Archives par étiquette : Writers House

UNFINISHED de Nidhi Chanani

A tender YA graphic novel that traces grief, friendship, and the healing power of storytelling, following a boy who learns to navigate loss by finishing the comic his brother left behind.

UNFINISHED
by Nidhi Chanani
Atheneum/Simon & Schuster, August 2027
(via Writers House)

Sanjay Lal was never supposed to become older than his older brother, Jeevan. But three years ago, Jeevan died, and now, Sanjay is hit with overwhelming grief that he doesn’t know how to handle. His parents have sent him back to group counseling where he finds kinship with fellow group member, Ruchi, a bold, fat, beautiful teen who bakes to cope with her own loss.

But Sanjay doesn’t really know how to talk to girls, and his home life isn’t any better. Jeevan was the social brother, not Sanjay. How is Sanjay supposed to navigate new friendships and silent family dinners without him? For Sanjay, a historical comic about an unknown group of Indian freedom fighters becomes his lifeline. Jeevan began the comic before his death, setting out to tell the story of how the Ghadar Party made their mark in 1913 San Francisco, but like Jeevan, they were never able to finish their work.

With humor and hope, UNFINISHED interweaves Sanjay’s story and the story within the comic, all while showing the process of comic book making, from thumbnails to inks and finally full-color. Through finishing Jeevan’s comic, Sanjay begins to process his grief and uncover an astonishing truth about his brother, community, and the power in documenting stories to remember.

Nidhi Chanani is a freelance illustrator, cartoonist, and writer. Born in Calcutta and raised in suburban Southern California, she creates because it makes her happy—with the hope that it can make others happy too. Her debut graphic novel, Pashmina, received starred reviews from School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, was a JLG Selection, a YALSA Top Ten Great Graphic Novel for Teens, and was reviewed in the New York Times, among other honors. She has a number of other comics and picture books out in the world as well, including Binny’s Diwali, Jukebox, and What Will My Story Be? Chanani draws and dreams every day with her husband, kid, and their kittens in the San Francisco Bay Area.

DEPARTMENT OF TREASURE de Steve Sheinkin

Award-winning and best-selling author Steve Sheinkin’s new middle-grade novel follows a group of friends as they set off on an unauthorized road trip in search of a legendary buried treasure. Drawing from the very true story of the Scottish privateer William Kidd, this comedy-adventure is perfect for new and established fans.

DEPARTMENT OF TREASURE
by Steve Sheinkin
Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan, Fall 2027
(via Writers House)

Photo credit: Rob Spring

Sam Sparkler dreams of becoming one of the world’s great treasure hunters. One day. For now, he’s content with metal detecting after lunch at school, digging up a coin on a lucky day. Not the most exciting life, but it’s tough enough adjusting to this new middle school, living with his mom’s new husband. But things start looking up when Sam’s nineteen-year-old step-brother, Tristan, comes into town. Tristan— who fancies himself a modern-day knight, traveling the land in his ice cream truck—is desperately in debt and has agreed to stay with Sam while their parents are off on a long weekend in Florida. It’s the recipe for the perfect adventure.

Inspired by a chapter in his favorite treasure book, Sam proposes a wild idea: solve the mystery of Captain Kidd’s buried treasure! Tristan needs the money, and Sam can’t pass up the chance to follow his treasure-hunting dreams. Rounding out the crew is Smiley Cortez, a clever girl Sam sort of knows from math class. She’s absolutely, one hundred percent joining this quest, invited or not.

But the team quickly discovers they’re not alone in their search. They have a dangerous rival: a disgruntled nonfiction author named Byron Bellamy. A letter buried in Bellamy’s files sets off a chase for clues that leads to a midnight showdown on New York City’s Governors Island, where the notorious Captain William Kidd just may have hidden his loot in the summer of 1699. Drawing on the true history of Captain Kidd, this is a story celebrating the fact that great treasures are still out there, sleeping below the ground. And adventure lives on, lurking under the surface of everyday life. As Sam has been known to say—What’s the point of a fantasy that can never come true?

Steve Sheinkin is the author of fast-paced, cinematic nonfiction including Bomb, Fallout, Undefeated, Born to Fly, The Port Chicago 50, and Impossible Escape, as well as The Bletchley Riddle, a middle grade historical mystery written with Ruta Sepetys. Steve’s accolades include a Newbery Honor, three Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, a Sibert Medal and Honor, three National Book Award finalist honors, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. He lives with his family in Saratoga Springs, New York.

THE PLACE BETWEEN WORDS de Jesset Karlen

When a boy’s untimely passing upsets the delicate balance between life and death, he must embark on a thrilling adventure to restore it. Sold in a heated four-house auction, and set against an immersive yet accessible fantasy world, this standalone middle-grade debut is perfect for fans of Erin Entrada Kelly, Grace Lin, and Kelly Barnhill.

