In a palace of illusions, nothing is what it seems.

Each generation, a competition is held to find the next empress of Honoku. The rules are simple. Survive the palace's enchanted seasonal rooms. Conquer Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Marry the prince. All are eligible to compete-all except yokai, supernatural monsters and spirits whom the human emperor is determined to enslave and destroy. 

Mari has spent a lifetime training to become empress. Winning should be easy. And it would be, if she weren't hiding a dangerous secret. Mari is a yokai with the ability to transform into a terrifying monster. If discovered, her life will be forfeit. As she struggles to keep her true identity hidden, Mari's fate collides with that of Taro, the prince who has no desire to inherit the imperial throne, and Akira, a half-human, half-yokai outcast. 

Torn between duty and love, loyalty and betrayal, vengeance and forgiveness, the choices of Mari, Taro, and Akira will decide the fate of Honoku in this beautifully written, edge-of-your-seat YA fantasy. 

A fatal collision — who’s to blame? Two bodies, two souls switch in search of justice.

When fifteen-year-old Hallie gets knocked flying by a Hurricane SUV, her life ends without her ever having kissed a boy. At an otherworldly carnival, she meets and argues with the eighty-two-year-old driver, Susan. Both return to life, only with one catch — they’ve swapped bodies.

Now Hallie has wrinkled skin and achy joints while Susan deals with a forehead zit and a crush on a guy who’s a player. Hallie faces a life in a long-term care residence. Susan gets picked up for shoplifting.

As they struggle with technology, medications, and each other’s fashion foibles, they start to understand and maybe even like each other. But can they work together to prove that a defect in the Hurricane caused the deadly crash? Or will their time run out? 

In this heart-pounding conclusion to the Witch’s Child trilogy, Catherine Egan’s masterful world-building and fiercely flawed heroine will thrill fans of The Rose Society, Graceling and Six of Crows.

Julia has been ensnared in so many different webs it’s hard to see how she’ll ever break free. She must do Casimir’s bidding in order to save the life of her brother. She must work against Casimir to save the lives of most everyone else she knows.

Casimir demands that Julia use her vanishing skills to act as a spy at court and ensure that a maleable prince is installed on the throne of Frayne. But Julia is secretly acting as a double agent, passing information to the revolutionaries and witches who want a rebel princess to rule.

Beyond these deadly entanglements, Julia is also desperately seeking the truth about herself—how is it she can vanish? Is she some form of monster? Is her life her own anyway?

With every move she makes, Julia finds herself tangled ever tighter. Should she try to save her country? Her brother? A beloved child? Can she even save herself?

Some rules are made to be broken.

When Emma moves to Astoria, Oregon, she is given two rules:

#1 – Don’t cross to “their” side of the street.

#2 – Don’t mess with the elites, especially Lexen Darken, top elite and resident bad boy.

While she finds this both weird and insulting, Emma has no actual intention of breaking these rules - until her guardians go missing. Now all bets are off. Only a single line separates her side of the street from the elites', and she's crossing it.

Captured and held by Lexen and his brothers, she learns the rules are in place for a very good reason. There's a secret world hidden in this small town which goes far beyond the one she knows and understands.

A world not for humans. 

A missing girl on a journey of revenge and a Serial―like podcast following the clues she's left behind.

Sadie hasn't had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she's been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water.

But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie's entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister's killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him.

When West McCray―a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America―overhears Sadie's story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie's journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it's too late.

Courtney Summers has written the breakout book of her career. Sadie is propulsive and harrowing and will keep you riveted until the last page. 

In this heart-pounding conclusion to the Witch’s Child trilogy, Catherine Egan’s masterful world-building and fiercely flawed heroine will thrill fans of The Rose Society, Graceling and Six of Crows.

Julia has been ensnared in so many different webs it’s hard to see how she’ll ever break free. She must do Casimir’s bidding in order to save the life of her brother. She must work against Casimir to save the lives of most everyone else she knows.

