New Releases

New Releases

Posted onAuthorAudrey
Collage of the covers for Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot, A Constellation of Minor Bears, and Flamboyants. All are described in more detail in the post.

We’ve got six new releases on our radar this week! Which ones do you want to check out?

Illustrated cover for Aisle Nine. A tentacled, purple-pink lump of flesh drips purple blood through the bottom of a silver and blue shopping cart. Yellow and black caution tape is strewn across the shopping cart, and a scalloped blue sticker proclaims that the apocalypse is on sale.Aisle Nine by Ian X. Cho
HarperCollins

It’s Black Friday—and the apocalypse is on sale!

Ever since the world filled with portals to hell and bloodthirsty demons started popping out on the reg, Jasper’s life has gotten worse and worse. A teenage nobody with no friends or family, he is plagued by the life he can’t remember and the person he’s sure he’s supposed to be.

Jasper spends his days working as a checkout clerk at the Here for You discount mart, where a hell portal in aisle nine means danger every shift. But at least at the mart he can be near his crush, Kyle Kuan, a junior member of the monster-fighting Vanguard, though Kyle really seems to hate Jasper for reasons he doesn’t remember or understand.

But when Jasper and Kyle learn they both share a frightening vision of the impending apocalypse, they’re forced to team up and uncover the uncomfortable truth about the hell portals and the demons that haunt the world. Because the true monsters are not always what they seem, the past is not always what we wish, and like it or not, on Black Friday, all hell will break loose starting in aisle nine. Perfect for fans of Grasshopper Jungle or The Last of Us comes Aisle Nine, the debut young adult novel from rising YA star Ian X. Cho.

Illustrated cover of A Constellation of Minor Bears. Four teenagers are gathered around a lantern, looking relaxed. They're all sitting in front of a green tent, and behind them you can see the silhouettes of trees, some hills/cliffs, and the last light of the setting sun. The stars have just started to come out.A Constellation of Minor Bears by Jen Ferguson
Heartdrum

Award-winning author Jen Ferguson has written a powerful story about teens grappling with balancing resentment with enduring friendship—and how to move forward with a life that’s not what they’d imagined.

Before that awful Saturday, Molly used to be inseparable from her brother, Hank, and his best friend, Tray. The indoor climbing accident that left Hank with a traumatic brain injury filled Molly with anger.

While she knows the accident wasn’t Tray’s fault, she will never forgive him for being there and failing to stop the damage. But she can’t forgive herself for not being there either.

Determined to go on the trio’s post-graduation hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, even without Hank, Molly packs her bag. But when her parents put Tray in charge of looking out for her, she is stuck backpacking with the person who incites her easy anger.

Despite all her planning, the trail she’ll walk has a few more twists and turns ahead. . . .

Illustrated cover for Faeries Never Lie: Tales to Revel In. A six-winged dragonfly dominates this cover. It's body is various shades of pink and purple, and its blue wings are covered in multicolored human-looking eyes. Faeries Never Lie: Tales to Revel In edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker
Feiwel & Friends

Faeries Never Lie, the next young adult collection in the Untold Legends series edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker, is filled with fourteen short stories to revel in, that center faeries of varying genders and cultures!

There’s something to be said for starting your first day in faerie boarding school, for chasing a faerie through Chang’an during the Tang Dynasty, for searching for the missing part of your throuple who may have run away with a faerie prince, for descending into madness after spending countless nights plagued by the same faerie dream—and much more.

Fly into this revelry filled with tricksters, lovers, monsters, and the like, in this exciting collection for those who love faeries and those who are experiencing them for the first time!

Edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker, Faeries Never Lie features short stories from beloved authors Nafiza Azad, Holly Black, Dhonielle Clayton, Christine Day, Chloe Gong, Tessa Gratton, Kwame Mbalia, Ryan La Sala, L.L. McKinney, Anna-Marie McLemore, Kaitlyn Sage Patterson, Rory Power.

