LAUREN ALLBRIGHT :: EXIT STRATEGY
MG Contemporary
Aladdin/S&S :: Summer 2017
When a twelve-year-old and his mother end their serial relocations, he must make friends for the first time ever. Since he doesn’t have a clue how to do that, he uses the scientific process to help him figure it out.
Lauren Allbright roamed the southern states before landing in Texas and calling it home. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s from Texas A&M University. After graduation, she spent her days teaching middle schoolers and her nights reading books. Now when she is not writing (or momming), she enjoys training for half-marathons and triathlons as well as camping with her family. She lives in Dallas with her patient husband, three high-energy children, six (give or take) fish, one overly excitable cocker spaniel, and (the slowest ever) guinea pig named Blaster.
DANIELLE MAGES AMATO :: THE HIDDEN MEMORY OF OBJECTS
YA Mystery
HarperCollins/Balzer+Bray :: Winter 2017
Megan Brown has four weeks to clear her dead brother’s name before the police brand him an addict and a criminal. When she discovers she can see memories attached to the objects he left behind, she discovers a brother she never knew: one who organized underground parties, stole from his classmates’ parents, and had a troubling obsession with John Wilkes Booth. Desperate to uncover the truth, she finds herself hunting not just her brother but the legacy of a famous assassin.
Danielle is a professional theatre geek who writes YA novels about the places where the past and the present collide. When she’s not writing fiction, you’ll find her reading a play, researching obscure facts about theatre history, or working with a playwright on a new piece. She’s a member of SCBWI.
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NATALIE C. ANDERSON :: QUEEN OF SAINTS AND THIEVES
YA Contemporary
GP Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers :: Spring 2017
After Tina’s mother is murdered she takes care of herself the only way an orphaned refugee can in unforgiving Sangui City – by becoming a thief. And as a thief she can finally get what she wants: revenge.
Natalie C. Anderson is a writer and international development professional living in Boston, Massachusetts, but you can also often find her in Kenya and the mountains of North Carolina. She has spent the last decade working with NGOs and the UN on refugee relief and development, mainly in Africa. She was selected as the 2014-2015 Associates of the Boston Public Library Children’s Writer in Residence, where she wrote The Breaking Wheel. She collects hobbies, ceramic birds, cats, and the odd religious icon.
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KATHERINE ARDEN :: THE BEAR AND THE NIGHTINGALE
YA Historical Fantasy
Del Rey :: January 10, 2017
In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift – a precious jewel on a delicate chain, intended for his young daughter. Uncertain of its meaning, Pytor hides the gift away and Vasya grows up a wild, willful girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that, armed only with the necklace, she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay.
Born in Austin, Texas, Katherine Arden spent her junior year of high school in Rennes, France. Following her acceptance to Middlebury College, she deferred enrollment for a year in order to live and study in Moscow. At Middlebury, she specialized in French and Russian literature. Having received her BA, Katherine moved to Maui, Hawaii, where she worked every kind of odd job imaginable, from grant writing, to making crepes, to working as a personal tour guide, to guiding horse tours. After a year on the island, she got a contract as a teaching assistant in a high school in Briançon, France. She spent nine months teaching, returned to Maui, stayed for nearly a year, then left again, wandering. Currently she lives in Vermont, but really, you never know.
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PATRICIA BAILEY :: THE TRAGICALLY TRUE ADVENTURES OF KIT DONOVAN
MG Historical
Albert Whitman & Company :: Spring 2017
Patricia Bailey grew up in a small town in Oregon. She now lives in a slightly larger town in Oregon with her husband and three cats. She spends her time exploring forgotten places, hiking mountain trails, and scribbling story ideas on sticky notes. This is her first novel.
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ALEXANDRA BALLARD :: WHAT I LOST
YA Contemporary
FSG :: Winter 2017
Starving is hard, but if there is one thing 16-year-old Elizabeth learned from her mother, it’s this: You have to suffer to be beautiful. Even after she’s committed to a residential treatment center, all Elizabeth wants is to get released, win back her ex, and lose the weight she’s been forced to gain. But then a brass ring on a red satin ribbon arrives, wrapped in white paper with no note or return address. With each package the mystery mailer sends, Elizabeth’s desire for a life free from anorexia grows. But her disease won’t go gently, forcing Elizabeth to decide once and for all: fight or fade away?
Alexandra Ballard has worked as a writer and editor at magazines covering fitness walking, golf, and container ships, started a cake business, and as a middle school language arts teacher in New York City and Berkeley, CA. She currently lives in Berkeley with her husband and two daughters.
REBECCA BARROW :: YOU DON’T KNOW ME BUT I KNOW YOU
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/HarperTeen :: Summer 2017
Audrey receives an unexpected letter from her birth mother as she and her boyfriend struggle to decide what to do about an accidental pregnancy, while facing a growing distance with her best friend, who’s keeping secrets of her own.
Rebecca Barrow writes stories about girls and all the wonders they can be. A lipstick obsessive with the ability to quote the entirety of Mean Girls, she lives in England, where it rains a considerable amount more than in the fictional worlds of her characters. She collects tattoos, cats, and more books than she could ever possibly read.
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KATIE BAYERL :: A PSALM FOR LOST GIRLS
YA Contemporary Mystery
Penguin/Putnam Books for Young Readers :: Spring 2017
An abduction in a small New England city forever alters the fates of three girls—one who’s been missing, one who is grieving, and one who is dead and rumored to be a saint.
When Katie Bayerl isn’t penning stories, she coaches teens (and nonprofits) to tell theirs. She is a proud graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts Writing for Children and Young Adults program, where she is the founding coordinator of the VCFA Young Writers Network. She also teaches fiction in the teen program at Grub Street in her home city of Boston. Katie has an incurable obsession with saints, old-timey ballads, and murder. It’s becoming a problem.
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ERIN BEATY :: THE TRAITOR’S KISS
YA Fantasy
MacMillan/Imprint :: May 9, 2017
Jane Eyre meets Mulan: when a caravan of wealthy brides falls prey to a treasonous plot, their only hope of escape lies with their reluctant ceremonial escort and the girl no one would ever marry.
Erin Beaty was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, which means she can’t drive a tractor, but she won’t eat veggies that come from a can. She graduated from the US Naval Academy with a degree in rocket science and somehow always ended up writing her study group’s lab reports. After serving in the fleet as a weapons officer and a leadership instructor, she resigned to pursue her side hobby of populating the Church of Rome. It still amazes her when other people want to hear the stories that come out of her head. She and her husband have five children, two cats, and a vegetable garden, and live wherever the navy tells them to go.
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LINDSEY BECKER :: THE STAR THIEF
MG Fantasy
Little Brown Books for Young Readers :: Spring 2017
In 1891, twelve year old Honorine is swept away from her life as a maid, and into the heart of a battle between Nautilus Olyphant, a genius inventor with a steamship full of nefarious contraptions, and The Mapmaker, a mysterious figure who travels with a band of mythical constellations. Each needs Honorine’s help to prevail, and she will need to choose a side, but it’s going to be a nearly impossible decision.
Lindsey Becker lives in rural south eastern Wisconsin with her husband, son, a few cats and a dog. She writes middle grade stories about daring little girls living in worlds full of ghost and mysteries and adventures and myths.
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SONIA BELASCO :: SPEAK OF ME AS I AM
YA Contemporary
Penguin/Philomel Books :: Spring 2017
This is your basic story of love, death and Shakespeare, about a boy and a girl who lose people close to them and find each other. But Melanie and Damon’s road to romance won’t be easy – not after the school production of Othello that brought them together triggers painful memories they both wish they could leave behind.
Sonia Belasco has spent much of her professional life working with teenagers as a mentor, tutor and therapist, and her writing is often inspired by the amazing stories they tell her. She will watch almost any TV show about high school and has seen every contemporary movie that involves dance battles or superheroes. She is a native of Washington, D.C. and currently lives in Philadelphia, PA, where she is trying to acquire a taste for cheesesteak.
RHODA BELLEZA ::EMPRESS OF A THOUSAND SKIES
YA Sci-Fi
Penguin/Razorbill :: Spring 2017
Perfect for fans of RED RISING and Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, this epic sci-fi fantasy adventure follows two fugitives – a young princess-in-exile and her would-be assassin – across the far reaches of the galaxy as they fight to reclaim her dynasty and save the universe from a deadly threat.
Rhoda Belleza was raised in Los Angeles, where she grew up writing XFiles fanfiction and stuffing her face with avocados. When she’s not writing, Rhoda obsesses over nail art tutorials, watches kung fu movies, and sews together crooked things that pass for clothes. She’s an editor at Paper Lantern Lit and of Cornered: 14 Stories of Bullying and Defiance, and her work has appeared on the rumpus.net. She lives in a sunny Brooklyn apartment with far too many bikes and far too many shoes. Empress of a Thousand Skies is her debut novel.
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N. R. BERGESON :: THE MAGNIFICENT GLASS GLOBE
MG Adventure
Tantrum Books :: Fall 2017
After stumbling across a mysterious globe in a museum warehouse, eleven-year-old Mary finds herself suddenly lost in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. It’s up to Mary, her little brother, and her best friend to use what knowledge they have to get home. The rainforest is a magical place, but it’s dangerous too. Not only are they fighting to survive, but they soon learn they’re not the only ones at risk.
N. R. (Nils) Bergeson spent his childhood at the foot of the beautiful mountains of northern Utah. From an early age, he was fascinated with the wider world, prompting him to seek experiences abroad. Since 2002, he has only spent four years living in the United States. He was a missionary in Siberia, spent time in Romania as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, and has worked for several years in Colombia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, and soon Indonesia as a U.S. diplomat/international development worker. He’s traveled to more than 60 countries with his wife, Emily, and their three young children. Nils hopes his writing will instill a desire in his readers to take advantage of modern opportunities to see the world, learn new languages, and expand their cultural experiences.
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SARA BIREN :: THE LAST THING YOU SAID
YA Contemporary
ABRAMS/Amulet Books :: Spring 2017
Everything changed for Ben Porter and Lucy Meadows after Ben’s sister – Lucy’s best friend – died. Now, as summer returns and the first anniversary of Trixie’s death approaches, Ben and Lucy can no longer avoid their grief or their feelings for each other.
Sara Biren lives outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband and their two children. She works in marketing, leads her daughter’s Girl Scout troop, and loves cheese. Her Top 5 concerts (in no particular order) are Paul McCartney, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, the Jayhawks, and Billy Joel, but she has yet to see Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem live.
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ELLY BLAKE :: FROSTBLOOD
YA Fantasy
Little Brown Books for Young Readers :: January 2017
In a world where flame and ice are mortal enemies, seventeen-year old Ruby has always hidden her power over fire. When a Frostblood warrior offers her a chance for revenge against the Frost King responsible for her mother’s death, she must learn to control her powers and save the kingdom from an ancient curse.
Elly Blake loves fairy tales, old houses, and owls. After earning a BA in English literature, she held a series of seemingly random jobs, including project manager, customs clerk, graphic designer, reporter for a local business magazine, and library assistant. She lives in Southwestern Ontario with her husband, kids, and a Siberian Husky mix who definitely shows Frostblood tendencies.
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CHELSEA BOBULSKI :: THE WOOD
YA Contemporary Fantasy
Macmillan, Feiwel and Friends :: Spring 2017
Winter is the guardian of the woods behind her house, rescuing travelers from madness and death. When a mysterious boy shows up, knowing more than he should, it’s up to the two of them to learn the truth about her father’s disappearance and to stop a killer from striking again
Chelsea Bobulski was born in Columbus, Ohio, and raised on Disney movies, classic musicals, and Buckeye pride. She’s always had a penchant for the fantastical, the stories that teach us there is more to this world than meets the eye. She has a soft spot for characters with broken pasts, strange talents, and a dash of destiny in their bones. After graduating from The Ohio State University with a degree in history, she promptly married her high school sweetheart and settled down in Northwest Ohio with her notebooks and daydreams and copious amounts of chocolate. THE WOOD is her debut novel.
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FAITH M. BOUGHAN :: CINDERELLA, NECROMANCER
YA Fantasy
Month9Books :: Fall 2017
Ellison’s discovery of an ancient necromancy tome hidden in the secret passages of her father’s mansion gives her the strength and power to fight back against her abusive, controlling stepfamily. But as her stepmother’s cruelty grows, Ellison’s control over the spirits weakens and soon Ellison must face the question: Is her stepmother is the true monster…or is she?
F.M. Boughan is a bibliophile, a writer, and an unabashed parrot enthusiast. She can often be found writing in local coffee shops, namely because it’s hard to concentrate with a cat lying on the keyboard and a small, colorful parrot screaming into her ear. She’s highly active on social media and, for some bizarre reason, actually loves public speaking. Her work is somewhat dark, somewhat violent, somewhat hopeful, and always contains a hint of magic.
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AMY BRASHEAR :: NO SAINTS IN KANSAS
YA Historical
Soho Teen :: 2017
A retelling of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood from the point of view of Carly, best friend to Nancy Clutter.
Amy Brashear was born in Arkansas and grew up in Southwest Kansas. She is a graduate of the University of Arkansas where she majored in English and played the clarinet in the Razorback Marching Band. Condemned is her debut novel.
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KIERSI BURKHART :: HONOR CODE
YA Contemporary
Lerner Books/Carolrhoda Lab :: Fall 2017
Scholarship student Sam Barker has been accepted at Edwards Academy, where the key to fitting in—and to getting into Harvard, and scoring a date with the cute, popular guy—is to play the game. But when she learns what it really costs to become an Edwardian, will Sam be willing to keep a terrible secret to stay in the exclusive private school club?
Kiersi grew up riding horses in Colorado, then got a degree in Political Science in Oregon. Now she works as an author and freelance writer from locations all across the country with her beloved mutt, Baby. Who knows where she’ll land next?
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JAKE BURT :: GREETINGS FROM WITNESS PROTECTION!
MG Contemporary
MacMillan/Feiwel and Friends :: Spring 2017
Nicki Demere,a veteran of five foster families (and counting), longs to find a place to belong. When a clan called the Trevors offers to take her in, it seems like she’s gotten exactly what she wanted—until she learns that the family is being pursued by a killer and is about to enter the witness-protection program.
Jake Burt lives in Connecticut with his wife, daughter, and three banjos, which he plays enthusiastically, if not well. When he’s not doing his best John Hartford impression, he writes, plays ultimate frisbee, and teaches fifth grade. From Ohio originally (O-H…), Jake has also lived in North Carolina, Scotland, and China.
