A Thief’s Guide to Stealing the Crown
YA Urban FantasyWhen Cara Hart’s father goes missing, the seventeen-year-old pickpocket learns she is now on the hook for the $250,000 debt he borrowed. The deadly Chicago mob boss doesn’t expect her to pay it back; he wants her to work it off. But Ivan’s crew is dangerous, and Cara works alone. Rather than risk outliving her usefulness in Ivan’s employ, Cara insists she’ll pay back the money before the deadline in three weeks.
Her impossible situation gets stranger when Cara sees a portal open, depositing four magical travelers in the middle of a dark alley.
Cara reluctantly agrees to help the strangers on their quest — the riches they promise as payment her only hope of repaying her father’s debt. The idea goes from Hail Mary to hopeless when it’s revealed that the person in possession of the magic crown they seek is the reclusive and enigmatic billionaire, Nes Branson.
Still her only option, Cara plans an impossible heist, only to learn the travelers — most specifically the stoic, honor-bound Guardian Tobias — are even less enthusiastic to receive her help than she is to give it.
Teaming up with travelers from a world where theft is considered the greatest possible offense, Cara has to navigate their morals, explain an unfamiliar world, and, most importantly, learn to trust a crew.
But as she plans the heist of a lifetime, Cara discovers the secrets they're hunting are tangled with her own, and the magic they seek might be the only thing that can save her from a fate she never knew to fear.
The Haunting of
Lainey Miller Does Not Believe in Ghosts
Contemporary YALainey would like nothing more than to spend the summer holed up in her mom’s childhood bedroom, quietly disassociating after having been hospitalized for a year due to a near-fatal accident. But the ghost of Grace Keller has other plans.
An uncompromising skeptic, Lainey does not believe in ghosts. She dismisses her therapist’s suggestions that the specter is a manifestation of unprocessed trauma and instead resolves to ignore the unwelcome poltergeist.
Shutting out Grace quickly becomes untenable as Lainey begins having the “normal, healthy” summer everyone hoped she would — complete with friends, movie nights, and hanging out at the pool. The only problem is the ghost.
Despite Grace’s protestations that there’s nothing suspicious about her death, Lainey becomes convinced there is a mystery to solve. Ghosts aren’t real. The only logical explanation is that her subconscious is latching onto clues others have missed. Enlisting the virtual assistance of her best friend Natalie — who is less likely to judge her for being crazy — the pair dig for any clues they can find about Grace’s life and death, including a local conspiracy theory that Grace’s death wasn’t the accident everyone claims.
Incapable of untangling Grace’s accident from her own, and refusing to live in a world where bad things happen without cause or warning, Lainey must find the closure she’s missing through Grace’s mystery. But, as much as she thinks she’s looking for blame in a twenty-five-year-old accident, maybe she’s really looking for absolution in her own.
Magnolia Burns Peace
YA FantasyLoosely based on western fairytales, readers will find new versions of their favorite characters like: Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Ariel, and more!
When the crown prince announces his intention to marry the woman he just met — under the strange criteria that her foot fit an abandoned glass slipper — peace talks between two ancient enemies fall apart. War seems to be all but imminent when the king falls into an enchanted sleep, and each nation accuses the other of foul play.
With spies everywhere, the only hope of salvaging the negotiations and avoiding war is if Lady Magnolia can sneak away from the palace to find answers. With her crimson riding cape, uninvited traveling companions, and trusty pack of wolves, Noli must venture through the enchanted forest and into enemy lands to find an explanation that could have been torn straight from a storybook.
