Multicultural Fantasy

On the same day Faye’s brother comes home with a black eye, a package arrives from a relative they’ve never met. It’s a slab of clay: some weird kind of bar mitzvah present? The strange gift turns out to be an invitation to learn a craft that’s been in their family for centuries. And it’s not pottery. Faye and Shiloh are driven to New York City by their grandfather for a spring break filled with magical instruction. But at night they find themselves transported to a strange parallel world, where groups of innocent people are facing appalling hatred and violence.

Welcome to the Apprentice Academy. Congratulations on your acceptance to one of the world’s finest institutions for sorcery. Your course of study here will be long and perilous, but this book of sorcery skills and fascinating tales from the world of magic will help you along the way—ideally...

When Felice learns that she’s the daughter of La Llorona, she catches a ride to the magical town of Tres Leches, where her mother is said to be haunting the river. Growing up with her uncle Clem in Corpus Christi, Felice knew that she had been rescued from drowning—it’s where her intense fear of water comes from—but she had no idea her mother remained trapped between worlds, looking for her.

The future world has been divided into sectors - each the same as the other. Surrounded by thick steel fences, there is no way in and no way out. Yet a cyborg army penetrates each sector, picking off its citizens one by one, until no one is left. Behind the sectors’ thick walls, the citizens wait to die. Few will be chosen to survive what’s coming; the rest will be left behind to suffer. A new world has been created, and its rulers are incredibly selective on who will become a citizen. They want only those with important roles in society to help create a more perfect future.

Six smarter-than-most teens wake up in the same hospital after having experienced a traumatic event that they can’t quite remember…other than being forcibly sucked into an abyss at the moment of their deaths. With individual clocks ticking—and with each guarding an individual secret—they band together and conspire to piece together the whole of what happened.

Ten-year-old Opie Jones is Very Ordinary. In fact nothing remarkable has ever happened to her, if you don’t count the cat that gives her funny looks from next door (which she doesn’t). So she is naturally very surprised when she is recruited to join The Resistance—a team of superheroes who can read minds, and have a dastardly brainwashing villain to defeat. However it turns out Opie can’t read human minds; she can read animal ones. The other members of the Resistance are very disappointed. And a whole world of animal chat and demands is opening up to her.

All Nestor Lopez wants is to live in one place for more than a few months and have dinner with his dad. When he and his mother move to a new town to live with his grandmother after his dad’s latest deployment, Nestor plans to lay low. He definitely doesn’t want anyone to find out his deepest secret: that he can talk to animals. But when the animals in his new town start disappearing, Nestor's grandmother becomes the prime suspect.

Eighteen-year-old Filipino American Ruby Santos has been unmoored since her mother’s death. She’s always dreamed of going to art school, but instead, she and her father have had to move into the basement of their home and rent out the main floor while they work to pay back her mother’s hospital bills. Then Ruby finds out her father has been living a secret life as a delivery person for a magical underworld—he “jumps” train lines to help deliver packages for a powerful family. Recently, he’s fallen behind on deliveries (and deeper into a fog of alcohol).

Conquering the world is a hefty job for anyone, not to mention the additional surprise of becoming a father, again. Cade Willmartin is up for the task though.

Despite being back with the family she so desperately fought to get back to, all she can think about is the life she left behind. Her aching heart grows worse day by day, but she doesn’t have anyone to confide in about her impossible adventure, so she keeps it all to herself, letting her grief slowly consume her. With no seer, no queen, and no love of his life, Kang-Dae is in a bad place. Though those around him try to convince him Serenity is gone for good, he refuses to accept it. There’s something inside him that desperately clings to the hope that she is alive.

Dustin Averin, lead guitarist for Manifold and crown prince of the European Kirata community, has been ignoring the call home by his queen for longer than he’d care to remember. His purpose, to sire the next generation of Kirata with a willing female, is the furthest from his mind. Dustin’s cat isn’t interested in anyone, and unless he has a pure mating, one where he actually wants to be with the woman in question, he is content to be alone, play in the band, and wait. When a meeting at a music conference leaves him hurting from a woman he didn’t expect, his interest is piqued.