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SARAH CANNON :: ODDITY
MG Sci-Fi
Macmillan/Feiwel & Friends :: Fall 2017
ODDITY follows 11-year-old Ada Roundtree as she searches for her missing twin sister Pearl in Oddity, N.M., where the dumpsters can be carnivorous, aliens big and small walk the streets, and the local Protection Committee defends citizens from the Blurmonster roaming the town outskirts, though the organization may not be as benevolent as believed.
Sarah Cannon holds a Bachelor’s degree in Education, specializing in children with emotional disturbance. She has a husband, three kids and a misguided dog. She’s a nerdy knitting gardener who drinks a lot of coffee, and eats a lot of raspberries. She is probably human.
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EMMA CHASTAIN :: CONFESSIONS OF A HIGH SCHOOL DISASTER: CHLOE SNOW’S DIARY
YA Contemporary
Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse :: March 7, 2017
In the tradition of Bridget Jones’s Diary, a lovably flawed high school student chronicles her life as she navigates the highs and lows of family, friendship, school, and love.
Emma Chastain is a graduate of Barnard College and the MFA program at Boston University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two sons.
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REBECCA CHRISTIANSEN :: MAYBE IN PARIS
YA Contemporary
Sky Pony/Sky Horse :: Spring 2017
Eighteen-year-old Keira has always dreamt of travelling to France. After her brother suffers a break in his mental health, she whisks him along with her to Paris, thinking the trip of a lifetime will solve all their problems. She is (mostly) wrong.
Rebecca Christiansen is 24 years old and lives in Campbell River, BC, Canada. She dropped out of university after skipping too many poetry classes to write YA novels in the library — she figured she’d concentrate on that instead and save the tuition. She loves diet soda, pyjamas, and her shih tzu, Jimmy.
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KRISTEN CICCARELLI :: ASKARI
YA High Fantasy
HarperCollins/HarperTeen :: Fall 2017
A sweeping epic focused on strong characters, dangerous escapades, and poisonous politics…
Asha, an accomplished dragon-slayer, faces a political marriage while civil war spreads through her homeland. To win her freedom, Asha makes a pact with her father, the king, to bring him the head of the deadliest dragon in her kingdom. She just doesn’t realize her father is hiding a life-changing secret. Perfect for fans of Victoria Aveyard, Kristin Cashore, and Sarah J. Maas.
Kristen hails from Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula where she grew up on her grandfather’s grape farm. She’s made her living as a baker, a bookseller, and a potter, but now writes books about bloodthirsty dragons, girls wielding really cool weapons, and the transformative power of stories.
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GWEN COLE :: COLD SUMMER
YA Sci-Fi
Sky Pony/Sky Horse :: Spring 2017
A teen suffering from PTSD—due to repeatedly being pulled back in time to the front lines of WWII—must find a way to stop the pulls from happening with the help of the childhood friend he secretly loves before he dies on the battlefield
Gwen Cole grew up in upstate New York, moved to Virginia where she did not graduate college, and worked various jobs including pharmacy technician, meat clerk, ranch hand, and a receiving specialist at Target. She enjoys large jigsaw puzzles, playing Xbox, and watching movies. Gwen now lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, daughter, and very large dog, where she longs to live in the country again.
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DAVE CONNIS :: THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM
YA Contemporary
Sky Pony/Sky Horse :: Fall 2017
A porn addict tries to kick his addiction for good with the help of his friends, afraid that if he fails, he’ll lose a chance with Mia, the trust of his sister, and the hope of a non-Sisyphus kind of life. A life not dictated by the itch of porn.
Dave Connis is an author based out of Chattanooga, TN. He feeds his family by working at a local library and at his church as Assistant Youth Director. He loves Jesus, cusses a lot, makes music, and is probably struggling with social media comparison right now.
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NADINE JOLIE COURTNEY :: ROMANCING THE THRONE
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen :: Fall 2017
ROMANCING THE THRONE is about two sisters at English boarding school in a love triangle with the future King. (Think: William & Kate, if Pippa dated him first.) It’s The Other Boleyn Girl meets Gossip Girl.
Nadine Jolie Courtney is the author of Beauty Confidential and Confessions of a Beauty Addict. A graduate of Barnard College, her writing has appeared in Town & Country, Cosmo, VanityFair.com, and Vogue.com. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her husband Erik and her daughter Aurelia. She is still waiting for her invitation to Buckingham Palace.
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LAURA CREEDLE :: THE LOVE LETTERS OF ABELARD AND LILY
YA Contemporary
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt :: Fall 2017
The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily tells what happens when Lily goes off her ADHD meds and spontaneously kisses Abelard, the brilliant, beautiful boy with Asperger’s.
Laura Creedle is an ADHD and dyslexic guitarist and writer. After thumb surgery kept her away from the guitar, she enrolled in a graduate level reading specialist program. She failed out of the program for not being able to read well enough. Twice. That experience inspired her to write The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.
Laura lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and son. When not writing, she volunteers with a kindergarten pre-literacy program at a local school. She is attempting to learn the pedal steel guitar.
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JULIE DAO :: FOREST OF A THOUSAND LANTERNS
YA Fantasy
Philomel Books/Penguin Random House :: Fall 2017
FOTL is a YA epic fantasy reimagining of Snow White’s evil queen in Asia. Eighteen-year-old Xifeng is destined to become Empress of Feng Lu. But in order to achieve greatness, she must decide whether to destroy the darkness within… or embrace it.
Julie C. Dao fell in love with storytelling at age eight. Though she studied medicine in college at her parents’ insistence, her phobia of blood and needles sent her running right back to the books. Writing is arguably Julie’s most useful skill, as her other talents include: being the slowest eater on Earth, winning over other people’s cranky pets in true Disney princess fashion, and reciting Lord of the Rings movie quotes on command. When she’s not making up stories, she’s dreaming about her next travel destination. She lives in New England.
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SOMAIYA DAUD :: MIRAGE
YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Macmillan/Flatiron Books :: 2017
A poor girl from an isolated moon must become the body double to the cruel imperial princess, and learns that life in the royal palace is far more dangerous and complicated than she imagined.
Somaiya Daud is studying to get her PhD in English Literature. She has alternately been a program assistant, bookseller, and receptionist. Currently, she lives in the Pacific Northwest with a devilish cat, yelling about Victorian rocks. She is also a contributor to the Young Adult Highway blog (yahighway.com).
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DANIELLE DAVIS :: ZINNIA AND THE BEES
MG Contemporary
Capstone :: Fall 2017
Zinnia and the Bees is a middle grade novel told from the alternating perspectives of Zinnia—a humorous young loner, knitter, and yarn bomber—and an unintentionally comical hive of honeybees.
Danielle Davis grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong and now lives in Los Angeles where she reads, writes, and roller skates. She’s had the privilege of teaching English to middle school and community college students and she currently volunteers with literacy organizations in L.A. She also blogs about books for kids at This Picture Book Life.
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JC DAVIS :: CHEESUS WAS HERE
YA Contemporary
Sky Horse/Sky Pony :: Spring 2017
Sixteen-year-old Delaney Delgado hasn’t believed in miracles since her kid sister died. When crazy religious signs begin turning up, bringing a barrage of news vans and people searching for God in the discount aisle of the grocery store, Del is determined prove the so-called miracles are fake.
JC Davis spent her childhood inventing secret worlds and finding forgotten places. Busy reading her way through the local library, she never imagined writing books of her own until one day, all grown up, she fell in love with a children’s book and decided to rediscover a few of those secret worlds she’d invented. Her debut novel, CHEESUS WAS HERE, takes place in a tiny Texas town, which really is a strange world all its own. A programmer by day, Ms. Davis lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, two kids and a pair of hedgehogs with nerdy names. Ms. Davis is an amateur photographer, runs the 3rd largest Harry Potter meet-up group in the U.S. and is an unrepentant book addict.
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REBECCA DENTON :: THIS BEATS PERFECT
YA Romance
Little, Brown/Atom Books :: February 2, 2017
The Keep are the latest reality TV sensation – and now biggest boy band on Planet Pop. Amelie absolutely hates them. But a brief backstage encounter with the Keep’s lead singer, Maxx, makes her question her assumptions. Maxx, it turns out, is tired of celebrity life and manufactured pop songs. He’s recording his first solo EP, but struggling with the sound. Meanwhile, Amelie is a natural songwriter with the perfect voice, but no confidence to perform on stage. They have a lot to offer each other, but are their worlds just too far apart? This Beats Perfect is about finding your voice in a world dominated by social media, adult opinions and manufactured art.
Rebecca is 39 years old, lives in Hackney, London with a one year old, a trumpet, 2 guitars, a keyboard, and several vintage computer game consoles. She spent her career traveling the world making Music TV for MTV and Channel 4, and wrangling young adult audiences for Cartoon Network, BBC and ITV. She’s worked with Iggy Pop, MIA, Kaiser Chiefs, Sonic Youth, Jack White, Dirty Pretty Things, and Laura Marling to name just a few. She has now turned that dab hand to writing racy tales of rock n roll for Young Adults.
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LAURIE DEVORE :: HOW TO BREAK A BOY
YA Contemporary
Macmillan/Imprint :: January 31, 2017
Olivia Clayton and her best friend have always run their small town of Buckley, South Carolina. But when the death of Olivia’s older brother sends her into a spiral and she loses it all, she’s left to navigate a trail of revenge and broken promises, a fake relationship with an arrogant golden boy, and the dangerous best friend she betrayed.
Laurie Devore was born and raised in small town South Carolina and graduated from Clemson University. She now lives and works in Chicago, where she misses the charms and contradictions of the south every day. In her spare time, she reluctantly runs marathons, watches too much TV, and works a “y’all” into every conversation.
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KELLY DEVOS :: FAT GIRL ON A PLANE
YA CONTEMPORARY
Harlequin Teen :: August 2017
This body-positive YA novel follows teen fashion student Cookie Vonn across two timelines, before and after a major weight loss that she falsely believed would solve all of her problems. As Cookie pursues a career as a high fashion designer, she learns what it means to be and feel beautiful and how finding love requires learning to love herself.
Kelly deVos is a Young Adult writer living in Gilbert, Arizona, represented by Kathleen Rushall of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Kelly has a degree in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and currently serves as an intern to Entangled Senior Editor, Kate Brauning. She is a contributor to the YA Buccaneers.
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ANDREW DEYOUNG :: THE EXO PROJECT
YA Sci-Fi
Boyds Mills Press :: April 4, 2017
On a future Earth ravaged by solar radiation, Matthew joins the Exo Project to find a habitable planet for the resettlement of the human race. 100 light years away, Kiva is chosen to lead her people after she sees a vision of Strangers from the stars. But when Matthew and Kiva meet, they discover a connection they never expected, and now they must choose: will they be loyal to their people or to each other?
Andrew DeYoung is a writer, editor, and dad living in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Among the functionally useless things he knows: the history of Victorian detective fiction, the complete X-Files mythology, and how to mix a great gin martini. (Maybe that last one isn’t so useless.) THE EXO PROJECT is his first novel.
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CALE DIETRICH :: THE LOVE INTEREST
YA Sci-Fi
Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends :: Spring 2017
Love Interest – in which a boy, trained all his life to be the love interest of a special girl to be decided, finally gets sent on assignment only to realize he’s in love with his competition.
Cale Dietrich is a bookseller and YA writer from Brisbane, Australia.
REBECCA DONNELLY :: HOW TO STAGE A CATASTROPHE
MG Contemporary
Capstone Young Readers :: April 2017
The Juicebox Theater is Sid’s favorite place in the whole world. He can’t let it close. When regular fundraisers don’t work, his entrepreneurial best friend Folly steps in. With help from a couple of other theater kids, they come up with a plan that isn’t exactly extortion but might just be a total catastrophe.
Rebecca Donnelly has lived in the UK, California, Florida, and New Mexico, and she currently writes and runs a small rural library in upstate New York.
KEIRA DRAKE :: THE CONTINENT
YA Fantasy
HarlequinTEEN :: January 3, 2017
For her sixteenth birthday, Vaela Sun receives the most coveted gift in the Spire—a trip to the Continent. Most tour to see the spectacle and violence of battle—a thing long vanished in the Spire. For Vaela—a talented apprentice cartographer—it’s an opportunity to improve upon the maps she’s drawn of this vast, frozen land. But when tragedy strikes, she is stranded in the icy wilderness. Starving, alone, and lost in the middle of a war zone, Vaela must try to find a way home–but first, she must survive.
Keira Drake is a full-time author and enjoys writing poetry and music in addition to novels. She is an avid gamer with a soft spot for titles that feature epic and astounding storytelling (favorite series include Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, and Halo). When not writing or gaming, Keira is likely reading, napping, golfing, drawing, or spending time with her husband and sassy eight-year-old daughter. She lives in Utah and loves it, but is a native Californian and will remind you of that fact at every opportunity.
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MEG EDEN :: POST HIGH SCHOOL REALITY QUEST
YA Magical Realism
California Coldblood / Rare Bird Lit :: Spring 2017
When Buffy first hears a voice called “the text parser,” she thinks it’s her brain’s way of coping with college stress. When the voice begins to tell her how to live her life, Buffy finds herself stuck in the middle of a never-ending game built off her greatest nightmares.
Meg Eden’s work has been published in various magazines, including Rattle, Drunken Boat, Poet Lore, and Gargoyle. She teaches at the University of Maryland. She has four poetry chapbooks, and her novel “Post-High School Reality Quest” is forthcoming from California Coldblood, an imprint of Rare Bird Lit.
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ROSALYN EVES :: BLOOD ROSE REBELLION
YA Historical Fantasy
Random House/Knopf :: March 2017
In an alternate Victorian society governed by magic, sixteen-year-old Anna Arden will do anything to belong. But when exiled to Hungary for spell-breaking, Anna must choose: deny her unique power and achieve the life she’s always wanted—or embrace it, destroy her world’s greatest spell, spark a revolution, and change the face of magic itself.
Rosalyn Eves grew up in the Rocky Mountains, dividing her time between reading books and bossing her siblings into performing her dramatic scripts. As an adult, the telling and reading of stories is still one of her favorite things to do. She has a PhD in English from Penn State, and teaches college writing classes when not writing or parenting. THE BLOOD ROSE REBELLION is the first novel in a trilogy.
