An utterly addictive new YA novel from debut author Allyson Dahlin! Set in an alternate future Versailles, social influencer Marie Antoinette and her shy new husband Louis Auguste must right the wrongs of generations, amid rampant misinformation and capitalist propaganda.
CAKE EATER
by Allyson Dahlin
HarperTeen, August 2022
(via Writers House)
The year is 3070, and Marie Antoinette has just arrived at Versailles. Marie is an App sensation, a style icon and a maven of social influence with millions of followers—but here, in the glamorous Franc Kingdom, her job is simply to marry Louis August. Unfortunately, Louis doesn’t seem interested in Marie, making her feel lonelier than ever in this new country. Luckily, Marie has a distraction: opulent soirées and decadent after-parties abound in Versailles.
But beneath the luxurious world lies a sinister underbelly, and a storm hits Versailles that reveals to Marie and Louis the gilded world around them for the cracked facade it truly is—a hideaway for the rich and powerful, while the people outside suffer and starve. Determined to set things right, Louis and Marie must devise a way to right the wrongs of generations past—and outwit those who want to keep them pawns in a deadly game.
CAKE EATER will take readers to a glittering world full of breathless luxuries, deadly secrets, and a thrilling romance that attempts to rewrite history itself.
Allyson Dahlin grew up on a farm in central New York, where she had little to do but read loads of library books and make up magical and slightly creepy stories about the woods and farm animals while pretending to be a witch/homesteader. She studied psychology in college while working as a housekeeper at a motel in Cooperstown. That job involved a lot of boring hours to think up backstories for the guests whose rooms she cleaned. A shawl left on a chair by an aging opera soprano, a stack of old baseball cards left by a Hall of Fame inductee, and the legend of a monster in the lake were all fodder for stories. It was during that time she transformed from a reader and a daydreamer to a writer.
It’s fourteen-year-old Gabe Sweeney’s day to check for survivors . . . Two years after a global pandemic, twenty survivors (most of them children) have relocated from their coastal Maine island full of sad memories to a mansion on a small, neighboring island where they have school and farm chores. When Gabe and his dog, Mud, find Relle Douglas alone in the woods on the mainland, they take the strange new girl across the channel to live with them. Relle changes the island with her hopeful attitude. She tells big stories and makes plans for activities like talent shows. Despite a growing crush, Gabe doesn’t quite understand the point of it all; why have a talent show at the end of the world? But when tragedy strikes, Gabe sets out on a dangerous journey to try and find other survivors where the world might be normal. Like Before. 
Ellie McFadden has intuitive gifts. She can sense what other living things are feeling. She can even talk to animals! Too bad she can’t connect with her twin sister, Parker. Parker McFadden has kinetic gifts. She can cause shocks to the earth and produce heat energy that explodes from her body like fire, especially when she is angry. The sisters aren’t aware of the legacy they inherited from their mother until, on their thirteenth birthday, two mysterious relatives on the Power side whisk them off to an isolated sanctuary called Haven. Ellie immediately adapts to their new routine, but Parker has one impulse: to get back to her normal life of friends and sports, fast.
When Doctor Frances Ai’s younger sister Maura died in a tragic accident six months ago, Frances swore she would bring her back to life. However, the creature that rises from the slab is clearly not Maura. This girl, who chooses the name “M,” doesn’t remember anything about Maura’s life and just wants to be her own person. However, Frances expects M to pursue the same path that Maura had been on—applying to college to become a scientist—and continue the plans she and Maura shared. Hoping to trigger Maura’s memories, Frances surrounds M with the trappings of Maura’s past, but M wants nothing to do with Frances’ attempts to change her into something she’s not.
In Linette Moore’s debut, middle-grade graphic novel, THE PRISONER OF SHIVERSTONE, eleven-year-old Helga Sharp is found unconscious in a drifting rowboat near the coast of Utley Island. Utley, as Helga finds out when she awakens in the hospital, is forbidden territory: it’s a prison island to which the Mainland has exiled troublesome mad scientists for generations. Helga is questioned by the island’s guards and though they’re suspicious of her story, they agree to let her stay until they find her family.