BATCAT de Meggie Ramm

A new graphic novel series for emerging readers about accepting yourself and others, from up-and-coming author-illustrator Meggie Ramm.

BATCAT #1
by Meggie Ramm
Amulet/Abrams, March 2023

Batcat loves being all alone in their home on Spooky Island. Up in their tree house, they pass the time playing video games and watching TV. But when Batcat suddenly finds themself haunted by an annoying, ice cream–stealing ghost, they visit the local Island Witch for a spell to remove their ghastly guest permanently!
With their Ghost-B-Gone spell in hand, Batcat travels across Spooky Island to gather ingredients—to the Cavernous Caves where the bats tell them they’re too round to be a bat, and to the Whispering Cemetery where the cats will help only if they commit to being a true cat. But Batcat is neither and that’s what makes them special, right?
From up-and-coming author Meggie Ramm comes a sweet and fun story about accepting yourself when you’re perfectly in-between here and there.

Meggie Ramm is a non-binary cartoonist from Michigan. They spent their twenties teaching comics to kids in Oakland, California, and it was the best job in the whole world. They’ve had work in the New Yorker, Everyday Feminism, and Silver Sprocket, and have a limerick-based comic strip called The Littlest Dungeon Guard distributed through Sunday HaHa. They love rhymes, reading gay sci-fi and fantasy, and comics.

HIDDEN HOPE d’Elisa Boxer & Amy June Bates

This picture book tells the remarkable true story of how a toy duck smuggled forged identity papers for Jewish refugees during WWII.

HIDDEN HOPE:
How a Toy and a Hero Saved Lives During the Holocaust
by Elisa Boxer
illustrated by Amy June Bates
Abrams BYR, March 2023

During World War II, families all across Europe huddled together in basements, attics, and closets as Nazi soldiers rounded up anyone Jewish. The Star of David, a symbol of faith and pride, became a tool of hate when the Nazis forced Jewish people to carry papers stamped with that star, so that it was clear who to capture. But many brave souls dared to help them.
Jewish teenager Jacqueline Gauthier, a member of the French Resistance who had to conceal her identity, was one who risked her life in secret workshops, forging papers with new names and without stars in order to help others escape. But how to get these life-saving papers to families in hiding? An ordinary wooden toy duck held the answer, a hidden compartment: hope in a hollow.
Written by award-winning journalist Elisa Boxer and movingly illustrated by the acclaimed Amy June Bates, HIDDEN HOPE celebrates the triumph of freedom and the human spirit, a story of everyday heroism, resilience, and finding hope in unexpected places.

Elisa Boxer is the author of the picture book Covered in Color as well as an Emmy Award–winning journalist and columnist. She has reported for newspapers, magazines, and TV stations, and has a passion for telling stories about people finding the courage to create change. Boxer lives with her family in Maine. 
Amy Bates is the illustrator of many books for children, including The Boy and the Sea, Gittel’s Journey, Minette’s Feast, and The Dog Who Belonged to No One. She lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

WINTER’S AXIOM de Yoon Ha Lee

A new YA SciFi trilogy by the New York Times bestselling author of Dragon Pearl.

WINTER’S AXIOM
(Book 1 in the Lancers series)
by Yoon Ha Lee
Delacorte, Spring 2024
(via The Gernert Company)

When Hwa Young’s home is destroyed and her family is on the run from enemy forces, she faces an impossible choice. Stay with her family and likely perish or be adopted by a new family connected to the Empire, which is enforcing conformity across the galaxy. She chooses her own survival.
Several years later, Hwa is a talented lancer pilot, manning a mecha robot on missions to planets under the Empire’s control, when she discovers the next mission is to destroy her home planet where her mother is still alive.
WINTER’S AXIOM is a novel about family, community, conformity, survival and about doing what’s right.

Yoon Ha Lee is the author of several critically acclaimed short stories and the Machineries of Empire trilogy for adults: Ninefox Gambit, Raven Strategem, and Revenant Gun. Yoon draws inspiration from a variety of sources including Korean history and mythology, fairy tales, higher mathematics, classic moral dilemmas, and genre fiction.

THESE DEADLY GAMES de Diana Urban

Author of ALL YOUR TWISTED SECRETS, Diana Urban’s explosive sophomore novel will keep you riveted until the final twist is revealed.

THESE DEADLY GAMES
by Diana Urban
Wednesday Books, February 2022
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

Let’s play a game. You have 24 hours to win. If you break my rules, she dies. If you call the police, she dies. If you tell your parents or anyone else, she dies. Are you ready?
When Crystal Donavan gets a message on a mysterious app with a video of her little sister gagged and bound, she agrees to play the kidnapper’s game. At first, they make her complete bizarre tasks: steal a test and stuff it in a locker, bake brownies, make a prank call.
But then Crystal realizes each task is meant to hurt–and kill–her friends, one by one. But if she refuses to play, the kidnapper will kill her sister. Is someone trying to take her team out of the running for a gaming tournament? Or have they uncovered a secret from their past, and wants them to pay for what they did…
As Crystal makes the impossible choices between her friends and her sister, she must uncover the truth and find a way to outplay the kidnapper… before it’s too late.

A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 from:
Seventeen Magazine * Buzzfeed * Book Riot * Goodreads * The Nerd Daily * She Reads

Diana Urban is an author of dark, twisty thrillers, including All Your Twisted Secrets, These Deadly Games, and Lying in the Deep (Penguin Teen, coming May 2, 2023). Her novels have been published internationally, and she’ll be featured in the Firsts and Lasts anthology (Penguin Workshop, 2023). When she’s not torturing her fictional characters, she freelances in video game narrative writing. She lives with her husband and cat in Boston and enjoys reading, playing video games, fawning over cute animals, and looking at the beach from a safe distance. 

KRAZYLAND de Mar Romasco-Moore

In this scary story for fans of Neil Gaiman, The Last Kids on Earth, and Goosebumps, the only way out is krazier than you could ever imagine…

KRAZYLAND
by Mar Romasco-Moore
Delacorte, September 2022
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

Nathan used to be terrified of Krazyland when he was a young kid. Now that he’s 12, the spooky-themed arcade games aren’t that bad. He even enjoys stomping on plastic spiders and battling a creepy doll with big plastic eyes. But things become scarier again when kids start to go missing from the entertainment park…
There’s another world exists beneath Kraztown’s ball pit. A world where the entertainment park’s games come to life. And if he isn’t careful, Nathan is going to be the next one sucked under!

Mar Romasco Moore is the author of the novels I Am the Ghost in Your House and Some Kind of Animal, as well as Ghostographs, an interconnected collection of flash fiction inspired by vintage photographs. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Lightspeed, Fireside, DIAGRAM, Hobart, Interfictions, Kaleidotrope, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and the anthology Women Destroy Science Fiction. She is a graduate of the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop and has an MFA from Southern Illinois University. She teaches writing at Columbus College of Art and Design.