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HEATHER FAWCETT :: EVEN THE DARKEST STARS
YA Fantasy
HarperCollins/Balzer+Bray :: Fall 2017
Set in a fictional kingdom reminiscent of Nepal, EVEN THE DARKEST STARS is the story of a teenage girl enlisted by a legendary explorer to help him climb the kingdom’s deadliest mountain – only to discover that his true mission may threaten her whole world.
Heather Fawcett has had many jobs, including Pompeiian archaeologist, aerospace technical writer, and ticket wrangler for a Shakespearean theatre festival. She lives in Vancouver.
JESSIKA FLECK :: THE CASTAWAYS
YA Fantasy
Entangled Teen :: Summer, 2017
Mean Girls meets Lord of the Flies in this YA contemporary fantasy, in which sixteen-year-old Olive is chased by bullies into a carnival corn maze and ends up on an island full of warring, misfit teens, with no idea how to get home. Olive is only sure of one thing: her tribe are the good guys, and she’ll do anything to help them win the war. Because war is always black and white like that.
Jessika Fleck is a writer, unapologetic coffee drinker, and knitter — she sincerely hopes to one day discover a way to do all three at once. Until then, she continues collecting vintage typewriters and hourglasses, dreaming of an Ireland getaway, and convincing her husband they NEED more kittens. She’s never been known to pass up a good cup of coffee or a great pair of boots. Her work verges on fantastical and dark with a touch of realism. She is a regular contributor to the fantastic kidlit blog, The Kidliterati.
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AMANDA FOODY :: DAUGHTER OF THE BURNING CITY
YA Fantasy
HarlequinTEEN :: August, 2017
In a massive carnival of debauchery, illusion-worker Sorina runs the Gomorrah Festival Freak Show with her family of illusions. When someone begins murdering her family, Sorina must determine who is doing it, why, and–most importantly–how they are killing those who don’t exist.
Amanda Foody has always considered imagination to be our best attempt at magic. When she is not writing young adult fantasy about spectacle, extravagance, and prestige, she is figuring out this whole “adult” thing. After graduating from the College of William and Mary, she now lives near Philadelphia, PA with her many siblings and many books.Her first novel, DAUGHTER OF THE BURNING CITY, will be published by HarlequinTEEN in August 2017. Her second, ACE OF SHADES, will follow in Spring 2018.
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LAURIE FOREST :: THE BLACK WITCH
YA Fantasy
HarlequinTEEN :: June 2017
First in a fantasy series set in the magical, diverse realm of Erthia. There a fiercely determined heroine must embrace a power she never knew she had in order to protect everyone she loves from the darkness sweeping across their world.
Laurie Forest lives deep in the backwoods of Vermont where she sits in front of a wood stove drinking strong tea and dreaming up tales full of dryads, dragons and wands. The Black Witch (June 2017, HarlequinTEEN) is her first novel, and Wandfasted (The Black Witch prequel, April 2017, HarlequinTEEN) is her first e-book novella.
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KIM FOSTER :: GAME OF SECRETS
YA Historical Fantasy
Skyhorse/Sky Pony :: Fall 2017
GAME OF SECRETS is a historical fantasy set in an alternate Victorian London where people with special abilities are considered Tainted and are hunted down and killed. A 16 year old girl from the slums is awaiting execution when a mysterious gentleman rescues her and whisks her away to a clandestine countryside spy institute founded by Christopher Marlowe, in training for Her Majesty’s secret service.
Kim Foster is a writer, family doctor, and wannabe Parisienne. She’s a mom to two young boys, and can often be found writing in cafes, mostly because there are no kids there. Well, there are, but they aren’t hers, and nobody expects her to feed or take care of them, which is pure magic. Kim writes novels about spies and thieves, and is obsessed with James Bond, good coffee, the NFL, and traveling the world (20 countries and counting).
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JILLY GAGNON :: #famous
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen :: February 14, 2017
It’s a classic love story: girl meets boy, girl snaps photo, photo blows up the internet overnight, and soon both girl and boy are swept up in a whirlwind that leaves them wondering whether fame, and love, are worth the price.
Jilly Gagnon writes young adult fiction, comedy, and personal essays. In the past her work has appeared in Newsweek, Elle, The Toast, The Hairpin, Vanity Fair, The Onion, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. Her comedy book series, Choose Your Own Misery (co-authored with Mike MacDonald), debuted in 2016. So far three titles are planned. She’s much less funny at cocktail parties than you might think that would make her.
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DIANA GALLAGHER :: LESSONS IN FALLING
YA Contemporary
Beaufort Books/Spencer Hill Press :: February 7, 2017
When 17-year-old Savannah blows out her knee–and a shot a gymnastics scholarship-–she’s done with taking chances. Luckily her best friend, Cassie, is enough of a risk-taker for both of them. But when Cassie’s failed suicide attempt reveals the rift in their relationship, Savannah must figure out how to take chances again, with or without the one person she’s always counted on to lead the way.
Though Diana Gallagher be but little, she is fierce. She’s also a gymnastics coach and judge, former collegiate gymnast, and writing professor. Her work has appeared in The Southampton Review, International Gymnast,The Couch Gymnast, and on a candy cigarette box for SmokeLong Quarterly. She holds an MFA from Stony Brook University.
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CANDACE GANGER :: THE INEVITABLE COLLISION OF BIRDIE & BASH
YA Contemporary
St. Martin’s Press :: Spring/Summer 2017
Two teens from different sides of the tracks fall in love, not knowing of each other’s connection to a horrific tragedy.
STEPHANIE GARBER :: CARAVAL
YA Fantasy
Macmillan/Flatiron :: January 10, 2017
An original world. A legendary competition. A mesmerizing romance. An unbreakable bond between two sisters. Welcome to Caraval—the spell-casting first book in a fantasy series.
Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance, but she nonetheless soon becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic with her sister, with Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend, and with the other players.
Stephanie Garber loves Disneyland because it’s the one place on earth where she feels as if the fantastical stories she loves to write about could actually come to life. When she’s not writing young adult fantasy, she teaches creative writing at a private college in northern California, where she’s known for turning assignments into games and taking students on field trips that involve book signings. She’s also a blogger on Pub(lishing) Crawl.
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WHITNEY GARDNER :: YOU’RE WELCOME, UNIVERSE
YA Contemporary
Knopf :: Spring 2017
Seventeen-year-old Julia is a Deaf street artist who must decide between being painted into obscurity or getting caught after she finds herself locked in a graffiti war with an opponent who takes it a step too far.
Whitney Gardner is an author/illustrator living in Portland, Oregon with her husband, pug, and 10,000 bees. She is woefully/giddily addicted to coffee and office supplies and probably has more pens than any one human could ever need. She’s represented by Brent Taylor at Triada US Literary Agency. She loves telling stories, the color yellow, and you.
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KELLY GARRETT :: THE LAST TO DIE
YA Thriller
Poisoned Pen Press :: Late 2017
Harper is no saint, but she doesn’t deserve to die. But when her burglary ring goes terribly wrong, and her friends start dying, she knows she’s next on the list.
Kelly Garrett is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. She’s obsessed with coffee and the Portland Timbers, and spends her weekends hiking the Pacific Northwest. In addition to being a member of the Swanky 17s, she’s a member of SCBWI, Sisters In Crime, Willamette Writers, and the Mystery Writers of America.
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A.V. GEIGER :: FOLLOW ME BACK
YA Contemporary
Sourcebooks Fire :: Summer 2017
When a disguised pop star and his #1 Twitter fan arrange to meet in real life, fake identities are revealed, and what should have made for the world’s best episode of Catfish turns deadly. Follow Me Back is a romantic thriller for the online generation, told through a combination of police transcripts, Twitter DMs, and a dual POV narrative.
A.V. Geiger is an over-analytical number cruncher by profession, who spends far too much spare time on social media. When she’s not performing statistical regression analyses, she can usually be found fangirling, following people back, and photoshopping the heads of band members onto the bodies of unicorns. Her original teen fiction has received millions of hits on the story-sharing website Wattpad. She lives in New Jersey with her vaguely baffled husband and twin boys.
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ALYSON GERBER :: BRACED
MG Contemporary
Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books :: Spring 2017
In BRACED, twelve-year-old Rachel learns her scoliosis has worsened and she has to wear a back brace. As she battles stares from her classmates, pressure from her mother, and difficulty on her soccer team, she discovers she’s made of stronger stuff than even her brace. Both the author and editor wore back braces for scoliosis as teenagers, and this will be the first standalone novel focused on this disorder, which affects ten percent of all adolescents, since Judy Blume’s Deenie.
Alyson Gerber earned her MFA in Writing for Children and Teens from The New School. She grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts and wore a back brace for scoliosis in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. She loves swimming pools, French fries, and hot sauce on everything. She always wanted to live in New York City and now she does with her husband.
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ALISON GERVAIS :: IN 27 DAYS
YA Contemporary Paranormal
HarperCollins/Blink :: Summer, 2017
Hadley Jamison makes a deal with Death to go back in time 27 days in order to save the life of a boy she barely knows after he commits suicide.
Watty Award winning author Alison Gervais is a current undergraduate student at Colorado State University-Pueblo, and has been writing for as long as she can remember. In 2011, she joined the writer’s website Wattpad, and has been active on the site for five years. If she’s not writing or studying for classes, she can be found re-reading Harry Potter, watching Supernatural, or trying to win the affection of her cats, Kovu and Rocket.
AMY GILES :: NOW IS EVERYTHING
YA Contemporary
HarperTeen :: Fall 2017
When Hadley McCauley arrives at the hospital after surviving the plane crash and attempts to take her own life, everyone—from her friends to her doctors, to the investigator on the case—wants to know why. Only Hadley knows what really happened in the cockpit that day, and she’s not talking.
To everyone else, the McCauleys seem like the perfect family. But perfect families are the best at keeping the darkest secrets. Told in alternating chapters between then and now—Hadley’s life leading up to the accident and her life after in the children’s psych ward—Now is Everything is a story about survival and what one girl is willing to do to protect her past, present and future.
Amy Giles is a copywriter, having written everything from cereal commercials to animated webisodes to print ads to commercial fishing catalogs. Her true love is writing for and about teens. She lives on an Island that is Long with her husband, two daughters, and rescue dog.
JEFF GILES :: THE EDGE OF EVERYTHING
YA Contemporary Fantasy
Bloomsbury Kids :: January 27, 2017
A Montana girl, who’s grieving after the mysterious death of her dad, chases her little brother into a blizzard—and stumbles on a bounty hunter from the underworld who’s come to take a soul. She tries to help him escape his life before all hell breaks loose.
Jeff Giles grew up in Cohasset, Massachusetts. Most recently, he was the Deputy Managing Editor of Entertainment Weekly, where he oversaw all coverage of movies and books, including the magazine’s championing of YA fiction. Jeff has written for Rolling Stone and The New York Times Books Review. He also co-authored The Terrorist’s Son, a nonfiction book that won an Alex award from the American Library Association. While reporting on the Lord of the Rings movies for Newsweek, Jeff was invited to be an extra in “The Return of the King.” He played a Rohan soldier, and—because he didn’t have a beard or mustache—they glued yak hair to his face. Jeff lives with his family in Montana.
KARINA YAN GLASER :: THE VANDERBEEKERS OF 141ST STREET
MG Contemporary
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt :: Fall, 2017
It’s a week before Christmas and the five Vanderbeeker children should be dreaming about sugar plums and presents. But when Mr. Beiderman, their seriously unpleasant landlord and third floor neighbor, says they need to leave their apartment by New Year’s, there are suddenly more pressing worries. And the Vanderbeekers aren’t the kind of kids who will sit by sucking candy canes while some grouchy old man kicks them out of the home and neighborhood they love.
Karina is a contributing editor to Book Riot and proud mom to two kids who never leave home without a book. She lives in Harlem, New York City with her family, a dog, a cat, and a house rabbit.
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TARA GOEDJEN :: THE BREATHLESS
YA Contemporary
Random House / Delacorte :: Fall 2017
A gothic mystery set on the Gulf Coast, THE BREATHLESS follows 16-year-old Mae Cole’s quest to uncover who is responsible for her sister’s mysterious death. Mae’s search takes a terrifying turn when she starts to dig up long-buried secrets about her family’s dark past.
Tara Goedjen loves fairytales and ghost stories. After growing up in Alabama, she left to play college tennis in Iowa, then moved to Alaska and Australia. While completing grad school, she worked as a yoga instructor, a writing teacher, and an editor for a publishing house in Sydney. These days, when she’s not making up stories, you can find her on a hike, staring woefully at a to-do list, or eating all of California’s seasonal fruit.
KRISTIN L. GRAY :: VILONIA BEEBE TAKES CHARGE
MG Contemporary
Simon & Schuster / Paula Wiseman Books :: Spring 2017
Fourth-grader Vilonia Beebe’s mama has come down with the Infinite Sadness, and Vilonia knows just how to cheer her up: a dog. But Daddy says no pets until Vilonia learns some responsibility. So Vilonia collects responsibility like night collects stars, never imagining her biggest job, keeping her librarian’s goldfish over spring break, could be her trickiest.
Kristin L. Gray loves to read, eat cake, walk her dogs, eat cake, and take long Sunday afternoon naps (dreaming of cake) from her home in Arkansas. She will also travel any chance she gets, but don’t make her unpack because laundry is NOT cake. Kristin’s fourth-grade self would never believe she has five children, two dogs, one fish, a bearded dragon, and a shy grass snake.
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LARISSA HARDESTY :: KISS ME KILL YOU
YA Paranormal Romance
Entangled Crave :: September 2017
Fifteen-year-old Emmy doesn’t know that she’s a succubus, or that her kiss can literally kill. She just wants to fall in love and live happily ever after–preferably with her classmate Paul.
Eighteen-year-old Paul’s job is to make sure Emmy comes into her power without revealing their kind’s existence. He’s not supposed to fall in love with her, but the heart doesn’t always listen to reason. Unfortunately for both of them, the penalty for disobeying is worse than death<
Larissa Hardesty is an elementary music teacher, handbell choir director, and writer. She enjoys all things musical, bookish, and crafty, so all her money goes to iTunes, bookstores, office supply stores, and craft stores. She lives in Central Florida with her husband, three children, two birds, and a cat.
