Archives par étiquette : Writers House

RIVER OF SPIRITS de Shana Targosz

In her beautifully written and fiercely imaginative middle-grade novel, debut author Shana Targosz delivers an utterly original take on Greek mythology that’s a tale of friendship, sacrifice, and an incredibly nuanced portrayal of grief for a younger audience.

RIVER OF SPIRITS
(THE UNDERWILD, Book 1)
by Shana Targosz
Simon & Schuster, Spring 2025
(via Writers House)

Senka lives between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead. As ward to Charon, the Ferryer of the Underworld, Senka assists Charon in ferrying recently departed souls across the river and into their afterlife. Although Charon has mentored her, and messenger-raven and tutor Mortimer has taught Senka a bit about the realm of the Living, there’s so much about the Underworld Charon has been keeping from her. Senka knows Charon forbids her from straying too far from their home (it’s Rule number five in the Rules for Ferryers, after all), and though she doesn’t understand why, she listens—there is nothing she wants more than to prove she can be a model Ferryer.

When a young boy’s soul gets yanked away by the river’s current, and when the boy’s living sister, Poppy, arrives in the Underworld and pleads for Senka’s help to find him, Senka is literally dragged downriver, far from everything she’s ever known. Lost in the Underworld, Senka and Poppy encounter malevolent spirits of lore and eccentric ghosts—and not all are willing to let souls slip through their grasp.

But the Living can’t stay in the realm of the Dead for long, and there are only three days until Poppy’s soul will also become lost to the Underworld. Senka must utilize everything she has learned in order to save Poppy from a fate worse than death. As Poppy and Senka dodge angry demigods, hungry wraiths, tricksy shape-shifters, and terrifying dragon chimera, Senka gets closer and closer to learning the truth of her own past. Soon, Senka won’t just need to save Poppy’s life—she’ll also need to save her own. . .

Shana Targosz is an Oregon Literary Fellow and the recipient of the Edna L. Holmes Fellowship for Young Readers. An alumni of Author Mentor Match (#AMM), she is a former Pitch Wars mentor and current AMM mentor, and has been a guest host on Grace Lin’s #kidlitwomen podcast.

THE SLINGER SERIES de Graci Kim

X-Men meets Pokémon in this endlessly inventive new middle-grade series from New York Times bestselling author Graci Kim—if Professor X was a Korean king, and magic literally came from our dreams!

THE SLINGER SERIES
by Graci Kim
Disney Hyperion, Spring 2025
(via Writers House)

Book 1: DREAMSLINGER

Book 2: ROYALSLINGER

Fourteen-year-old Aria Loveridge is a carrier of the dreamslinger gene—a rare genetic mutation that causes fire, wind, poison, or ice to blast from her hands after a nightmare. Like all dreamslingers, Aria is a total outcast—hated and feared by the public. But thanks to her dad, a celebrated Texan professor of dreamslinger welfare, things are about to change. His groundbreaking work to build Dreamslinger Homes in every US state is going to give teenagers like Aria a safe haven, and Aria couldn’t be prouder.

But when Aria accidentally lights the camera crew on fire during her dad’s live-streamed national announcement, her dad’s career goes up in flame too. And in an attempt to save his life’s work, Aria strikes a deal with the government—she’ll enter the mysterious and dangerous Annual Slinger Trials in the Royal Kingdom of Hanguk as a spy, in exchange for her dad’s project getting the green light.

Aria knows the risks. After all, the hermit kingdom’s been closed to the world for the past ten years—ever since their royally-trained slingers unleashed a series of fires, hurricanes, ice storms, and poisonous plagues that took thousands of lives. And this is the first time they’ve opened their controversial training contest to the world. But apart from the cut-throat competition, nothing in the Trials is as Aria expected. Flying palanquins? Trees that grow snacks? Dream creatures that give you real-life superpowers? And . . . new friends?

Soon, Aria begins to question everything she thought she knew about being a dreamslinger. And when her spying leads her to discover shocking truths about her own family and history, Aria has to decide where her loyalties lie—to her dad, to the kingdom, or perhaps even, to herself.

