Sarah Lyall

London may be burning, but that doesn’t mean that the Murdoch hacking scandal isn’t still helping sell book proposals.

New York Times writers Sarah Lyall and Don Van Natta, Jr. will co-author the “definitive account.” Times Books, an imprint of Henry Holt, will publish, they announced today. They did not announce a publication date or title.

Ms. Lyall is the witty American writer of The Anglo Files, a book about cultural differences between the US and Great Britain (as well as countless Times articles on the subject).

Mr. Van Natta is a Times investigative reporter. He co-authored Her Way, a 2007 book about Hillary Clinton. Wonder Girl, his book about female golfer Babe Didrikson, came out earlier this year. Mr. Van Natta also co-wrote a 2010 cover story for the New York Times Magazine on News of the World’s phone hacking.

The “definitive account” is not the only book about the scandal coming out of a Macmillan imprint. Late last month, Faber & Faber’s Mitzi Angel bought US rights to Guardian journalist Nick Davies’ account of how he broke the hacking story. HACK ATTACK: How the Truth Caught up with the World's Most Powerful Man is slated for publication in Fall 2012.

Jo Becker, a Times investigative reporter who has been on the Murdoch beat of late (and shared many bylines, including the magazine cover story, with Mr. Van Natta) will presumably be thanked in the acknowledgements, as will Ravi Somaiya, who has also written about the hacking scandal. Mr. Somaiya is now covering the riots.