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KATE HART :: AFTER THE FALL
YA Contemporary
FSG/Macmillan :: Winter 2017
The story of a girl who refuses to play the damsel in distress, even in the face of sexual assault, and the boy who has always hoped to rescue her, until she seeks comfort in his brother’s arms and a terrible accident changes everything.
After studying Spanish and history at a small liberal arts school, Kate Hart taught small people their ABCs, wrote grants for grownup people with disabilities, and now builds treehouses for people of all sizes. Her debut YA novel, AFTER THE FALL, is coming winter 2017 from FSG. She also blogs at YA Highway, hosts the Badass Ladies You Should Know project, and enjoys taking so many book out of the library that her children ask why people are staring.
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LEAH HENDERSON :: ONE SHADOW ON THE WALL
MG Contemporary
Simon & Schuster/Atheneum :: Summer 2017
Newly orphaned Mor and his two younger sisters are willing to try almost anything to stay together in contemporary Senegal. While battling a bully who wants all they have, including their spirits, and an aunt determined to separate them; Mor must find a way to keep his family safe.
Leah has always loved getting lost in stories. When she is not scribbling down her characters’ adventures, she is off on her own, exploring new spaces and places around the world. Leah received her MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University and currently calls the Washington D.C. area home.
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SARAH HENNING :: SEA WITCH
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen :: Fall 2017
The origin story of the Sea Witch in Hans Christian Andersen’s THE LITTLE MERMAID, as told in the vein of WICKED, from the villainess’s point of view.
Sarah Henning is a recovering journalist who has worked for the Palm Beach Post, KC Star and Associated Press. When not hunched over her computer, she runs ultramarathons, forces kale smoothies upon her husband and goes on absurdly long walks with her two tow-headed kids. Sarah lives in Lawrence, Kansas, home of Langston Hughes, William S. Burroughs and a really good basketball team.
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S. F. HENSON :: DEVILS WITHIN
YA Contemporary
Sky Horse/Sky Pony :: Spring 2017
Nate grew up at The Fort, a white supremacist compound. He was eight the first time he stabbed someone; he was eleven when he earned his red laces—a prize for spilling blood for “the cause.” And he was fourteen when he murdered his father (and the leader of The Fort) in self-defense, landing in a treatment center while the state searched for his next of kin. Now living with his estranged uncle, he struggles to overcome the racist beliefs he was taught since birth, while hiding from the violent men who want him dead.
S. F. Henson is a YA author, born and raised in the deep south. She graduated from Auburn University with a degree in Animal Science, which she put to great use by attending law school. Her law degree has gotten some mileage, though, giving her the experience to write about criminals and other dark, nefarious subjects. She lives beside a missile test range in Huntsville, Alabama with her husband, dog, two oddly named cats, and, of course, the missiles that frequently shake her house.
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CARTER HIGGINS :: A RAMBLER STEALS HOME
MG Contemporary
HMH Books for Young Readers :: February 28, 2017
Eleven-year-old Derby Christmas Clark is a rambler of the road. She travels year-round in an RV with her father and younger brother, selling Christmas trees during the cold months and burgers and fries during baseball season. Derby always did prefer grease splatters to hauling trees, so she’s excited that summer will take her back to small town Ridge Creek, the Rockskippers, her best friend, and her surrogate mom, June. But this summer, a tragedy has changed Ridge Creek—and as Derby tries to help those she loves, long-held secrets are revealed. This warm-hearted southern debut is perfect for fans of Kate DiCamillo and Sheila Turnage.
Carter is a librarian at an independent school in Los Angeles and the author of two forthcoming picture books from Chronicle Books. She is an Emmy-winning visual effects and motion graphics artist whose career has covered all the nooks and crannies of visual storytelling. She writes about picture books and graphic design at her blog, Design of the Picture Book, and you can find her on Twitter @carterhiggins.
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SARAH JEAN HORWITZ :: CARMER AND GRIT BOOK ONE: THE WINGSNATCHERS
MG Fantasy
Algonquin Young Readers :: April 25, 2017
A magician’s apprentice and a faerie princess with one wing form an unlikely alliance to solve a mystery that could change both of their worlds forever.
Sarah Jean Horwitz was raised in suburban New Jersey, where her love of storytelling grew from listening to her mother’s “fractured fairy tales.” She is a graduate of Emerson College and a member of the Boston Teen Author Festival organizing team. Sarah currently works as a receptionist and lives with her partner near Cambridge, MA.
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AMANDA HOSCH :: MABEL OPAL PEAR AND THE RULES FOR SPYING
MG Mystery
Capstone Young Readers :: Fall, 2017
Mabel Opal Pear has a secret: her parents are spies. On the same day they go missing, Mabel’s beloved Aunt Gertie is thrown in jail for smuggling. Greedy Uncle Frank and Aunt Stella camp out in Mabel’s house. Their daughter, Victoria, is Mabel’s new roommate/ratfink. Using rules from a spy worksheet, Mabel attempts to clear Gertie’s name, find her parents, and unmask the real criminal.
Amanda Hosch loves writing, travel, and coffee. She lived abroad for almost a decade, teaching English as a Foreign Language. A fifth generation New Orleanian, Amanda now lives in Seattle with her husband, their two daughters, and a ghost cat. When not writing, she’s a reading tutor for elementary school kids.
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MCCALL HOYLE :: THE THING WITH FEATHERS
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/Blink :: September, 2017
From award-winning author McCall Hoyle comes The Thing with Feathers, the story of sixteen-year-old Emilie Day, an epileptic teen leaving her safe, homeschooled life for high school on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. For the first time, Emilie must navigate classes, cliques, and crushes, all the while keeping her epilepsy a secret.
McCall Hoyle writes honest YA novels about friendship, first love, and girls finding the strength to overcome great challenges. She is a middle school language arts teacher. Her own less-than-perfect teenage experiences and those of the girls she teaches inspire many of the struggles in her books. When she’s not reading or writing, she’s spending time with her family and their odd assortment of pets—a food-obsessed beagle, a grumpy rescue cat, and a three-and-a-half-legged kitten. She has an English degree from Columbia College and a master’s degree from Georgia State University. She lives in a cottage in the woods in North Georgia where she reads and writes every day.
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ALLISON K. HYMAS :: UNDER LOCKER AND KEY
MG Mystery
Simon & Schuster/Aladdin :: April 18, 2017
When Jeremy Wilderson, retrieval specialist, botches a job, he accidentally places the master key to every locker in the hands of an aspiring crime kingpin. He will have to team up with his nemesis Becca Mills, private eye, to get it back.
Allison K. Hymas received a Masters of Fine Arts from Brigham Young University. She currently lives in Provo, UT.
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JULIE ISRAEL :: JUNIPER LEMON’S HAPPINESS INDEX
YA Contemporary
Penguin Random House/Kathy Dawson Books :: Summer, 2017
Sixty-five days after the death of her older sister, Juniper Lemon finds the love letter Camilla wrote to “You” on the day she died. Unable to make other amends, she vows to deliver it—as soon as she figures out who “You” is.
Julie Israel is a tea-drinking, boot-wearing Portlander who writes by day and wreaks creative havoc by night. Her loves include making art, learning languages, plucking songs on guitar (badly, but joyfully), stories with dark/fantastic elements, and the three golden Cs: Cheese, Chocolate, and Chai. JUNIPER is her first novel.
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TIFFANY JACKSON :: ALLEGEDLY
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen :: Winter, 2017
Nine-year-old Mary B. Addison killed a baby. Allegedly.
She didn’t say much during the trial but the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: A three-month-old white baby had died under the care of a church going black mother and her daughter.
After spending six years in prison for the unthinkable crime, sixteen year old Mary discovers she is pregnant. When the state threatens to take her baby, Mary must find the voice to fight her past while surviving life in a Brooklyn group home. But her fate lies in the hands of the one person she distrusts the most: her mother
Tiffany D. Jackson is a TV professional by day, novelist by night, awkward black girl 24/7. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Film from Howard University and her Master of Arts in Media Studies from The New School University. A Brooklyn native, she is a lover of naps, cookie dough, and beaches, currently residing in the borough she loves with her adorable chihuahua Oscar, most likely multitasking.
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VIC JAMES :: GILDED CAGE
YA Contemporary Fantasy
Random House/DelRey :: January 26, 2017
NOT ALL ARE FREE – NOT ALL ARE EQUAL – NOT ALL WILL BE SAVED.
In a modern Britain, everyone must endure ten years of slavery for a magically-skilled aristocracy. Here a teenage boy dreams of rebellion. His sister thirsts for knowledge, and will find love. And a dangerous young aristocrat will remake the world with his dark gifts.
Vic James is a current affairs TV director who loves stories in all their forms. She has twice judged The Guardian’s ‘Not the Booker’ prize, has made films for BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4, and is a Wattpad.com success story. Under its previous title, Slavedays, her book won the ‘Talk of the Town’ Watty Award – on a site showcasing 150 million stories. Vic is a 2017 debutante three times over – GILDED CAGE is the first in a trilogy, all releasing in 2017. She lives in London.
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S. JAE-JONES :: WINTERSONG
YA Fantasy
Thomas Dunne :: Winter, 2017
A young woman must journey to the Underground to rescue her sister from the clutches of the Goblin King.
S. Jae-Jones, called JJ, is a voracious and indiscriminate reader, an avid traveller, and something of an adrenaline junkie. Born and raised in sunny Los Angeles, she lived in New York City for ten years before relocating down to Dixie, where she is comfortably growing fat on grits and barbecue. When not writing, she can be found rock-climbing, skydiving, taking photographs, drawing pictures, and dragging her dog on ridiculously long hikes.
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CHRISTINA JUNE :: IT STARTED WITH GOODBYE
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/Blink :: May 9, 2017
Sixteen-year-old Tatum is spending the summer on stepmother-imposed lockdown after she’s arrested for grand larceny, which she didn’t commit. Tatum uses her newfound free time, when she’s not doing court-ordered community service, to start a secret graphic design business. In the process, she discovers she’s not the only one in the house with secrets and has to decide if she wants to spill them or use that info to her advantage. Bonus, Tatum strikes up an unexpected flirtation with a cello-playing client. Pitched as a contemporary twist on Cinderella.
CHRISTINA JUNE writes young adult contemporary fiction when she’s not writing college recommendation letters during her day job as a school counselor. She loves the little moments in life that help someone discover who they’re meant to become – whether it’s her students or her characters. Christina is a voracious reader, loves to travel, eats too many cupcakes, and hopes to one day be bicoastal – the east coast of the US and the east coast of Scotland. She lives with her husband and the world’s most rambunctious five-year-old. Her debut YA novel IT STARTED WITH GOOD-BYE will release from Blink/HarperCollins in 2017.
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HEATHER KACZYNSKI :: DARE MIGHTY THINGS
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/HarperTeen :: Fall 2017
A brilliant Indian-American teen girl competes for the last spot on an experimental mission into space.
Heather writes books for teenagers and other people who like books about teenagers. They’re usually about teenagers saving the world, because she really believes they can. Heather never got to go to Space Camp, so she had to settle for writing about it. After graduating cum laude with a degree in biology, she returned to her first love of books, and now works in a library near NASA. She’s not nearly brave enough to go into space, but she did twirl a fire baton in high school.
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GWEN C. KATZ :: AMONG THE RED STARS
YA Historical
HarperTeen :: Fall 2017
Nazi fighter aces, blinding searchlights, flammable planes: Nothing teen girls can’t handle. 18-year-old pilot Valya disobeys orders to rescue her boyfriend from behind enemy lines in this epistolary novel of the daring Russian airwomen the Nazis called “Night Witches.”
Gwen Katz lives in Altadena, CA with her husband and a revolving door of transient mammals.
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NIKKI KATZ :: THE MIDNIGHT DANCE
YA Historical
Macmillan/Swoon Reads :: September 2017
17-year-old Penny attends Grande Teatro – a finishing school run by the mysterious Master. Dance and matching pink outfits are the only life Penny knows … until it isn’t. Flashes of conflicting memories convince Penny that everything is not as it seems. With the help of the kitchen boy, Cricket, Penny tries to escape the fantasy of the Grande Teatro in search of her lost reality. But some strings are not so easily broken….
Nikki Katz is a managing editor and ex-rocket scientist living in sunny San Diego with her husband and three children. With a BS in aerospace engineering, Nikki first put her writing skills to use publishing four nonfiction books in the puzzle and game genre. She moved on to writing young adult fiction, her favorite activity. Other fave pastimes include chauffeuring her kids around town, reading fantasy and sci-fi, baking yummy desserts, watching Reality TV, and scrolling social media feeds. The Midnight Dance is her debut novel.
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JODI KENDALL :: THE UNLIKELY STORY OF A PIG IN THE CITY
MG Contemporary
HarperCollins Children’s Books :: Fall 2017
Eleven year-old Josie makes it her mission to save the piglet named Hamlet her brother brings home from college, but as she and Hamlet each struggle to find their place in a crowded, chaotic family, Josie realizes that life with a pig in the city is harder than she thought it would be. It’s Charlotte’s Web meets The Penderwicks.
Jodi Kendall is a freelance writer based in New York City. Her work is represented on several National Geographic Channel websites (including Inside Wild, Nat Geo Dogs, Mysterious Science and Inside NGC), NBC Health, ABC News and in Pregnancy & Newborn Magazine. For work, Jodi once followed an eight-hour, overnight secret transport of a manta ray across state lines. On another trip, she was harnessed into an open-door airplane so she could snap photographs of the largest whale shark aggregation on the planet. She faced her fear of sharks by swimming with seven species in an aquarium tank, got up close and personal with venomous snakes along the Kinabatangan River, and motored through a known saltwater crocodile breeding ground. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Arizona and is an active member of SCBWI. Jodi grew up in Columbus, Ohio with her family of seven and a household of countless pets, including hamsters, ducks, dogs, rabbits, an iguana, and yes… even a farm pig!
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MARY E. LAMBERT :: FAMILY GAME NIGHT AND OTHER CATASTROPHES
MG Contemporary
Scholastic :: February 2017
Annabelle Balog’s life is a mess. Literally. Her mother refuses to throw anything away. Life gets even more complicated when Grandma Nora decides to clean house against the wishes of Annabelle’s mother. Now Annabelle, who can usually be found trying to sneak her mother’s collections to the nearest dumpster, must decide if some things are worth saving.
