Archives par étiquette : St. Martin’s Press

SECRETS, SPELLS, AND CHOCOLATE de Marisa Churchill

This fast-paced, whimsical fantasy set in a kitchen-witchery world is perfect for younger YA readers.

SECRETS, SPELLS, AND CHOCOLATE
by Marisa Churchill
Page Street/St. Martin’s, November 2025

All 14-year-old Sylvie Jones wants is to attend her dream cooking school, Brindille School of Culinary Arts and Magic. After years of gossip and threats against her family, Sylvie is ready to prove that she’s got the skills to be a great chef and put an end to the rumors that her famous chef mother cheated her way to victory at the world’s greatest magical cooking competition, The Golden Whisk. But the new head of the Council of Culinary Sages, Jack Bass, has mandated that Sylvie must finish first in her class during a preparatory program or she’ll be banned from attending Brindille. To make matters worse, her mom must compete in the highly-anticipated Golden Whisk All Stars, putting herself back in the spotlight or risk losing her right to cook with magic. But some will go to great lengths to ensure her mother can’t compete.

With the unlikely help of frenemy Georgia Shaw, and rising-star-student Fleur, Sylvie must find a way to The Golden Whisk to help her mother before it’s too late. But betrayal has a taste all its own, and Sylvie will soon discover that not everyone is who they seem. Will Sylvie be able to save her family and her future or will it all end in burned butter and broken dreams?

Marisa Churchill spent a decade of her career working in some of San Francisco’s most notable restaurants, was a competitor on Top Chef season two, and competed multiple times on Food Network Challenge. She is the author of two cookbooks Sweet & Skinny and My Sweet & Skinny Life. Her recipes have appeared in almost every culinary publication, from Food & Wine to Epicurious. Her recipes have also been featured in Oprah.com, Women’s Health, and on numerous TV shows: The Talk, Access Hollywood, Hallmark’s Home & Family, and more.

THE REDWOOD BARGAIN de Markelle Grabo

In this gothic fairy tale, a maid poses as her lord’s stepdaughter to fulfill his bargain with the murderous lord of the woods.

THE REDWOOD BARGAIN
by Markelle Grabo
Page Street/St. Martin’s, March 2026

To free her cousin from an indentured contract, Katrien agrees to fulfill their lord’s bargain with the fabled “Redwood Man.” Three maids before her have posed as his stepdaughter, Lady Zaviera, and met this lord of the forest as promised. But Katrien means to be the first to fool him—and live. Impersonating a lady is no easy feat, especially one as beautiful and aloof as Zaviera. With one month before she’s sent off, Katrien is put through endless lessons, even as the Redwood Man’s suffocating vines overtake the manor and threaten its staff. Zaviera takes a special interest in her training, and their shared interests grow into shared affections. But the Redwood Man awaits his prize. Caught between duty and desire, her future and her past, Katrien must navigate a tricky bargain—or risk failing those she holds dearest.

Markelle Grabo retells the fairy tales that frustrate her, which, based on that guideline, could include nearly all of them. She earned her master’s degree in creative writing for children and young adults from Hamline University and lives in Illinois with her partner and their two cats, Matcha and Kava. She is the author of Call Forth a Fox.

THE GIRLS BEFORE de Kate Alice Marshall

There is a girl in a basement. The door has stopped opening. The light is gone.
The next book from this acclaimed and bestselling author.

THE GIRLS BEFORE
by Kate Alice Marshall
Flatiron Books, February 2026

Stranger is trapped in the dark, with only her imagination and the scribbles on the wall left by long-dead girls to keep her company. Nearly out of food and water, she makes one last attempt to escape. But what will happen if the door opens? Audrey is a search and rescue expert who never stopped looking for her ex-best friend, Janie, who disappeared when they were teenagers. Janie used to love the local legend of a forest witch who saves girls from bad men, but Audrey knows now that for every one saved, there’s always another one lost. When she stumbles upon evidence in the forest that a teenage runaway might have actually been kidnapped from land belonging to the town’s wealthiest family, she will have to dig through decades of secrets to reveal the biggest one of all: what happened to the girls before.

