#macmillan
WE ARE THE SCRIBES
by Randi Pink
Feiwel & Friends | Oct 18 | 9781250820310
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Ruth Fitz is surrounded by activism. Her mother is a senator who frequently appears on CNN as a powerful Black voice fighting for legislative social change within the Black community. Her father, a professor of African American history, is a walking encyclopedia, spouting off random dates and events. And her beloved older sister, Virginia, is a natural activist, steadily gaining notoriety within the community and on social media. Ruth, on the other hand, would rather sit quietly reading or writing in her journal.
When her family is rocked by tragedy, Ruth stops writing. As life goes on, Ruth’s mother is presented with a political opportunity she can’t refuse. Just as Senator Fitz is more absent, Ruth begins receiving parchment letters with a seal reading WE ARE THE SCRIBES, sent by Harriet Jacobs, the author of the autobiography and 1861 American classic, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Is Ruth dreaming? How has she been chosen as a “scribe” when she can barely put a sentence together? In a narrative that blends present with past, Randi Pink explores two extraordinary characters who channel their hopelessness and find their voices to make history.
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AFTERLOVE
by Tanya Byrne
Henry Holt | Sep 27 | 9781250865618
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summary CW: death
When Ashana Persaud meets Poppy Morgan on a school trip, she’s sure it’s too good to be true. Ash has never had much luck with girls, but Poppy proves different. Coffee dates turn to museum trips until, soon, the two girls can see a future together—one that’s seemingly snatched from them when a hit-and-run takes Ash’s life on New Year’s Eve.
As the last person to die before midnight, Ash is bestowed the title of reaper, tasked with finding lost souls and helping them cross over. Only those close to death can perceive a reaper, so when Ash runs into Poppy one lonely night—and Poppy recognizes her—they can’t be sure if it’s the second chance they’ve so desperately wished for, or a tragedy lying in wait.
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OPENING MY EYES UNDERWATER
by Ashley Woodfolk
Feiwel & Friends | Sep 27 | 9781250240378
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Inspired by the life and quotations of former first lady Michelle Obama, Opening My Eyes Underwater is a collection of essays penned by bestselling author Ashley Woodfolk.
Essays of bullying, heartbreak, racism, and confidence, Ashley taps into her own past and shares those stories that made her who she is today as she seamlessly weaves in parallel experiences that both she and Mrs. Obama have faced in their separate childhoods as well as their adult lives.
Open, searing, and honest, these are stories readers will feel seen with. Readers who are growing and learning as they move forward through life’s triumphs and pitfalls will undoubtedly gravitate to and find comfort within its pages.
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IN THE CITY OF TIME
by Gwendolyn Clare
Feiwel & Friends | Nov 29 | 9781250230744
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In 1891, Willa Marconi’s life falls apart when her mentor at the University of Bologna unexpectedly dies. She loses her laboratory access and her stipend, but she refuses to let anyone take her research away. While testing her prototype radio equipment, she detects a mysterious signal and pursues its origin.
In 2034, a cataclysmic event has rendered the Earth uninhabitable, and humankind survives by living inside of artificial worlds. Riley would do anything for Jaideep, who lost his parents in the collapse of the Bay Area pocket universe—and anything includes building a time machine so they can travel back to the 19th century, prevent the destabilization of the planet, and rewrite history.
But the experiment goes wrong, accidentally pulling Willa forward in time and stranding the three of them in a strange, seemingly abandoned city. Now they’ve got a glitchy time machine, a scary android time cop hot on their trail, and some tangled temporal mechanics to unravel. Can they save the Earth when the Continuity Agency is dead-set on preserving the current timeline?
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IMPROVE
HOW I DISCOVERED IMPROV AND CONQUERED SOCIAL ANXIETY
by Alex Graudins
First Second | Sep 6 | 9781250208231
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A graphic memoir for teens about the author’s efforts to overcome her social anxiety by learning improv comedy.
