New Releases

I have been looking forward to reading The Last Tiger for a long time and I’m excited to see it and several others out in the world for all of us to enjoy. Are any of these on your TBR?

Book cover of Mastery of Monsters features a light brown bird with its wings stretched out and being held by the silver tip of an arrow on each wing. The bird is red around the beak and is facing to the right. The background is green with shadows like evergreens that are distorted curving around the bird.A Mastery of Monsters (Mastery of Monsters #1) by Liselle Sambury
Margaret K. McElderry Books

When August’s brother disappears before his sophomore semester, everyone thinks the stress of college got to him. But August knows her brother would never have left her voluntarily, especially not after their mother so recently went missing.

The only clue he left behind was a note telling her to stay safe and protect their remaining family. And after August is attacked by a ten-foot-tall creature with fur and claws, she realizes that her brother might be in more danger than she could have imagined.

Unfortunately for her, the only person with a connection to the mysterious creature is the bookish Virgil Hawthorne…and he knows about them because he is one. If he doesn’t find a partner to help control his true nature, he’ll lose his humanity and become a mindless beast—exactly what the secret society he’s grown up in would love to put down.

Virgil makes a proposition: August will join his society and partner with him, and in return, he’ll help her find her brother. And so August is plunged into a deadly competition to win one of the few coveted candidate spots, all while trying to accept a frightening reality: that monsters are real, and she has to learn to master them if she’s to have any hope of saving her brother.

Cover of the book Bones at the crossroads features a young Black man with his fingers resting lightly on either side of his head. There is a red haze in front of him and behind him that has faces in it above his shoulders. He is outside and it is night time. There are red dots floating around the trees and grass.Bones at the Crossroads (Blood at the Root #2) by LaDarrion Williams
Labyrinth Road

It’s Homecoming season at Caiman University, and all 17-year-old Malik Baron wants to do is be a regular college student…or as regular as he can get at a magical HBCU for young, Black Conjurers. He’s ready to go to parties, hang out with his new friends, choose a major, and talk to girls. Instead, he’s reeling from a summer of revelations, heartbreak and betrayal, and still uncovering the truth about his powers and his legacy.

The family he only just discovered is already fractured beyond repair, and a new relative who shows up on his doorstep brings even more questions. Then there’s the mother he risked everything to find, who might be the biggest threat to the life he’s trying to build. To protect his new community, Malik joins an elite secret society with roots in ancient magic.

His journey takes him even deeper into his own heritage and the history of the magical world, while bringing him closer to a classmate whose friendship might mean something more, if Malik is ready to let her in. But how can he use powers he can’t even control to defend a world he’s not sure will ever fully accept him? And as the pressure and danger builds, will he be able to confront the deepening cracks within the magical society, and those building within himself?

The book cover of The Last Tiger centers a young Korean woman with long dark brown hair. She has a golden eye on the left and a brown eye on the right. There is a blue somewhat translucent dragon to the right of her. To the left is a blue tiger. She is wearing a white hanbok. There are swirling clouds and flowers around her. She is staring straight ahead with focus.The Last Tiger by Julia Riew & Brad Riew
Kokila

In a colonized land where tigers are being hunted to extinction and ancient magic stirs, two star-crossed teens—Lee Seung, a servant yearning for freedom, and Choi Eunji, a noble girl defying tradition—join forces to try and reshape their respective fates.

But their relationship evolves from begrudging accomplices to bitter adversaries as they soon find themselves on opposite sides of a battle over the last tiger, a symbol of their people’s lost freedom and key to the liberation of their country. As the ties between Seung and Eunji are complicated by their conflicting loyalties, tensions rise—especially when a charming princeling of the empire begins to rival for Eunji’s affection.

In this friends-to-enemies-to-lovers story of forbidden romance, antagonists turned allies, oppression and liberation, neither Seung nor Eunji can abandon their mission—or each other. And as they embark on separate quests to find the elusive creature, each must also find the power within themselves to make their own destiny.

Illustrated cover for Immortal Consequences. An hourglass has been made out of what look like branches or brown vines, with flowers emerging around the edges. The top half of the hourglass is red, with an upside down, leafless tree inside it. The bottom half has a right side up tree, with leaves on all its branches, glowing softly white.Immortal Consequences by I. V. Marie
Delacorte Press

Six students compete to change their fate at a darkly enchanted boarding school in purgatory where graduation is the only escape—and love can cross the boundaries between life and death.

Welcome to Blackwood Academy: the legendary school located on the fringes of the afterlife. Once a pupil enters the academy’s arched gates, there is no way out…except the Decennial, a cut-throat magical competition with only one victor.

This year, six of the Academy’s top students have been chosen to face the Decennial’s tests. Two academic archrivals, whose strange connection blurs the lines between obsession and hate. One girl driven solely by ambition, and another plagued by memories of the love she lost. And a charming playboy who never cared for anyone—until he met the academy’s newest student. But what none of them know? They aren’t the only ones playing Blackwood’s game.

Who will win, and who will fall? Only one thing is for certain: in this game, some fates are worse than death.