'Fifty Shades' author announces steamy new 'Cinderella romance'

The author of the blockbuster “Fifty Shades of Grey” novels is returning with a new, erotic book that she calls a “Cinderella romance for the 21st century.”

Called “The Mister,” the novel by British author E.L. James will be published in Britain and North America on April 16, publishers Vintage Books said on Thursday.

The story, set in London and Eastern Europe, centres on an aristocratic Englishman who falls for a mysterious, musically gifted young woman who has recently arrived in England, the publishers said.

“I’m so excited to finally get this passionate new romance out into the world,” James said in a statement. “It’s a Cinderella story for the twenty-first century. Maxim and Alessia have led me on a fascinating journey and I hope that my readers will be swept away by their thrilling and sensual tale.”

James’s “Fifty Shades” trilogy, featuring bondage, discipline, dominance, submission and sadomasochism (BDSM), was first published in 2012 and shot to the top of best-seller lists around the world with 150 million copies sold.

The novels were made into three movies for Universal Pictures that took more than $1 billion at the global box office but the so-called “mommy porn” that drew a mainstream female audience also provoked a debate about the lines between erotica and emotional or sexual abuse.

There was no word on Thursday on whether “The Mister” would be adapted for a movie, with neither Universal nor Vintage, a unit of Penguin Random House, responding to queries on whether the screen rights had been sold.