Author: Alex Acks

Masquapaug is a remote island where dragons haven’t lived in generations…until the day 15-year-old Anequs finds a dragon’s egg. When the egg hatches and the hatchling bonds with her, Anequs is celebrated by her people as a Nampeshiweisit; they remember when dragons lived on the island and danced the autumn storms away. But the Anglish colonizers have their own ideas about how dragons should be raised and what their use is. Anequs is “allowed” to enroll in an Anglish dragon school on the mainland, on the understanding that if she cannot succeed there, her dragon will be killed. To save them both, Anequs must learn quickly — but the most important lesson she takes in is that the world needs changing, and that she and her dragon may just have the power to do it.

A boy and a girl who have never met find themselves connected across a vast distance of space and time. The boy lives, trapped, in a library that is larger than most cities and older than any empire. The girl lives in a tiny, dangerous settlement called Dust, where no one goes because it is the territory of nightmares. And it is the books that bring them together…

When Bronwyn’s grandmother goes into hospice, she travels to rural Hillwoods with her father; the idea is they’ll be in this backwater for only a year, enough time to get grandma’s affairs in order and make a few last memories with her before she passes. But an already depressing situation is made worse by the standoffishness of Hillwood’s people — and the strange interdiction on swimming, whether it’s in the gorgeous lake nearby or the pool at the abandoned rec center. One resident, Anais, has learned to hide from Hillwood — and she’ll protect Bronwyn, if she’ll let her.

In near-future Britain, the right-wing government has put the Sanctity of Marriage Act in place, which punishes those who choose to remain single and empowers the surveillance state to make that misery a true reality. Four couples soon learn how difficult relationships become when they are being watched over and enforced.

America’s private prison industry is becoming ever more dominant, and now it’s profiting even more with a controversial yet popular, new version of gladiators: Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, AKA CAPE. In CAPE, prisoners fight in death matches for the chance of a freedom those who run the prisons have no intention of ever truly allowing them.

Violet Sorrengail, small and brittle-boned, was destined for a life as a scribe, living quietly among the books. But her mother, the commanding general, decrees instead she will take her chances at becoming a dragon rider. But while the dragons themselves are dangerous, her fellow cadets are even more so — many would happily kill her (or see to an “accident”) to better their own chances of bonding to a dragon. If Violet can survive the dragons and her peers, there’s still an ever-worsening war to face — one she is beginning to suspect leadership is lying to them all about.

A hybrid novel that combines fables, poems, and autobiography to explore a shared past between the Coast Salish and Māori cultures, in a world in which Vancouver Island and Aotearoa sit side-by-side in the ocean. The two sides of the family that occupy these lands must work together to find forgiveness and understanding to heal the wounds done to them by colonialism.

In this technothriller, Martin Hench is a 67-year-old forensic accountant who wanders California in a tour bus he bought from a washed-up rock star. He’s not famous…except to the people who matter, those who are desperate to hide their money — or equally determined to find money that’s been hidden. But now he’s been roped into the most dangerous job of his storied career, and it’s going to take every ounce of skill and cleverness he has to finish the job — let alone make it out alive.

Joan Sands is 16 and a gifted craftswoman, with metal as her chosen medium thanks to her magical ability to control it, a gift from her Head Orisha, Ogun. This has landed her a place with Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, making and maintaining the stage blades for their plays. But thanks to her family’s close ties to the Orisha, they’ve also always kept an eye on the Fae in London, and something is beginning to go wrong. More Fae attacks are occurring, and when Joan rescues the son of a cruel lord from the Fae, she gets dragged into two worlds of political intrigue.

Over a century in the future, teleportation is a reality and so is deep space exploration. But when 17-year-old Jessica Mathers wakes up in a crashed lander on the surface of an alien world where life has long since gone extinct, she realizes that accidents and disasters are not a thing of the distant past. Beyond merely needing to survive, Jessica soon finds that something else has gone terribly, terribly wrong — there are blood handprints all over the crashed lander, and graves marked with names she does not know. If she wants to not only survive but escape, she’ll have to unravel the mystery around her.

Alejandra is a woman pulled in so many directions she no longer knows who she is — and worse, as she despairs about remembering herself, she sees a ghostly apparition of a crying woman in white: La Llorona. What she soon discovers is there is no banishing La Llorona until she follows the ghost on a journey to know the women she never knew in her family, all of whom were connected to the ghost as well.

