Fans of the Impossible Life, Kate Scelsa
Details: 368 pages | Expected publication: September 8th 2015 by Balzer + Bray | ISBN 0062331752 (ISBN13: 9780062331755)
Description: Mira is starting over at Saint Francis Prep. She promised her parents she would at least try to pretend that she could act like a functioning human this time, not a girl who can’t get out of bed for days on end, who only feels awake when she’s with Sebby. Jeremy is the painfully shy art nerd at Saint Francis who’s been in self-imposed isolation after an incident that ruined his last year of school. When he sees Sebby for the first time across the school lawn, it’s as if he’s been expecting this blond, lanky boy with mischief glinting in his eye. Sebby, Mira’s gay best friend, is a boy who seems to carry sunlight around with him. Even as life in his foster home starts to take its toll, Sebby and Mira together craft a world of magic rituals and impromptu road trips, designed to fix the broken parts of their lives. As Jeremy finds himself drawn into Sebby and Mira’s world, he begins to understand the secrets that they hide in order to protect themselves, to keep each other safe from those who don’t understand their quest to live for the impossible.
About the Author: Writer of books and plays and performing member of theater company Elevator Repair Service since 2002, Kate grew up in New Jersey, went to Sarah Lawrence College, and now lives in Brooklyn with her wife and two black cats. Current interests include: angsty singing ladies, interior revolutions and exterior adornments. Also – nostalgia as an art form. And – spiritual conspiracy theories.
The One Thing, Marci Lyn Curtis
Details: Expected publication: September 8th 2015 by Disney-Hyperion
Description: Maggie Sanders might be blind, but she won’t invite anyone to her pity party. Ever since losing her sight six months ago, Maggie’s rebellious streak has taken on a life of its own, culminating with an elaborate school prank. Maggie called it genius. The judge called it illegal. Now Maggie has a probation officer. But she isn’t interested in rehabilitation, not when she’s still mourning the loss of her professional-soccer dreams, and furious at her so-called friends, who lost interest in her as soon as she could no longer lead the team to victory. Then Maggie’s whole world is turned upside down. Somehow, incredibly, she can see again. But only one person: Ben, a precocious ten-year-old unlike anyone she’s ever met. Ben’s life isn’t easy, but he doesn’t see limits, only possibilities. After awhile, Maggie starts to realize that losing her sight doesn’t have to mean losing everything she dreamed of. Even if what she’s currently dreaming of is Mason Milton, the infuriatingly attractive lead singer of Maggie’s new favorite band, who just happens to be Ben’s brother. But when she learns the real reason she can see Ben, Maggie must find the courage to face a once-unimaginable future… before she loses everything she has grown to love.
About the Author: Marci Lyn Curtis grew up in Northern California, where she went to college and met an amazing guy in a military uniform. Two college-aged kids and one dachshund later, she lives in Maryland, where she laughs too loudly and eats peanut butter off spoons.
The Hired Girl, Laura Amy Schlitz
Details: 400 pages | Expected publication: September 8th 2015 by Candlewick Press | ISBN 076367818X (ISBN13: 9780763678180)
Description: Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself—because maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream of—a woman with a future. Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz relates Joan’s journey from the muck of the chicken coop to the comforts of a society household in Baltimore (Electricity! Carpet sweepers! Sending out the laundry!), taking readers on an exploration of feminism and housework; religion and literature; love and loyalty; cats, hats, and bunions.
About the Author: Laura Amy Schlitz is currently a librarian at the Park School in Baltimore, where she has worked since 1991. She is a winner of the 2008 John Newbery award for her book Good Masters, Sweet Ladies! Ms. Schlitz lives in the Loch Hill section of Baltimore County. She is single with no children. She has also been a playwright, a costumer, and an actress. As of January 2008, she had written eight or nine plays, which have been produced at Stage One in Louisville, Ky., Pumpkin Theatre in Baltimore, Md., and the Children’s Theatre Association, in Baltimore, Md.
