It feels almost like a fairy tale, until Callie discovers that her renter intends to do more than party-and that Prime Destinations’ plans are more evil than Callie could ever have imagined. But the neurochip they place in Callie’s head malfunctions and she wakes up in the life of her renter, living in her mansion, driving her cars, and going out with a senator’s grandson. Callie, desperate for the money that will keep her, Tyler, and Michael alive, agrees to be a donor. He hires teens to rent their bodies to Enders-seniors who want to be young again. Callie’s only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man. She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie. Starters is out of the gate with an unspecified print run from Delacorte Books for Young Readers.Callie lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty. Liongate picked up the rights to Hunger Games when the first book was only in the middle of a 200,000-copy run (the entire trilogy now has about 23.5 million copies in print). The protagonist discovers a nefarious secret behind the renting.ĮXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Behind the Scenes of THR’s ‘Hunger Games’ Cover Shoot The sequel, Enders, was also a bestseller. STARTERS garnered praise from Harlan Ellison, the LA Times and Dean Koontz.

In order to escape her predicament and help her brother, 16-year old Callie enlists in an organization that allows the elderly to “rent” the bodies of the young, with the youngsters having no memory of what transpires during the body-takeover as the Enders enjoy the vitality of youth. Lissa Price is the internationally bestselling author of the Starters series published in 29 countries, with Random House as the US publisher. The situation is so bad that Mexico builds a wall to keep Americans out, and the young are left mostly to fend for themselves. And like Hunger Games, it’s a YA book that appeals to adults.Ī biological attack kills off anyone who wasn’t vaccinated, leaving only the young and elderly alive (called Starters and Enders, respectively). For example, the Los Angeles Times said, “Readers who have been waiting for a worthy successor to Suzanne Collins‘ The Hunger Games will find it here,” while Booklist said it had chases “worthy of a blockbuster.” Like Games, Starters is set in a dystopian United States torn apart by a war, and it features a female protagonist who is willing to sacrifice everything to save her little brother. Starters immediately generated reviews and profiles comparing it to Hunger Games. PHOTOS: 10 Biggest Book-to-Big Screen Adaptations of the Last 25 Years

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