Archives par étiquette : Writers House

MOLLY AND BEAR de Bob & Vicki Scott

Based on the beloved comic strip by Bob Scott, the Molly and Bear series by Bob and Vicki Scott is a pitch-perfect, lighthearted, hilarious odd couple graphic novel adventure that’s sure to become a new favorite for middle-grade readers.

MOLLY AND BEAR
by Bob & Vicki Scott
Aladdin/Simon & Schuster, Summer 2024
(via Writers House)

11 year old Molly has an unusual new BFF: an 800 pound scaredy bear! When Bear wanders into Molly’s life, it doesn’t take long for her to figure out she’s just met her new bestie. Loyal, sweet, inquisitive…and terrified of almost everything. . . Bear makes a great new friend. And he’s not scary AT ALL! But try telling that to the rest of the world.
Molly eventually convinces her mom and dad to let Bear stay with them, but convincing everyone else that Bear isn’t dangerous (not to mention convincing Bear that he isn’t in constant danger!) is going to take some work. Lucky for Bear, Molly doesn’t give up easily so she’s up for the challenge.

Bob and Vicki Scott began their careers in animation and have worked on films for Dreamworks and Pixar. Molly and the Bear, which is based on Bob’s syndicated comic strip Bear with Me, is their middle-grade debut.

NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS de Meredith Jeffers

Sold in a heated auction, debut author Meredith Jeffers’s intricate YA novel is part mystery, part Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, and part HBO’s The Flight Attendant. The perfect combination of plot-filled page-turner and powerful coming-of-age tale, NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS announces Meredith as a major new voice in YA fiction.

NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS
by Meredith Jeffers
Bloomsbury, Spring 2024
(via Writers House)

I think, inexplicably, of another photo. Last fall, late October. The night of the bonfire at Durand Eastman Beach. In the photo, I wear tight denim shorts, beat-up white Keds, a black zip-up that isn’t mine. It’s bad enough how I tilt my head, just so, a hickey bruised on the curve of my neck, but even worse is my smile. Sly. Coy. Like I know more in this moment than some girls ever know. I didn’t know shit. I especially didn’t know that when the night sky filled with stars, when the fire hissed, half-dead, when every phone pinged with SIX NEW PHOTOS, I’d so seamlessly become the worst of me: Jo at seventeen, outcast. But I guess that’s the trouble with girls like me. We always get what we deserve.
Seventeen-year-old Jo-Lynn Kirby used to be “brace-faced but beautiful, a tiara pinned in her sun-streaked hair.” She used to be “sophomore class president, stunned at her landslide victory […], June’s Scooper of the Month at Costello’s Frozen Custard, posing a touch too proudly with her bonus check. . . ” but now she’s. . . just not. Now Jo is a wild girl, reckless girl, difficult girl, who rolls her eyes a little too much, whose grades have plummeted to the point that she’s on academic probation; now Jo is the girl whose Nudes were leaked to the entire school. And then her former best friend: pretty, nice, Maddie Price, uncharacteristically, cryptically, and desperately asks Jo for help—telling Jo she’s in trouble, that she thinks Jo can help her—just hours before Maddie disappears.
What quickly seems to the community like a simple runaway doesn’t add up that way to Jo-Lynn—and it doesn’t seem that way to Jo’s classmate and Eastman High’s Salutatorian Hudson Harper-Moore either. To dig deeper into Maddie’s disappearance, Jo needs to get in with, and back with, the group of classmates she left behind—and Jo and Hudson decide the only way to seamlessly do that is to pretend they’re dating. But for Jo, going back to social life from social outcast means she must confront all she’d rather leave behind: the boys who betrayed her; the girls who whisper that she had it coming; the secrets that tore her and Maddie apart. Yet as Jo finds allies in girls she once alienated, a true mentor in her Senior Experience Journalism supervisor, and as she develops very real feelings for Hudson, she risks losing more than she ever knew she wanted. . . as the clues to Maddie’s disappearance pull Jo deeper and deeper into a web of lies, whose stories can and can’t Jo trust? Especially when she’s still figuring out her own story, and her own truth. . .

Meredith Jeffers is a writer from (snowy, gray) Rochester, New York, who now lives in (hot, humid) North Carolina, where she recently earned her graduate degree in Library Science from UNC-Chapel Hill. There, she specialized in youth services and created a social justice-driven book club toolkit as a resource for YA librarians for her Master’s project. Meredith previously earned her MFA in Nonfiction from West Virginia University in 2018 and received a Pushcart Prize nomination the same year.

WANDER IN THE DARK de Jumata Emill

From the acclaimed author of The Black Queen comes a stunning new YA novel in the spirit of This Is Us, but with the propulsive, page-turning suspense synonymous with Karen McManus, Kara Thomas, and Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé.

