Harper Lee Will Publish A New Novel In July

For more than 50 years, Harper Lee was something of a one-hit wonder. Now, that's all about to change. The To Kill A Mockingbird author will publish a new novel in July, the AP reports. Harper — the publisher — announced today the new novel will be called Go Set A Watchman. It's set to publish on July 14. Fans of TKAM will be especially pleased to learn that the latest book is a sequel to the iconic novel. The 88-year-old Lee said in a Harper statement that she actually completed this novel in the mid-1950s, prior to writing Mockingbird. "It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout's childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became To Kill A Mockingbird) from the point of view of the young Scout." According to Harper, in Watchman, an adult Scout returns to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, the venerable Atticus Finch. "She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father's attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood," the publisher writes in a statement. The 304-page book will see a first printing of two million copies.