Gritty, gripping thriller meets contemporary queer romance in this brand-new YA novel filled with first love, stolen identity and murder, from the award-winning and bestselling author of All That’s Left in the World.
BETTER THE DEVIL
by Erik J. Brown
Storytide/HarperCollins, Summer 2026
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)
After being arrested for shoplifting, a homeless teen is afraid the police will send him home to his abusive family, so he assumes the identity of Nate Beaumont—a child who, according to the missing poster on the police station wall, went missing ten years ago. It doesn’t hurt that he looks a lot like the age-progressed picture of Nate. He plans to escape before the police can discover his lie, but when Nate’s family comes to collect him, he unexpectedly starts to bond with them.
The Beaumonts are nothing like his real family. There’s Nate’s loving, but intensely protective mother, his reserved and imposing father, an older brother wracked with guilt, and a quirky, card shark grandmother. When he looks further into the disappearance, « Nate » learns that the boy he’s pretending to be didn’t just go missing—rumor is, he was murdered. As strange occurrences begin to unfold around the Beaumont home, Nate realizes he’s trapped in a dangerous game with an unknown killer. One who knows he isn’t the real Nate Beaumont.
Nate has three choices: run, confess, or find out who the real killer is…before history repeats itself.
Erik J. Brown is an award-winning writer based in Philadelphia, PA. His debut Young Adult novel, All That’s Left in the World, was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award, shortlisted for the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize and won the UK reader’s choice Books Are My Bag award. In 2021 he was selected as a Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow. His second novel for young adults, Lose You to Find Me, came out in May 2023, and the sequel to All That’s Left in the World, titled The Only Light Left Burning, comes out May 2024. You can find him on Twitter @WriterikJB, and Instagram @ErikJB, and on his website, https://www.erikjbrown.com.