After being silenced by the screenwriters strike, gossip soon will fly once more, when new episodes of Gossip Girl begin to air again starting April 21. And fans eager for the next book need wait only until May, when Little Brown Books for Young Readers’ Poppy imprint will publish Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl: The Carlyles with a 200,000-copy first printing.

With the exception of the gossipy blogger who gives the series its name, the cast of this and subsequent volumes in the spin-off is all-new, though the setting remains the same. Exactly the same. The Carlyles—teen triplets who relocate to Manhattan from Nantucket—move into the very Fifth Avenue penthouse that Gossip Girl star Blair Waldorf’s family has vacated. They attend the same exclusive private schools as did the characters from the original arc and move in the same privileged social circles. Read the rest of this entry »