THE PLACE BETWEEN WORDS
by Jesset Karlen
Simon & Schuster, Fall 2027
(via Writers House)

Quill Owens is dead, and that’s just the start of his troubles. Upon his untimely death, he is transported to the realm of the Betwixt, where his arrival inadvertently upsets the delicate balance of the two powerful beings that reside there: Life and Death. Now, with unchecked life wreaking havoc across the realm, Quill is tasked with finding Death’s long-ago stolen power. Without it, Death is too weak to check the overzealous power of Life, and the souls trapped in the Betwixt will never know peace.

As Quill scrambles to find footing in this strange new world and come to terms with his passing, he meets Ellie, a girl who claims to have died in the 1800s. She’s been stuck in the Betwixt ever since, unable to move on, but the circumstances of how she got there are shrouded in mystery. Together, Quill and Ellie set out to find the only one who might be able to help them both: Time, the middle sibling of Life and Death. But journeying in the Betwixt is not without its dangers—even for those who are already dead. Quill and Ellie will have to uncover the dark secrets of the famed Memory Market, make it through the Forgotten Library, and catch the elusive King of Dreams if they are to find the missing power. And all the while, Life has her own plans for Quill. She wants Death’s power for herself, and she’ll promise Quill anything to side with her. Anything—even a return to the land of the living.

Jesset Karlen is a writer from Vancouver Canada with a fondness for children’s literature and speculative fiction. He has participated in the Banff Centre’s writing residency, Diaspora Dialogues mentorship program, and he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. He is also a content reader for PRISM International and Pulp Literature.

THE LOVE OF BEAVERS de Matthew Perry

The author’s extensive, long-term tracking of wild beaver colonies documents intimate family relationships and complex colony hierarchies highlighting how beavers serve as primary forces against drought and climate shifting by engineering vital, biodiverse wetlands.

THE LOVE OF BEAVERS
by Matthew Perry
Atria Books, March 2028
(via Writers House)

When conservationist and naturalist Matthew Perry arrived at Spring Farm CARES Nature Sanctuary in central New York, he believed he had been hired to restore a damaged landscape by hand—replanting forests, repairing streams, rebuilding bird habitat after two centuries of agricultural depletion. Instead, on his very first day, he met the true agents of restoration: a young pair of beavers newly released onto the land. Within months, they accomplished what no human-designed plan could, transforming a narrow farm stream into a living wetland system.

What began as a practical collaboration became a twenty-six-year relationship spanning three generations of beavers—and a profound shift in how to understand wildlife, restoration, and intelligence beyond the human realm. THE LOVE OF BEAVERS chronicles the lives of a single, multi-generational beaver colony with rare intimacy, following individuals, family lines, and learned traditions across decades of floods, droughts, loss, recovery, and renewal.

The world is just becoming hip to the importance and appeal of beavers. Perry’s posts of ongoing field observations, images, and short-form narrative videos regularly draw hundreds of thousands to millions of views, including a single beaver-fo­cused post that has reached more than 10 million viewers.

As the beavers go about their lives, the land responds. The book documents this transformation from the inside, revealing rewilding not as a technical intervention but as a relationship—one rooted in patience, trust, and shared time.

Matthew Perry has served for over twenty-five years as Conservation Director and Resident Naturalist at Spring Farm CARES Nature Sanctuary, overseeing a 260-acre rewilding project shaped largely by beaver-engineered wetlands. He is President of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife, a national nonprofit dedicated to coexistence-based conservation, and President of the Utica Peregrine Falcon Project. The Spring Farm beavers will be featured in an upcoming PBS documentary, and the BBC has ex­pressed interest in filming the colony in 2026.

BLOCKERS de Michael Lewis

An inside look at the early days of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, as told by the public servants it targeted and one of America’s best storytellers.

BLOCKERS
by Michael Lewis
W.W. Norton, October 2026
(via Writers House)

Blockers. It wasn’t a compliment. In the new Washington, it was the worst thing you could be―especially if you worked in the federal government and wanted to keep your job. A Blocker was a holdover, an impediment, someone who didn’t get the message―and, most of all, someone who didn’t belong.

Michael Lewis found six of them.

BLOCKERS is the story of people who believed they had a calling, who were convinced they were doing something the country couldn’t do without, and then discovered they were no longer wanted. One kept Americans’ most sensitive tax data out of the wrong hands and another made sure that politicians and civil servants played by the rules. One figured out how to stop wildfires from destroying suburban neighborhoods, another helped uncover the mysteries of cystic fibrosis.

There was also a security guard.

It should come as no surprise that the writer who made subprime mortgages gripping (The Big Short) and who turned baseball statistics into poetry (Moneyball) could transform the first two years of the second Trump administration into a thriller about federal employees. But he does.

And he does something else. He puts before us a clear question: If these public servants can’t survive in government today, then what does that say about us?

Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, and The Fifth Risk. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.