A spellbinding middle-grade tale of determination and love. Its characters sparkle and delight. It’s a brilliantly rich magical tale that young readers will fall in love with.
THE HOTEL WITCH
by Jessica Miller
Text Publishing (Australia), March 2023
Sibyl loves possibilities, and at the Grand Mirror Hotel everything seems possible. It might even be possible that one day her grandmother will let her open the Book of Advanced and Dangerous Magic. Sibyl is the apprentice hotel witch. Under the watchful care of her grandmother she is memorising spell patterns to keep the hotel staff and guests happy. But the spells don’t always go exactly as planned: sometimes the spell to make the cakes rise works a little too well, and eclairs and chocolate cakes float up to the ceiling.
When Sibyl’s grandmother goes missing, other things mysteriously disappear from the Grand Mirror Hotel. At first, the harp doesn’t sound quite so ‘harp-y’, then the grandfather clock loses its ‘boooong’ and the Golden Nightingale, the world’s most wonderful soprano, loses her voice. When Sibyl discovers that something or someone is stealing their shadows, she knows it’s up to her to find the right spell to return them before the magic of the Grand Mirror Hotel is lost.
Jessica Miller is a children’s writer from Brisbane, currently living in Berlin. She has written for a variety of publications including Kill Your Darlings and Stilts. Her first novel, Elizabeth and Zenobia, was shortlisted for the Text Prize and the Readings Prize. It was also a CBCA Notable Book, as was her second book, The Republic of Birds.
Four years ago, five kids started a game. Only four survived. Now, at the end of their senior year of high school, the survivors—Dax, Maddy, Emerson, and Owen—have reunited for one strange and terrible reason: they’ve been summoned by the ghost of Ian, the friend they left for dead. Together they return to the tunnel where their friendship ended with one goal: find Ian and bring him home. So they restart the deadly game they never finished—an innocent card-matching challenge called Meido. A game without instructions. As soon as they begin, they’re dragged out of their reality and into an eerie hellscape of Japanese underworlds, more horrifying than even the darkest folktales that Owen’s grandmother told him. There, they meet Shinigami, an old wise woman who explains the rules: They have one night to complete seven challenges or all of them, even Ian, will be stuck in this world forever. Once inseparable, the survivors now can’t stand each other, but the challenges demand they work together, think quickly, and make sacrifices—blood, clothes, secrets, memories, and worse. And once again, not everyone will make it out of Meido alive.
It’s 1979, and Jasmine Zumideh is ready to get the heck out of her stale, Southern California suburb and into her dream school, NYU, where she’ll major in journalism and cover New York City’s exploding music scene. There’s just one teeny problem: Due to a deadline snafu, she maaaaaaybe said she was Senior Class President-Elect on her application―before the election takes place. But honestly, she’s running against Gerald Thomas, a rigid rule-follower whose platform includes reinstating a dress code―there’s no way she can lose. And she better not, or NYU will rescind her application. But then, an international incident turns the election upside down: a group of students in Iran, fed up with the U.S.’s interference in Iranian politics, takes the American Embassy in Tehran―and the people within it―hostage. And, as the Iran Hostage Crisis dominates the nightly news, her opponent seizes the opportunity to stir up anti-Iranian sentiment at school and turn the electorate against her―with the help of her outspoken brother, who never stops talking about it. Now, as the white lie she told snowballs into an avalanche, Jasmine is stuck between claiming her heritage or hiding it, standing by her outspoken brother or turning her back on him, winning the election or abandoning her dreams for good.
Andie Rose has a plan. Transfer to the illustrious Blue Ridge State mid-Freshman year. Major in psychology. Become an iconic self-help figure. Create a lasting, positive impression on the world just like her larger-than-life, beloved talk-radio host mom
Book 1: STACEY CASEY AND THE HOUSE THAT TIME REMEMBERED
Book 2: STACEY CASEY AND THE CHEEKY OUTLAW