Last summer we reported that HarperCollins was to relaunch its Killer Reads online community as a digital-first crime and thriller list, and that its initial wave of releases would be discovered via a week of open submissions. Now, with its first publication date of February 19th little over a fortnight away, the imprint has revealed the first three titles it has bought from those submissions, along with three additional titles submitted via literary agents.

According to The Bookseller, the successful submissions are Chris Curran’s psychological thriller Mindsight, Patrick Kendrick’s US thriller Acoustic Shadows and J J Durham’s historical crime novel An Act of Mercy, whilst the agented acquisitions are Catherine Hunt’s psychological thriller Someone Out There, S Williams’ London-set thriller Tuesday Falling and Sheena Lambert’s The Lake, based in 1970s Ireland. Curran will be first to be published, with the remaining titles released at a rate of up to two per month.

Sarah Hodgson, the publisher’s deputy publishing director, says of the acquisitions: ‘We can’t wait to introduce our wonderful new authors to the discerning crime and thriller community and look forward to hearing what readers think of them. We’ve been lucky enough to acquire a broad variety of novels across the spectrum of the crime and thriller genre to launch the list with, but what they all share is that page-turning quality that keeps you reading long after you should have turned the light out.’

Editor Kate Stephenson, meanwhile, adds: ‘These authors really deserve to be published, and we are so pleased that they have chosen to make Killer Reads their home.’

This is the second instance in the past six months of a HarperCollins imprint yielding the fruits of open submission, following sci-fi and horror list Harper Voyager’s announcement last year that it would publish 15 unagented titles after its October 2012 call for submissions.