Archives par étiquette : Writers House

REBELLION 1776 de Laurie Halse Anderson

From New York Times bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson comes an eerily timely historical fiction middle-grade adventure about a girl struggling to survive amid a smallpox epidemic, the public’s fear of inoculation, and the seething Revolutionary War.

REBELLION 1776
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Simon & Schuster, April 2025
(via Writers House)

In the spring of 1776, thirteen-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper wakes to the sound of cannons. It’s the Siege of Boston, the Patriots’ massive drive to push the Loyalists out that turns the city into a chaotic war zone. Elsbeth’s father—her only living relative—has gone missing, leaving her alone and adrift in a broken town while desperately seeking employment to avoid the orphanage.

Just when things couldn’t feel worse, the smallpox epidemic sweeps across Boston. Now, Bostonians must fight for their lives against an invisible enemy in addition to the visible one. While a treatment is being frantically fine-tuned, thousands of people rush in from the countryside begging for inoculation. At the same time, others refuse protection, for the treatment is crude at best and at times more dangerous than the disease itself.

Elsbeth, who had smallpox as a small child and is now immune, finds work taking care of a large, wealthy family with discord of their own as they await a turn at inoculation, but as the epidemic and the revolution rage on, will she find her father?

Laurie Halse Anderson is a New York Times bestselling author known for tackling tough subjects with humor and sensitivity. She’s twice been a National Book Award finalist, for Chains and Speak; Chains also received the 2009 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Laurie was chosen for the 2009 Margaret A. Edwards Award and received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2023, presented to her by the Crown Princess of Sweden. She lives in Pennsylvania, and you can follow her adventures on X (previously known as Twitter) @HalseAnderson or visit her at MadWomanintheForest.com

THE BEST OF ALL WORDS de Kenneth Oppel

Master storyteller Ken Oppel delivers a new novel blending science fiction with social commentary, in an emotionally engaging, coming-of-age YA drama.

THE BEST OF ALL WORDS
by Kenneth Oppel
Scholastic, June 2025
(via Writers House)

No warning. No explanation. No escape.

Xavier Oaks doesn’t particularly want to go to the cabin with his dad and his dad’s pregnant new wife, Nia. But family obligations are family obligations, and it’s only for a short time. So he leaves his mom, his brother, and the rest of his life behind for a week in the woods. Except . . . on the first morning he wakes up and the house isn’t where it was before. It’s like it’s been lifted and placed somewhere else. When Xavier, his dad, and Nia go explore, they find they are inside a dome, trapped. And there’s no one else around . . .

Until, three years later, another family arrives. Is there any escape? Is there a reason for them to be stuck where they are? Different people have different answers – and those different answers inevitably lead to tension, strife, and sacrifice.

In this masterpiece, award-winning author Kenneth Oppel has created a heart-stopping, can’t-wait-to-talk-about-it story, showing how our very human choices collectively lead to humanity’s eventual fate.

Kenneth Oppel is the author of numerous books for young readers. His award-winning Silverwing trilogy has sold over a million copies worldwide and been adapted as an animated TV series and stage play. Airborn won a Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award and the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award for children’s literature; its sequel, Skybreaker, was a New York Times bestseller and was named Children’s Novel of the Year by the London Times. He is also the author of Half Brother (which won both the Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year for Children Award, as well as their Young Adult Book Award – the first time in the awards’ history the same title has won both honours), This Dark Endeavor, Such Wicked Intent, and The Boundless. His latest books are Inkling and The Nest (which won the 2016 CLA Book of the Year for Children Award). Born on Canada’s Vancouver Island, he has lived in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, Canada; in England and Ireland; and now resides in Toronto with his wife and children.

MY NAME IS EMILIA DEL VALLE d’Isabel Allende

In this spellbinding novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and The Wind Knows My Name, a young journalist comes of age in the late 1800’s and attempts to uncover the truth about her father—and herself.

