Archives par étiquette : Writers House

DUNGEONEER ACADEMY de James Parks & Ben Costa

This awesomely illustrated new middle-grade trilogy from the creators of Rickety Stitch is Dungeons & Dragons meets The Last Kids on Earth and Fablehaven!

DUNGEONEER ACADEMY
by James Parks & Ben Costa
Aladdin/Simon & Schuster, Summer 2022; 2023; 2024

Coop Cooperson is the only human kid at Dungeoneer Academy, a school for future explorers in the Land of Eem, a world of monsters, mazes, mayhem—and even magic! Coop is surrounded by great friends—Oggie (hulking, sensitive bugbear), Mindy (whiz kid imp), and Daz (would-be class superstar boggart, if she only applied herself). Together, they become literal lifesavers when a school-trip-gone-wrong flings the kids into an adventure that puts all their Dungeoneer skills to the test. As Coop and his misfit friends try to find their way home, they’ll face more than their own fears to overcome a menagerie of dangerous creatures, obstacles, and a mysterious enemy from the Academy’s past.

James Parks & Ben Costa have been friends since the 2nd grade, and always loved making stuff together. It all began in grade school, drawing superhero comics with crayons and construction paper. In high school, they spent hours making wacky homemade movies, and as college roommates, they wrote comics and short fiction, coming up with the idea that would become Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo, their first published graphic novel series. They love fantasy, and strive to craft tales that celebrate the adventures of unlikely heroes. They grew up playing tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons, creating countless characters and collaborative worlds. It’s a pastime that’s paved the way for their creative careers, and they still play with the same friends to this day.

SNEAKS de Catherine Egan

Men in Black meets The Westing Game in the middle-grade debut of the author of the Julia Vanishes trilogy! When Ben’s school project uncovers a secret society whose aim is to keep sneaks—mischievous interdimensional sprites—from slipping into our universe!

SNEAKS
by Catherine Egan
Knopf, January 2022

What starts as a boring class project takes an intergalactic turn when Ben, Akemi, and Charlotte discover that the elderly woman they’ve been assigned to interview is a member of the super secret Gateway Society—and she’s in trouble. Agatha gives them a box to keep safe and then disappears! Of course they open the box—and learn about Sneaks: interdimensional malsprites that can slip through the seals between worlds and wreak havoc. The Gateway Society usually handles Sneak attacks, but Sneaks are converging on the town in alarming numbers, and they are after the notebook and strange statue the kids found in Agatha’s box. And they want something else too: to pull a more dangerous creature through the seal. Can three misfit kids work together to decode the notebook and stop an intergalactic takeover? Can they find Agatha? Can they get their class project done on time?
This funny, fantastical adventure will leave readers checking under their beds for Sneaks that go bump in the night.

Catherine Egan grew up in Vancouver, Canada. Since then, she has lived on a volcanic island in Japan (which erupted while she was there and sent her hurtling straight into the arms of her now husband), in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Beijing, on an oil rig in the middle of Bohai Bay, then in New Jersey, and now in New Haven, Connecticut. She is currently occupied with writing books and fighting dragon armies with her warrior children. SNEAKS is her middle grade debut.

A CONSPIRACY OF MOTHERS de Colleen van Niekerk

From a bold new voice in literary fiction comes a compelling story of three mothers whose lives intersect during a generation-defining period in South Africa’s history.

A CONSPIRACY OF MOTHERS
by Colleen van Niekerk
Little A, October 2021

The year is 1994, and South Africa is in political turmoil as its first democratic election looms. Against a backdrop of apartheid and racial violence, traumatized artist Yolanda Petersen returns from the Appalachian foothills to the land of her youth at the behest of her mother. While there Yolanda longs to reconnect with her estranged daughter, Ingrid, the product of an illegal mixed-race affair with a white man. But Ingrid is missing, and as Yolanda quickly discovers, she isn’t the only woman in Cape Town desperate to protect her own. Ingrid’s very existence is proof of a white man’s crime, and that man’s mother will do anything—even kill—to ensure the truth remains buried.
An evocative debut which takes place a few months prior to Nelson Mandela’s presidency and release from prison, A CONSPIRACY OF MOTHERS tells a gripping story of love and betrayal from multiple perspectives while deftly balancing the painful legacy of apartheid with the trials of motherhood.

Colleen van Niekerk was born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, and now lives in Vancouver, Canada. This is her debut novel.

