More Fiction from James Frey

Thu., Sep. 13, 2007 3:05 PM PDT by Sarah Hall

Disgraced "memoirist" James Frey is getting another chance to prove himself as a writer.

The A Million Little Pieces author, who admitted fabricating large portions of his drug and alcohol account, will publish a novel through HarperCollins next summer, the publisher said Wednesday.

Bright Shiny Morning, a work tagged as fiction from the outset, was described as a portrait of modern-day Los Angeles.

"James Frey is an immensely talented writer who has written a truly extraordinary and original novel, one of great breadth and ambition," Jonathan Burnham, HarperCollins senior vice president and publisher, said in a statement.

HarperCollins said there would be no comment from Frey on his comeback oeuvre.

That Frey, 38, managed to ink a new book deal is somewhat surprising, considering his writing career appeared to be entirely over as of last year.

His troubles began when the Smoking Gun Website unearthed numerous inaccuracies in A Million Little Pieces, including the amount of time Frey claimed he spent behind bars, his account of undergoing a root canal without Novocain and his version of the circumstances surrounding his girlfriend's death.

Frey was subsequently taken to task by Oprah Winfrey on national television, with the talk-show host claiming she felt "duped" and "betrayed" after selecting the tome for her book club and sending its sales through the roof.

Plans for a feature film adaptation of the book fell through after Warner Bros. elected to shelve the project, which Brad Pitt had been on board to produce.

Amid the furor, Frey was dropped by his agent as well as Penguin Books USA, which had previously negotiated a seven-figure contract with him. Doubleday ended up offering refunds to readers who felt they had been wronged by the embellished memoir, and added an author's note from Frey acknowledging the discrepancies to all new editions of the book.

Despite Frey's downfall, A Million Little Pieces continues to sell well, moving at least 1,000 copies a week into 2007, per Nielsen BookScan.

Just don't look for Winfrey to endorse his new novel for her book club.