New Releases

New Releases

Posted onAuthorK. Imani Tennyson

A whole bunch of new books out today from a variety of genres and a little something for everybody. I’m looking forward to reading, The Eternal Ones, the conclusion of Namina Forna’s Deathless trilogy and a I always love Renee Watson’s work so I’m excited to read her book of poetry that I can share with my students. Read on to check out this week’s new books.

Illustrated cover for This Is How You Fall In Love. Four teenagers wearing headphones are at a crowded party with pink, blue and purple lights shining down from the ceiling. There is an indistinct, silhouetted crowd behind them. The two Desi teens in the middle are holding hands and look like they're dancing together. The girl has long black hair and is wearing a black shirt, skirt, tights, and boots. The boy is wearing a light blue button down, black slacks, and shoes. A boy wearing a hoodie and jeans is standing off to the side watching them, while a blonde girl in a white shirt and blue pants glances at them all as she walks away.This is How You Fall in Love by Anika Hussain
Bloomsbury YA

Zara and Adnan are just friends. Always have been, always will be. Even if they have to pretend to be girlfriend and boyfriend…

Zara loves love in all forms: 90s romcoms and romance novels and grand sweeping gestures. And she’s desperate to have her own great love story. Crucially, a real one. So when her best friend Adnan begs her to pretend to date him to cover up his new top-secret relationship, Zara is hesitant. This isn’t the kind of thing she had in mind. But there’s something in it for Zara too: making her parents, who love Adnan, happy might just stop them arguing for a while. She may not be getting her own love story, but she could save theirs.

So Zara agrees and the act begins: after all, how different can pretending to be in a relationship with your best friend be to just hanging around with them like usual? Turns out, a lot. With fake dating comes fake hand-holding and fake kissing and real feelings… And when a new boy turns up in Zara’s life, things get more confusing than ever.

The course of true love never did run smooth, but Zara’s love story is messier than most…

Illustrated cover for The Eternal Ones. A Black teenage girl is shown from the bust up, and she is turned slightly to look at the viewer. Her black hair is done elaborately in many small braids and threaded through with a golden crown and jewelry. She appears to be wearing some kind of gold and black armor with a shoulder cape. There is a gold pattern on the left side of her face from her jaw up to her cheekbone.The Eternal Ones (Deathless #3) by Namina Forna
Delacorte Press

Mere weeks after confronting the Gilded Ones—the false beings she once believed to be her family—Deka is on the hunt. In order to kill the gods, whose ravenous competition for power is bleeding Otera dry, she must uncover the source of her divinity. But with her mortal body on the verge of ruin, Deka is running out of time—to save herself and an empire that’s tearing itself apart at its seams.

When Deka’s search leads her and her friends to the edge of the world as they know it, they discover an astonishing new realm, one which holds the key to Deka’s past. Yet it also illuminates a devastating decision she must soon make…

Choose to be reborn as a god, losing everyone she loves in the process. Or bring about the end of the world.

Illustrated cover for The Boyfriend Wish. An Indian American girl lounges on a yellow sofa. She is wearing a white sweater and black pants. She has an open book in her lap while she looks at a white flower. Her phone is near her elbow, and there are a stack of books and a coffee mug on the floor below her bare feet. There are trees in blue pots on either side of the couch and a color run hung on the wall behind everything.The Boyfriend Wish by Swati Teerdhala
Katherine Tegen Books

Deepa’s a hopeless romantic. And even though Deepa’s checklist for the perfect boyfriend is a mile long, her mom and dad’s fairy-tale love story makes her feel like romantic success ought to be a family trait. It’s why when her grandmother gives her a jasmine flower with the promise that it will fulfill her heart’s greatest desire, and then a new boy moves in across the street, Deepa knows—he must be her wish come true.

Rohit checks off every box on Deepa’s timelessly handsome, a thoughtful listener, and a romantic who knows his flowers. Deepa’s next-door neighbor (and constant tormentor) Vik also surprisingly approves, though she knows it shouldn’t be a mark against Rohit.