Casimir demands that Julia use her vanishing skills to act as a spy at court and ensure that a maleable prince is installed on the throne of Frayne. But Julia is secretly acting as a double agent, passing information to the revolutionaries and witches who want a rebel princess to rule.

Beyond these deadly entanglements, Julia is also desperately seeking the truth about herself—how is it she can vanish? Is she some form of monster? Is her life her own anyway?

With every move she makes, Julia finds herself tangled ever tighter. Should she try to save her country? Her brother? A beloved child? Can she even save herself?  

I adore Rachel Hartman’s books – Seraphina, Shadow Scale, and the recent, brilliant, shattering, recovery-from-trauma-road-trip-novel Tess of the Road.  

N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is unlike anything else out there, and I cannot recommend the books highly enough: The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky. They are completely original, stunning achievements, and gave me actual nightmares (diamond-toothed stone-eaters chewing their way up out of the sidewalk).  

I have been loving Kiersten White’s gender-bent Vlad the Impaler novels – I suppose they are more alternate history than fantasy, there is no magic, but I’m going to include them here anyway because they are so good. And I Darken, Now I Rise, and I am so eager to finally read the conclusion to the trilogy, just out this summer: Bright We Burn.   

I recently read Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation, a reconstruction-era zombie novel that really is as good as all the rave reviews say it is, so I was thrilled to hear a sequel will be coming. 

Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves has won pretty much every award Canada has to offer, and I hope that readers in the U.S. are going to discover it in the same numbers. It is a harrowing page-turner, the prose is beautiful, the characters unforgettable, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I’m hugely looking forward to Heather Fawcett’s All the Wandering Light, sequel to Even the Darkest Stars, with witches and dragons (my faves!) as you’ve never seen them before, and heart-pounding mountain-climbing scenes.   

Two SFF novels I always like to recommend, because I feel like neither one quite became the massive phenomenon that it ought to have become, are Zen Cho’s totally charming Sorcerer to the Crown, which balances high stakes and farce so deftly, and Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince, which has possibly the coolest world-building of any SFF novel I’ve ever read, while also being a gorgeously written coming-of-age story about love, art, and revolution.     Thank you, Catherine Egan, for your time and thoughtful answers! And much thanks to Penguin Random House Canada for the opportunity to host a Q&A with Catherine Egan on my blog. 😍

The heart-pounding follow-up to Julia Vanishes and the second book in the Witch's Child trilogy. Catherine Egan's masterful world-building and fiercely flawed heroine will thrill fans of The Rose Society, Graceling, and Six of Crows

In this compelling and action-packed novel, Julia and her allies travel to the other side of the world in their efforts to thwart Casimir's quest for power. They rescued the baby Theo from his fortress once, but Casimir is relentless. He needs this child. Or rather, he needs the magical power that has been written into the child's very being. And so Julia and a mismatched band of revolutionaries, scholars, and thieves journey to Yongguo, searching out the witch who worked that dark spell. They must find a way to separate the magic from Theo without killing him--a nicety that Casimir won't bother with. Julia is also searching for answers about herself. Her ability to vanish to a place just out of sight has grown--she can now disappear from her world so completely that it's like stepping into another world. A dark and fiery world that that feels disturbingly like hell. Where the creatures seem to recognize her--and count her as one of their own. Caught between a web of ruthless, powerful people, and a world seemingly dredged from her nightmares, Julia must decide not just who but what she really is if she wants to survive. 

A stubborn teen faces off with her brooding, indifferent (but super hot) soulmate in this unique and sexy take on a classic paranormal romance story.

She's met her mate . . . and he's met his match.

Megan Ross has been waiting her whole life for her mate to come and sweep her off her feet. But the wolf she meets on the beach is NOT the sweet gentle boy she's been dreaming of. Instead, he's a warrior, one whose suffering has led him to lock his heart away in a prison as cold and hard as a diamond, who fights to resist the bond and their deep attraction.

Far from home, with a soulmate who is still a stranger, Megan learns that the path to true love isn't quite as straight and easy as she thought . . .

