HELLO!LUCKY: A SEED WILL GROW de Sabrina Moyle, illustré par Eunice Moyle

From Hello!Lucky, the creators of My Mom Is Magical! and My Dad Is Amazing!, comes a brand–new novelty series with tabs to pull and surfaces to touch.

A SEED WILL GROW
(A Hello!Lucky Hands-On Book)
 Story by Sabrina Moyle; pictures by Eunice Moyle
Appleseed/Abrams, February 2024

Just like a seed, here’s what you need:

patience, warmth, a caring heart,

so you can bloom and play your part

in Mother Nature’s brilliant art!

Filled with exuberant illustrations in Hello!Lucky’s inimitable style, A SEED WILL GROW introduces young readers to the plant life cycle, starting with sowing seeds and nurturing the resulting plants, and ending with a brilliant double gatefold that opens to showcase a garden in full bloom.

With a little water, a little sun, and some pollination from bees and butterflies, out shoot roots and leaves and fruits as plants grow. Each page has a different interactive element to highlight the seed–to–plant–to–fruit transformation, and with a fifth color of ink throughout, this deluxe board book is sure to catch the eye of aspiring gardeners and educators alike!

Hello!Lucky is all about using creativity to spread joy, fun, and kindness. Founded by sisters Eunice and Sabrina Moyle in 2003, Hello!Lucky is an award–winning letterpress greeting card and design studio working with dozens of partners to create products, including Abrams’ pun–derful children’s books: My Mom Is Magical!; My Dad Is Amazing!; My Grandma Is Great!; My Grandpa Is Grand!; My Brother Is the Best!; My Sister Is Super!; Super Pooper and Whizz Kid: Potty Power!; Kindness Rules!; Christmas Is Awesome!; Sloth and Smell the Roses; Go Get ’Em, Tiger!; Thanks a Ton!; School Is Cool!; Bananas for You!; and Halloween Is a Treat! and the Astrid and Stella graphic novel series. They also offer gifts, ceramics, stationery, kids’ partyware, and more. Hello!Lucky is based in San Francisco.

HOUSE OF THE BEAST de Michelle Wong

Celebrated artist Michelle Wong, illustrator of The Legend of Korra comics, makes her literary debut with this fantasy novel brimming with romance and horror, centered on a young woman who is seeking revenge on her aristocratic family, aided by the powers of a dark and alluring god who appears only to her in the form of a handsome young man—also featuring gorgeous black-and-white illustrations throughout by the author.

HOUSE OF THE BEAST
by Michelle Wong
Harper Voyager, June 2025

Growing up poor and outcasted as a child born out of wedlock, Alma learned to make her peace with solitude, so long as she had her mother. But when her mother becomes desperately ill, Alma discovers a clue about her estranged father and writes a message begging for help. Little does she know that she is a bastard of House Avera, a powerful magical family that serves a dark and frightening elder god, the Dread Beast.

In exchange for her mother’s medicine, Alma agrees to sacrifice her left arm to the Beast in a ceremony that binds her to House Avera. Regardless, her mother soon passes as a result of her father’s selfish nature.

Now vengeance is the only thing that keeps Alma going. That, and the strange connection she has with her god—a monster who is constantly by her side, an eldritch being taking the form of a beautiful prince with starlit hair that only she can see and hear. He tells Alma that she has been chosen to bring change upon Kugara, and with his help, Alma plots to destroy the House that has stolen everything from her.

Michelle Wong is a writer and artist from Hong Kong with over 50K followers across social media platforms. She’s illustrated for various clients such as HarperCollins, IDW, Dark Horse, and more. This is her debut novel.

TOO MUCH! de Jolene Gutiérrez, illustré par Angel Chang

A reassuring rhyming picture book about sensory overload and what you can do when everything is too much.

TOO MUCH!
An Overwhelming Day
written by Jolene Gutiérrez; illustrated by Angel Chang
Abrams, August 2023

When feelings go on overload,

I pause and breathe

and all is . . . slowed.

Sometimes everything is too much! Too loud, too bright, and all too overwhelming. Writing from her own experience with sensory processing disorder, Jolene Gutiérrez’s compassionate text—paired with Angel Chang’s beautiful illustrations—explores the struggles of a sensorily sensitive child and how they settle themselves. An extensive author’s note to caregivers and educators explores sensory systems, sensory processing issues, and specific information about how to support kids with overstimulated nervous systems.

Jolene Gutiérrez is an award–winning teacher–librarian who has been working with diverse learners for the past 28 years. When she was little, she would squint to protect her eyes from bright lights and cover her ears to protect herself from loud noises. Now, she wears sunglasses when she’s outside and brings earplugs if she thinks she’ll need them. She hopes TOO MUCH! will help caregivers and educators recognize and support sensory processing challenges.