When Mary E. Lambert was eight years old, her grandma told her that she should be a writer. Mary said, “No.” She thought she’d rather be a teacher. Many years later, Mary realized there was no avoiding one of her grandma’s pronouncements, and she started to write novels. In 2014, Mary graduated from Vermont College of Fine Arts with an M.F.A. in Writing for Children and Young Adults. She lives in Arizona where she spends her days explaining to students that five paragraph essays really do have five paragraphs, while most evenings she can be found writing in local coffee shops and consuming truly lamentable quantities of caffeine.
HEIDI LANG AND KATI BARTKOWSKI :: A DASH OF DRAGON
MG Fantasy
Simon & Schuster/Aladdin :: Summer 2017
Thirteen-year-old Lailu is the youngest master chef in the kingdom, able to hunt and cook the most dangerous and delicious mystical beasts, and apprenticed to the man who literally wrote the book on dragon cuisine. But in a land where steampunk scientists feud with gangster elves, Lailu will find her most ruthless adversary is a vicious loan shark who will stop at nothing until Lailu and her culinary talents belong to him.
We are a writing team of two sisters: Heidi Lang, who likes to fling food across her stove while attempting to cook new dishes, and Kati Bartkowski, who enjoys trying new cuisine at fancy restaurants. Because of our twenty years of experience in Judo, we both prefer our female protagonists to kick some butt.
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DANA LANGER :: SIREN SISTERS
MG Fantasy
Simon & Schuster/Aladdin :: Spring 2017
A twelve-year-old girl in present-day New England dreads becoming a siren like her three older sisters until she witnesses their kidnapping and must use her powers to save them.
Dana Langer is a high school English teacher and the author of Siren Sisters. She holds a BA in creative writing from Brandeis University where she was the recipient of the Dafna Zamarripa-Gesundheit Fiction Prize. She grew up in New York and Massachusetts and now lives with her family on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her imagination continues to reside in rural New England.
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RUTH LAUREN :: PRISONER OF ICE AND SNOW
MG Fantasy
Bloomsbury :: April 2017
Thirteen-year-old Valor is accused of attempting to murder the prince and is sent to prison, where she attempts to break out her twin sister. But in the process, they discover that a much thicker plot may lie behind their crimes.
Ruth Lauren lives in an old Victorian house in England with a lot of children and cats.
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CAROLINE LEECH :: WAIT FOR ME
YA Historical
HarperCollins/HarperTeen :: Winter 2017
WAIT FOR ME begins in 1945 as Paul, an injured German prisoner-of-war, is sent to a local farm and Lorna, the farmer’s teenage daughter, is horrified at having an enemy soldier working there. Lorna soon discovers however that in wartime, your family and your allies might not actually be your friends, and your enemy might turn out to be the love of your life. Ultimately, will the events which bring peace to Europe tear Lorna and Paul apart?
Caroline Leech is a Scottish writer living in Houston, Texas. She writes YA historical fiction, and one day might find the courage to set a story outside Scotland. She blogs a lot, and reads more, and almost always has an audiobook playing through her headphones. In her house, Caroline has three teenage readers and writers. She sometimes yearns for home, but loves living in Texas, even if she still can’t remember which is a nickel and which is a dime.
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KYRA LEIGH :: REAPER
YA Contemporary
Simon and Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books :: Summer 2017
After Rosie Wolfe dies, she learns that before she can move on to paradise to meet her father, she must complete three tasks for the Grim Reaper.
Kyra Leigh lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. When she isn’t writing, Kyra likes to spend her free time visiting with her family, hiking, or binge watching Netflix with her boyfriend.
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SARAH NICOLE LEMON :: DONE DIRT CHEAP
YA Contemporary
Abrams/Amulet :: Spring 2017
Two teenage girls are caught between a motorcycle club and corrupt law enforcement in an unforgiving southern town. Sons of Anarchy meets Thelma & Louise.
It was touch and go for awhile, but Sarah Nicole Lemon finally grew into her woods witch vibe and now spends her days merrily setting young girls to impossible tasks with dire threats if they fail. When not writing, you can find her drinking iced coffee in a half-submerged lawn chair near her home in Southern Maryland.
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TRICIA LEVENSELLER :: DAUGHTER OF THE PIRATE KING
YA Historical Fantasy
Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends :: Winter 2017
Seventeen-year-old Alosa Kalligan gets herself intentionally kidnapped by pirates so she can steal something off their ship. She thinks the task will be easy, but the ridiculously attractive first mate might be onto her.
Initially from a small town in Oregon, Tricia now lives next to the Rocky Mountains with her bossy dog, Rosy. She received her degree in English Language and editing and is thrilled that she never has to read a textbook again. When she’s not writing or reading, Tricia enjoys putting together jigsaw puzzles, playing volleyball, and watching shows while eating extra-buttered popcorn.
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HENRY LIEN :: PEASPROUT CHEN, FUTURE LEGEND OF SKATE AND SWORD
MG Fantasy
Penguin Random House/Razorbill :: Fall 2017
Middle grade Asian fantasy about a girl determined to take top ranking at Pearl Academy, where she will study Wu Liu, a form that blends figure skating with martial arts. Pitched as “The School for Good and Evil” meets “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. The first of a series.
Henry Lien was born in Taiwan. His debut novel, PEASPROUT CHEN, FUTURE LEGEND OF SKATE AND SWORD, will be published by Penguin Random House/Razorbill in 2017 and its first sequel will be published in 2018. He attended Clarion West in 2012. Since then, he has sold his work to magazines including Asimov’s, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet; has been nominated twice for a Nebula; and wrote, recorded, and performed “Radio SFWA”, the recruitment anthem for Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. Henry is a graduate of St. Paul’s School, Brown University, and UCLA School of Law. Before becoming an author, he worked as an attorney, fine art dealer, and college instructor. He lives in Hollywood, CA.
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KATHERINE LOCKE :: THE GIRL WITH THE RED BALLOON
YA Historical Fantasy
Albert Whitman & Company :: Spring 2017
A sixteen-year-old Jewish-American girl accidentally time travels to 1988 East Berlin by way of a magic balloon, just like how her grandfather escaped a death camp in 1943. She’s caught up in a conspiracy of time and magic, and the only way to stop people from dying may be to destroy her only way home.
Katherine Locke lives and writes in a very small town outside of Philadelphia, where she’s ruled by her feline overlords and her addiction to chai lattes. She almost always writes about that which she cannot do such as time travel, magic, or ballet. She not-so-secretly believes most stories are fairy tales in disguise. Her Young Adult debut THE GIRL WITH THE RED BALLOON arrives Spring 2017 by way of Albert Whitman & Company and a magic balloon.
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MARK MACIEJEWSKI :: I AM FARTACUS
MG Humor
Simon & Schuster / Aladdin :: April 2017
Chub is a bald middle-school outcast who becomes an unlikely hero when he sets out to bring down his arch-nemesis and ends up destroying an evil empire in the process.
Mark Maciejewski is the author of Chub and the Cadre of Evil (Aladdin/2017) and Chub II: Electric Boogerloo (Aladdin 2018). Mark’s other writing credits include an anonymous, passive-aggressive note to a guy who once parked too close to him, and his name in some snow. He lives in Seattle with his partner Donna, one son, three teenage daughters, two dogs, two frogs, and some fish. His day job is classified. It involves high-stakes games of espionage and…..its actually steel, he sells steel.
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HEATHER MACLEAN :: TOWARD A SECRET SKY
YA Contemporary Fantasy Romance
HarperCollins/Blink :: April 4, 2017
New York Times bestselling author Heather Maclean’s YA debut TOWARD A SECRET SKY, is an adventure-quest crossed with a sweeping, forbidden love story pitched as a modern mix of The Da Vinci Code and Twilight, in which a newly orphaned teenager sent to live in Scotland uncovers her parents’ supernatural secrets and must decide whether to continue their work andsacrifice her friends or follow her heart and sacrifice herself.
Heather Maclean is a Princeton graduate and The New York Times bestselling author and editor of 15 books. Named one of the “16 Best Entrepreneurs in America” by Sir Richard Branson, she accompanied the adventurous business legend on a 50,000-mile trip around the world, alternately helping improve the lives of others (designing sustainable development initiatives in South Africa) and fearing for her own (rappelling out of a Black Hawk helicopter in a Moroccan sandstorm). Heather began her career at Disney, where she had the distinction of being the first person ever to answer Mickey Mouse’s e-mail. When not castle hunting in her husband’s native Scotland, she and her clan of 3 kids happily reside in Michigan.
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MAGGIE ANN MARTIN :: THE BIG F
YA Contemporary
Macmillan/ Swoon Reads :: August 29, 2017
Danielle must figure out her own path when her college acceptance is revoked due to a failing grade.
Maggie Ann Martin hails from Des Moines, Iowa but moonlights as a New Yorker. She has a shiny new BA in English and Journalism from the University of Iowa, the most welcoming literary community in the world. When she is not writing, you can find her binge watching TV shows or passionately fangirling over fictional characters on the Internet. The Big F is her debut novel.
JAMIE MAYER :: PAINLESS
YA Contemporary
Rare Bird Books :: January, 2017
Quinn is a rebellious 17-year-old who can’t feel physical pain. When he falls in love for the first time, the graphic novels he draws start to come alive, ultimately forcing him to confront his emotional isolation and family’s tragic past.
Screenwriter Jamie Mayer is venturing into prose with her debut YA novel Painless. Jamie has written and sold television and feature film scripts, and most recently co-wrote and co-produced the first season of A&E/Lifetime’s digital romance platform Fall Into Me. She has also directed short films and music videos, and workshopped a feature film version of Painless at the Sundance Writers’ and Directors’ Labs. Jamie was born in New York City, grew up in New Jersey and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University. She now lives in Los Angeles with her musician husband and absurdly delightful son.
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WENDY MCLEOD MACKNIGHT :: IT’S A MYSTERY, PIG-FACE!
MG Contemporary
Sky Horse/Sky Pony :: February 7, 2017
Pitched as Nancy Drew meets Harry Styles, It’s a Mystery, Pig-Face! tells the story of how 11-year-old Tracy finds a bag of money in a baseball dugout and enlists the help of her best friend as well as her annoying little brother to discover who lost – or maybe, stole – it, in a town brimming with suspects. Along the way, maybe she can also figure out why her heart pounds uncomfortably whenever recent-transplant and boy-band clone Zach is around.
Wendy McLeod MacKnight grew up in a magical small town with a library card as her prized possession. Over the course of her professional life, she’s been responsible for early childhood and child welfare programming, and ended her public service career as head of the Government of New Brunswick’s Department of Education. Then one day she woke up and decided it was time to pursue her life-long dream of writing books for children. It’s a Mystery, Pig-Face! is her debut novel and any resemblance to the author is purely intentional. Wendy lives in New Brunswick, Canada with her family, her garden, and a ne’er-do-well groundhog.
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KAREN MCMANUS :: ONE OF US IS LYING
YA Contemporary
Random House/Delacorte :: Summer 2017
When the creator of a notorious high school gossip app mysteriously dies in front of four high-profile students whose secrets he was about to reveal, they all become suspects. Bronwyn, Cooper, Addy, and Nate—the school’s resident brain, jock, princess, and criminal—all have something to hide. Any of them could have done it, but somebody pulled a lot of strings to get them together that day.
Karen McManus used to write books when she was supposed to be playing outside, and not much has changed. She is a marketing and communications professional who also writes Young Adult contemporary and fantasy fiction in Cambridge, MA. When not writing or working Karen loves to travel, and along with her nine-year old son she’s ridden horses in Colombia and bicycles through Paris. A member of SCBWI, Karen holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in Journalism from Northeastern University. Which she has never, ever used professionally.
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DARCY MILLER :: ROLL
MG Contemporary
HarperCollins :: Summer 2017
When 11-year-old Ren meets a new neighbor girl who is focused on breaking into the strange world of competitive pigeon rolling, he discovers that there’s more to life than vintage comic books and video game marathons.
Darcy Miller was once listed in her friend’s wedding program as someone who “enjoys buying pants and baking pies,” and truer words have never been written. She currently lives in Wisconsin with her family. This is her debut novel.
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LINSEY MILLER :: MASK OF SHADOWS
YA Fantasy
Sourcebooks Fire :: Summer 2017
A gender-fluid pickpocket auditions to become a replacement member of the Left Hand – the queen’s quartet of assassins – but must survive the competition while also putting their true reason for auditioning into motion.
A wayward biology student from Arkansas, Linsey has previously worked as a crime lab intern, neuroscience lab assistant, and pharmacy technician. Her debut novel MASK OF SHADOWS is the first in a fantasy duology coming in 2017 from Sourcebooks Fire. She can be found writing about science and magic anywhere there is coffee.
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MICHAEL MILLER :: SHADOW RUN
YA Sci-Fi
Delacorte :: Spring 2017
Shadow Run follows the orphaned Qole, a young but savvy captain of a starship that “fishes” for a volatile energy source, and whose ragtag crew has just become the focus of a corporate arms race; and Nev, the prince whose mission to exploit them turns into one to save them.
Raised off-grid in Alaska, where long winter nights were spent reading by kerosene lamp, Michael spent as much time in imaginary worlds as the real one. Weaned on Tolkien, Russian fairy tales and Laura Ingalls Wilder, he started scribbling adventures for a periodical newspaper he and his brother produced to keep friends informed of life in the woods. The introduction of solar power and a Macbook changed everything – his writing, and his career. He now works as an Apple Consultant and web developer. He lives in Alaska with his fabulous wife, spending part of the winter being vagabonds elsewhere on the planet.
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PATRICK MOODY :: THE GRAVEDIGGER’S SON
MG Fantasy
Sky Pony/Sky Horse :: Spring 2017
An 11-year-old boy must reluctantly embrace his ability to speak to the dead after awakening the inhabitants of the graveyard his ancestors have spent centuries tending
Patrick Moody writes horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, all of which is geared towards the YA or MG audience, but he’s been known to go a bit darker every now and then. His short fiction has been published in various online and print publications. The Gravedigger’s Son is his first novel. He lives in Connecticut with his wonderful girlfriend and mischievous coven of cats.
EMILY BAIN MURPHY :: THE DISAPPEARANCES
YA Fantasy
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt :: Summer 2017
THE DISAPPEARANCES is about Aila Quinn, a teen girl who moves to her recently deceased mother’s hometown and discovers that every seven years it is cursed to lose the experiences that weave life together – the stars in the sky, the scent of flowers, the ability to dream – and that her mother may be to blame.