Painted cover of Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known. The cover features a Black person dressed up with an elaborate boa around their shoulders. Their hair is done up, and they're wearing what looks like an elaborate flower and jewel headdress. They've got one hand up to touch their headdress as they smile over their shoulder. In the background are a pair of people who look like they are posing for a picture.Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known written by George M. Johnson & illustrated by Charly Palmer
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

From the New York Times–bestselling author of All Boys Aren’t Blue comes an empowering set of essays about Black and Queer icons from the Harlem Renaissance.

In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson celebrates writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history. Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer – and whose stories deserve to be celebrated in their entirety.

Interspersed with personal narrative, powerful poetry, and illustrations by award-winning illustrator Charly Palmer, Flamboyants looks to the past for understanding as to how Black and Queer culture has defined the present and will continue to impact the future. With candid prose and an unflinching lens towards truth and hope, George M. Johnson brings young adult readers an inspiring collection of biographies that will encourage teens today to be unabashed in their layered identities.

Illustrated cover of The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette's. At the center of this black-and-white cover is an open mouth, clearly screaming. White bandages or ribbons stream out from the mouth chaotically, like they've been blasted by the force of the person's scream. The title is written in all caps, in bright pink paint, across the cover so it centers the screaming mouth.The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette’s by Hanna Alkaf
Salaam Reads / Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

For over a hundred years, girls have fought to attend St. Bernadette’s, with its reputation for shaping only the best and brightest young women.

Unfortunately, there is also the screaming.

When a student begins to scream in the middle of class, a chain reaction starts that impacts the entire school. By the end of the day, seventeen girls are affected—along with St. Bernadette’s stellar reputation.

Khadijah’s got her own scars to tend to, and watching her friends succumb to hysteria only rips apart wounds she’d rather keep closed. But when her sister falls to the screams, Khad knows she’s the only one who can save her.

Rachel has always been far too occupied trying to reconcile her overbearing mother’s expectations with her own secret ambitions to pay attention to school antics. But just as Rachel finds her voice, it turns into screams.

Together, the two girls find themselves digging deeper into the school’s dark history, hunting for the truth. Little do they know that a specter lurks in the darkness, watching, waiting, and hungry for its next victim…

Illustrated cover of Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot. An Indian American teenage girl stands in between boys. She is leaning against and looking a little adoring up at a taller boy who has his back to her as he leans against her shoulder. She is absently fist-bumping the boy on her other side, who looks a little dubious at the two of them but nonetheless returns the fist-bump. There is a bank of purple school lockers behind the three of them, and the title at the bottom is wreathed by pink flowers. Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot by Preeti Chhibber
Kokila

This laugh-out-loud debut romance introduces perfectly imperfect Payal Mehta, whose plan to get her long-time crush to finally notice her is destined for success, but only if she ignores her budding feelings for her archnemesis…

Payal Mehta has had a crush on popular, athletic, all-around perfect Jonathan Slate ever since he smiled at her in freshman–year Spanish class. At a party during spring break of her junior year, Payal finally works up the courage to ask Jon to hang out. However, her romantic plans are derailed when he vomits on her Keds. Twice. But when Jon offers to take her out to lunch as an apology, Payal is convinced this is the start of their love story.

Over chalupas and burritos at Taco Bell, Payal’s best jokes are landing as planned. Jon is basically choking on his Coke—and then it happens. “Do you have a boyfriend?” Payal is (finally) about to get the guy. And then he tries to set her up with his Indian friend. Payal’s best friends, Neil Patel and Divya Bhatt, are just as mad about the microaggression as Payal is, but they think she’s a little too hung up on him.

Determined to teach Jon a lesson by making him fall for her, Payal ropes in her archnemesis, Philip Kim, to help by ceding creative control over their psych project. It’s the perfect plan. Minus Philip’s snarky, annoying quips and lack of faith in its success. But as Payal lies to the people she loves, hides the too-Indian parts of herself in front of her crush, and learns that maybe Philip isn’t the worst, she starts to wonder if what she’s been looking for has been scowling at her all along…