Archives de catégorie : Young Adult

THE BITTER END d’Alexa Donne

Eight teens. One blizzard. Zero exits. And a killer on the loose. The trip of a lifetime might be the death of them all.

THE BITTER END
by Alexa Donne
Crown (Penguin Random House), October 2024
(via Laura Dail Literary Agency)

Willa believes she’s cursed. Now bad luck has followed her up a mountain.

Declan became TikTok-famous for pranks. But this trip is no joke.

Delaney is the perfect girlfriend. Her boyfriend? He’s the perfect liar.

Wyatt has mastered every video game. Too bad there are no extra lives IRL.

Eden has never shied away from drama. Will her secrets get the best of her?

Liam is a literal Boy Scout. Now he’ll have to put his survival skills to use.

Camille is the ultimate competitor—and she’ll fight to the death.

Piper wasn’t supposed to be on this trip at all. Or was she?

The students of LA’s elite Warner Prep can’t wait for their Senior Excursion—five days of Instagrammable adventure in one of the world’s most exclusive locations. This is not your average field trip. Which is why eight students can’t believe their bad luck when they end up on a digital detox in an isolated Colorado ski chalet. Their epic trip is panning out to be an epic bore… until their classmates start dropping in a series of disturbing deaths. The message is clear: this trip is no accident. And when a blizzard strikes, secrets are revealed, betrayals are exposed, and survival is at stake in a race to the bitter end.

Alexa Donne is the author of Brightly Burning and The Stars We Steal, YA sci-fi romances, and The Ivies and Pretty Dead Queens, YA thrillers. A graduate of Boston University, she works in TV marketing and has done pro bono college admissions mentoring since 2014. In her “free” time she manages one of the most popular writing advice channels on YouTube.

BLOOD AT THE ROOT de LaDarrion Williams

A teenager on the run from his past finds the family he never knew existed and the community he never knew he needed at an HCBU for the young, Black, and magical. Enroll in this fresh fantasy debut with the emotional power of Legendborn and the redefined ancestral magic of Lovecraft Country.

BLOOD AT THE ROOT (Book 1)
by LaDarrion Williams
Labyrinth Road/PRH, May 2024
(via Park & Fine Literary and Media)

At just seven years old, Malik’s life changed forever the night his mother mysteriously vanished, and he discovered he had uncontrollable powers. For ten years, he kept his abilities hidden, looking out for himself and his younger foster brother, Taye. However, a daring act to safeguard them both reveals an unexpected connection with his long-lost grandmother: a legendary conjurer with ties to a hidden magical university that Malik’s mother attended.

At Caiman University, Malik’s eyes are opened to a future he never could have envisioned for himself— one that includes the reappearance of his first love, Alexis. His search for answers about his heritage, his powers, and what really happened to his mother exposes the cracks in their magical community as it faces a reawakened evil dating back to the Haitian Revolution. Together with Alexis, Malik discovers a lot beneath the surface at Caiman: feuding covens and magical politics, forbidden knowledge and buried mysteries.

In a wholly unique saga of family, history and community, Malik must embrace his legacy to save what’s left of his old family as well as his new one. Exploring the roots and secrets that connect us in an unforgettable contemporary setting, this heart-pounding fantasy series opener is a rich tapestry of atmosphere, intrigue, and emotion.

« [An] exuberant contemporary fantasy series opener… Williams delivers a serpentine, high-intensity celebration of Black culture, history, and power. » Publishers Weekly

« The extensive worldbuilding incorporates West African, Caribbean, and Black American history and cultures to explain a magical reality hidden from view and relevant to the Black diaspora and Malik’s family history… A well-thought-out magical world that provocatively centers Black experiences. » Kirkus Reviews

A genre-shattering amalgamation of culture, heritage, and magic. Williams’s debut is bold, gripping and utterly refreshing. » – J. Elle, NYT bestselling author of Wings of Ebony and House of Marionne

LaDarrion Williams is a Los Angeles based-playwright, filmmaker, author, and screenwriter whose goal is to cultivate a new era of Black fantasy, providing space and agency for Black characters and stories in a new, fresh, and fantastical way. LaDarrion is currently a resident playwright/co-creator of The Black Creators Collective.