Is it luck or is it magic? Deepa doesn’t want to take chances, so when her grandmother warns her that the wish is only permanent if she seals it with a kiss, she knows she needs to move quickly. Rohit is the right boy in every way, so then why does Deepa not feel like he might not be the right choice?

Illustrated cover for A Suffragist's Guide to the Antarctic. A teenage girl is shown from the elbows up. She has pale skin and brown hair that is mostly hidden by a green cold-weather hat. She is wearing a striped green, purple, and white scarf and a pink jacket. It appears to be snowing around her, and superimposed beneath her is a view of Antarctic mountains and snow, with an early 20th century ship that appears to have run aground.A Suffragist’s Guide to the Antarctic by Yi Shun Lai
Atheneum Books for Young Readers

November 1914.

Clara Ketterling-Dunbar is one of twenty-eight crew members of The Resolute —a ship meant for an Antarctic expedition now marooned on ice one hundred miles from the shore of the continent. An eighteen-year-old American, Clara has told the crew she’s a twenty-one-year-old Canadian. Since the war broke out, sentiment toward Americans has not been the most favorable, and Clara will be underestimated enough simply for being a woman without also giving away just how young she is. Two members of the crew know her nationality, but no one knows the truth of her activities in England before The Resolute set sail.

She and her suffragist sisters in the Women’s Social & Political Union were waging war of a different kind in London. They taught Clara to fight. And now, even marooned on the ice, she won’t stop fighting for women’s rights…or for survival. In the wilderness of Antarctica, Clara is determined to demonstrate what a woman is truly capable of—if the crew will let her.

Illustrated cover for Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear. A teenage boy and girl stand at the bottom corners of the cover. They are turned toward each other, all in white, and appear to either be about to draw the swords beneath them or reaching toward each other. Green vines and leaves bracket the edges of the cover, and a skull is on one side and a cat on the other. A pair of skeletal hands cling to telephone poles, and above is a crescent moon.Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear by Robin Wasley
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

A painfully average teen’s life is upended by a magical apocalypse in this darkly atmospheric and sweepingly romantic novel perfect for fans of The Raven Boys , Buffy the Vampire Slayer , and The Rest of Us Just Live Here .

High school is hard enough to survive without an apocalypse to navigate.

Sid Spencer has always been the most normal girl in her abnormal hometown, a tourist trap built over one of the fault lines that seal magic away from the world. Meanwhile, all Sid has to deal with is hair-ruining humidity, painful awkwardness, being one of four Asians in town, and her friends dumping her when they start dating each other—just days after one of the most humiliating romantic rejections faced by anyone, ever, in all of history.

Then someone kills one of the Guardians who protect the seal. The earth rips open and unleashes the magic trapped inside. Monsters crawl from the ground, no one can enter or leave, and the man behind it all is roaming the streets with a gang of violent vigilantes. Suddenly, Sid’s life becomes a lot less ordinary. When she finds out her missing brother is involved, she joins the remaining Guardians, desperate to find him and close the fault line for good.

Fighting through hordes of living corpses and uncontrollable growths of forest, Sid and a ragtag crew of would-be heroes are the only thing standing between their town and the end of the world as they know it. Between magic, murderers, and burgeoning crushes, Sid must survive being a perfectly normal girl caught in a perfectly abnormal apocalypse.

Only—how can someone so ordinary make it in such an extraordinary world?

Illustrated cover for The Fox Maidens. A Korean teenage girl is shown from the shoulders up. She has her black hair in a center part and pulled back, and she is wearing a white jeogori. It is the night of a full moon, and in the branches of a tree behind her, you can see a white fox.The Fox Maidens by Robin Ha
Balzer + Bray

Kai Song dreams of being a warrior. She wants to follow in the footsteps of her beloved father, the commander of the Royal Legion. But while her father believes in Kai and trains her in martial arts, their society isn’t ready for a girl warrior.

Still, Kai is determined. But she is plagued by rumors that she is the granddaughter of Gumiho, the infamous nine-tailed fox demon who was killed by her father years before.