Alex has crippling social anxiety. All day long, she is trapped in a web of negative thoughts and paralyzing fear. To pull herself free of this endless cycle, Alex does something truly terrifying: she signs up for an improv comedy class. By forcing herself to play silly games and act out ridiculous scenes, Alex confronts the unbearable weight of embarrassment, makes new friends, rediscovers parts of herself that she’d hidden away, and ultimately faces her greatest fear by performing onstage for all to see.
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DON’T LOOK BACK
A MEMOIR OF WAR, SURVIVAL, AND MY JOURNEY FROM SUDAN TO AMERICA
by Achut Deng & Keely Hutton
FSG | Oct 11 | 9780374389727
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After a deadly attack in South Sudan left six-year-old Achut Deng without a family, she lived in refugee camps for ten years, until a refugee relocation program gave her the opportunity to move to the United States. When asked why she should be given a chance to leave the camp, Achut simply told the interviewer: I want life.
But the chance at starting a new life in a new country came with a different set of challenges. Some of them equally deadly. Taught by the strong women in her life not to look back, Achut kept moving forward, overcoming one obstacle after another, facing each day with hope and faith in her future. Yet, just as Achut began to think of the US as her home, a tie to her old life resurfaced, and for the first time, she had no choice but to remember her past.
In this powerful, and propulsive memoir, Achut Deng and Keely Hutton tell a harrowing and inspiring story showing both the ugliness and the beauty of humanity, and the power of not giving up.
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PRINCESS OF SOULS
by Alexandra Christo
Feiwel & Friends | Oct 11 | 9781250841742
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For sixteen years, Selestra Somniatis has been trapped in a castle on the Floating Mountain, preparing to take her mother’s place as King Seryth’s right hand. Tied by blood to steal souls for the immortal King of the Six Isles, the Somniatis Witch foretells the deaths of participants in the Festival of Predictions. To outrun your fate is to save your soul and steal the King’s immortality. But if you die, your soul is forfeit. And though thousands have tried, nobody has ever beaten death.
As a soldier in King Seryth’s army, Nox Laederic is an unlikely candidate for the Festival, but he has no plans to die at the hands of the King or his witches. His plan is more akin to violent revenge: steal the King’s immortality and kill the entirety of his court, starting with Selestra herself.
But when Selestra touches Nox in her very first prediction, she sees her own death alongside his–their fates are unmistakably intertwined, and Selestra is no longer safe in the only home she’s ever known. Nox and Selestra will have to enter a turbulent alliance in order to survive long enough to free the Six Isles from King Seryth’s clutches and escape the new fate that hunts them.
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FORESTFALL
World at the Lake’s Edge #2
by Lyndall Clipstone
Henry Holt | Sep 27 | 9781250753410
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Some oaths can never be broken…
The curse that haunted Lakesedge Estate has been broken, but at great cost. Violeta Graceling has sacrificed herself to end the Corruption. To escape death, Leta makes a desperate bargain with the Lord Under, one that sees her living at his side in the land of the dead.
But this world of souls and mist hides many secrets. And when Leta realizes she is still connected to Rowan by a tethering spell, she will risk everything— even her soul— to try and reach him.
Torn between power and love, life and death, Leta struggles to keep hold of her humanity as she falls further and further under the spell of the world Below… and the Lord Under.
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The Hazel Wood & The Night Country
By Melissa Albert
The Hazel Wood and its sequel, The Night Country, are stories I almost wish I could experience again for the first time. An exploration of the fairytale underworld, the tales follow Alice, a beleaguered, haunted teenager, as she lives a piece-meal life, constantly moving cross-country with her mom. The duo flees makeshift homes regularly, with bad luck always nipping at their heels.
Though Alice and her mom live modestly, Alice’s grandmother is world-renowned, the author of a sublimely notorious and equally hard-to-find compendium of fairy tales. After receiving word that the estranged grandmother has died, mother and daughter finally settle in NYC, sighing with relief that their bad luck is behind them. Finally, Alice has a chance at a normal life.
But then, Alice’s mom goes missing and all clues point to the grandmother’s mansion, and beyond - to the morbid world of her concocted fairytales, tales that are starting to materialize on the streets of NY.