The Marigold is a condo tower in a near-future Toronto wracked by climate change; it was supposed to offer exclusive luxury suites, but instead sits half empty as a mysterious toxic mold infestation spreads through it and rots it from within. A public health inspector investigates the mold that spreads from a tower; a gig worker making ends meet with ridesharing finds himself in possession of dangerous information related to the tower; a 13-year-old child sees her friend snatched out of a sinkhole by a horrifying creature; and Stanley Marigold, son of the builder of the tower, tries to get the Marigold II build and decides it’s worth tapping into hidden reserves of power no matter the human cost.

Elodie is really a princess in name only, having grown up in the poor and famine-stricken realm of Inophe. But when she’s offered a chance to marry a prince — and get the wealth that comes with it to help her kingdom — she immediately accepts, even though it means being whisked away to a reclusive kingdom that is hiding dark secrets beneath its veneer of perfection. Then she finds out the true reason for her quick betrothal: every harvest season, the kingdom sacrifices its princess to a hungry dragon, and she’s been brought in to be the next on the great wyrm’s plate. Elodie has no intention of going quietly, however, and if no one in her new kingdom is willing to fight, she will do it herself.

Beatrice Bolano lives in Seagate, a town run by a religion that believes abstaining from food brings a person closer to God, and regulates every calorie taken in by its citizens. As the requirements of Seagate become ever more stringent, she is faced with the choice to either give up her passion for cooking or leave the only home she’s known. Far from her, Reiko Rimando is a college student who has lost her funding despite her flawless grades, leaving her with the choice of returning home in shame or suffocating under a mountain of debt. A mysterious, centuries-old cookbook authored by a kitchen maid brings these two women together.

Folkvíand has always been unnaturally close to her brother Áslakr, due to the remoteness of their village — and the fact that their mother is a shaman who has begun to pass her knowledge to her daughter. But when their parents die from illness and Áslakr leaves on his first expedition, Folkvíand’s life is turned on its head. And worse, when her brother returns…he has founds someone else to love. Folkvíand takes her plaint first to the gods, then decides that she will fix her problems herself — before the date her brother is to marry.

Peeraphan Rhattna is an ordinary woman going about her life as a dancer…until one night her rehearsal is interrupted by a violent, supernatural clash and she’s rescued by Bennett Andrews, a brooding (of course) vampire who also claims to represent a secret organization of supernatural beings who protect humans by locating mythical and magical objects. And Peeraphan has stepped into one such object, quite literally: magical red shoes that will make her dance herself to death. Except the shoes do not carry out their death sentence, and it seems Peeraphan has her own secrets, ones buried so deeply she didn’t even know them herself.

Manticores are one of the greatest threats to those who live in the empire; Ester knows this well after one kills her mother and baby brother and leaves her father forever scarred and distant. Her own grief leads her to the King’s Royal Mews, where she dedicates herself to becoming a ruhker, bonded to one of the massive rocs that are used to hunt the manticores. Bound forever to a creature that demands absolute sacrifice while being unable to return her devotion and love, Ester embarks on the most dangerous manticore hunt in the empire, seeking both revenge… and a return to herself.

The majoda destroyed Earth with a reality-shaping weapon called the Wisdom; the survivors of humanity live on Gaea Station, plotting vengeance for their dead world. Kyr has been training for this since she was born, but Command assigns her brother to a certain death mission and consigns her to Nursery to bear sons for humanity until her own death. Thus, she has no choice but to take vengeance into her own hands and escape Command… only to find the universe is far more complicated than she’s been taught.

Marjan’s father told her many fantastic fables when she was a little girl, ones about extraordinary, magical beasts. But now Marjan is an adult, and the sudden death of her father leaves her trying to balance schoolwork, friendships, and keeping his veterinary practice afloat. Then she receives a visitor who tells her that her father’s stories were true — he traveled the world to care for magical beasts, and now she needs to take over that part of his practice as well.

The Sunglade is a place of burning sunlight and monsters, populated by the worshippers of the evil sun goddess Ponuriah. Yet Adaris Kavari, a wandering scriber burdened by disgrace, gets herself captured by Ponuriah’s worshippers and is tasked by them with recording their side of the story. Adaris is determined to free herself and her fellow prisoners, and bring back this story she has learned, which might be the key to her personal salvation and stopping a coming war.