THE NIGHTFALL BAZAAR DUOLOGY de Catelyn Wilson

Stephanie Garber’s Caraval series meets Mary E. Pearson’s Dance of Thieves series in this sweeping fantasy about a young woman caught in a game of cat-andmouse with the silver-tongued king of a magical island.

THE NIGHTFALL BAZAAR DUOLOGY
by Catelyn Wilson
(via JABberwocky Literary Agency)

#1 THESE WICKED STARS (October 2022)

Remember, if you know what you want, you’ll never find it.
Hazel Blackthorn is an outcast, the bastard daughter of a nameless sailor and a disgraced mother. She will do anything to marry her secret fiancé and escape her oppressive life. When her fiancé announces he must marry her cousin in order to save his family’s crumbling business, Hazel is heartbroken and her hope for the future crushed. But a kind old man offers her salvation: Travel to the mythical Bazaar that visits the island once every thirty years and return before the end of the festival with medicine he needs, and she will have all the riches in the world. Gripped by hope, Hazel accepts.
But in the Bazaar, a place where the gods themselves used to dwell, Hazel can trust nothing. In a world where you can buy time and purchase power, wicked merchants wield cruel magic. As she travels further into the Bazaar, searching for the medicine her benefactor desires, she becomes enmeshed in a game of cat and mouse with the all-powerful King of the Bazaar, a man with a silver-tongue and shadowy past.
As time runs out and the Bazaar threatens to trap Hazel forever, she begins to unravel the mystery of the Bazaar and why the King wants her for himself. But Hazel must decide if her desire for her freedom is worth the cost the Bazaar demands—and if the love she thought she needed is the one she truly deserves.

#2 THESE FALLEN GODS (December 2023)

« There is a darkness in me. A hunger. A lust for power. The appetite of a god. »
The Bazaar has fallen, Zaire is gone, and Adelaide is alive. But Hazel Blackthorn has never felt more alone.
With her sister sick from the lotus flower, and haunted by powers she doesn’t understand, Hazel struggles to come to terms with who she is. When she and Cassian learn of strange, cataclysmic events across the world, it is clear their time has run out. The gods are rising.
Hazel learns that the answers to defeating the gods and saving Adelaide may be hidden far away in ancient archives. She and Cassian leave Veara island and embark on a journey across the sea. But the gods have not been forgotten in these new lands, and their followers are eager to serve their masters and deliver Hazel back to Irra.
Fighting old enemies and traveling with new allies, Hazel must confront her identity and master her powers if she hopes to save the world from the wrath of hungry gods. And as Cassian battles his own past and his endless curse, the two risk losing their bond forever.

Catelyn Wilson writes YA Fantasy with a splash of romance. She loves incorporating mythology into her books and firmly believes morally grey is the way to any woman’s heart. She has an unhealthy obsession with Jane Austen, sunscreen, and animals. She lives in Texas with her husband and mini-Aussie, Churro.

THE SHADOWSPELL ACADEMY SERIES de Shannon Mayer & K.F. Breene

Hunger Games meets A Deadly Education in this collaboration between USA Today bestselling authors Shannon Mayer and K.F. Breene, in which a teen girl infiltrates a dangerous school for magic to search for her missing brother.