Angel Chang was once a young girl who felt too much and often thought she didn’t belong because of it. It took a long time for her to learn that her feelings matter as much as everyone else’s. She hopes this book will help young readers realize theirs do too. Chang is the illustrator of Most of the Better Natural Things in the World; Just Like Me; and Lunar New Year Around the World. She lives in Taiwan with a cat who loves to chew papers and sleep on books.

EDEN UNDONE d’Abbott Kahler

With a mystery as alluring and exotic as the Galapagos itself, EDEN UNDONE explores the universal and timeless desire to seek Utopia—and how human fallibility renders such a quest doomed.

EDEN UNDONE:
A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II
by Abbott Kahler
Crown, Fall 2024
(via Writers House)

In December 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore of a remote Galapagos island. The deaths, though shocking, seemed inevitable. For the past four years Hancock had been traveling to the Galapagos, as had other wealthy, prominent Americans, to collect specimens for scientific research. On his first trip, Hancock was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a Utopian paradise. One was so devoted to a life of isolation that he’d had his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of steel dentures.

As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, the paradise suffered from chaos. The three sets of exiles—a Berlin doctor and his lover, a traumatized World War I veteran and his young family, and an Austrian Baroness with two adoring lovers—turned against each other. Petty slights led to angry confrontations. The Baroness, wielding a riding crop and pearl-handled revolver, staged physical fights between her two lovers, seduced American tourists, and threatened a friend of businessman and philanthropist Vincent Astor. The conclusion was deadly: two exiles missing and two others dead, with the survivors hurling accusations of murder.

Using never-before-published archives, and set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World War II, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie. With a mystery as alluring and exotic as the Galapagos itself, EDEN UNDONE explores the universal and timeless desire to seek Utopia—and how human fallibility renders such a quest doomed.

Abbott Kahler, formerly writing as Karen Abbott, is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City; American Rose; Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy; and The Ghosts of Eden Park, which was an Edgar Award finalist for best fact crime and a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award. Her debut novel, Where You End, was published January 2024.

THESE SHATTERED SPIRES de Cassidy Ellis Salter

A crossover upper-YA gothic fantasy, with the snark and worldbuilding of Gideon the Ninth mixed with the romances and backstabbing of The Atlas Six.

THESE SHATTERED SPIRES
by Cassidy Ellis Salter
On submission
(via Zeno Agency)

The world of Fourspires, is lucious in its grotesqueness. It is a world constantly on the edge of self-destruction and, whether you’re slinking through the rerouting passages of the library or fighting off cutlery-welding starvings in the poisonous forests of the Ulcer, it propulsively pulls you through unforgettable tableaus.

The crumbling castle of Fourspires is the centre of the sole city that exists under the desecrae, a bloody, domed sky that encloses this small world. This is a world where mirrors are banned lest they allow horrors through, where dead nuns stalk the corridors looking to snap the necks of rule breakers, and where magic is real but comes with a price. Because you can reanimate the dead, control someone through their blood or simply make the flowers grow, but it comes with pain. Pain so unbearable you would do anything to avoid it. Which is why Fourspires developed a system of human familiars. Now Arcanists can go about their days quite happily, knowing that their young familiars will be forced to take the pain for all their magic.

Taro and Nixie just graduated from The Academy of familiars. And they’ve been assigned to the head arcanists of the Bone and Botanist disciplines. As high familiars they see each other all the time, but they can never talk, never touch. Which is a shame for Taro because she thinks they’re in love and Nixie is her girlfriend. It’s also a shame for Nixie, because she hates Taro with a passion and wants to throttle her. Despite their differences, on the eve our story begins, Taro and Nixie are planning to escape. Anything’s better than the life of a familiar and, if they can just sneak out of the castle, maybe they can kiss each other or kill each other – whichever’s more practical.

But that’s the night the Tick Tock king finally dies and everything is thrown into chaos. In 48-hours, Taro and Nixie will have to accompany their arcanists into The Fifth Tower and kill or be killed in the fight to the top…

THESE SHATTERER SPIRES is a twisty, multiple-viewpoint tale that keeps you guessing until the very last page. It’s also a very prescient, very necessary novel, prominently featuring queer characters, characters struggling with their gender identity and characters with selective mutism.

Cassidy Ellis Salter is a queer, non-binary author from London’s Brixton. They have published two middle grade books (The Bone Snatcher and Where the Woods End) and THESE SHATTERED SPIRES is their first fantasy for older readers. They work in marketing in their day job and have a personal author TikTok account where their videos have amassed more than a million views and they now have just shy of 10,000 followers. Alis’ struggle to discover themselves as non-binary is very much based on Cassidy’s own coming to terms with their gender identity.