Acquisition Announcement: THE SECRET LIVES OF IMMORTALS by Ash Huang
We are thrilled to announce the acquisition of The Secret Lives of Immortals by debut author Ash Huang, an exquisite tale of sorcery and power, and a centuries-spanning love story between a poet from the Imperial Chinese palace and the Roman gladiator who tricks her into eternal life.
With the epic scope of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and the irreverent, unapologetically modern voice of The Ministry of Time, The Secret Lives of Immortals is a genre-defying work of speculative fiction that will that will break your heart and put it back together again.
Here’s more about the book:
He Ling is many things—storyteller, poet, con woman. She’s also lived for a very long time.
From the courts of Imperial China to the bloody gladiatorial pits of Rome, from druidic London to frontier America—she’s seen and experienced it all.
She’s witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations; embarked on great adventures; mourned the fleeting lives of her friends. Still, she can’t help but remember the one who came before all else: Quintus, the Roman mercenary who tricked her into this eternal life in the first place. The first man she ever loved, and the one who haunts her still.
For immortals like them, forever is both a promise and a curse. As Ling starts to carve out a life she can finally call her own in the new millennium, she’s about to find out which is true.
Author Ash Huang said: “I’m absolutely thrilled find a home here at Orbit with Jenni, Angelica, and the rest of the team. I’ve read and obsessed over many immortality stories over the years, from canonical vampire lore to cryogenically preserved bumblers like Futurama’s Frye. The Secret Lives of Immortals is my own homage to what it actually means to make the years count as they fly on by.”
The Secret Lives of Immortals will publish in Winter 2027. Meanwhile, you can find Ash at her website or on Instagram.
Ash Huang has been published in Nightmare, Lightspeed, Ecotone, Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, Orion’s Belt, Catapult, and elsewhere. In 2022, she won the Diverse Worlds Grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation, and is an alum of the Roots. Wounds. Words. Retreat, Tin House Winter Workshop, and the Periplus Fellowship. She was a Reading Fellow for the Tin House Workshop in 2024–2025. She is currently a Fiction Editor at Orion’s Belt, and a Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler Resident with Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.
Orbit UK editorial director Jenni Hill acquired World English rights to two books from Hana El Niwairi at Cooke McDermid. Orbit US editor Angelica Chong has acquired US rights for Redhook.