For many months now, Del Rey has had a single book left on its contract ('05 to '08) that wasn't yet assigned. With the full breadth of the timeline more open now than ever before, speculation has been fierce as to what kind of story we might end up getting. At long last, we have an answer, courtesy of the Official Site:

James Luceno, author of the bestselling Cloak of Deception and Darth Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, has been contracted by Del Rey Books to write a novel about Darth Sidious and his Muun mentor, Darth Plagueis. As is to be expected on all matters of the Sith, details remain obscured by the shadow of the dark side, but in time, more will be revealed.

Already there's interesting new info to chew over here - Palpatine's master was a nonhuman? Who would have thought!? Click here for more, and our thanks go out to Derek for alerting us first.