Master storyteller Ken Oppel delivers a new novel blending science fiction with social commentary, in an emotionally engaging, coming-of-age YA drama.
THE BEST OF ALL WORDS
by Kenneth Oppel
Scholastic, June 2025
(via Writers House)
No warning. No explanation. No escape.
Xavier Oaks doesn’t particularly want to go to the cabin with his dad and his dad’s pregnant new wife, Nia. But family obligations are family obligations, and it’s only for a short time. So he leaves his mom, his brother, and the rest of his life behind for a week in the woods. Except . . . on the first morning he wakes up and the house isn’t where it was before. It’s like it’s been lifted and placed somewhere else. When Xavier, his dad, and Nia go explore, they find they are inside a dome, trapped. And there’s no one else around . . .
Until, three years later, another family arrives. Is there any escape? Is there a reason for them to be stuck where they are? Different people have different answers – and those different answers inevitably lead to tension, strife, and sacrifice.
In this masterpiece, award-winning author Kenneth Oppel has created a heart-stopping, can’t-wait-to-talk-about-it story, showing how our very human choices collectively lead to humanity’s eventual fate.
Kenneth Oppel is the author of numerous books for young readers. His award-winning Silverwing trilogy has sold over a million copies worldwide and been adapted as an animated TV series and stage play. Airborn won a Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award and the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award for children’s literature; its sequel, Skybreaker, was a New York Times bestseller and was named Children’s Novel of the Year by the London Times. He is also the author of Half Brother (which won both the Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year for Children Award, as well as their Young Adult Book Award – the first time in the awards’ history the same title has won both honours), This Dark Endeavor, Such Wicked Intent, and The Boundless. His latest books are Inkling and The Nest (which won the 2016 CLA Book of the Year for Children Award). Born on Canada’s Vancouver Island, he has lived in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, Canada; in England and Ireland; and now resides in Toronto with his wife and children.

Princess Rosemary of Henland can’t afford distractions. She’s working tirelessly to repair her image following a scandal that lost the trust of both her country and her best friend. Unfortunately, when a beautiful and funny new student joins her boarding school, Rose finds herself quite distracted indeed.
Terra Slater might not know anything about her birth family or where she comes from, but that’s never stopped her, and she fully intends her senior year to be her best yet. Until the dark and mysterious Thorne Wilder—a magical bounty hunter—moves to town, bringing revelations that wreck all of her plans.
Ruti is Markless. In a society where worth is determined by the mark on your palm and the magic it grants you, this also deems her worthless. Except she’s also a hardened survivor, a protector of the Markless…and the most powerful witch in Somanchi. With a single song, she can pray to the many gods for unimaginable powers.