Emily Bain Murphy grew up in Indiana, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, and graduated from Tufts University. Murphy currently lives in Connecticut with her family but will be moving to San Francisco in summer 2016. When not writing, reading, or chasing after her two young children, she is passionate about fighting child trafficking with the nonprofit Love146. She is currently at work on her second novel, another magical fantasy for young adults.
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TRACEY NEITHERCOTT :: GRAY WOLF ISLAND
YA Magical Realism
Random House/Knopf :: Fall 2017
Pitched as Goonies with magic realism, Gray Wolf Island follows five teens looking for a legendary treasure on a mysterious island, only discover they must reveal their darkest secrets in order to succeed.
Tracey Neithercott’s first book was written by hand and illustrated with some really fancy colored pencils. It was highly acclaimed by her mother. Now, she writes YA stories of friendship, love, murder, and magic. (None of which she illustrates—you’re welcome.) She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, who suggests improving her novels by adding Star Wars characters.
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KATIE A. NELSON :: THE DUKE OF BANNERMAN PREP
YA Contemporary
Sky Pony/Sky Horse :: Spring 2017
Tanner McKay is recruited to an elite prep school to bring their debate team a victory at Nationals, and is soon drawn into a glittering world of parties and after-curfew bonfires, only to discover that the thrill-seeking playboy who’s taken him under his wing is more conman than caviar.
Katie Nelson has always loved words and stories. Formerly a high school English and Debate teacher, she now lives in Northern California with her husband, four children, and hyperactive dog.
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LIANNE OELKE :: HOUSE OF ORANGE
YA Contemporary
Clarion Books :: Fall 2017
After she’s kicked out of high school, Jane Sinner turns to community college to finish her diploma and a student-run reality show for a social makeover. Backstabbing roommates, public humiliation, and a journal full of secrets- what could go wrong?
Lianne Oelke lives in Vancouver, BC. When she’s not running around in the woods pretending computers don’t exist, Lianne works in the film industry. Her cynicism towards made-for-TV movies featuring the mild antics of generically attractive white people has inspired her to write some pretty substandard stories of her own.
AXIE OH :: THE AMATERASU PROJECT
YA Sci-Fi
Lee & Low Books/Tu Books :: Fall 2017
YA science fiction/action novel set in a futuristic Korea about a former gangster who is recruited into the military over a secret prototype weapons project—which turns out to be a genetically modified girl.
Axie Oh is a graduate of the University of California-San Diego where she studied Korean history and creative writing. She was the recipient of Tu Books’ 2015 New Visions Award, awarded to an unpublished author of color. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Lesley University. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Most importantly, she loves K-pop.
KAYLA OLSON :: THE SANDCASTLE EMPIRE
YA Sci-Fi
HarperTeen :: Summer 2017
Set in 2055—when Earth is at a breaking point due to climate change, coastal flooding and overpopulation—a radical faction known as the Wolfpack has overthrown the government and taken control. The story centers on a young woman named Eden who escapes a Wolfpack labor camp, joining three other girls fleeing to an island. During her journey, she will find clues as to what happened to her missing father and find out that she is the key to bringing down the Wolfpack.
Kayla Olson lives in Texas with her family, and can usually be found in near proximity to black coffee, the darkest chocolate, Scrivener, and an army of Sharpie highlighters. THE SANDCASTLE EMPIRE was recently optioned for film by Paramount, with Leonardo DiCaprio/Appian Way producing.
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KRISTEN ORLANDO :: YOU DON’T KNOW MY NAME
YA Thriller
Macmillan/Swoon Reads :: Winter 2017
Trained in mortal combat and weaponry her entire life, Reagan is expected to follow in her parents’ footsteps and join the ranks of the most elite secret agency in the world, the Black Angels. Falling in love with Luke was not part of the plan. Now Reagan must decide: utilize her incredible talents and lead the dangerous life she was born into, or throw it all away for Luke and the normal life she’s always wanted.
Writing is one of the great loves of Kristen Orlando’s life and she’s been lucky enough to make it her living—first as a television producer, then as a marketer and now as a novelist. Kristen graduated with a B.A. in English Literature from Kenyon College. She lives in Columbus, Ohio with the other great love of her life, Michael.
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JOANNE O’SULLIVAN :: BETWEEN TWO SKIES
YA Contemporary
Candlewick :: Spring 2017
Sixteen-year-old Evangeline Riley struggles to start over in Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina destroys her beloved hometown of Bayou Perdu, Louisiana and her best friend goes missing. But when she meets blues-loving fellow Katrina refugee Tru, she comes to question whether home is a place or a person.
Joanne O’Sullivan traveled the world teaching English as a Second Language and meeting fascinating characters before settling with her husband and two kids in the perfect town of Asheville, North Carolina, where she writes about books and artists as journalist, researches science and social studies as a non-fiction author, and armchair travels while planning her next big trip.
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ALEXANDRA OTT :: RULES FOR THIEVES
MG Fantasy
Simon & Schuster/Aladdin :: Summer 2017
A twelve-year-old orphan joins a legendary band of thieves in order to try and obtain the cure for a deadly curse before it kills her.
Alexandra Ott graduated from the University of Tulsa, where she studied English in order to get credit for reading. She is currently an editorial intern at Entangled Publishing. In her spare time, she plays the flute, eats a lot of chocolate, and reads just about everything. She lives in Oklahoma with her tiny canine overlord.
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JENNIFER PARK :: THE SHADOWS WE KNOW BY HEART
YA Magical Realism
Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse :: March 14, 2017
Leah Roberts thought her greatest secret was the family of Bigfoot living in the woods behind her home, until the day they bring t a teenage boy out of the woods with them, with no name, no past, and a future that could destroy them both.
Jennifer Park grew up on the bayous of southeast Texas, daydreaming of fantastical worlds amid magnolia trees and Spanish moss. A former middle school art teacher and current Ocean Artist Society member, she now lives tucked within the East Texas pines she loves. When she’s not writing, she spends her time overloading on soy mochas, hoarding chocolate, and managing her herd of one husband, two daughters, numerous dogs, a shamefully large number of garden snails, and one tortoise named Turquoise. Sometimes she does look out the window and hope to see Bigfoot.
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SHAILA PATEL :: SOULMATED
YA Paranormal Romance
Month9Books :: January 17, 2017
Eighteen-year- old Liam Whelan, an Irish royal empath, searches America for the soul mate from his psychic father’s vision. The union will cement their family’s standing in society, give Liam and his soul mate legendary powers, and allow him to finally go back home to Ireland to lead his clan. The six-year- long search finally leads him to Indian-American, Laxshmi Kapadia—the girl he affectionately calls Lucky—and even without proof that she’s The One, he falls for her. Not only do they struggle against cultural and family expectations, but they run straight into the path of a dark and ancient group waiting to destroy them.
As an unabashed lover of all things happily ever after, Shaila’s younger self would finish reading Cinderella and fling her copy across the room because it didn’t mention what happened next. Now she writes from her home in the Carolinas and dreams up all sorts of stories with epilogues. Soulmated, her debut novel, won first place in the Young Adult category of the 2015 Chanticleer Book Reviews Paranormal Awards. A member of the Romance Writers of America, Shaila is a pharmacist by training, a medical office manager by day, and a writer by night. She enjoys traveling, craft beer, tea, and loves reading books—especially in cozy window seats.
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K.K. PEREZ :: GARDEN OF BLOOD AND DUST
YA Fantasy
Simon Pulse :: Summer 2017
A YA fantasy inspired by the legend of Elizabeth Bathory, the world’s first female serial killer, pitched as a cross between Maleficent and American Horror Story.
THE TESLA LEGACY
YA Sci-Fi
MacMillan/Thomas Dunne :: Fall 2017
THE TESLA LEGACY is the story of a young woman whose powerful abilities are unlocked while visiting the “Tesla Room” at the New Yorker hotel, leading her into an epic battle that’s been raging for generations.
A native New Yorker, K.K. Pérez has spent the last two decades in Europe and Asia working as a journalist and academic. She’s got a penchant for non-defanged vampires, fringe science, angry chicks with guitars, and Italian ice. It’s also usually best to keep the chocolate out of her reach.
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BONNIE PIPKIN :: AFTERCARE INSTRUCTIONS
YA Contemporary
Macmillan/Flatiron Books :: May, 2017
When seventeen-year-old Genesis is left at Planned Parenthood by her boyfriend after they agree to abort her unwanted pregnancy, the flimsy story of their undying love begins to unravel, as does Genesis. Alternating between a traditional narrative and a play script format, Genesis discovers how the secrets of her past will ultimately help her discover herself and guide her to her place center stage.
Bonnie Pipkin is a writer and reader of many things but loves young adult novels best. She has a growing collection of master’s degrees, but the one she’s most proud of is her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Bonnie teaches Children’s Literature and Young Adult Literature at Kean University in Union, NJ, and she serves on the board of directors for the New York International Fringe Festival. A few of her favorite things include: pizza, the ocean, fireworks, and red lipstick. She’s a California native who now calls Brooklyn home.
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TIFFANY PITCOCK :: JUST FRIENDS
YA Contemporary
MacMillan/Swoon Reads :: March 14, 2017
Little-Miss-Likes-Having-A’s Jenny Wessler and popular, sarcastic Chance Masters are as different as can be. Their friendship was only a joke, a lie to BS their way through a presentation. As Chance’s home life grows complicated, he finds himself running to Jenny. Jenny is struggling to balance her social life and her social anxiety – something Chance seems to help with. But with a friendship based on elaborate lies, it can be hard to tell when love is real.
Tiffany Renee Pitcock is a young writer from Benton, Ar. She studied English at Henderson State University, but has been writing stories for as long as she can remember. Besides reading, she is a fan of cats, staying indoors, and tv dramas.
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SALLY J. PLA :: SOMEDAY BIRDS
MG Contemporary
HarperCollins Childrens :: Winter 2017
Charlie wishes his life could be as predictable and simple as chicken nuggets. And it usually is. He has his clean room, his carefully organized bird books and art supplies, his favorite foods, and comfortable routines.
But life has been unraveling since his war journalist father was injured in Afghanistan. And when Dad gets sent from California to Virginia for further medical treatment, Charlie must travel cross-country to meet him. With his boy-crazy sister Davis, his unruly twin brothers, and the mysterious Ludmila at the wheel, this journey looks to be anything but smooth.
So Charlie decides that if he can spot all the birds that he and his father had been hoping to see in the wild, someday, and show that list to Dad, then maybe, just maybe, things will turn out okay.
Sally J. Pla has been a desk clerk at a creaky old hotel, a very forgetful waitress, and a terrible back-up singer for a local band. But she’s always loved writing the best. She has lived in the Northeast, Midwest, and West, and loves each place. She’s worked as a business journalist, and in public education.Sally has three sons, a husband, and an enormous fluffy dog, and currently lives near lots of lemon trees in Southern California. She’s represented by Taylor Martindale Kean at Full Circle Literary Agency.
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LANA POPOVIC :: WICKED LIKE A WILDFIRE
YA Contemporary Fantasy
HarperCollins / Katherine Tegen :: Fall 2017
All the women in the Marević family are born with a gleam—a unique way of experiencing and manipulating beauty through magic. Seventeen-year-old Iris sees flowers as fractals and turns her kaleidoscope visions into glasswork, her twin sister Malina interprets moods as music, and their cold, distant mother bakes scenery into decadent treats at her confectionery in Old Town Cattaro. But when a mysterious, white-haired woman attacks their mother and leaves her hovering between life and death, the sisters must trace their way back to the ancient curse that haunts their line. To break the curse and save each other, the sisters must untangle a thousand years of lies and come to terms with their own secrets.
Lana Popovic studied psychology and literature at Yale University, holds a J.D. from the Boston University School of Law and an M.A. in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College, and is a literary agent with Chalberg & Sussman.
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KAMA FALZOI POST :: IN HUMAN
YA Sci-Fi Romance
BookFish Books :: February 2017
In order to eradicate an enemy and find her missing father, a seventeen-year-old girl is tasked with helping initiate and protect the otherworldly beings sent to Earth in human bodies. Problem is, she ends up falling for one of them.
Kama Falzoi Post is a part-time introvert, a pinnacle of contradictions, mother, step-mother, and author. She enjoys drinking red wine and listening to music that moves her. Her stories have appeared in Inkwell, SmokeLong Quarterly, and most recently in the anthology Outliers of Speculative Fiction.
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ANNA PRIEMAZA :: KAT AND MEG CONQUER THE WORLD
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/HarperTeen :: Fall 2017
Panic-attack-prone gamer Kat is afraid of everything; skateboarder Meg, who has ADHD, is fearless. When they’re teamed up for a year-long science project, they discover they have one thing in common: their obsession with their favorite YouTube gamer. Separately Kat and Meg are a mess, but together they might just be able to battle the negative voices in their heads…if they don’t kill each other first.
Anna Priemaza is a contemporary young adult author and a practicing family and immigration lawyer in Edmonton, Alberta, where she lives with her husband. She can never quite remember how old she is, as she knits like an old lady, practices law like an adult, fangirls over YouTubers like a teen, and dreams like a child.
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JARED RECK :: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
YA Contemporary
Knopf Books for Young Readers :: Fall 2017
Matt Wainwright is constantly sabotaged by the overdramatic movie director in his head. He can’t tell Tabby how he feels, he implodes on the basketball court, and the only place he feels normal is in Mr. Ellis’s English class, discussing the greatest fart scenes in literature and writing poems about pissed-off candy-cane lumberjacks. To make matters worse, Matt watches Tabby get swept away by senior athlete and all-around great guy Jason Branson.
Jared Reck teaches 8th grade Language Arts, where he has been reading awesome books and writing alongside his students for the past ten years. He lives in Hanover, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two daughters.
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SCOTT REINTGEN :: IRON SHARPENS IRON
YA Sci-Fi
Random House/Crown Children’s :: Summer 2017
A Detroit teen accepts an interstellar space contract only to realize the promised millions must be won in a brutal competition where winners face the ultimate choice—take the money and become pawns in the corporation’s sinister plans or find a way to fight that won’t forever compromise their humanity.
Scott Reintgen grew up in North Carolina, and took full advantage of the fact that he lived on the same street as fourteen of his cousins. It could be a little crowded, but he threw a few elbows and carved out a space for himself as the family storyteller. He enjoyed the role so much that he decided to spend most of college and graduate school investing in the world of literature. This led to a career teaching English and Creative Writing in the great state of North Carolina, where he currently lives with his wife and family. To his great delight, the demand for stories and storytellers is alive and well. As such, he can often be found at local coffee shops laboring over stories that he hopes his family, and fans, will love.