The Hazel Wood is a gritty Brothers’ Grimm bumming a cigarette, a jaded teenager stuck on the dark side of a NYC daydream, a haunted subway ride. It’s the stuff of nightmares but more gruesome and modern than Grimm. Imbued with young adult emo, it is also surprisingly poetic - much like our teenage years.
The Night Country follows in its footsteps, imagining a world that would make Mary Shelly shiver. Albert’s world is a fanatical escape for these dark times if you want to get away and indulge simultaneously. And for those hungry for more of Albert’s macabre marvels, the actual book of grandmother’s fairytales is slated to be released this winter. A book within a book. How apropos for a tale like this… Just take care you can separate story from reality. Fairytales are, after all, only make believe… aren’t they?
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Backcover.
C. Collodi,The Adventures of Pinocchio,illustratedbyNaiad Einsel ( New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963).
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¡Qué bonita bandera! AKA what heritage(s) do you claim?
My dad was born in Argentina before immigrating to California as a teen, and I’m very proud of my Argentine heritage.
When was the first time you saw yourself represented?
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros was the only book featuring Latinx characters that I read in English class. Although the life experiences of those characters were very different from my own, just reading about people with Spanish names like mine was exciting and gratifying in a way my 12-year-old self didn’t quite understand. Also, as silly as it might sound, Cameron Diaz first became famous when I was in high school and I’d never seen a white Latina like me on the screen before; it made those conversations about “not looking like a Pérez” easier to take and allowed me to educate those willing to listen.
How do you connect to your heritage through your books (if at all)?
It’s taken me a while to work up the courage to write a Latinx MC mostly because I’ve been worried that my experience isn’t representative and therefore invalid somehow. Then I realized, ¡Qué idiota soy! My experience is my own and I can only tell my own stories, and I don’t need anyone else’s permission. The result is my current middle-grade WIP set in New York, where I grew up, and it’s the book of my heart. My debut YA is a high fantasy but one of the leads is of mixed heritage within his world. Subconsciously I have always included characters who have to negotiate two different cultures as surrogates for myself, I think.
What do you hope for the future of Latinx books?
¡Más y más! I hope that there are more and more books on shelves featuring Latinx characters who demonstrate the breadth and diversity of Latinx cultures as well as stories where Latinx protagonists have adventures or fly spaceships just like any other white character.
What is the book that inspired you to write for kids/teens?
I don’t think I can pick just one! The three books that inspired me as a young teen were The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce. The heroines of these novels are headstrong and independent, and I wanted to be just like them. They helped shape the way I saw the world as well as what I thought I might be able to achieve, and my greatest hope is that my heroines might inspire other teens in the same way.
What are you writing now?
Sweet Black Waves, the first book in my debut trilogy, will be released by Imprint/Macmillan on June 5th, 2018 and I’m brimming with excitement! Taking inspiration from the medieval tale of Tristan and Eseult, my retelling shines a light on the legend’s true heroine––the princess’s cousin, Branwen––and her ancient healing magic. Branwen is my ode to the heroines whom I Ioved so much as a teen and I can’t wait to share her with readers. I’m currently hard at work on the second book in the series!
Kristina Pérez is a half-Argentine/half-Norwegian native New Yorker. She has spent the past two decades working as a journalist and academic in Europe and Asia, and has a PhD in Medieval Literature from the University of Cambridge. Sweet Black Waves is Kristina’s debut YA novel, out June 5th, 2018 from Imprint/Macmillan. This lush fantasy of warring countries and family secrets is the first in a trilogy inspired by the star-crossed tale of Tristan and Eseult.
Website*Twitter*Instagram*Facebook *Pinterest *Goodreads*Pre-order Sweet Black Waves! *
The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. <3 I cannot wait to get to see the cover for Winter too :D I’m sure it will be all kinds of gorgeous. Wishing it was November already, though.
Today I just posted Cress Tuesday #68. <3
I also just read Fairest a few days ago, and my 5 star review can be read here. <3 I loved it so so much. It’s amazing. And.. I actually really liked Levana. Ack!
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