For fans of Nevermoor and Howl’s Moving Castle comes an epic middle-grade fantasy about a girl with the ability to unlock anything—including the empire’s darkest secrets.
THE LOCK-EATER
by Zack Loran Clark
Dial Books/Penguin Young Readers, January 2022
Melanie Gate is a foundling with a peculiar talent for opening the unopenable—any lock releases at the touch of her hand. One night, her orphanage is visited by Traveler, a gearling automaton there on behalf of his magical mistress, who needs an apprentice pronto. When Melanie is selected because of her gift, her life changes in a flash, and in more ways than she knows—because Traveler is not at all what he seems. But then, neither is Melanie Gate.
So begins an epic adventure sparkling with magic, humor, secret identities, stinky cats, fierce orphan girls, impostor boys, and a foundling and gearling hotly pursued by the most powerful and dangerous wizard in the land.
Action-packed yet layered, THE LOCK-EATER is a mix of lush world-building, high stakes, humor, and emotional heft—a page-turner and so much more.
« An epic tapestry threaded with rich lore, vibrant characters, and a twisting plot that will have readers tumbling through the pages. Marrying the zany inventiveness of Alice in Wonderland with the thorough magical world-building of Howl’s Moving Castle, Clark creates a deeply immersive fantasy, full of both heft and humor, that’s sure to stay with young readers long after its final page is turned. » —Soman Chainani, New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good and Evil series
Zack Loran Clark is a writer and editor of children’s books, and the co-author of The Adventurers Guild trilogy. A lifelong fantasy nerd, avid Dungeons & Dragons player, and aspiring sorcerer, he lives with his husband and their dog in Brooklyn, New York.
Rose Atkinson’s mother can see the future. Her father can move things he doesn’t touch. Her brother Aaron can read minds. And Rose, well, she makes a mean spaghetti bolognese. 
Twin sisters, Mercy and Hunter are witches, descendants of the Goode family of witches. After the murder of their mother at the hands of a foul demon, they have become the protectors of the Gates to different underworlds–ancient portals between their world and realms where mythology rules and the darkest of creatures exist.
Eighteen-year-old Zarela Zalvidar is a talented flamenco dancer and daughter of the most famous Dragonador in Hispalia. People come for miles to see him fight in their arena, La Giralda. And one day La Giralda will be hers to run. During their five hundredth anniversary show, the family’s dragons mysteriously break free from their pens, causing death and destruction in the ring, and in the carnage, Zarela’s father is horribly injured. Facing punishment from the Dragon Guild, Zarela must keep the arena—her ancestral home and inheritance —safe from their greedy hands. She has no choice but to take her father’s place as the Dragonador of La Giralda. Seeking the help of Arturo Diaz de Montserrat, an infuriatingly handsome former Dragonador with his own secrets, she trains for the role of her life.
All her life, eleven-year-old Farrah Noorzad has been desperate to make her father proud. But she only gets one day a year—her birthday—to spend time with him, before he jets back across the world to his real family in Abu Dhabi. This year, when her father gives her a box containing a mysterious, whispering ring, and tells her she can make a wish on it, Farrah doesn’t think twice. She takes the ring and wishes with everything in her heart to find a place in his world. But her wish backfires and her father vanishes before her eyes. Guided by the whispering ring, she meets Idris, a half-jinn with milky white eyes and hair, who reveals her true heritage: she is also a half-jinn…and her father is one of the seven great jinn kings. As if that weren’t unbelievable enough, he explains that her wish has trapped her father inside the ring, and the other six jinn kings will follow if she can’t find a way to undo her mistake.