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KARUNA RIAZI :: THE GAUNTLET
MG Fantasy
Simon & Schuster/Salaam Reads :: 2017
The Gauntlet of Blood and Sand by Karuna Riazi is a middle–grade adventure about twelve-year-old Bangladeshi American Farah Mirza from Queens, New York, and her quest to save her brother from a supernatural board game.
Karuna Riazi hails from a loving, large extended family and the rather trying experience of being the eldest sibling in her particular clan. Besides pursuing a Bachelors in English Literature, she is an online diversity advocate, blogger and publishing intern. Karuna is fond of tea, Korean dramas and writing about tough girls forging their own paths toward their destinies. (Full bio, like everything else, still to come!)
LILLIAM RIVERA :: THE EDUCATION OF MARGOT SANCHEZ
YA Contemporary
Simon & Schuster :: Spring 2017
After getting busted charging $600 on her father’s credit card, Margot Sanchez is forced to spend the summer working off her debt at her family’s failing supermarket in the South Bronx. This summer, Margot will learn to navigate her conflicted feelings towards identity, family, and friendship.
Lilliam Rivera is the author of The Education of Margot Sanchez, a contemporary young adult novel to debut in the spring 2017 under Simon & Schuster. She is a 2016 Pushcart Prize winner and a 2015 Clarion alumni. Lilliam’s work has appeared in Tin House, Los Angeles Times, Latina, USA Today, among others. She hosts a monthly radio show Literary Soundtrack and lives in Los Angeles.
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ROBIN ROE :: A LIST OF CAGES
YA Contemporary
Disney-Hyperion :: January 10, 2017
When the school psychologist asks 17-year- old Adam Blake to track down the troubled freshman who keeps dodging her, he discovers that the boy is Julian—the foster brother he hasn’t seen in five years. Adam is ecstatic to be reunited but soon realizes Julian is keeping secrets, like where he hides during the middle of the day, and what’s really going on inside his house. Adam is determined to help him, but his involvement could cost both boys their lives.
Robin Roe has a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a master’s from Harvard. She counseled adolescents in Boston before she moved to Dallas to run a mentoring program for at-risk teens.
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JONATHAN ROSEN :: NIGHT OF THE LIVING CUDDLE BUNNIES
MG Fantasy
Skyhorse :: Fall 2017
Twelve-year-old Devin Dexter has problems. His sister, Abby, is annoying. His best friend, Tommy, sees conspiracies everywhere. And his new neighbor, Herb, might be a warlock. When strange things start happening, like the hot new Christmas toy, the Cuddle-Bunny, coming to life and turning evil, Devin and Tommy set out to stop them and prove Herb is a warlock. Will they have enough time before the town of Gravesend is overrun by the cutest little murderers ever?
Jonathan Rosen is a transplanted New Yorker, who now lives with his family in sunny, South Florida. He spends his “free” time being a volunteer coach and chauffeur for his three kids. Some of Jonathan’s fondest childhood memories are of discovering a really good book to dive into. He currently writes middle-grade, because he finds that he shares the same sense of humor as that audience. Jonathan is half-Mexican and half-American, with neither country willing to accept responsibility. You can find him on Twitter and Facebook and has a website coming soon.
DARCEY ROSENBLATT :: KEY TO HEAVEN
MG Historical Fiction
MacMillan/Henry Holt :: Spring 2017
KEY TO HEAVEN is about a 12-year-old Iranian boy in 1982, who joins the army because it was expected. He ends up in an Iraqi prisoner of war camp with other young boys, and always, always, holds onto his love of music. That music and his own persistence and desire to be free set him on a path away from the prisons he’s been locked in, both literally and figuratively.
MELISSA ROSKE :: KAT GREENE COMES CLEAN
MG Contemporary
Charlesbridge :: June 13, 2017
Twelve-year-old Kat Greene has a lot on her pre-rinsed plate, thanks to her divorced mom’s OCD. When Mom isn’t scrubbing every inch of their New York apartment, she’s boiling the silverware or checking Kat’s sheets for bedbugs. The situation escalates when Mom becomes a contestant on Clean Sweep, a competitive-cleaning TV game show. With nowhere to turn – and after a fight with her boy-crazy BFF – Kat reaches out to Olympia Rabinowitz, the free-spirited psychologist at Village Humanity, Kat’s hippy-dippy private school.
Melissa Roske is a writer of contemporary middle-grade fiction. Before spending her days with imaginary people, Melissa interviewed real ones, as a journalist in Europe. In London, she landed a job as an advice columnist for Just Seventeen magazine, where she answered hundreds of letters from readers each week. (Her column was called “Life Sucks,” but it was Melissa’s job to insist it didn’t.) Upon returning to her native New York, Melissa contributed to several books and magazines, selected jokes for Reader’s Digest, and got certified as a life coach. She lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her husband, Henry, daughter, Chloe, and the occasional dust bunny.
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REBECCA ROSS :: IMPASSIONED
YA Fantasy
HarperTeen :: Fall 2017
All Brienna wants is to become a Passion of Knowledge by her seventeenth summer solstice. But everything changes when she accepts the patronage of a disgraced lord, who plans to dethrone the king…and he needs Brienna’s ancestral memories to do it.
Rebecca Ross grew up in Georgia, where she continues to reside with her husband, lively dog and endless piles of books. She received her bachelor’s degree in English from UGA. In the past, she has worked at a Colorado dude ranch, as a school librarian, and as a live-time captionist for a college.
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CAITLIN SANGSTER :: LAST STAR BURNING
YA Sci-Fi
Simon Pulse :: Fall 2017
In a world ravaged by a sleeping sickness, Sev must escape the only society she’s ever known when she’s accused of treason.
Caitlin Sangster is a runner, an Asia nerd, and a compulsive reader. Writing is what makes her world go round, especially when it involves Asia or running. She lives in Utah Valley with her husband and four adorable children.
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AMANDA SEARCY :: THE TRUTH BENEATH THE LIES
QYA Psychological Thriller
Random House/Delacorte :: Fall 2017
A psychological thriller following two teen girls, one in a Texas border town hoping to outrun her past and another who fears for her future in a mildewing public housing complex; when their worlds collide, only one girl will make it out alive.
Amanda Searcy is the collection development supervisor for a public library system, and loves chocolate, cats, and curling up with a good book. She lives in New Mexico.
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CHELSEA SEDOTI :: THE HUNDRED LIES OF LIZZIE LOVETT
YA Contemporary
Sourcebooks Fire :: Jan. 3, 2017
Hawthorn Creely knows what really happened the night her classmate, Lizzie Lovett, vanished in the woods. Sure, her theory is a little crazy, but that only makes Hawthorn more determined to prove it true. Hawthorn launches her own investigation into Lizzie’s disappearance without stopping to ask herself the most important question of all—what if she’s wrong?
Chelsea Sedoti lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her short stories have been published in a variety of places, including Pantheon Magazine and Helen: A Literary Magazine. When she’s not writing, Chelsea spends her time rock climbing, baking and exploring the Mojave Desert.
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NISHA SHARMA :: MY SO-CALLED BOLLYWOOD LIFE
YA Contemporary Multicultural Romance
Crown Books for Young Readers :: Spring 2017
Winnie Metha, Bollywood film groupie, has a dilemma: her boyfriend breaks up with her one week before senior year and instead of running the Princeton, NJ student film festival with him, she has to compete against him for the spot. Dev Khanna, indie film savant, has a solution: sabotage Raj the douchy-ex and take over as festival chair. Dev will help of course, as long as his movie short gets the best spot in the festival lineup. At first, the plan seems to be working…until Winnie falls in love with the one guy who just may be the perfect hero she’s been waiting for. In a story where high school has more drama than the Indian film industry, two Indian Americans learn that a little Bollywood romance just may be the key to a happily ever after.
Award-winning author Nisha Sharma was raised in the countryside of Northeast, Pennsylvania. With very little to do in a small town, Nisha filled her spare time with eighties music, Bollywood movies, and lots of romance novels. When she ran out of romances to read at her local library, she started writing sequels to her favorites and she’s been writing ever since. Her young adult romance MY SO-CALLED BOLLYWOOD LIFE comes out in Summer of 2017 with Crown Books for Young Readers.
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BREEANA SHIELDS :: POISON’S KISS
YA Fantasy
Random House :: Spring, 2017
Marinda has been trained as a visha kanya(a “poison maiden”) in the Raja’s service since birth. When she is ordered to kill a boy she has feelings for, she begins to question not only her role but the Raja’s end game.
Breeana Shields graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in English Literature. She lives in the Pacific Northwest where it drizzles, rains or pours nine months of the year, but then transforms into paradise during the other three. She’s willing to make the trade-off.
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CORABEL SHOFNER :: ALMOST PARADISE
MG Contemporary
FSG Books for Young Readers :: Spring, 2017
RUBY CLYDE is the zany and heartfelt story of a little spitfire, determined to free her mother from prison, who discovers saving grace in the form of her estranged aunt, an ornery solitary nun in the Texas Hill Country.
Corabel Shofner was born in Mississippi and currently lives with her husband (the children flew the coop) in Nashville. A big piece of her heart will always be in Texas and New York City. A former world traveler (the long long road home) and attorney (see Mom, you didn’t need to worry, I could do it) Corabel is delighted to finally be a published novelist, something she’s been seeking since writing “The Monsters Under My Bed” in first grade.
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ANDREW SHVARTS :: ROYAL BASTARDS
YA Fantasy
Disney-Hyperion :: Summer 2017
GAME OF THRONES meets THE BREAKFAST CLUB. The sixteen-year-old bastard of the Lord of the West, Tilla wants nothing more than her father’s love, but when she witnesses him commit a brutal murder, she and her friends are forced to go on the run, branded fugitives and fighting for their lives.
Andrew Shvarts is a Russian-born YA writer, living in San Jose, California. He spends his days designing videogames at Pixelberry Studios and his nights playing board games or making growling noises while chasing his 1-year-old around.
KATIE SLIVENSKY :: THE COUNTDOWN CONSPIRACY
MG Sci-Fi
HarperCollins Childrens :: Summer 2017
A 13 year-old robotics whiz is thrilled to be chosen to train for an international mission to Mars, but soon finds herself and her fellow cadets in a situation far more dire and deadly than any of them could have imagined.
Katie is a science educator at the Museum of Science in Boston, where she coordinates school visits, does presentations with alligators and liquid nitrogen (not usually at the same time), and runs the rooftop observatory program. With an academic background in paleontology and zoology, she only began dabbling in astronomy when she joined the Museum in 2009. It soon became a major passion, and spilled straight over into her writing life.
Katie lives in a suburb of Boston with her two completely absurd cats, Galileo and Darwin. She is represented by Ammi-Joan Paquette.
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CARLIE SOROSIAK :: IF BIRDS FLY BACK
YA Contemporary
HarperTeen :: Summer 2017
Two teens’ lives converge around a missing cult film star’s sudden reappearance, forcing them to confront questions of love, family, and the mysteries of the universe.
Carlie Sorosiak grew up in North Carolina and holds two master’s degrees: one in English from Oxford University, and another in Creative Writing and Publishing from City University London. Her life goals include traveling to all seven continents and fostering many polydactyl cats. She currently splits her time between the US and the UK, hoping to gain an accent like Madonna’s.
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ALI STANDISH :: THE ETHAN I WAS BEFORE
MG Contemporary
HarperCollins Children’s :: January 24, 2017
After Ethan loses his best friend, Kacey, in a tragic accident, his family moves him from Boston to the seaside town of Palm Knot, Georgia, home of possibility and second chances. It’s also home to Coralee, a girl with a big personality and even bigger stories. Coralee may be just the friend Ethan needs, but Ethan isn’t the only one with secrets. Coralee’s are catching up with her, and what she’s hiding might be putting both their lives at risk.
Ali Standish grew up in North Carolina and graduated from Pomona College before spending several years as an educator in the Washington, D.C. public school system. She has an MFA in children’s writing from Hollins University and is working on an MPhil in Children’s Literature from the University of Cambridge. She lives with her Finnish husband and rescue dog in Grantchester, UK. The Ethan I Was Before is her debut novel.
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NIC STONE :: DEAR MARTIN
YA Contemporary
Random House/Crown BFYR :: Fall 2017
After a traumatic racial profiling incident, Justyce McAllister begins a social experiment: live according to the teachings of MLK, and chronicle the experience in a series of letters to him. When his efforts prove futile during a tragic encounter with an off-duty police officer, Justyce must make the most difficult decision of all: in a world where the odds often seem stacked against him, who will he choose to be?
Nic Stone was born and raised in a suburb on the outskirts of Atlanta, GA. Growing up with people from a wide range of cultures, religions, and backgrounds fueled her love of stories and insatiable wanderlust. After a few years in Israel, she returned to the US to write YA fiction with diversity in mind. She currently lives in Atlanta with her husband and small humans.
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JJ STRONG :: US KIDS KNOW
YA Contemporary
Razorbill :: Fall 2017
Part Fight Club and part The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Us Kids Know follows a group of unmoored teens in 2002 as they blaze a destructive path through the post-9/11 New York-area suburbs. Cullen Hickson is the figurehead and mentor for a band of reckless kids who pay him to experience the singular thrill of small-time crimes. When Ray O’Dell enlists in Cullen’s gang of misfits and his sister Brielle becomes romantically entwined with the enigmatic upperclassman, they find in Cullen’s violent antics an alluring, addictive outlet… until one disastrous error forever alters the paths of everyone involved.
JJ Strong’s writing has appeared in Fifth Wednesday, the Santa Monica Review (Fall 2010 and Spring 2012) and LA Weekly. His plays have been produced throughout the country, including in Los Angeles, San Diego, St. Louis, and New York. He currently teaches in the undergraduate writing program at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and son.
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MISA SUGIURA :: IT’S NOT LIKE IT’S A SECRET
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/HarperTeen :: Spring 2017
When not-yet-out-of-the-closet Sana Kiyohara moves from suburban Milwaukee to the Silicon Valley, she makes new friends, learns to embrace being “openly Asian,” and falls for a beautiful Latina classmate. As she makes her way through a tangle of feelings, beliefs, dreams and disappointments—some secret and some not so much—she finds herself constantly tripped up by her parents’ old-fashioned Japanese values—which help them to hide secrets of their own.
