Archives de catégorie : Fantasy

THE BABYSITTERS’ COVEN de Kate Williams

Adventures in Babysitting meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this funny, action-packed novel about a coven of witchy babysitters who realize their calling to protect the innocent and save the world from an onslaught of evil.

THE BABYSITTERS’ COVEN
by Kate Williams
Delacorte Press, September 2019

Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it’s kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she’s good at it. And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let’s just say she owes some people a new tree. Enter Cassandra Heaven. She’s Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria cooking. So why is Cassandra willing to do anything, even take on a potty-training two-year-old, to join Esme’s babysitters club? The answer lies in a mysterious note Cassandra’s mother left her: « Find the babysitters. Love, Mom. » Turns out, Esme and Cassandra have more in common than they think, and they’re about to discover what being a babysitter really means: a heroic lineage of superpowers, magic rituals, and saving the innocent from seriously terrifying evil. And all before the parents get home.

Film/TV rights optioned to Nickelodeon.

Also available:
FOR BETTER OR CURSED (The Babysitters Coven Book 2) – Delacorte Press, December 2020
SPELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT (The Babysitters Coven Book 3) – Delacorte Press, Fall 2021

Kate Williams has written for Seventeen, NYLON, Cosmopolitan, Bustle, Vans, Calvin Klein, Urban Outfitters, and many other brands and magazines. She lives in Kansas.

THE THOUSAND STEPS de Helen Brain

A smart and pacy dystopian thriller trilogy, in the vein of Divergent, with an original mythology that draws on the power of African ancestor legends.

THE THOUSAND STEPS
(Book 1 in the Elevation Trilogy)
by Helen Brain
Human & Rousseau/NB Publishers South Africa, May 2022 | Catalyst Press USA, January 2020

On the brink of execution, 16 year old Ebba den Eeden is unexpectedly “elevated” from the bunker deep in South Africa’s Table Mountain where she has lived all her life, believing—as do all the other teenagers who toil daily to make their food and power the bunker—that the world « Above » is uninhabitable due to a nuclear holocaust. Instead, she is heiress to a massive fortune―one that everyone wants to control. While dealing with the machinations of the High Priest, his handsome son Hal, and the rules and regulations of a society and religion she doesn’t understand, she must also try to save her three friends, still stuck in the bunker and facing execution any day.

Helen Brain was born in Australia in 1960 and raised in Durban, South Africa. After school, she studied music at the University of Cape Town. Before settling to a life writing and teaching writing online, she was a freelance journalist and editor, a screenprinter and crafter, and taught English, music, and Ancient Greek. A mother to three sons and grandmother to one grandson, Brain lives in Muizenberg, South Africa with her husband.

SWASHBUCKLERS de Dan Hanks

When Cisco Collins returns to his home town thirty years after saving it from being swallowed by a hell mouth opened by an ancient pirate ghost, he realises that being a childhood hero isn’t like it was in the movies. Especially when nobody remembers the heroic bits – even the friends who once fought alongside him..

SWASHBUCKLERS
by Dan Hanks
Angry Robot, November 2021

Struggling with single parenting and treated as bit of a joke, Cisco isn’t really in the Christmas spirit like everyone else. A fact that’s made worse by the tendrils of the pirate’s powers creeping back into our world and people beginning to die in bizarre ways. With the help of a talking fox, an enchanted forest, a long-lost friend haunting his dreams, and some 80s video game consoles turned into weapons, Cisco must now convince his friends to once again help him save the day. Yet they quickly discover that being a ghostbusting hero is so much easier when you don’t have schools runs, parent evenings, and nativity plays to attend. And even in the middle of a supernatural battle, you always need to bring snacks and wipes…
SWASHBUCKLERS is a middle-aged, parenting Ghostbusters at Christmas tale, which blends British folklore and a tiny bit of time travel into the mix too. It explores what happens when those childhood heroes like the Goonies grow up. Do they ever get over what happened? Do some of them hang onto those adventures too much and forget to live in the present? And what happens when they’re forced back together to save the day again?

Dan Hanks is a writer and editor based in the rolling green hills of the Peak District with his human family and fluffy sidekicks Indy and Maverick. One of the co-founders of the OcTBR Challenge and a a long-time reviewer for Fantasy Faction, he writes books, screenplays and comics when he’s not wasting time on Twitter.

THE THOUSAND EYES de A. K. Larkwood

The sequel to A. K. Larkwood’s stunning debut fantasy, The Unspoken Name, THE THOUSAND EYES continues The Serpent Gates series – perfect for fans of Jenn Lyons, Joe Abercrombie, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

THE THOUSAND EYES
(The Serpent Gates, Book 2)
by A. K. Larkwood
Tor Books, February 2022

Two years ago, Csorwe and Shuthmili risked the anger of the wizard Belthandros Sethennai to gain their freedom. Now, they make their living exploring relic worlds of the ancient serpent empire of Echentyr. They think they’re prepared for anything – but when one of their expeditions releases an Echentyri soldier who has slept undisturbed since the fall of her homeland, they are thrown back into a conflict that has lain dormant for thousands of years. Shuthmili will give anything to protect the woman and the life that she loves, but as events spiral out of control, she is torn between clinging to her humanity and embracing her eldritch power. Meanwhile, Tal Charossa returns to Tlaanthothe to find that Sethennai has gone missing. Tal wants nothing to do with his old boss and former lover, so when a magical catastrophe befalls the city, Tal tries to run rather than face his past – but he soon learns that something even worse may lurk in the future. Throughout the worlds of the Echo Maze, fragments of an undead goddess begin to awaken, and not all confrontations can be put off forever….
Les droits du tome 1, The Unspoken Name, sont toujours disponibles.

A.K. Larkwood studied English at St John’s College, Cambridge, and now lives in Oxford with her wife and a cat. Since then, she has worked in higher education & media relations, and is now studying law. She is the author of The Unspoken Name.

EBONWILDE de Crystal Smith

Get ready to be swept away, seduced, and swindled in the wickedly vicious third and final installment in the Bloodleaf series that Laura Sebastian called “enchanting, visceral, and twisty.”

EBONWILDE
(The Bloodleaf Trilogy, Book 3)
by Crystal Smith
HMH Books for Young Readers, Summer 2022
(via Park & Fine)

Welcome to Ebonwilde. Come and find me. Aurelia’s last words haunted Zan. Left with the task of finding and reviving Princess Aurelia, Zan sets off on his own adventure to find her and return the gift she sacrificed for him—her life. But not all is what it seems, and Ebonwilde is more dangerous than anyone can predict.
After Bloodleaf and Greythorne, this book concludes the Bloodleaf series, a roar of a dark and luscious epic fantasy that’s layered with heady romance, bloodthirsty magic, and ghostly intrigue—an absolutely wicked delight.

« The plot is breathlessly fast, complete with creepy spirits, a satisfying romance, and complex but clear political twists and turns….Political, romantic, magical, timely, yet also traditionally appealing. » —Kirkus

« Bloodleaf has a good chance of becoming your next YA obsession.” —Entertainment Weekly

« Smith has created a world full of intricate magical properties and rules where nothing is as it seems and the game is constantly changing….[Readers will] be pulled to the edge of their seats….abruptly awesome. A worthy addition to any fantasy collection. » —School Library Journal

Crystal Smith is a writer, photographer, and artist who developed an early love of storytelling in a family of voracious readers. She married her high school sweetheart in 2005, and they now reside in Utah with their two sons. When she isn’t writing or creating, she can be found re-watching Jane Eyre or reading ghost stories with all the lights on. EBONWILDE is Crystal’s third novel.