MONSTER TOWN

(YA/Urban Fantasy) When Henry, a human teenager and maniac par excellence, makes a play to break out of a prison town built entirely for has-been monsters, he jumpstarts a systematic plot to exterminate the entire town- himself included. In order to save his own life, he'll have to subvert their oppressors and ally himself with a ragtag group of monsters that blame him for their plight. It’s something like a contemporary Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children except these teens are a bunch of rowdy, violent assholes.

LADY REBEKKAH

(YA/Fantasy) Lady Rebekah is a sixteen-year-old girl with a castle and a kingdom. Her mother has served as queen regent until today, and prior to that she fought a dark and bloody war just to win this selfsame kingdom and castle. But Rebekah doesn't want it. She wakes to this day before any other and sheers her head to the scalp and storms the beach with her uncle for another brutal bout of wit and swordplay. She comes here on her crowning day and demands that whence she finally beats him, she'll be allowed her first look at real, true magic.

And then it comes- by sea serpents and inside them, men. A whole legion of invaders with a wyvern and cyclops in tow, all of them fearful servants to the lithe, frayed rope-of-a-warlord known only as Grym. With ties to the dark warlock that ruled before Rebekkah, Grym takes her castle and her kingdom, though what he really wants is the same as she- magic.

So off she goes, to the edges of a world rid of color and nearly cleared of its indigenous magi. What remains is a prophecy that puts Rebekah at the center of its fate and that fate tied to whomever might wake the god that created it all from the start. She'll need not her wit or her sword as she builds a ragtag team of misbegotten gnomes and a talking, horny sword, but her humility. The prophecy as it turns was wrong- she was meant not to be the savior of these lands but its servant.

THE APPRENTICESHIP OF LUCAS POLK

(YA/Spec Fiction) For as long as he cares to remember, sixteen-year-old Clay Thompson has been a 'Locksmith' - he's the guy who can bust any vault or lockbox in NYC and the only permanent player on Dutch's rotating crew of crooks. In that regard, the odd duo make for a bit of an unlikely family, but like all families, there are secrets. See every night Clay goes to sleep he is greeted with a dream- a reminder of the night, as a child, that he accidentally killed his older brother and gave birth to his murderous, magic hands. 

Like the rats that share his city, Clay survives by keeping his secrets in the shadows- until the day he breaks into a safe deposit box and finds a watch engraved with his name. His real name- Lucas Polk. Anxious to bottle up his leaking past, Clay pays a visit to the mysterious old man who made the watch and discovers something even worse. Lucas is not alone in his abilities or finished accruing problems, either. He is one of the last few magicians alive in this world- like the old man, a Minuteman, and his estranged daughter, Belén, a Sleepwalker. Once revealed, Clay is expected to join them, to navigate their resentment and heartbreaking histories, in an effort to stop the 'Darkness.' This, he is told, is a man who wants to end the world and simply must be stopped. For all Clay knows though, the old man might just be dealing in the one currency Clay knows best- lies. 

Dogged by a relentless FBI agent, this mysterious Darkness and his long-ignored past, finding meaning in the madness will hinge on something Clay never thought possible: forgiving himself for the death of a brother he has always thought his better. Using his newly honed abilities as a magician and years of hard-won streetwise as an accomplished NYC thief, Clay will need to come to terms with Lucas if he has any hope for keeping his found-family alive when the all-consuming Darkness makes a play to finish them all. 

COWARDS AND CAPES

(YA/Spec Fiction) It's been twenty years since the last superheroes died and the power went out in Old Chicago. To the teenagers that have been born on the other side of it all, life seems to oscillate between two very specific moments: moments where you can almost catch your breath and moments where you're not sure you should even bother. 

Fifteen-year-old Glenn is just such a teenager. Forced to look out for a drug-addled mother and his poor, bullied mountain-of-a-boyfriend, Glenn preaches a life of risk-averse routine and, should anything too big and ugly rear its head, all Glenn has to do is flash the barrel of his father's revolver... Until the day a mysterious old man teases permanent salvation: electricity can be restored. Fueled by their own fantasies, fears and dreams, the two teenagers embark on an epic journey through the ruins of Old Chicago and New as they search for the remains of the city's fallen superheroes and the key to restoring the light. Jumping between present day and a mash of decades-old diary entries from the mysterious old man, the boys happen upon a secret even bigger than the ones the superheroes kept: the old man doesn't intend to restore electricity at all. After a long life of political and sexual persecution, all the old man wants before his heart finally quits is for the world to know him as its first and last supervillain. 

Moving through five decades of fictionalized real-world history in Chicago, this story combines the historical depth and specificity of Michael Chabon's THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY with the poetic, apocalyptic beauty of Emily St. John Mandel's STATION ELEVEN.