Chosen by readers like you for Macmillan's young adult imprint Swoon Reads, Alyssa Brandon’s debut novel Bound to You is guaranteed to make readers swoon, sigh, and maybe even cry before it's over. 

Delaney might have done her job a little TOO well...and now her life has once again been turned upside down by aliens, this time by a deadly (and devastatingly handsome) alien prince in this explosive second installment of Chani Lynn Feener's The Xenith Trilogy.

Delaney has been kidnapped by aliens. Again. After only a month back on Earth with her hot new alien boyfriend Ruckus, the deadly and devastatingly handsome prince Trystan has dragged her right back to his planet.

While some girls may dream of winning a prince’s heart, Delaney just wishes this one would leave her alone. Instead, she finds herself at the center of both a tense political battle between two alien kingdoms and Trystan’s romantic attentions, both of which are absolutely ruining the life she’s built on Earth. Not to mention the fact that she’s about to be crowned queen of a planet she’s barely even visited. Just another day in the life of an ordinary human girl.

Readers won’t want to miss Between Frost and Fury, the compelling, fast-paced sequel to Chani Lynn Feener’s Amid Stars and Darkness.

From the #1 New York Times- and USA Today-bestselling author of the Rosemary Beach and The Vincent Boys series, Abbi Glines delivers another smoldering, compulsively readable YA romance with As She Fades. 

On the night of her high school graduation, Vale McKinley and her boyfriend Crawford are in a terrible car accident that leaves Crawford in a coma. They were supposed to spend the summer planning for college, for a bright future full of possibility. Together. Instead, Vale spends long days in the hospital, hoping Crawford will awaken.

Slate Allen, a college friend of Vale’s brother, has been visiting his dying uncle at the same hospital. When he and Vale meet, she can’t deny the flutter of an illicit attraction. She tries to ignore her feelings, but she's not immune to Slate's charm. Slowly, they form a cautious friendship.

Then, Crawford wakes up . . . with no memory of Vale or their relationship. Heartbroken, Vale opts to leave for college and move on with her life. Except now, she’s in Slate’s territory, and their story is about to take a very strange turn.

Glines’ millions of fans will adore As She Fades, a novel as romantic as it is full of twists and unexpected turns.

Once Every Thousand Years...

Every millennium, one age ends and another age dawns...and whoever holds the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers holds the power to call the great Kami Dragon from the sea and ask for any one wish. The time is near...and the missing pieces of the scroll will be sought throughout the land of Iwagoto. The holder of the first piece is a humble, unknown peasant girl with a dangerous secret.

Demons have burned the temple Yumeko was raised in to the ground, killing everyone within, including the master who trained her to both use and hide her kitsune shapeshifting powers. Yumeko escapes with the temple’s greatest treasure—one part of the ancient scroll. Fate thrusts her into the path of a mysterious samurai, Kage Tatsumi of the Shadow Clan. Yumeko knows he seeks what she has...and is under orders to kill anything and anyone who stands between him and the scroll.

A WISH WILL BE GRANTED AND A NEW AGE WILL DAWN.

Grave Mercy meets Red Queen in this epic debut fantasy, inspired by Renaissance France, about an outcast who finds herself bound to a disgraced lord and entangled in his plot to overthrow the current king.

Brienna desires only two things: to master her passion and to be chosen by a patron. Growing up in Valenia at the renowned Magnalia House should have prepared her. While some are born with a talent for one of the five passions—art, music, dramatics, wit, and knowledge—Brienna struggled to find hers until she chose knowledge. However, Brienna’s greatest fear comes true—she is left without a patron. 

Months later, her life takes an unexpected turn when a disgraced lord offers her patronage. Suspicious of his intent, she reluctantly accepts. But there is much more to his story, for there is a dangerous plot to overthrow the king of Maevana—the rival kingdom of Valenia—and restore the rightful queen, and her magic, to the throne. And others are involved—some closer to Brienna than she realizes.

And now, with war brewing, Brienna must choose which side she will remain loyal to: passion or blood.