A new middle-grade series about a boarding school where a fairy godmother hides fairytale princesses (and one prince) who don’t like the endings to their timeless tales.
THE PRINCESS PROTECTION PROGRAM
by Alex London
HarperCollins / Greenwillow, 2024 – 2025
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)
Book 1: THE PRINCESS PROTECTION PROGRAM (February 2024)
The valiant prince quested long and hard to reach the castle where the sleeping princess lies. The last thing he must do is awaken her with a kiss. He has played his role in the story perfectly. But Princess Rosamund does NOT think a kiss from a stranger is a very pleasant way to be woken up! At all!
When Rosamund flees her prince, a Door of Opportunity opens, and she steps through to the HEA. In this new world, HEA stands for Home Educational Academy, not Happily Ever After. Rosamund has found the Princess Protection Program, where fugitive fairy tale princesses escape unwanted affections, untimely ends, and all the other perils of their stories. Verna, the kindly fairy godmother who runs the academy, keeps them all safe. Safe from their stories, and safe from the monstrous Uponatimes who lurk outside the school’s gates, eager to swallow the girls whole and return them to their tales.
As Rosamund adjusts to life in the real world and makes her first real friends, she has more and more questions.
THE PRINCESS PROTECTION PROGRAM is for fans of the Never Afters and the Descendants series, The School for Good and Evil, and the Fairly True Tales series.
Book 2: AFTER EVER AFTER (February 2025)
The second book in Alex London’s delightful middle-grade fantasy duology that plays with the traditional fairy tale story.
Rana loves her friends, loves her school, and loves punk rock. One she thing she does not love is frogs…especially demanding frog princes who follow her home. She left her story because of one and has no plans ever to go back. When her frog prince shows up at the Academy for wayward fairy tale royalty, she’s not happy about it, and when dozens of duplicate frog princes follow him to her world, she’s downright alarmed. Worse still, a shadowy monster is in hot pursuit and to save everyone she cares about, Rana will have to do the one thing she vowed she’d never to do. She has to return to her Once Upon Time and face more than just the frogs she left behind. All her fears are waiting for her, right where she left them.
© Gina Clyne Photography
Alex London is the author of over 25 books for children, teens, and adults, with over 2 million copies sold. He’s the author of the middle grade Dog Tags, Tides of War, Wild Ones, and Accidental Adventures series, as well as two titles in the 39 Clues. His latest middle grade series, Battle Dragons, a cyberpunk romp pitched as The Fast and the Furious meets How to Train Your Dragon, is out from Scholastic. For young adults, he’s the author of the cyberpunk duology Proxy, an ALA Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Readers, Best Fiction For Young Adults, and Rainbow List selection and the epic fantasy trilogy, Black Wings Beating, an NBC Today Show Pick, a Kirkus Best Young Adult Fantasy selection, a Seventeen Magazine best of 2018 pick, and a We Need Diverse Books 2018 Must Read, and a 2020 Rainbow List selection. He’s been a journalist and human rights researcher reporting from conflict zones and refugee camps, a young adult librarian with New York Public Library, an assistant to a film agent, and a snorkel salesman. He lives with his husband, daughter, and hound dog in Philadelphia, PA.