For all those keen on a bit of literary smut, the 50 Shades trilogy now has a follow-up! EL James, who got the idea for the BDSM romance-thriller novels after writing some fanfic about Twilight’s Edward and Bella, is writing a new novel. And we already know some details: The Mister is set in the present-day, and flits from London to Cornwall and Eastern Europe.
Tied up in class and money and sex, as before, the novel has Maxim Trevelyan, a wealthy aristocrat, at its centre. He becomes involved with Alessia Demachi, a newcomer to London, who’s got a dangerous past and not so much money at all. It will be on sale on April 16th, and is available for pre-order already.
'I’m so excited to finally get this passionate new romance out into the world,’ a statement from the reclusive James said: ‘It’s a Cinderella story for the twenty-first century. Maxim and Alessia have led me on a fascinating journey and I hope that my readers will be swept away by their thrilling and sensual tale, just as I was while writing, and that, like me, they fall in love with them.’
An excerpt of the book was shared on the Today programme, and it’s basically about Alessia watching Maxim as he sleeps. He has ‘unkempt brown hair’, ‘a pale taut backside’, ‘long, muscular legs’ and ‘unfocused but brilliant green eyes’.
50 Shades of Grey, the first of the 50 Shades Trilogy, was first published in, wait for it, 2012, and, along with 50 Shades Darker and 50 Shades Freed, went on to sell 125 million copies by June 2015. It also culminated in three films featuring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson doing about 60% of all the sexy stuff that their characters did in the book. Simply by virtue of the previous books’ roaring success, The Mister is set to make EL James as rich as her richest protagonist.