A brother and sister travel the world helping to save endangered species in this new commercial middle-grade series.
THE WILDES: THE AMAZON (Book 1)
by Roland Smith
Sleeping Bear Press, March 2023
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)
Ring and Asia Wilde’s life is anything but ordinary. Some of their closest friends are endangered monkeys and rare birds. Instead of attending middle school, they accompany their parents (scientists who work to save endangered species) on adventures around the world. They spend more time climbing trees, tracking animal prints, and taking on three-hundred-pound anacondas than they do filling out worksheets. But a research trip to the Amazon rainforest turns into a dangerous mystery when their mother goes missing. Who kidnapped Dr. Jane Wilde, and why? Ring and Asia have the skills to survive the jungle–but do they have what it takes to rescue their mom?
New York Times Bestselling author Roland Smith is a former Zoo Curator and Research Biologist. He has published more than twenty novels for young adults. He and his wife, Marie, who is also an author, live on a small farm near Portland, Oregon.
It’s summertime in New York City and Magnolia Wu is stuck helping her parents at the family-owned Bing Qi Ling Bubbles Laundromat. While her classmates are off at summer camps and on vacation, Magnolia longs to escape the daily monotony of laundromat life. Luckily the Wu family keeps a sock board where all the lost socks get pinned. With her dog, Mister Pants, as her sidekick, Magnolia becomes New York’s leading Sock Detective, venturing into the city’s chaos to return every sock to its rightful owner.
Ever since his mother was killed, seventeen-year-old Cayder Broduck has had one goal—to see illegal users of magic brought to justice. People who carelessly use extradimensional magic for their own self-interest, without a care about the damage it does to society or those around them, deserve to be punished as far as Cayder is concerned. Because magic always has a price. So, when Cayder lands a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to apprentice under a premier public defender, he takes it. If he can learn all the tricks of public defense, the better he’ll be able to dismantle defense arguments when he’s a prosecutor. Then he’ll finally be able to make sure justice is served.
When they meet as children, Nina and Jess form a strong bond, one that quickly intensifies when they discover they share an extraordinary power: they can swap bodies. As they grow older, they use this ability to steal into each other’s lives, unearthing secrets and betraying confidences. Nina, introspective and self-conscious, is seduced by the turbulence of Jess’ life, but also possessive of her bolder friend. Jess, meanwhile, envies the stability of Nina’s world, and wishes to seize it for herself. Now, Jess has re-entered Nina’s life after a long separation. She is in crisis after her father’s death, and says she needs Nina’s help, but Nina fears she may try to take far more than that. Over the course of this novel, they reckon with the truth, the beauty, and the horror of walking in another person’s shoes.
Jonathan Abernathy is screwed. Jobless, behind on his student loan payments, and a self-declared failure, the only thing Abernathy has in abundance is debt. When a government loan forgiveness program offers him a job he can do literally in his sleep, he thinks he’s found his big break. That is, until he finds himself auditing the dreams of white collar workers, flagging their anxieties and preoccupations for removal.