Great new book recommendations for our Young at Heart Reader Types this Summer
For the Young at Heart reader type, we have put together a fascinating choice of books for the summer that will mesmerize you and take you into engaging worlds rich with wonder, adventure, and timeless teachings. Join us as we set out on a literary trip that celebrates the eternal youth of the soul and spans all ages.
september new releases
The Lies We Conjure
by Sarah Henning
A "Best of" Pick by Fangirlish
Knives Out meets The Inheritance Games with magic in this standalone supernatural thriller by Sarah Henning: thirteen witches, a locked-room murder, and two non-magical sisters trapped in a deadly whodunit.
Ruby and her sister, Wren, are normal, middle-class Colorado high school students working a summer job at the local Renaissance Fest to supplement their meager college savings.
So when an eccentric old lady asks them to impersonate her long-absent grandchildren at a fancy dinner party at the jaw-dropping rate of two grand--each--for a single night... Wren insists it's a no-brainer. Make some cash, have some fun, do a good deed.
Ruin Road
by Lamar Giles
"My twin, Lamar, is a phenomenal innovative storyteller... A true king!" -- Tiffany D. Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Grown and The Weight of Blood
Sometimes a little fear is a good thing…
Cade Webster lives between worlds. He's a standout football star at the right school but lives in the wrong neighborhood--if you let his classmates tell it. Everywhere but home, people are afraid of him for one reason or another. Afraid he's too big, too fast, too ambitious, too Black.
Desert Echoes
by Abdi Nazemian
From Abdi Nazemian, the award-winning author of Like a Love Story and Only This Beautiful Moment, comes a suspenseful contemporary YA novel about loss and love.
Fifteen-year-old Kam is head over heels for Ash, the boy who swept him off his feet. But his family and best friend, Bodie, are worried. Something seems off about Ash. He also has a habit of disappearing, at times for days. When Ash asks Kam to join him on a trip to Joshua Tree, the two of them walk off into the sunset . . . but only Kam returns.
Two years later, Kam is still left with a hole in his heart and too many unanswered questions. So it feels like fate when a school trip takes him back to Joshua Tree. On the trip, Kam wants to find closure about what happened to Ash but instead finds himself in danger of facing a similar fate. In the desert, Kam must reckon with the truth of his past relationship--and the possibility of opening himself up to love once again.
Desert Echoes is a propulsive, moving story about human resilience and connection.
Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote
by Michael Eric Dyson - Marc Favreau
Read about the electrifying and continuing fight for voting rights--and discover your place in it--in this dramatic exploration of American democracy, from renowned thought leader Michael Eric Dyson and widely celebrated author Marc Favreau.
One of the most important and least understood true stories of our nation, the fight for representation is an ongoing and epic quest to build the democracy sketched out in the Constitution but unfinished in the twenty-first century. With impeccable research and exhilarating prose, Represent tells the story of voting rights in the United States from the American Revolution up to the present day.
Each chapter takes on a new battle between the forces of people power and forces opposed to it. Readers will meet champions of freedom, including formerly enslaved revolutionaries, a Chinese American teenager, a Lakota Sioux activist, Black World War II veterans, a Mexican American student, and others who fought for their right to vote.
august new releases
My Salty Mary
by Cynthia Hand - Brodi Ashton - Jodi Meadows
Perfect for fans of The Princess Bride and A Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, New York Times bestselling authors Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows are back with a fantastical, romantical, and piratical historical fantasy remix that marries the story of The Little Mermaid with the life and times of infamous lady pirate Mary Read.
Mary is in love with the so-called prince of Charles Town, except he doesn't love her back. Which is inconvenient. Since she's a mermaid, being brokenhearted means she'll--poof!--turn into sea-foam.
But instead, Mary finds herself pulled out of the sea and up onto a pirate ship. To survive, she joins them. But Mary isn't willing to just sing the yo-ho-hos. She wants the pirate life, all of it, and she's ready to make a splash . . . by becoming captain. But when Blackbeard dies suddenly, Mary has a chance to become so much more: Pirate King . . . or Queen.
