Archives de l’auteur : WebmasterBenisti

IMPOSTER SYNDROME AND OTHER CONFESSIONS OF ALEJANDRA KIM de Patricia Park

The award-winning author of Re Jane makes her young adult debut in a funny, poignant, and powerful novel about a multicultural teen struggling to fit into her whitewashed school, her diverse Queens neighborhood, and even her own home as her family reels from the loss of her father.

IMPOSTER SYNDROME AND OTHER CONFESSIONS OF ALEJANDRA KIM
by Patricia Park
Crown Books for Young Readers, February 2023
(via The Gernert Company)

Alejandra Kim doesn’t feel like she belongs anywhere. At her wealthy Manhattan high school, her súper Spanish name and súper Korean face do not compute to her mostly white « woke » classmates and teachers. In her Jackson Heights neighborhood, she’s not Latinx enough. Even at home, Ale feels unwelcome. And things at home have only gotten worse since Papi’s body was discovered on the subway tracks.
Ale wants nothing more than to escape the city for the wide-open spaces of the prestigious Wyder University. But when a microaggression at school thrusts Ale into the spotlight—and into a discussion she didn’t ask for—Ale must discover what is means to carve out a space for yourself to belong.
Patricia Park’s coming-of-age novel about a multicultural teen caught between worlds, and the future she is building for herself, is an incisive, laugh-out-loud, provocative read.

“…A dazzling YA debut…that is deep, real and scathingly funny.” —Gayle Forman, New York Times best-selling author of If I Stay.

“…brimming with insights while being un-put-downable and just plain fun. Simply brilliant!” —David Yoon, New York Times best-selling author of Frankly In Love

“Park’s work paints an educational but entertaining portrait of what it is like to be a person of color in today’s world…. [A] fantastic read.” —School Library Journal, starred review

“[An] entertaining, well-paced story…. Ale is a thoroughly appealing protagonist.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Alejandra’s powerful story will leave readers with much to think about.” —The Horn Book

“This humor-infused tale poignantly captures one teenager’s experience learning to stand up for what she believes in.” —Publishers Weekly

Patricia Park is an assistant professor of creative writing at American University, a Fulbright Scholar in Creative Arts, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and the author of the acclaimed adult novel Re Jane. The Korean American reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre was named an Editors’ Choice by the New York Times Book Review; a Best Book of 2015 by the American Library Association; an O, The Oprah Magazine pick; and an NPR « Fresh Air » pick, among other honors. Her writing has also appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Guardian, Salon, and others. Patricia lives in Brooklyn, NY.

GIRLS LIKE GIRLS de Hayley Kiyoko

Trailblazing pop star, actor and director, Hayley Kiyoko debuts her first novel, a coming-of-age romance based on her breakthrough hit song and viral video, Girls Like Girls.

GIRLS LIKE GIRLS
by Hayley Kiyoko
Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press, May 2023

It’s summertime and 17-year-old Coley has found herself alone, again. Forced to move to rural Oregon after just losing her mother, she is in no position to risk her already fragile heart. But when she meets Sonya, the attraction is immediate.
Coley worries she isn’t worthy of love. Up until now, everyone she’s loved has left her. And Sonya’s never been with a girl before. What if she’s too afraid to show up for Coley? What if by opening her heart, Coley’s risking it all?
They both realize that when things are pushed down, and feelings are forced to shrivel away, Coley and Sonya will be the ones to shrink. It’s not until they accept the love they fear and deserve most, that suddenly the song makes sense.
Based on the billboard-charting smash hit song and viral music video GIRLS LIKE GIRLS, Hayley Kiyoko’s debut novel is about embracing your truth and realizing we are all worthy of being loved back.

Hayley Kiyoko is an award-winning American singer, dancer, and actress. « At the forefront of an unapologetically queer pop movement » according to Rolling Stone, Hayley is a passionate advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights. Her debut novel, GIRLS LIKE GIRLS, is based on her hit single and music video of the same name.

SHOW STRIDES #1 de Rennie Dyball & Piper Klemm

A contemporary take on bestselling series such as The Saddle Club, SHOW STRIDES brings the world of horses, horse shows, and barn life to a new generation of readers.

SHOW STRIDES #1: SCHOOL HORSES AND SHOW PONIES
by Rennie Dyball & Piper Klemm
Andrews McMeel, Summer 2024
(via Gillian MacKenzie Agency)

SHOW STRIDES follows young equestrian Tally Hart and her stable of friends as they work together to succeed both in and out of the show ring.
As veteran horsewomen and leaders in the equestrian industry, Piper and Rennie want to draw as many children as possible into the magical world of horses. It is no secret that equestrian sports have historically been elitist. But as the sport expands and seeks to be more inclusive, a new generation of riders are now entering the ring and the bookstore—looking for stories they can connect to, but coming up short-handed. SHOW STRIDES is the contemporary, bestselling answer to the problems found in outdated classics like The Saddle Club and Thoroughbred. Gone is the “mean girl” that often populated the pages of those series; instead SHOW STRIDES embraces kids working together and lifting each other up. Gone is the stereotypical arrogant rich girl leading the charge; instead SHOW STRIDES stars Tally Hart, who mucks stalls, bathes ponies, fills water buckets, and sweeps aisles, all to pay for her riding lessons. (To Tally, this isn’t work. As anyone who has ever loved a horse knows, just being around the creatures is reward enough.)
With a diverse cast of characters, this inclusive series is aimed to appeal to everyone—from the kid actively competing in horse shows to the one just reading and dreaming about them from their bedroom. And based on the initial self-published success SHOW STRIDES has found, it looks it is on its way to earning a blue ribbon.