Früher betrachtete ich meine Hände mit Stolz. Jetzt kann ich nur noch denken: Das sind die Hände, die meine Mutter begraben haben. Ning hat nur ein Ziel: Sie muss das Leben ihrer kleinen Schwester retten, denn nach dem Tod ihrer Mutter könnte sie nicht noch einen Verlust ertragen. Und so nimmt sie die Einladung zum Wettkampf der mächtigsten Tee-Magier des Reiches an, obwohl sie gar nicht für sie bestimmt ist. Denn wer diesen Wettkampf gewinnt, hat einen Wunsch frei.

Zuberi, Uzochi, and Lencho were among the first of a new generation of Nubians to awaken to extraordinary powers—gifts their parents lost when they fled their island home decades ago. And now that Uzochi has been declared a Nubian catalyst, everyone expects him to lead. But what should be a time of rebirth and celebration is instead one of turmoil. The so-called sky king, Krazen St. John, is bent on harnessing Nubian gifts for himself, and he has assembled a special, superhuman militia to do his bidding, putting a ruthless Lencho in charge.

Minerva Soledad Miranda is determined to reach her goals, despite shouldering more responsibility than the other kids at school—like caring for her two sisters while her mom works two jobs. But one night, Minerva's mom doesn't come home, and Minerva has to figure out what to do. Was Mamá snapped up by immigration enforcement? Will the girls be sent to foster homes or holding centers for migrant kids? Minerva and her sisters can't let anyone know Mamá has disappeared. They'll just pretend everything is normal until she comes back.

Zach Larsson finds he just doesn't belong. He's too young, too smart, and too different: the perfect victim for middle-school bullying. The worse his luck gets, the more he dives into his writing to escape. But his stories are bringing an astonishing mystery into real life. Bad Luck Zach embraces second-language learning and the cultural mix that makes middle school life that much harder when it's right by the biggest international border crossing in the world.

Imani is a crusader for justice. After a tragic event in her family, she has sworn to fight for those who are unjustly accused and imprisoned. So when she is asked to go to another planet and fight for the rights of a Kindred warrior who is scheduled for execution, she jumps at the chance. But there's one problem - he's a Nightwalker Kindred, a species so dangerous, even the other Kindred shun them. Imani is fearless and determined to free her new client, but what happens when she accidentally claims him as her own?

It’s difficult taking care of a delusional father by yourself. Sixteen-year-old Shaleigh Mallet would rather explore and photograph dilapidated buildings than cater to her father’s dark episodes. But when she’s kidnapped by a creature who carries her atop a flying bicycle into another world, she realizes this wasn’t the escape she wanted. In a kingdom known as the Garden, where minotaurs pull carriages and parties are held in hot air balloons, Madam Cloom and her faerie servant, Teagan, rule over the land with incredible but terrifying magic.

In the aftermath of Ireland’s battle with her ancient enemies, Queen Isolde orders her cousin, smuggler Duncan O’Malley, to assume the throne of fairy as King Finvara. He’s a fish out of water when it comes to nurturing the alliance between Ireland’s mortal and fairy peoples. And the queen wants him to wed the daughter of Ireland’s enemy, the king of Icelandic shadow elves, to help keep the peace. But the Irish think of the elves as goblins, and Finvara refuses.

When Amaya rescues a mysterious stranger from drowning, she fears her rash actions have earned her a longer sentence on the debtor ship where she's been held captive for years. Instead, the man she saved offers her unimaginable riches and a new identity, setting Amaya on a perilous course through the coastal city-state of Moray, where old-world opulence and desperate gamblers collide. Amaya wants one thing: revenge against the man who ruined her family and stole the life she once had.

Seventeen-year-old Xochi is on her own in San Francisco. On a visit to Golden Gate Park, she meets Pallas, a precocious 12-year-old with a rockstar family that lives in one of the city's storybook Victorian mansions. Xochi accepts a position as Pallas's live-in governess and quickly becomes part of the band's household. But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas perform a pagan ritual that unintentionally summons a pair of ancient creatures devoted to righting the wrongs of Xochi's adolescence.