New Releases: Lost Heroines, Fairytale Woods, and An Unforgettable BLM-Inspired Debut

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
Thomas’s hotly awaited debut, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and already the subject of a planned film adaptation: believe the hype. The story of Starr Carter, sole witness to her childhood friend’s killing by a white cop during a traffic stop, is a breathless, topical, and heartbreaking take on an issue that trends with horrifying frequency. But it’s also a warm, hilarious look at the life of a family and a neighborhood, rendered with vivid, loving specificity. Her eye for telling detail is true, her dialogue is perfect, and her characters are so concisely drawn you can see every one of them with perfect clarity.

The Ship Beyond Time, by Heidi Heilig
At the end of Heilig’s magnificent debut, The Girl from Everywhere, Nix, wayfaring daughter of the captain of a time-traveling pirate ship, has been handed the keys (as it were) to the ship. After spending her entire life searching for a map that will bring him back to his wife prior to her death giving birth to Nix—a bit of time-folding that might result in Nix’s winking out of existence—her father, Slate, swears he’s done with that foolhardy addiction. Their ship is able to travel to the terrain of any map, to lands real and imagined; or, if traveling without a map, to wash up in Slate’s original timeline, that of contemporary New York. It’s there that Nix meets an oddly dreamy girl, who gives her a map and disappears into the rain. The map will carry them to the mythical, doomed island of Ys, where they imagine they can solve all the problems that ail them. In Ys they find a madman, a tangled, myth-touched mystery, and further explorations into the perils of trying to save the past without sacrificing the present.

Frogkisser, by Garth Nix
In Nix’s latest skewed fairy tale, Princess Anya is the oppressed ward of an evil stepmother and an even eviler duke step-stepfather, with a magical lip balm–enhanced knack for turning her sister’s suitors, transformed into frogs by the evil duke, back into men. But with lip balm supplies running low and her sister’s latest love stuck in amphibian form, Anya sets off on a quest to replenish her magical toolkit—and to escape the duke’s wickedness—while being dogged by annoying heralds and in the company of three animal companions, two of whom would like to be human again.

The Beast Is an Animal, by Peternelle van Arsdale
In this fairy tale that’s as haunting as the darkest chapters out of the Brothers Grimm, a village’s entire adult population is decimated by the soul eaters, twin sisters who were transformed by their father’s abandonment into something inhuman. Alys is among the children left behind, a group of refugees “rescued” by a neighboring village and forced into service as night watchmen against the return of the soul eaters. The villagers see the children as marked by their tragedy, and fear any hint of witchcraft, but Alys communes in secret with the forest’s mysterious forces, and knows the world can’t be seen in stark shades of good and evil. Soon her strange connection not just with the sisters but with the misunderstood beast living in the trees will send her on a life-changing journey through a fairytale wood.

Daughter of the Pirate King, by Tricia Levenseller
Alosa’s the tough as nails titular pirate king’s daughter, and she’s not about to get captured unless it’s her idea. At the start of this debut, she sets out to do just that, allowing herself to be taken by a rival gang of pirates in order to case their ship for a treasure map. Though she’s tough and resourceful (and then some), she didn’t reckon on the wiles of irritatingly appealing first mate Riden, who matches her trick for trick. As she attempts to locate her quarry without giving up the game, she reckons with a growing attraction to the enemy.

A Good Idea, by Cristina Moracho
Recent high school grad and New York transplant Finley returns to her tiny Maine hometown after the drowning death of her best friend, Betty, leads to an arrest but no charges. Betty’s ex-boyfriend admitted to the crime, then changed his story, and Finley can’t bear to see him go unpunished. But what she finds back home is anything but simple, as she navigates a former fling, a new one with a girl whose connection to Betty remains unclear, a ruthless hippie drug dealer, and some chilling revelations about Betty herself.

Rebels Like Us, by Liz Reinhardt
When her mother’s tanking relationship sends the two of them fleeing Brooklyn for a new life in the small-town south, biracial city girl Agnes plans to stay quiet and escape as soon as she can. Her plan quickly goes awry, as she draws the eye of her new principal, the school’s queen bee…and popular Doyle, who’s soon serving as her unofficial guide. But there’s a more troubling side to her new life: a depth of racism she has never encountered, laid bare in a traffic stop and in her school’s tradition of holding two segregated proms. As Agnes helps plan an alterna-prom, she makes herself a target—and discovers the power of taking a stand.

Sad Perfect, by Stephanie Elliot
Pea lives life under the power of avoidant/restrictive food disorder, which makes her relationship with eating one of anxiety and terrible dread. A supportive best friend and the interest of a good-hearted boy help her feel like she’s on a path toward wellness, but a dangerous decision—to go off her antidepressants—puts her on the path to a setback that threatens to drag her under. Pea’s painful, ultimately hopeful journey immediately draws readers in with its urgent, second-person narration.

Future Threat, by Elizabeth Briggs (March 1)
In last year’s Future Shock, Elena Martinez, gifted with an eidetic memory, was one of five teens recruited by the powerful Aether Corp. to make a data-gathering trip 30 years into the future, in exchange for the kind of compensation she can’t refuse. But when their trip doesn’t go as planned, not everyone comes home alive. In follow-up Future Threat, Elena is trying to heal from the disastrous journey, but Aether Corp. isn’t done with her: she’s heading back into the future—an unrecognizable one—to retrieve four missing teens from another mission gone awry.

Camp So-and-So, by Mary McCoy (March 1)
When 25 “lucky” girls receive invitations to the too-good-to-be-true Camp So-and-So, they have no idea what they’re in for. When they arrive at the campground, on an isolated mountain with zero adult supervision, the campers are scattered across five cabins. Soon each cabin is facing down its own bizarre challenge, ranging from the terrifying to the magical. A distinct cast of characters fights for victory—and survival—in a book that promises to be deliciously weird, magical, and genuinely different.