Cover Stories: Zafón's second opus; Macmillan changes; Opening Blue Door

Readers and booksellers have long been looking forward to the new novel from Carlos Ruiz Zafón, whose debut, The Shadow of the Wind, sold around a million copies for Weidenfeld. This week, Kirsty Dunseath, the Spanish-speaking editor who bought it, was able to announce a second opus from Zafón, The Angel's Game. A prequel to Wind, set in pre-war Barcelona, it is "a thrilling tale of lost souls and literary intrigue". Lucia Graves, daughter of Robert Graves, will translate. Weidenfeld publishes next spring.

* Six months after she was installed at Macmillan as CEO in the wake of Richard Charkin's departure for Bloomsbury, Annette Thomas is making her presence felt. This week she revealed that David North, MD of Pan Macmillan, is to leave after eight years. North has presided over a 13 per cent growth, and his sudden departure has caused speculation about a wider upheaval – perhaps even the acquisition of Bloomsbury by Macmillan's German parent, Holtzbrinck. Rumours persist that Random House and Hachette have also given Bloomsbury a look over.

* Patrick Janson-Smith, who left Transworld to become an agent, is to return as a publisher to HarperCollins and set up his own imprint, Blue Door. The bespoke list of fiction and non-fiction will form part of HarperPress. It's a homecoming for PJS: he began at Granada, long since subsumed into HarperCollins.