Graci Kim is the award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author of the Rick Riordan Presents series The Last Fallen Star, a Korean mythology-inspired middle-grade that was in TIME Magazine for Kids, praised as a “sparkling yarn” by Entertainment Weekly, and has been optioned for a television series by the Disney Channel. It was named a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Children’s Book, an Amazon Best Book, an Indigo Best Book, a Barnes & Noble Young Reader Pick, and a Whitcoulls Kids Top 50. In 2022, Graci was awarded the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best New Talent. Before she became an author, Graci was a New Zealand diplomat and a cooking show host.

THE FREEDOM OF FALLING d’Arriel Vinson

Sold in a 7-publisher auction, debut author and Reese’s Book Club Fellow Arriel Vinson delivers an outstanding novel-in-verse about a girl who falls in love at the roller-skating rink—the only place in the world where she feels whole.

THE FREEDOM OF FALLING
by Arriel Vinson
Putnam/ Penguin Random House, Summer 2025
(via Writers House)

Jaelyn Coleman wants nothing more than to go to WestSide Roll skating rink every weekend like she always does with her best friend Noelle. As Arriel says, like many Black families, her parents—before they got divorced—made roller skating a tradition. But Jaelyn learns that her place of refuge is shutting down by the middle of the summer. Her neighbourhood is being gentrified. Which means she and her best friend might grow apart even more. Trey—the guy she just met at the rink—may become a distant memory. And the place where her family was essentially made will be gone. But, Jaelyn realizes that no one can take away what she loves, and that skating is about keeping community alive.

With searing intelligence, THE FREEDOM OF FALLING explores female friendship, complicated family relationships, and growing into confidence. But at its heart, it’s about learning to let your emotions be free. The freedom to fall in love, maybe with your cute boyfriend, but also with your family who you thought you had lost.

Arriel Vinson is a Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellow and Midwesterner who writes about being young, Black, and in search of freedom. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Shondaland, Kweli Journal, Catapult, The Rumpus, Waxwing, and others. A Tin House YA Scholar, 2020 Walter Grant recipient, and 2019 Kimbilio Fellow, her work has been nominated for Best New Poets 2020, Best of the Net 2019, and a Pushcart Prize.

LitUp by Reese’s Book Club is working to break down systematic barriers in traditional book publishing and provide opportunities for underrepresented women storytellers. The program provides powerful resources for diverse writers to get started and get their books onto our shelves through a writers retreat, a mentorship with Reese’s Book Club alumni authors, and marketing through Reese’s Book Club channels, including spotlights on their Instagram, features in their newsletter, and videos on TikTok.

VERY DANGEROUS THINGS de Lauren Muñoz

From the author of Suddenly a Murder comes a smart, twisty whodunnit—set on one very unique school campus, and filled with love, betrayal, and deadly secrets. Perfect for fans of Karen McManus and Maureen Johnson.

VERY DANGEROUS THINGS
by Lauren Muñoz
Penguin Random House, May 2025
(via Writers House)

The dead body should have been fake. It wasn’t.

Dulce Castillo is determined to win the murder mystery game her crime and criminology magnet school stages every fall. Last year’s loss to her ex-best friend’s team wasn’t only humiliating; it kept her from winning the $60,000 prize money she and her dad need to keep living in the town she loves. But Dulce is sure this year will be different because she and her friend Emi have a secret weapon: Zane, the new transfer student, who somehow knows everything about forensics.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s as cute as ten puppies wearing bunny ears.

The school’s golden boy, Xavier Torres, is chosen to play the victim. Unfortunately, someone wants Xavier dead for real. When he’s found murdered in the school greenhouse, the primary suspect is his girlfriend, Sierra. She swears she’s being railroaded by the sheriff, but the evidence against her is overwhelming: It shows that she stabbed Xavier with a poison-tipped knitting needle because he dumped her when he found out she was having a fling with his brother.

Sierra begs Dulce for help clearing her name, but Dulce refuses. After all, this is the same ex-bff who lied about why Dulce’s mom died in a car wreck three years ago. But when the prize committee decides to offer up the $60,000 to whoever solves Xavier’s real murder, Dulce has no choice but to throw her monocle in the ring. When she finds evidence that Sierra might be innocent and that someone she cares about might be guilty, Dulce has to determine whether justice is more important than love.

Lauren Muñoz is a writer, lawyer, and former teacher living in Southern California. She received her J.D. from Northwestern University in Chicago, where she frequently skipped class to commune with her sun lamp. When she’s not reading, she can be found knitting, crocheting, and collecting recipes for things she’ll never bake.

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.