Misa Sugiura’s ancestors include a samurai, a stowaway, a poet, and a priestess. After college, Misa lived in Japan, where she fell in love with skiing, sumo, and karaoke. She went on to teach high school English in Santa Clara, California. Her imaginary boyfriends are Tom Hiddleston, Malcolm Gladwell, and Billy Collins; her imaginary girlfriends are Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, and Barbara Kingsolver; her guilty pleasures are Reuben sandwiches, fluffy rom-coms, and boy band music.
SUSAN TAN :: CILLA LEE-JENKINS: FUTURE AUTHOR EXTRAORDINAIRE
MG Contemporary
MacMillan/Roaring Brook :: Spring 2017
Cilla follows the “memoirs” of a surely-soon-to-be renowned nine-year-old girl, exploring her mixed Chinese and American heritage, school, birthdays, time-traveling theories, and the impending birth of a new sibling.
Susan Tan has lived many places in her life, but calls Concord, Massachusetts home. She grew up in a mixed-race family, and like, Cilla, was bald until the age of five. She earned degrees from Williams College and the University of Cambridge, where she studied children’s literature. She currently lives in Somerville, enjoys frequent trips to Chinatown to eat tzuck sang, and teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
NANCY TANDON :: SAY MY NAME
MG CONTEMPORARY
Little Pickle Press/Big Dill Stories :: Fall 2017
Not being able to say his own name is 12-year-old Rory’s biggest problem, until his used-to-be best friend Brent betrays him by sharing a humiliating secret. Before the boys can reconcile, Brent sustains a life-changing brain injury. Now Rory must decide which is worse: being the target of bullying, or becoming one himself.
Nancy Tandon is a children’s book author who loves sharing and reading all kinds of stories. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two children, and a small dog who thinks she’s a barnacle. Nancy has worked as an elementary school teacher, a speech-language pathologist, and an adjunct professor of Phonetics and Child Language Development. So far, writing is her favorite!
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MARY TARANTA :: SHIMMER AND BURN
YA Fantasy
Simon & Schuster/Margaret K. McElderry Books :: Summer 2017
Set in a world where magic is poisoned and using it can be torturous — or dangerously addictive — Faris is tricked into a plot to overthrow a tyrannical king and must find her own power to survive.
Born the youngest save one in a family of ten, Mary Taranta grew up in rural Ohio but moved to Central Florida kicking and screaming at the age of fifteen. It turned out all right in the end and she’s still there, now with her husband, two cats, and library cards in two counties.
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WHITNEY TAYLOR :: DEFINITIONS OF INDEFINABLE THINGS
YA Contemporary
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers :: Spring 2017
A heartbreaking and humorous novel about three teens in a small town whose lives intersect in ways they never expected, teaching them that there are no one-size-fits-all definitions of depression, friendship, and love.
Whitney Taylor is a YA writer that only speaks one language—fangirl. When she’s not devouring books, she spends her time taking selfies, obsessing over any TV show with a love triangle, and eating way too much McDonald’s. She’s an English and Psychology major from Virginia that likes to pretend she’s a supermodel from New York City. Her friends call her The Queen and she has a monogrammed robe to prove it. Bow down.
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ELLIE TERRY :: FORGET ME NOT
MG Contemporary Verse
Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan :: Spring 2017
Twelve-year-old Calliope June struggles to keep her Tourette syndrome a secret as she starts at a new school, while trying to convince her mother not to move them yet again, especially when she becomes friends with Jinsong–the boy next door who also happens to be the school’s popular Student Body President.
Ellie Terry was born in a state of misery. Not really. She was born in the state of Missouri. She grew up in South Dakota, Arizona, and Nevada, the second oldest of eight children (so she had plenty of experience changing diapers and reading bedtime stories). She now lives in the desert of Southern Utah with her husband and three creative kiddos. In her free time, she teaches baton twirling lessons and sews dresses for little girls.
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BLAIR THORNBURGH :: WHO’S THAT GIRL
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins Children’s :: Spring 2017
In the midst of trying to take over her school’s winter formal with her friends, Nattie McCullough-Schwartz gets her already weird life turned upside down when she finds herself the subject of the #3 indie rock song in the country.
Blair Thornburgh writes books for and about smart teenagers. A graduate of the University of Chicago and a student in Hamline University’s MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults, she lives in Philadelphia.
JENNIFER TORRES :: STEF SOTO, TACO QUEEN
MG Contemporary
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers :: January 2017
Seventh grader Estefania “Stef” Soto is itching to shake off the onion-and-cilantro embrace of Tia Perla, her family’s taco truck. She wants nothing more than for her dad to get a normal job and for Tía Perla to be put out to pasture. But just when it looks like Stef is going to get exactly what she wants, she will have to become the truck’s unlikely champion.
Jennifer Torres is the author of FINDING THE MUSIC/EN POS DE LA MÚSICA, a bilingual picture book published in spring 2015 by Children’s Book Press/Lee & Low Books. STEF SOTO, TACO QUEEN, her debut novel for middle grades, will be published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in January 2017. She works as a freelance journalist and as coordinator of an early literacy outreach initiative for University of the Pacific. Previously, Jennifer was a reporter for The Record newspaper, covering education, demographics, children and families. Originally from Southern California, she now lives in Stockton with her husband, David Siders, and daughters, Alice and Soledad.
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KES TRESTER :: A DANGEROUS YEAR
YA Contemporary
Curiosity Quills :: April 24, 2017
Seventeen-year-old Riley Collins has grown up in some of the world’s most dangerous cities, learning political strategies from her ambassador dad and defensive skills from his security chief. The only thing it didn’t prepare her for was life as an American teenager when she finds herself at an elite Connecticut boarding school charged with watching over a billionaire’s daughter with a target on her back.
Kes Trester has been in the entertainment business her entire life. Determined to combine her love of reading and writing with the excitement of Hollywood, she became a film development executive. She worked on a variety of independent films, from gritty dramas to hot vampire love stories (long before Twilight!) to teens-in-peril genre movies. As head of production for ZOO Films, she supervised the budgeting and production of national television commercials and award-winning music videos for artists such as Radiohead, Coldplay, and OKGO. She lives in Los Angeles with one very understanding husband, two busy YA’s, and three rescue dogs happy to snore under her desk as she writes.
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KATY UPPERMAN :: KISSING MAX HOLDEN
YA Contemporary
Macmillan/Swoon Reads :: August 2017
Seventeen-year-old aspiring pastry chef Jillian Eldridge is drawn to her neighbor, Max Holden, like sugar to butter. When Jill receives a late night visit from bad-boy Max, the result is an impulsive but sizzling kiss that leads to all sorts of trouble.
Katy Upperman is a graduate of Washington State University, a former elementary school teacher, and an insatiable reader. When not writing for young adults, Katy can be found whipping up batches of chocolate chip cookies or exploring the country with her husband and daughter. KISSING MAX HOLDEN is her debut novel.
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KIM VENTRELLA :: SKELETON TREE
MG
Scholastic :: Fall 2017
There are a lot of things that grow in backyards. Bones aren’t one of them.
SKELETON TREE is the story of a boy who finds beauty – and possibly a friend – in death with the help of an unusual tree growing in his backyard.
Kim Ventrella is the author of the middle grade novel, SKELETON TREE (Scholastic 2017). When she’s not writing, you might find her working as a children’s librarian or fighting crime with her dog/superhero sidekick, Hera. She is a fan of whimsy, magic and weird stories of all kinds. She is represented by Brianne Johnson at Writers House and Mary Pender at United Talent Agency.
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CECILIA VINESSE :: SEVEN DAYS OF YOU
YA Contemporary
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers :: March 7, 2017
Sophia has seven days left in Tokyo before she moves back to the States. Seven days to say good-bye to the electric city, her wild best friend, and the boy she’s crushed on for years. Seven perfect days….Until Jamie moves back and ruins everything. Jamie and Sophia have a history of heartbreak, but as the week counts down, Sophia realizes she may have misjudged him. Can their seven days together end in anything but good-bye?
Cecilia Vinesse was born in France but grew up between Tokyo, Japan and Greenville, South Carolina. Her obsession with Nora Ephron movies led her to New York City to attend Barnard College and then to live in New York for three years afterward, working in children’s book marketing and living in an apartment furnished mostly by stacks of novels. Now she’s in a small Edwardian house in England where she splits her time holding late-night writing sessions, daydreaming in libraries, and having Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathons with her girlfriend Rachel and a pup named Malfi. She writes books about teenagers who wander around cities and fall in love and eat really delicious food.
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CORRIE WANG :: THE TAKEDOWN
YA Speculative
Disney/FreeForm Books :: April 11, 2017
Set in near-future Brooklyn, where privacy is a bygone luxury and every perfect profile masks damning secrets, The Takedown is a stylish, propulsive, and provocative whodunit, asking what would you rely on if your tech turned against you?
Corrie Wang lives with Shuai Wang and their dog, Moose, in Charleston, South Carolina. Their food truck, Short Grain, was named one of the top 50 best new restaurants in the U.S. by Bon Appetit magazine. Prior to Short Grain, one of Corrie’s last paying gigs was running a three story night club on the Lower East Side of NYC.
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KATE WATSON :: SEEKING MANSFIELD
YA Contemporary
Jolly Fish Press :: Spring 2017
In SEEKING MANSFIELD, a contemporary retelling of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Finley Price’s efforts to step out of the shadows and join the prestigious Mansfield Theater capture the attention of infuriating Hollywood It-Boy…instead of her adorable best friend.
Like every little girl, Kate Watson dreamed of studying philosophy in college and being a director at a private university one day. Then she grew up, became a wife and mother, and realized she should do the responsible thing and write for a living.
The tenth of thirteen children, she grew up in a village in Alberta, Canada and now lives in Arizona with her adorable husband and two children. She loves travel, experiencing new cultures, indie music, reading, and being a nerd.
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KATHERINE WEBBER :: THE HEARTBEATS OF WING JONES
YA Contemporary
Random House/Delacorte :: March 14, 2017
The Heartbeats of Wing Jones, set in the run-up to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, is about a girl called Wing who, having one grandmother from China and another from Ghana, often feels caught between worlds. But when tragedy strikes, Wing discovers a talent for running she never knew she had.
Katherine Webber is originally from California but has lived in Hong Kong, Hawaii, and Atlanta. She currently lives in London with her husband. She loves an adventure, whether it is found in a book or in real life. She has climbed the Great Wall of China, ridden camels in the Sahara Desert, camped in the Serengeti, visited sacred temples in Bhutan, trekked to Machu Picchu, and eaten her way through Italy. Travel, books, and eating out are her favourite indulgences.
Katherine studied Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis and Chinese literature and language at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has worked at an international translation company, a technology startup, and most recently, a London based reading charity. Wing Jones is her first novel.
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J.C. WELKER :: THE WISHING HEART
YA Fantasy
Entangled Teen :: Spring, 2017
J.C. Welker’s debut novel, The Wishing Heart is a unique new f/f fantasy about an unloved girl looking for it through stories and magic. A daring heist leads a seventeen-year-old girl into a deadly world of magicians, fantastical beings, and myths come true.
J.C. Welker is a YA author who’s been, among other things, a fashion designer, a filmmaker and a kickboxer (seriously). Her short documentaries which focused on LGBTQ+ issues in the military have been featured on CURRENT TV, and her debut novel THE WISHING HEART won first place in the paranormal category of the 2016 YARWA Rosemary Awards. She continues to work towards giving a voice to LGBTQ stories, while facing magic and monsters along the way.
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E.S. WESLEY :: THE OUTS
YA Sci-Fi
Curiosity Quills :: January, 2017
When global, memory-stealing blackouts turn a seventeen-year-old honor student into an accidental kidnapper with a sadistic voice in his head, it’s up to the weird comic book fangirl with a language disability to save him before the little girl he stole unravels everyone’s future.
E.S. Wesley is an author and advocate for the safety and mental health of young people. A long-time mentor and counselor, Wesley has worked for years to protect, encourage, and empower young adults to navigate a life that rarely makes sense. He believes all people are just waiting for someone to relate to their stories, so he makes up stories in the hope that someone will read and find a home there.His stories are often strange and twisty.
Wesley lives with his wife in Texas, where he’s always writing. Texas has a lot of things that he likes, but Shelly is the best of them. Second best is his son, who introduced him to his wife. Sometimes we do things out of order—that just makes life more interesting.
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KRISTI WIENTGE :: KARMA KHULLAR’S MUSTACHE
MG Contemporary
Simon & Schuster/ BFYR :: Summer 2017
KARMA KHULLAR’S MUSTACHE tells the story of a biracial Indian-American girl who must navigate big changes in her friendships and family life as she starts sixth grade, all while trying to rid herself of an unexpected problem: 17 hairs that have sprouted on her upper lip.
Kristi Wientge is originally from Ohio where she grew up writing stories about animals and, her favorite, a jet-setting mouse. After studying to become a teacher for children with special needs, she spent several years exploring the world from China to England, teaching her students everything from English to how to flip their eyelids inside out before finally calling Singapore home. Now, all her adventures revolve around her four children and within the contemporary MG books she writes.
GARETH WRONSKI :: HOLLY FARB AND THE PRINCESS OF THE GALAXY
MG Sci-Fi
Simon & Schuster/Aladdin :: Summer 2017
When Holly Farb is kidnapped by alien space pirates who mistake her for the missing princess of a far-away galaxy, she must join with her eccentric science teacher and a mysterious new student to escape the pirates, locate the princess, and find her way back to Earth.
Gareth Wronski was born and raised in Toronto. He now lives in an old house by the Avon River in Stratford, Ontario, where he lives in constant terror of roaming swans.
IBI ZOBOI :: AMERICAN STREET
YA Contemporary
HarperCollins/Balzer+Bray :: Winter 2017
Infused with magical realism, AMERICAN STREET is a coming-of-age story that follows a Haitian immigrant girl thrust into the world of Detroit’s west side; as Fabiola struggles to get her mother out of a U.S. detention center she’s forced to confront the true meaning of family and home, even as she falls in love.
Ibi Zoboi was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and emigrated to the U.S. when she was four years old. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she was a recipient of the Norma Fox Mazer Award. Her award-winning and Pushcart-nominated writing has been published in Haiti Noir, the Caribbean Writer, The New York Times Book Review, the Horn Book Magazine, and The Rumpus, among others. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their three children. American Street is her first novel.
the swanky seventeens 
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