MY NAME IS EMILIA DEL VALLE
by Isabel Allende
Ballantine, May 2025
(via Writers House)

In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.

To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can’t contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, she meets her estranged father and delves into the violent confrontation in the country where her roots lie. As she and Eric discover love, the war escalates and Emilia finds herself in extreme danger, fearing for her life and questioning her identity and her destiny.

A riveting tale of self-discovery and love from one of the most masterful storytellers of our time, MY NAME IS EMILIA DEL VALLE introduces a character you will never forget.

Isabel Allende, born in Peru and raised in Chile, is a novelist, feminist, and philanthropist. She is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than eighty million copies of her twenty-eight books across forty-two languages. She is the author of several bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The Wind Knows My Name, Violeta, A Long Petal of the Sea, The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and Paula. In addition to her work as a writer, Isabel devotes much of her time to human rights causes. She has received fifteen honorary doctorates, been inducted into the California Hall of Fame, and received the PEN Center Lifetime Achievement Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and in 2018, she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation.

SEDUCTION THEORY d’Emily Adrian

With the raw emotional complexity of Conversations with Friends, the dark academia of Bunny, and filled with the sharp intimacy, heart, and humor of Splinters, SEDUCTION THEORY is a profound exploration of the challenges of monogamy, marital betrayal in all its forms, the dangerous intimacy of student-professor relationships, and the power of forgiveness.

SEDUCTION THEORY
by Emily Adrian
Little, Brown, August 2025
(via Writers House)

Simone is the star of the Edwards University Creative Writing Department: renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon. Her less glamorous and ostensibly devoted husband, Ethan, is a forgotten novelist and lecturer in the same department. But when Ethan and the department administrative assistant Abigail have sex, Simone’s graduate student Roberta “Robbie” Green fictionalizes the affair in a breathtakingly invasive MFA thesis.

Determined to tell her version of the story, Robbie’s youthful and sardonic voice weaves in and out of the novel until she finally takes charge of the plot. Vivid, innovative, witty, and tender, SEDUCTION THEORY is a story about how love and betrayal can coexist.

Emily Adrian is the author of Everything Here Is Under Control and The Second Season, as well as two critically acclaimed novels for young adults. Most recently, her memoir, Daughterhood was published. Her work has appeared in Granta, Joyland, EPOCH, Alta Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Millions.

UP IN SMOKE de Nick Brooks

Perfect for fans of Karen McManus and The Hate U Give, this edge-of-your-seat thriller from the author of Promise Boys follows a girl determined to clear her brother’s name and a boy desperate to keep his own out of the line of fire. As the heat turns up in a murder investigation, old feelings reignite between them, but a shocking secret could tear them apart.

UP IN SMOKE
by Nick Brooks
Henry Holt/Macmillan, May 2025
(via Writers House)

Unmask a murderer or take the fall.

After Cooper King is pressured by big brother figure Jason to go on a looting spree during a local march, the unthinkable happens: gunshots ring in the air and someone ends up dead. After Cooper flees, the news shows four teens in ski masks near the scene of the murder—Cooper and his friends. Cooper fears the cops will come knocking at his door, and the pressure only mounts when a suspect is taken into custody: Jason.

Monique, Jason’s sister and Cooper’s longtime crush, is willing to go any length to clear her brother’s name. Even if she needs to go into the belly of the beast and confront the killer herself. When she teams up with Cooper, they fall down the investigation rabbit hole and start to fall for each other. But little does Monique know that within this web of deception, Cooper is shrouding the truth that he was there when the shots went off. If the pair fail to uncover the real murderer, Jason will get locked up for a crime he didn’t commit—and drag Cooper down with him.

Nick Brooks is the critically-acclaimed author of Promise Boys and award-winning filmmaker from Washington, DC. His short film, Hoop Dreamin’, earned him the George Lucas Scholar Award and was a finalist in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Film Fest.