Penguin Random House will be publishing Jaleigh Johnson’s Dungeons & Dragons novel The Fallbacks:  Bound for Ruin under the Random House Worlds imprint with release set for March 5, 2024.

The Fallbacks:  Bound for Ruin introduces a team of five adventurers inspired by the classic Dungeons & Dragons character classes including a rogue, fighter, wizard, cleric, and bard, and their pet otyugh, Uggie.  Set in the Forgotten Realms setting, the book tells how this inexperienced party is hired to recover a spellbook from a lost temple, only for their patron to turn up murdered.  Discovering that the book has a mind of its own, they are forced to flee and try to clear their name.

Bound for Ruin will be the first book in a planned series of novels by Johnson (who authored the New York Times bestseller The Mark of the Dragonfly as well as fiction for Dungeons & Dragons:  Forgotten Realms and Marvel) and other books featuring the Fallbacks party.

Penguin Random House continues to publish Dungeons & Dragons material under license from Wizards of the Coast, though the distribution relationship between the two companies is scheduled to end (see “WotC Ending PRH Distribution of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’”).

The Random House Graphic division recently announced plans for a series of graphic novels based on the characters of Dr. Seuss (see “Dr. Seuss Characters Coming to Graphic Novels”).