Kate Alice Marshall is the USA Today bestselling author of What Lies in the Woods, No One Can Know, A Killing Cold, and multiple novels for younger readers. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family.

LIFE, AND DEATH, AND GIANTS de Ron Rindo

A remarkable child transforms a small, rural community—and soon the world.

LIFE, AND DEATH, AND GIANTS
by Ron Rindo
St. Martin’s Press, September 2025

A young, unmarried Amish woman, attended by the country veterinarian, delivers an enormous baby, and no one in Lakota, Wisconsin, knows what to make of the boy. Raised by his brother on a struggling farm, Gabriel Fisher walks at eight months, communicates with animals, and possesses extraordinary athletic abilities. When his brother dies, Gabriel is taken in by devout Amish grandparents, and for a time, he disappears into the anonymity of Amish life. But at age seventeen, and nearly eight feet tall, Gabriel is spotted working in a hay field by the local football coach, and his life changes.

In LIFE, AND DEATH, AND GIANTS, Gabriel’s remarkable story is told by those whose lives are transformed by him: Thomas Kennedy, the veterinarian who delivers him and becomes his mentor; Hannah Fisher, Gabriel’s Amish grandmother, who is troubled by deep gaps in her faith; Billy Walton, the salty bar owner and bridge between the Amish and English communities in Lakota; and Trey Beathard, the football coach, who tries to counsel Gabriel as his fame explodes―with consequences that no-one can predict.

Threaded through with the poems of Emily Dickinson, Life, and Death, and Giants weaves together an unforgettable story of faith, family, buried secrets, and everyday miracles.

« Straddling the Wisconsin of the Amish and “English,” Life, and Death, and Giants assays the limitations and temptations of the godly and the worldly. Ron Rindo has fashioned a small-town novel as magical and moral as a tall tale. » —Stewart O’Nan, author of Snow Angels and Songs for the Missing

« With Life, and Death, and Giants, Ron Rindo has performed literary magic. This is a remarkable, profoundly moving novel. » —Larry Watson, author of Montana 1948

Ron Rindo is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He has published one previous novel, Breathing Lake Superior, and three short story collections. He lives in Pickett, Wisconsin.

THE ZORG de Siddharth Kara

From Pulitzer finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red: A notorious slave ship incident that led to the abolition of slavery in the UK and sparked the US abolitionist movement.

THE ZORG:
A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
by Siddharth Kara
St. Martin’s Press, October 2025

In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The Zorg (a Dutch word meaning both “care” and “worry”) was one of thousands of such ships, but the harrowing events that ensued on its doomed journey were unique.

After reaching Africa, The Zorg was captured by a privateer and came under British command. With a new captain and crew, the ship was crammed with 442 slaves, and departed in 1781 for Jamaica. But a series of unpredictable weather events and mistakes in navigation left the ship drastically off course and running out of food and water. So a proposition was put forth: Save the crew and the most valuable of the slaves―by throwing 140 people, mostly women and children, overboard.

What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front page news. For the first time, concepts such as human rights and morality entered the discourse on slavery, in a notorious case that boiled down to a simple but profound question: Were the Africans on board the Zorg people or cargo?

The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history. In this book, Siddharth Kara utilizes primary source research, masterful storytelling, and painstaking investigation to uncover the Zorg’s journey, the lives and fates of the slaves on board, and the mystery of who finally revealed the truth of what happened on the ship.

Siddharth Kara is an author, researcher, and activist on modern slavery. He is a British Academy Global Professor and an Associate Professor of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at Nottingham University. Kara has authored several books and reports on slavery and child labor, and he won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. He has also taught courses on modern slavery at Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and Cornell University. He divides his time between the U.K. and the U.S.