Maid and the Crocodile: A Novel in the World of Raybearer
by Jordan Ifueko
A romantic standalone fantasy set in the world of Raybearer, from New York Times bestselling author Jordan Ifueko
The smallest spark can bind two hearts . . . or start a revolution.
In the magic-soaked capital city of Oluwan, Small Sade needs a job--preferably as a maid, with employers who don't mind her unique appearance and unlucky foot. But before she can be hired, she accidentally binds herself to a powerful being known only as the Crocodile, a god rumored to devour pretty girls. Small Sade entrances the Crocodile with her secret: she is a Curse Eater, gifted with the ability to alter people's fates by cleaning their houses.
Mysterious Ways
by Wendy Wunder
From acclaimed author Wendy Wunder comes a sharp and hilarious coming-of-age novel for fans of John Green and Nicola Yoon about an omniscient teenage girl who must grapple with whether there's such a thing as knowing too much...
Seventeen-year-old Maya knows everything. When she looks at someone, she instantly knows their history, their private thoughts, their secret desires, their most tragic failures. Combine these private miseries with the general state of the world, and it's easy to see why Maya's power starts to get her down...
Which is why she was sent to the Whispering Pines Psychiatric Facility, and also why starting at a new school is going to be such a challenge. Now, faced with Tyler, a cute guy she actually wants to know everything about, Maya realizes that maybe her power isn't so horrible after all. Maybe she can use it for good. Maybe she can even get the guy. Or maybe there really is such a thing as knowing too much.
Death at Morning House
by Maureen Johnson
From the bestselling author of the Truly Devious books, Maureen Johnson, comes a new stand-alone YA about a teen who uncovers a mystery while working as a tour guide on an island and must solve it before history repeats itself.
The fire wasn't Marlowe Wexler's fault. Dates should be hot, but not hot enough to warrant literal firefighters. Akilah, the girl Marlowe has been in love with for years, will never go out with her again. No one dates an accidental arsonist.
With her house-sitting career up in flames, it seems the universe owes Marlowe a new summer job, and that's how she ends up at Morning House, a mansion built on an island in the 1920s and abandoned shortly thereafter. It's easy enough, giving tours. Low risk of fire. High chance of getting bored talking about stained glass and nut cutlets and Prohibition.
Oh, and the deaths. Did anyone mention the deaths?
JULY New Releases
Spellshop
by Sarah Beth Durst
An Indie Next pick!
A gorgeous hardcover edition featuring lavender sprayed edges! The Spellshop is Sarah Beth Durst's romantasy debut-a lush cottagecore tale full of stolen spellbooks, unexpected friendships, sweet jams, and even sweeter love.
Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz--a magically sentient spider plant--have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire's most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city's elite.
When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she'd see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy--and very handsome--neighbor who can't take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she's fed and to help fix up her new home.
Rise
by Freya Finch
The action and adventure of Percy Jackson meets the complex heroines of The Cruel Prince as a family of valkyries fight to stop Ragnarök.
For seventeen-year-old Bryn, being the youngest, messiest, most rebellious sister in a family of valkyries isn't easy. Especially considering home is a Renaissance faire in Chicago full of costumed workers who see her as nothing more than a nuisance. When her mother disappears on a mission for Odin, Bryn begins having strange visions about the impending Ragnarök. Bryn senses their mother is in great danger, but her annoyingly perfect older sisters refuse to take her seriously. Their mother is, after all, captain of the valkyries.
Not about a Boy
by Myah Hollis
Euphoria meets Girl in Pieces in this coming-of-age story of a girl trying to put a grief-stricken past behind her, only to be startled by the discovery of a long-lost sister who puts into question everything she thought she knew.
Amélie Coeur has never known what it truly means to be happy.
She thought she'd found happiness once, in a love that ended in tragedy and nearly sent her over the edge. Now, at seventeen, Mel is beginning to piece her life back together. Under the supervision of Laurelle Child Services, the exclusive foster care agency that raised her, Mel is sober and living with a new family among Manhattan's elite. It's her last chance at adoption before she ages out of the system, and she promised, this time, she'll try.