Stand Off, Andrew Smith
Details: 448 pages | Expected publication: September 8th 2015 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers | ASIN B00TBKYKWO
About the Author: Andrew Smith is the author of Winger, The Marbury Lens, Passenger, Ghost Medicine, Stick, and In the Path of Falling Objects, as well as Grasshopper Jungle.
Drowning Is Inevitable, Shalanda Stanley
Details: 288 pages | Expected publication: September 8th 2015 by Knopf Books for Young Readers | ISBN 0553508296 (ISBN13: 9780553508291)
Description: Olivia has spent her whole life struggling to escape her dead mother’s shadow. But when her father can’t even look at her because Olivia reminds him of her mother, and her grandmother mistakenly calls her “Lillian,” shaking a reputation she didn’t ask for is next to impossible. Olivia is used to leaning on her best friend, Jamie; her handsome but hot-tempered boyfriend, Max; and their wild-child friend, Maggie, for the reality check that her small Louisiana town can’t provide. But when a terrible fight between Jamie and his father turns deadly, all Olivia can think to do is grab her friends and run. In a flash, Olivia, Jamie, Max, and Maggie become fugitives on the back roads of Louisiana. They’re headed to New Orleans, where they hope to find a solution to an unfixable problem. But with their faces displayed on all the news stations, their journey becomes a harrowing game of hide-and-seek from the police—and so-called allies, who just might be the real enemy.
True Dark, Gary Meehan
Details: 410 pages | Expected publication: September 8th 2015 by Quercus (first published May 26th 2015) | ISBN 162365615X (ISBN13: 9781623656157)
Description: With the help of her two companions–Eleanor, an eccentric aristocrat and skilled swordswoman, and Damon, a strong-willed charmer with a dark past–and armed just with her wits and determination, teenaged Megan now faces a world of danger with a newborn infant on her hip. The unstoppable witch army is growing in strength as it strives to seize absolute power, but a prophecy hints that their aims are connected to the fate of a child–Megan’s newborn daughter. Hordes of witches are closing in on the small group of adventurers, but they may have underestimated the lengths to which the newly empowered Megan will go to protect her child.
About the Author: Gary Meehan was born in Bolton, Lancashire, and was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Warwick. He lives in Derby with his son, where he works as a software engineer and on maintaining an air of bemused detachment. After a quarter century of writing he really should have come up with witty to put in his bio.
Wonders of the Invisible World, Christopher Barzak
Details: 352 pages | Expected publication: September 8th 2015 by Knopf Books for Young Readers | ISBN 0385392796 (ISBN13: 9780385392792)
Description: Aidan Lockwood feels like he’s been sleepwalking through life, each day as hazy and unremarkable as the one before it. But when his former best friend, Jarrod, suddenly moves back to town, the veil that has clouded Aidan’s mind begins to lift. Yet what Aidan discovers is that his world is haunted by stories of the past; stories that he has somehow been prevented from remembering. But visions from the past come to him unbidden, starting with an old apple tree—a gnarled, dead thing—that haunts Aidan’s sleep, and seems to beckon to him from across his family’s orchard. And then there are the dreams that show him people and places he’s only heard of in family stories: a great-grandfather on the field of battle; his own father, stumbling upon an unspeakable tragedy; and a mysterious young boy whose whispered words may be at the heart of the curse that now holds Aidan’s family in its grip. But there’s another presence lurking within this invisible world—someone who has been waiting to collect on a debt set into motion generations ago. As the lines between the past and the present, stories and truths, friends and lovers begin to blur, Aidan will be forced to spin a story of his own to protect those he loves, and keep the invisible world at bay.
About the Author: Christopher Barzak is the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award winning novel, One for Sorrow, which has been made into the Sundance feature film Jamie Marks is Dead. His second novel, The Love We Share Without Knowing, was a finalist for the Nebula and Tiptree Awards. He is also the author of two collections: Birds and Birthdays, a collection of surrealist fantasy stories, and Before and Afterlives, a collection of supernatural fantasies, which won the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection. He grew up in rural Ohio, has lived in a southern California beach town, the capital of Michigan, and has taught English outside of Tokyo, Japan, where he lived for two years. Currently he teaches fiction writing in the Northeast Ohio MFA program at Youngstown State University.