WANDER IN THE DARK
by Jumata Emill
Delacorte, Spring 2024
(via Writers House)

Amir Trudeau, the troubled son of local celebrity chef and restaurateur Martin Trudeau, isn’t without his share of problems. He hates his new school, his mother doesn’t like any of his friends, and his estranged half-brother Marcel is continuously trying to repair a relationship that Amir wants no part of. As far as Amir is concerned, years of hurt feelings that began the day their father divorced Amir’s mother and then moved on to achieve fame and fortune after marrying Marcel’s mother isn’t something that will ever be undone. But when Amir wakes up in the middle of the night and finds Chloe Danvers, a pretty and popular white girl he barely knows, stabbed to death, he suddenly finds himself with much bigger things to worry about.
Chloe is from an upper middle-class family with connections, and the last person she was with is a Black man caught fleeing the scene via security cameras. Everyone thinks the killer is Amir, including the police, and so in order to clear his name he’s going to have to rely on the people he trusts least—especially Marcel. Marcel sees helping Amir clear his name as way to repair their relationship, but he quickly learns that finding out why someone fatally stabbed Chloe will force the Trudeaus to confront truths that might tear them further apart, and reveal the twisted secrets festering within the hallowed halls of the elite private school the brothers attend.

Jumata Emill is a journalist who has covered crime and local politics in Mississippi and parts of Louisiana. He earned his BA in mass communications from Southern University and A&M University. He’s a Pitch Wars alum and a member of the Crime Writers of Color. When he’s not writing about murderous teens, he’s watching and obsessively tweeting about every franchise of the Real Housewives. Jumata lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

BEAST de Jennifer Donnelly

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Donnelly delivers an explosive reimagining of a tale as old as time! Think Beauty and the Beast meets Inside Out in this gender-reversed retelling, in which the beast is a mysterious noblewoman named Arabella, and the beauty is a handsome and cheeky thief named Beau—who stumbles into Arabella’s castle when he’s on the run after a robbery goes wrong.

BEAST
by Jennifer Donnelly
Scholastic, May 2024
(via Writers House)

A roaring fire and a grand feast await Beau when he arrives at Arabella’s domain, but it abruptly ends when a golden clock strikes midnight and a savage beast emerges. Beau escapes the vicious creature but becomes a prisoner in the castle. The next day, he meets the beautiful, disdainful Arabella, her tight-lipped servants, and a collection of sinister courtiers who behave very strangely, including the smile-until-your-face-cracks (literally) Lady Elge; the shuffling, mumbling Lady Iglut; and the rampaging Lady Rega.
Determined to escape, Beau steals a master key and lets himself into the cellar, where he hunts for a way out, but instead of finding the tunnel he’s certain must exist, he finds a child who’s been locked away. Her name is Hope. She appears to be a pitiful creature, but it’s a ruse. She steals his key, then leads him on a chase through the castle as she searches for her lost sisters, Faith and Love.
With Hope’s help, Beau learns that Arabella was cursed to turn into a beast every night when the clock strikes twelve,

and that the one who cursed her is none other than the forbidding Lady Espidra—the most fearsome of all Arabella’s courtiers. He also discovers why Arabella was cursed—and that the wounded, gifted young woman is as much a prisoner in the castle as he is. As he begins to fall in love with Arabella, Beau becomes determined to help her break the curse, but what he doesn’t know is that the golden clock is ticking—and time is running out.
BEAST is a story about two damaged people learning to love and forgive, but it’s also about how we all get trapped in prisons of our own making—and how we need to learn how to tear down walls and build bridges if we’re ever going to escape them.

Jennifer Donnelly is the author of A Northern Light, which was awarded a Printz Honor and a Carnegie Medal; Revolution (named a Best Book by Amazon, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and the Chicago Public Library, and nominated for a Carnegie Medal); the Deep Blue series; and many other books for young readers, including Lost in a Book, which spent more than 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

SUPER BOBA CAFÉ de Nidhi Chanani

From award-winning author Nidhi Chanani comes a sweet and magical new middle-grade graphic novel about a boba café, an earthquake-causing monster, and an unforgettable summer!

SUPER BOBA CAFÉ
by Nidhi Chanani
Abrams, October 2023
(via Writers House)

In the fog laden hills of San Francisco sits a sleepy independent boba café. Run by Jing Li and guarded by her kitty Bao, it comfortably fades into the background. But inside the boba café, there’s a secret. Jing is the keeper of the monster of San Francisco. Each day she prepares one giant boba for nine hours to feed it.
When Jing’s granddaughter, Aria, comes to stay with her for the summer she makes it her mission to turn the café around. Aria is quickly aided by Bao, who gives birth to eight perfect kittens. Aria spreads the news of the boba cat café on social media and overnight it is overrun with excited customers. Each day Nainai Li (Grandma Li) finds reasons to close the cafe but the demand only increases.
When she opens, the hill monster is left hungry and small earthquakes begin to plague the city. When Aria secretly follows her Nainai to the hill monster cave she isn’t sure what awaits. Will Aria be able to reason with the monster or become its new favorite meal? Or will she disturb its underground existence and cause the Big One?

Indian American illustrator and writer Nidhi Chanani has published several books for young readers, including YA graphic novel Pashmina, which was a Junior Library Guild selection, Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, Texas Maverick Graphic Novel, Northern California Indie Bookseller Association Long-List Title and a YALSA Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens. Born in Kolkata, India and raised in California, she holds a degree in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and in 2012 she was honored by the Obama Administration as a Champion of Change.