Everything comes crashing down the day Kai learns the deadly secret about her mother’s past. Now she must come to terms with the truth about her identity and take her destiny into her own hands. As Kai desperately searches for a way to escape her fate, she comes to find compassion, and even love, in the most unexpected places.

Set in 16th century Korea and richly infused with Korean folklore, The Fox Maidens is a timeless and powerful story about fighting for your place in the world, even when it seems impossible.

Illustrated cover for Call Me Iggy. A teenage boy with short black hair, a red hoodie, blue jeans, and a black backpack has one hand in his hoodie pocket and the other oh his head. He is glancing at the girl next to him and looks a little embarrassed or maybe fond. She has long brown hair, a light orange jacket, a light blue shirt, brown pans, and a green messenger bag. Behind them is a silhouetted scene from their school, and above them is the friendly ghost of the boy's grandfather.Call Me Iggy by Jorge Aguirre & Rafael Rosado
First Second

Ignacio “Iggy” Garcia is an Ohio-born Colombian American teen living his best life. After bumping into Marisol (and her coffee) at school, Iggy’s world is spun around. But Marisol as too much going on to be bothered with the likes of Iggy. She has school, work, family, and the uphill battle of getting her legal papers. As Iggy stresses over how to get Marisol to like him, his grandfather comes to the rescue. The thing is, not only is his abuelito dead, but he also gives terrible love advice. The worst. And so, with his ghost abuelito’s meddling, Iggy’s life begins to unravel as he sets off on a journey of self-discovery.

Call me Iggy tells the story of Iggy searching for his place in his family, his school, his community, and ultimately—as the political climate in America changes during the 2016 election— his country. Focusing on familial ties and budding love, Call me Iggy challenges our assumptions about Latino-American identity while reaffirming our belief in the hope that all young people represent. Perfect for lovers of multigenerational stories like Displacement and The Magic Fish.

Illustrated cover for Bunt! Striking Out on Financial Aid. A Black teenage girl is shown from the knees up. She has her hair in two short braids and has green bangs, glasses, a white and green t-shirt, blue jean shorts, a backpack stuffed with art supplies, and a messenger bag stuffed with textbooks.Bunt! Striking Out on Financial Aid by Ngozi Ukazu & Mad Rupert
First Second

Molly Bauer’s first year of college is not the picture-perfect piece of art she’d always envisioned. On day one at PICA, Molly discovers that—through some horrible twist of fate—her full-ride scholarship has vanished! But the ancient texts (PICA’s dusty financial aid documents) reveal a loophole. If Molly and 9 other art students win a single game of softball, they’ll receive a massive athletic scholarship. Can Molly’s crew of ragtag artists succeed in softball without dropping the ball?

The author of the New York Times best-selling Check, Please series, Ngozi Ukazu returns with debut artist Madeline Rupert to bring an energetic young adult story about authenticity, old vs. new, and college failure. It also poses the question: “Is art school worth it?”

Illustrated cover for Black Girl You Are Atlas. The cover looks like it has been pieced together from different colors and patterns of paper. The Black girl on the cover is shown from the shoulders up. She is looking directly at the viewer, and she has long black hair, blue eye shadow, pink lipstick, and large gold hoops. Her shirt is green, and there are some pink flowers in the bottom right corner.Black Girl You Are Atlas by Renée Watson & illustrated by Ekua Holmes
Kokila

A thoughtful celebration of Black girlhood by award-winning author and poet Renée Watson.

In this semi-autobiographical collection of poems, Renée Watson writes
about her experience growing up as a young Black girl at the intersections of race, class, and gender.

Using a variety of poetic forms, from haiku to free verse, Watson shares recollections of her childhood in Portland, tender odes to the Black women in her life, and urgent calls for Black girls to step into their power.

Black Girl You Are Atlas encourages young readers to embrace their future with a strong sense of sisterhood and celebration. With full-color art by celebrated fine artist Ekua Holmes throughout, this collection offers guidance and is a gift for anyone who reads it.