A New Novel Co-Authored By Stan Lee Is Coming This Fall

Stan Lee Image by Getty/Frazer Harrison/Staff

By PJ Grisar June 25, 2019

Stan Lee may have made his final film cameo in “Avengers: Endgame,” but we haven’t heard the last of him. The late Marvel publisher, who died last November at the age of 95, has a new book coming this fall — and it’s not a comic.

“A Trick of the Light,” one of Lee’s final creative endeavors will hit shelves on September 17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced June 24. According to the publisher, the book, co-authored by Edgar-nominated novelist and journalist Kat Rosenfield, is Lee’s first novel for adults.

The book is an origin story about a young man named Cameron, who achieves a degree of celebrity when an accident grants him the ability to telekinetically control electronics. Cameron is joined by a master hacker named Nia in a battle against an online threat to humanity.

Before the book arrives in hardcover, Audible is releasing an audio version, narrated by “Grown-ish” actress Yara Shahidi, out later this June. You [can hear Lee’s inimitable voice](narrated by actor Yara Shahidi, Audible’s version features Lee’s) plugging “A Trick of the Light” in ad on Audible’s website, asking: “What is more real: A world we are born into or one we create ourselves?”

The novel, and its world, the newly-minted Alliances Universe, were co-created by Lee, Oscar-winning producer Ryan Silbert and writer and producer Luke Lieberman, known for his work on “Red Sonja.”

“When Stan Lee passed away last fall, the world lost a genius whose fountain of creativity kept flowing to the very end,” Bruce Nichols, senior vice president at HMH said in a statement. “We are so grateful that one of his final projects was his first-ever novel for adult readers, and we are proud and excited to be publishing it.”

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected].

PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO