Archives de catégorie : Young Adult

A BRIGHT HEART de Kate Chenli

What if you could avenge your own murder? A brilliant young woman gets a second chance at life in this debut YA tale of vengeance, court intrigue, and romance inspired by clasic Chinese tropes.

A BRIGHT HEART
by Kate Chenli
Union Square Press, October 2023
(via Context Literary)

Mingshin is murdered by the prince she loved, the man she helped become king. But as she is dying, she prays for time to turn back so she can have a chance to make things right. Her prayer is granted.

When Mingshin wakes up two years earlier, she swears two things: She will do whatever it takes to prevent Ren from becoming king and she will never fall in love. But it isn’t easy to stop a man who is willing to lie, steal, kill, and even give his soul to the most evil form of magic. And it isn’t easy to prevent falling in love with a good man. Even if that man is Ren’s brother, who is also in competition for the throne.

Kate Chenli has a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, but has always enjoyed creating elaborate worlds and characters more than designing complex software. Besides reading and writing, her passion is world travel (four continents down and counting.)

NO ONE LEFT BUT YOU de Tash McAdam

Own voices for trans identity and struggles with anxiety and depression, NO ONE LEFT BUT YOU will appeal to fans of Malinda Lo’s A Line in the Dark, Angelline Boulley’s Firekeeper’s Daughter, and the TV show Euphoria.

NO ONE LEFT BUT YOU
by Tash McAdam
Soho Teen, November 2023
(via The Rights Factory)

Newly out trans guy Max is having a hard time in school. Things have been tough since his summer romance turned on him. This year, his plan is to keep his head down and make sure he graduates. All that changes when new It-girl Gloss moves to town.

No one understands why perfect, polished Gloss is so interested in an introverted skater kid, but Max blooms in the hothouse of her attention. Swept along in the riptide of burgeoning popularity, it doesn’t matter to Max that Gloss is making all the decisions, choosing his clothes, what he does and who he hangs out with. Caught somewhere between romance and obsession, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her on his side.

Haircut, makeovers, drugs, parties. It’s all fun and games until someone gets stabbed in the throat. When Gloss confesses to murdering his ex, Max refuses to believe that she did it. If she did, he’ll have lost the two most important people in his life in one night. Trying to collect evidence that will exonerate his only friend, Max veers dangerously close to being implicated—and his own memories of that awful night are fuzzy. He has to figure out who’s lying, even if it turns out to be himself.

Tash McAdam is a Welsh-Canadian author, activist, and high school educator. Their publications include The Psionics (Nine Star Press), and the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections Blood Sport and Sink Or Swim (Orca Books). They are also featured in multiple anthologies. Tash is a recipient of the Shoot for the Moon fund for trans writers, and a founding mentor with the Gender Generations Project. When they’re not writing or reading you can probably find Tash in a lake, lying on the carpet thinking about monsters, or getting a new tattoo. They enjoy regular cups of tea, existential philosophy, and sharp objects.

MY NAME IS MAGIC de Xan van Rooyen

For fans of witchcraft and wizardry looking for a new, inclusive story, MY NAME IS MAGIC, is a story about finding strength from within and potential where you least expected it.

MY NAME IS MAGIC
by Xan van Rooyen
Tiny Ghost Press, September 2022
(via The Rights Factory)

Despite coming from a long line of powerful Finnish mages, and their name literally meaning magic, Taika can’t perform the simplest of spells.

Forced to attend Myrskyjärvi International School for the Magically Gifted on account of their mom being principal, Taika has a hard time fitting in. Sometimes, they wonder if not having magic has something to do with the fact they’re neither a girl nor a boy and if they’re fated to be Taika the Talentless forever.

Life goes from bad to worse when Taika sees a liekkiö and recognizes the spirit’s voice begging for help as that of their former BFF and major crush, Natalie Khumalo, whose recent absence from class hadn’t gone unnoticed. When more students go missing, Taika must take the lead in a race against time to save friends old and new before a powerful group of chaos mages can unleash the legendary Sampo, an artifact capable of either renewing the world’s waning magic or destroying everything Taika holds dear.

To rescue Natalie, Taika will have to journey to the liminal space between worlds where they’ll be forced to battle mythical monsters and their own flagging self-esteem. In doing so, Taika might just discover that magic—and love—comes in many different forms.

Xan van Rooyen is a genderqueer, tattooed storyteller from South Africa. They currently live in Finland where they find the heavy metal soothing and the cold, dark forests inspiring. Although they have a Master’s degree in music, Xan prefers conjuring strange worlds and creating quirky characters. When they grow up, they want to be an elf—until then, they spend their time (when not writing) climbing, buying far too many books, and entertaining their shiba inu, Lego.

THE VANISHING STATION d’Ana Ellickson

A lyrical and bold YA debut about an underground magic system in San Francisco—and the lengths one girl is willing to go to protect the ones she loves.

THE VANISHING STATION
by Ana Ellickson
Amulet/Abrams, April 2024

Eighteen–year–old Filipino American Ruby Santos has been unmoored since her mother’s death. She can’t apply to art school like she’s always dreamed, and she and her father have had to move into the basement of their home and rent out the top floor while they work to pay back her mother’s hospital bills.

Then Ruby finds out her father has been living a secret life as a delivery person for a magical underworld—he “jumps” train lines to help deliver packages for a powerful family. Recently, he’s fallen behind on deliveries (and deeper into alcoholism), and if his debts aren’t satisfied, they’re going to take her mother’s house. In an effort to protect her father and save all that remains of her mother, Ruby volunteers to take over her dad’s station and start jumping train lines.

But this is no ordinary job. Ruby soon realizes that the trains are much more than doors to romance and adventure: they’re also doors to trafficking illicit goods and fierce rivalries. As she becomes more entangled with the magical underworld and the mysterious boy who’s helped her to learn magic, she realizes too late that she may be in over her head. Can she free her father and save her mother’s house? Or has she only managed to get herself pulled into the dangerous web her father was trapped in?

Ana Ellickson writes about fierce girls, family curses, and everyday magic. THE VANISHING STATION is her debut novel, inspired by daydreams about jumping portals in the San Francisco subway. Roman the Renegade–her graphic novel script about street art and Filipino monsters–was awarded the 2021 New Visions Honor by Lee & Low Books. She lives in sunny Santa Barbara.

CAPITANA de Cassandra James

Brimming with adventure, romance, danger and just the right amount of mystery, CAPITANA is perfect for fans of the high seas in Adrienne Young’s Fable, the romance of Isabel Ibañez’s Together We Burn, and the enchanting Caraval books by Stephanie Garber.

CAPITANA
by Cassandra James
HarperCollins, January 2025
(via Writers House)

Ximena Reale is certain of one thing: the only good pirate is a dead one.

Ximena has trained for eight years to become one of the black-cloaked Cazadores, seafaring hunters who capture the pirates pillaging the Luzan Empire. Although Ximena is the top candidate at La Academia, passing the Royal Examination alone will likely not be enough for a daughter of the notorious Reales—pirate captains who, when Ximena and her wayward sister Marquesa were children, were executed for their crimes against the empire. Ximena scours La Academia’s Archives for something, anything, that might point her towards her one chance of redemption: Gasparilla. The greatest pirate alive. The ultimate prize. A man who may—or may not—exist.

So when a pirate calling himself Gasparilla attacks Luza’s capitol and steals every coin in the Empire’s vaults, also capturing Luza’s queen, Ximena leaps at the chance to catch Gasparilla. She offers to bring the pirate, and their queen, back in exchange for her Cazadoro cloak. This is an offer the Empire accepts, with one catch: there’s only one Cazadoro cloak up for grabs, and she must compete against Dante De León, the pompous and infuriating son of Luza’s High Minster, who will lose his inheritance if he fails to best her.

With their futures on the line, Ximena and Dante set out on a dangerous quest across the Archipelago, led by a turncoat member of Gasparilla’s crew. But no matter how far Ximena sails, her family’s pirate legacy continues to haunt her, and her exposure to a world outside of La Academia leads her to question the very laws she’s always fought to uphold. It all leads her to wonder: is it possible she’s been on the wrong side all along?

Cassandra James recently graduated from Princeton University, where she studied English with a focus on Creative Writing. She is originally from Florida, where she lives with her family of Colombian immigrants and dreams of setting sail. She was inspired to write CAPITANA by the Floridian legend of the pirate captain Gasparilla, and drew from various aspects of pirate history—including the real-life Republic of Pirates which was founded by Blackbeard and others—to create the fictional empire of Luza.