THE SHADOWSPELL ACADEMY SERIES (Books 1 to 6)
by Shannon Mayer & K.F. Breene
Skyhorse, 2019-2021
(via JABberwocky Literary Agency)

You Don’t Choose The Academy. The Academy Chooses You.
I had no idea how those words would change my life. Or how they’d changed my life already… Until the day the most dangerous man I’ve ever met waltzed onto my farm and left us a death sentence. In an invitation. My younger brother has been chosen for the prestigious, secret magical school hidden within the folds of our mundane world. A place so dangerous, they don’t guarantee you’ll make it out alive. If he doesn’t go our entire family will be killed. It’s the same invitation my older brother received three years ago—the same place he mysteriously died. The academy has already killed one sibling. I’ll be damned if they take another. I do the only thing an older sister can: chop off my hair, strap on two bras to flatten the girls, and take my brother’s place. Magic and monsters are real. Assassins are coming for me, and the dead are prone to rise. What’s a girl faking it as a boy supposed to do? That’s right—beat the academy at its own game. Or die trying.

Shadowspell Academy novels offer delicious cliffhangers that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the final book – SHADOWSPELL ACADEMY: YEAR OF THE CHAMELEON (Book 6).

THE CULLING TRIALS PART 1 (#1) – April 2019
THE CULLING TRIALS PART 2 (#2) – May 2019
THE CULLING TRIALS PART 3 (#3) – June 2019
THE YEAR OF THE CHAMELEON, PART 1 (#4) – February 2021
THE YEAR OF THE CHAMELEON PART 2 (#5) – March 2021
THE YEAR OF THE CHAMELEON PART 3 (#6) – May 2021

K.F. Breene is a Wall Street JournalUSA TodayWashington Post, and Amazon Charts bestselling author of paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and fantasy novels. With nearly three million books sold, when she’s not penning stories about magic and what goes bump in the night, she’s sipping wine and planning shenanigans. She lives in Northern California with her husband, two children, and out of work treadmill.

Shannon Mayer is the USA TodayWall Street Journal and Washington Post bestselling author of urban fantasy, epic fantasy, and paranormal romance novels and series. She has sold more copies of her books than she can count on one hand—close to three million. She lives in the southwestern tip of Canada with her husband, son, and a menagerie of animals, many of which show up in her books as sassy side characters.

LIBERTY’S DAUGHTER de Naomi Kritzer

Set in a distinctive world with a charismatic protagonist, “the political critique is sharp and the mystery is gripping” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review).

LIBERTY’S DAUGHTER
by Naomi Kritzer
Fairwood Press, November 2023
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Beck Garrison lives on a seastead—an archipelago of constructed platforms and old cruise ships, assembled by libertarian separatists a generation ago. She’s grown up comfortable and sheltered, but starts doing odd jobs for pocket money. To her surprise, she finds that she’s the only detective that a debt slave can afford to hire to track down the woman’s missing sister. When she tackles this investigation, she learns things about life on the other side of the waterline—not to mention about herself and her father—that she did not expect. And that some people will stop at nothing to keep her from talking about . . .

Admirers of Chris McKinney’s Water City trilogy will be riveted.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Kritzer’s got a sharp knife and she slips it in so smoothly that you barely notice that you’re bleeding. The best sf uses the future to make a point about the present, and Kritzer’s got today’s enshittified, profit-worshipping, sociopathic present’s number.” —Cory Doctorow, author of the Little Brother series and The Lost Cause

This book offers a different kind of dystopia and a different kind of rebellion against it: a libertarian seastead that has managed to survive forty years while walking smack into all the expected bears, and a kid fighting those bears with all the strength of freedom and agency that the place has accidentally given her.” —Ruthanna Emrys, author of A Half-Built Garden

LIBERTY’S DAUGHTER is a fast-paced, forthright, funny voyage through libertarian seasteads and teenage heroism.” —Marissa Lingen, Novel Gazing Redux

Naomi Kritzer has won the Hugo Award and the Locus Award and been a finalist for the Nebula (as well as finalist for the Hugo) for her short stories. Her young adult novel Catfishing on CatNet won the 2020 Lodestar Award and its sequel Chaos on CatNet was a finalist in 2022. Several of her stories and books have been optioned for film. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with her family and a few cats. The number of cats is subject to change without notice.