THE DINOSAUR WARS de Gerta Keller

Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl meets Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction in this work of popular science which blends the personal narrative of a trailblazing woman’s life in a male-dominated scientific field with a highstakes inquiry into what really killed the dinosaurs, the greatest scientific detective story of our time.

THE DINOSAUR WARS: MY LIFE AS A WARRIOR SCIENTIST IN THE DINOSAUR WARS
by Gerta Keller
Penguin Press, October 2022
(via Writers House)

World-renowned geologist and paleontologist Gerta Keller is at the center of what has been called the nastiest feud in science, a contentious debate popularly known as “The Dinosaur Wars” over what triggered the fifth mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Era sixty-six million years ago. Dinosaurs have enthralled us for generations, and the question of what caused their demise is more relevant than ever, as humankind confronts the paroxysms of an imperiled planet and the possibility that we may become the dinosaurs of the sixth extinction.
Born into a life of poverty on a small farm in Switzerland as the sixth of a dozen children, Gerta was told her dreams of becoming a doctor were impossible. Defying the odds, Gerta reclaimed her childhood dream of studying science, ultimately completing her graduate studies in geology at Stanford and becoming a professor at Princeton University and a major voice in her field. Along the way, she overcame the hostility and disdain of her male colleagues, who sabotaged her work, took credit for her discoveries, and chided her for not “knowing her place.”
Driven by a relentless passion to discover the truth of Earth’s catastrophic upheavals, Gerta continued her research in a series of incredible adventures across the globe that have caused some to liken her to a female Indiana Jones and which led her to uncover a growing mass of evidence that contradicted the then-widely-accepted asteroid impact theory. Rather, Gerta discovered, the real cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction was Deccan volcanism, a series of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions on the Indian peninsula. Outraged by her daring to challenge them, the toxic, male scientific establishment launched an all-out war against Gerta, doing their utmost to sabotage her work, destroy her reputation, and suppress the publication of her research. But they picked a fight with the wrong woman.

Gerta Keller is a Professor of Paleontology and Geology in the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University, where she has been a tenured faculty member since 1984. She has placed over 260 scientific publications in international journals and is considered a leading authority on catastrophes and mass extinctions, and the biotic and environmental effects of impacts and volcanism. She has co-authored five academic books, is a frequent lecturer, and regularly receives invitations from academic institutions around the world. In recent years, her work has received increased recognition and continues to make waves in the mainstream media, including TV documentaries and news features, radio and podcast interviews, and print and web media, most notably in a widely circulated profile in The Atlantic.

YOU FEEL IT JUST BELOW THE RIBS de Jeffrey Cranor & Janina Matthewson

A haunting, provocative novel, YOU FEEL IT JUST BELOW THE RIBS is a fictional autobiography in an alternate 20th century that chronicles one woman’s unusual life, including the price she pays to survive and the cost her choices hold for the society she is trying to save.

YOU FEEL IT JUST BELOW THE RIBS
by Jeffrey Cranor & Janina Matthewson
HarperCollins, November 2021

Born at the end of the old world, Miriam grows up during The Great Reckoning, a sprawling, decades-long war that nearly decimates humanity and strips her of friends and family. Devastated by grief and loneliness, she emotionally exiles herself, avoiding relationships or allegiances, and throws herself into her work—disengagement that serves her when the war finally ends and The New Society arises.
To ensure a lasting peace, The New Society forbids anything that may cause tribal loyalties, including traditional families. Suddenly, everyone must live as Miriam has chosen to—disconnected and unattached. A researcher at heart, Miriam becomes involved in implementing this detachment process. She does not know it is the beginning of a darkly sinister program that will transform this new world and the lives of everyone in it. Eventually, the harmful effects of her research become too much for Miriam, and she devises a secret plan to destroy the system from within, and endangering her own life. But is her “confession” honest—or is it a fabrication riddled with lies meant to conceal the truth?
A jarring and uncanny tale of loss, trauma, and the power of human connection and deception, YOU FEEL IT JUST BELOW THE RIBS is a portrait of a disturbing alternate world eerily within reach, and an examination of the difficult choices we must make to survive in it.

Jeffrey Cranor is a novelist and playwright. He cowrites the Welcome to Night Vale and Within the Wires podcasts. He also creates theater and dance pieces with his wife, the choreographer Jillian Sweeney.
Janina Matthewson is the author of the novel Of Things Gone Astray and the novella The Understanding of Women. She co-writes Within the Wires, and has also written for Murmurs, The Cipher, and Passenger List.