Piper Klemm is the owner and publisher of The Plaid Horse, the leading North-American equestrian magazine with more than 85,000 unique and meaningfully engaged readers; 400,000 monthly webpage views; and over 130,000 followers across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. In addition, The Plaid Horse gets over 1,000,000 monthly views on Pinterest. Co-author Rennie Dyball has been writing and riding her whole life. She worked for fifteen years at People magazine and has ghostwritten books for Christian Siriano, Andrea Barber, and most recently Terry Crews and Rebecca King Crews, among others. Piper Klemm and Rennie Dyball are a unique and powerful team, combining Piper’s many years as a staple of equestrian sports media, and Rennie’s tenure as an author and 20 years in mainstream media. Both are active members as the equestrian community, not just in media, but as competitors on a national level themselves.

NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS de Meredith Adamo

Sold in a heated auction, debut author Meredith Adamo’s intricate YA novel is part mystery, part Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, and part HBO’s The Flight Attendant. The perfect combination of plot-filled page-turner and powerful coming-of-age tale, NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS announces Meredith as a major new voice in YA fiction.

NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS
by Meredith Adamo
Bloomsbury, April 2024
(via Writers House)

I think, inexplicably, of another photo. Last fall, late October. The night of the bonfire at Durand Eastman Beach. In the photo, I wear tight denim shorts, beat-up white Keds, a black zip-up that isn’t mine. It’s bad enough how I tilt my head, just so, a hickey bruised on the curve of my neck, but even worse is my smile. Sly. Coy. Like I know more in this moment than some girls ever know. I didn’t know shit. I especially didn’t know that when the night sky filled with stars, when the fire hissed, half-dead, when every phone pinged with SIX NEW PHOTOS, I’d so seamlessly become the worst of me: Jo at seventeen, outcast. But I guess that’s the trouble with girls like me. We always get what we deserve.
Seventeen-year-old Jo-Lynn Kirby used to be “brace-faced but beautiful, a tiara pinned in her sun-streaked hair.” She used to be “sophomore class president, stunned at her landslide victory […], June’s Scooper of the Month at Costello’s Frozen Custard, posing a touch too proudly with her bonus check. . . ” but now she’s. . . just not. Now Jo is a wild girl, reckless girl, difficult girl, who rolls her eyes a little too much, whose grades have plummeted to the point that she’s on academic probation; now Jo is the girl whose Nudes were leaked to the entire school. And then her former best friend: pretty, nice, Maddie Price, uncharacteristically, cryptically, and desperately asks Jo for help—telling Jo she’s in trouble, that she thinks Jo can help her—just hours before Maddie disappears.
What quickly seems to the community like a simple runaway doesn’t add up that way to Jo-Lynn—and it doesn’t seem that way to Jo’s classmate and Eastman High’s Salutatorian Hudson Harper-Moore either. To dig deeper into Maddie’s disappearance, Jo needs to get in with, and back with, the group of classmates she left behind—and Jo and Hudson decide the only way to seamlessly do that is to pretend they’re dating. But for Jo, going back to social life from social outcast means she must confront all she’d rather leave behind: the boys who betrayed her; the girls who whisper that she had it coming; the secrets that tore her and Maddie apart. Yet as Jo finds allies in girls she once alienated, a true mentor in her Senior Experience Journalism supervisor, and as she develops very real feelings for Hudson, she risks losing more than she ever knew she wanted. . . as the clues to Maddie’s disappearance pull Jo deeper and deeper into a web of lies, whose stories can and can’t Jo trust? Especially when she’s still figuring out her own story, and her own truth. . .

Meredith Adamo is a YA author based in hot, humid North Carolina, but she’s originally from Rochester, New York, which is her favorite place on the planet. She likes to write about girls who can make you laugh and break your heart—ideally on the same page. Her non-writing interests include collecting vintage bakeware, crocheting the ugliest blankets you’ve ever seen, and grocery shopping. NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS is her debut novel.

WANDER IN THE DARK de Jumata Emill

From the acclaimed author of The Black Queen comes a stunning new YA novel in the spirit of This Is Us, but with the propulsive, page-turning suspense synonymous with Karen McManus, Kara Thomas, and Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé.

WANDER IN THE DARK
by Jumata Emill
Delacorte, Spring 2024
(via Writers House)

Amir Trudeau, the troubled son of local celebrity chef and restaurateur Martin Trudeau, isn’t without his share of problems. He hates his new school, his mother doesn’t like any of his friends, and his estranged half-brother Marcel is continuously trying to repair a relationship that Amir wants no part of. As far as Amir is concerned, years of hurt feelings that began the day their father divorced Amir’s mother and then moved on to achieve fame and fortune after marrying Marcel’s mother isn’t something that will ever be undone. But when Amir wakes up in the middle of the night and finds Chloe Danvers, a pretty and popular white girl he barely knows, stabbed to death, he suddenly finds himself with much bigger things to worry about.
Chloe is from an upper middle-class family with connections, and the last person she was with is a Black man caught fleeing the scene via security cameras. Everyone thinks the killer is Amir, including the police, and so in order to clear his name he’s going to have to rely on the people he trusts least—especially Marcel. Marcel sees helping Amir clear his name as way to repair their relationship, but he quickly learns that finding out why someone fatally stabbed Chloe will force the Trudeaus to confront truths that might tear them further apart, and reveal the twisted secrets festering within the hallowed halls of the elite private school the brothers attend.

Jumata Emill is a journalist who has covered crime and local politics in Mississippi and parts of Louisiana. He earned his BA in mass communications from Southern University and A&M University. He’s a Pitch Wars alum and a member of the Crime Writers of Color. When he’s not writing about murderous teens, he’s watching and obsessively tweeting about every franchise of the Real Housewives. Jumata lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.