Coming 10/3/17 from Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan
Love grows such strange things.
Anna-Marie McLemore's debut novel The Weight of Feathers garnered fabulous reviews and was a finalist for the prestigious YALSA Morris Award, and her second novel, When the Moon Was Ours, was longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Now, in Wild Beauty, McLemore introduces a spellbinding setting and two characters who are drawn together by fate—and pulled apart by reality.
For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.
The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he’s even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family.
Anna-Marie McLemore's debut novel The Weight of Feathers garnered fabulous reviews and was a finalist for the prestigious YALSA Morris Award, and her second novel, When the Moon Was Ours, was longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Now, in Wild Beauty, McLemore introduces a spellbinding setting and two characters who are drawn together by fate—and pulled apart by reality.
For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.
The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he’s even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family.
Available for pre-order at Amazon
— Barnes & Noble — Books-a-Million — IndieBound — Powell's
WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS
Out now from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press
A 2017 Stonewall Honor Book
Winner of the 2016 James Tiptree Jr. Award
Longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature
A Junior Library Guild Selection
A 2017 Rainbow List Top Ten Book
A Kirkus Best Book of 2016
A Booklist Best Young Adult Book of 2016
Winner of the 2016 James Tiptree Jr. Award
Longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature
A Junior Library Guild Selection
A 2017 Rainbow List Top Ten Book
A Kirkus Best Book of 2016
A Booklist Best Young Adult Book of 2016
To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseperable. Roses grow out of Miel's wrist, and rumors say she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees, and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town.
But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel's skin, and they're willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.
Available now at Amazon — Audible — Barnes & Noble — Books-a-Million — IndieBound — Powell's
Advance Praise for WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS
Lushly written and surprisingly suspenseful, this magical tale is not just a love story, but a story of the secrets we share and the lies we tell, and the courage it takes to reveal our authentic selves to each other and to the world.
—Laura Ruby, Printz Award Winning Author of BONE GAP
Magical realism at its most exquisite, with a deeply sensual awareness of the intersection of spirit and body. At once visceral and ethereal, McLemore's masterpiece weaves glistening strands of culture, myth, dream, mystery, love, and gender identity into the most magical book I've read in years. This book took my breath away.
—Laura Resau, Americas Award Winning Author of RED GLASS
McLemore’s second novel is such a lush, surprising fable, you half expect birds to fly out of its pages.
—Jeff Giles, The New York Times Book Review
McLemore mesmerizes once again with a lush narrative set at the thresholds of identity, family, and devotion...Luxurious language infused with Spanish phrases, Latin lunar geography, and Pakistani traditions is so rich it lingers on the tongue, and the presence of magic is effortlessly woven into a web of prose that languidly unfolds to reveal the complexities of gender, culture, family, and self. Readers will be ensnared in this ethereal narrative long before they even realize the net has been cast.
—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
Amid the ordinariness of the small-town setting, McLemore winds arabesques of magical realism. This imbues the narrative with the feel of a centuries-old fairy tale, while the theme of sexual identity gives it the utmost relevance...a love story that is as endearingly old-fashioned as it is modern and as fantastical as it is real.
—School Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
"A careful, close look not only at gender identity but at what it is to possess a body...With luminous prose infused with Latino folklore and magical realism, this mixes fairy-tale ingredients with the elegance of a love story, with all of it rooted in a deeply real sense of humanity. Lovely, necessary, and true.
—Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Out now from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press
A Finalist for the 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award
A Junior Library Guild Fall 2015 Selection
On YALSA's 2016 Best Fiction for Young Adults List
A 2016 International Latino Book Awards Finalist
For twenty years, the Palomas and the Corbeaus
have been rivals and enemies, locked in an escalating feud for over a
generation. Both families make their living as traveling performers in
competing shows—the Palomas swimming in mermaid exhibitions, the Corbeaus,
former tightrope walkers, performing in the tallest trees they can find.
Lace Paloma may be new to her family’s show, but she knows as well as anyone that the Corbeaus are pure magia negra, black magic from the devil himself. Simply touching one could mean death, and she's been taught from birth to keep away. But when disaster strikes the small town where both families are performing, it’s a Corbeau boy, Cluck, who saves Lace’s life. And his touch immerses her in the world of the Corbeaus, where falling for him could turn his own family against him, and one misstep can be just as dangerous on the ground as it is in the trees.
Lace Paloma may be new to her family’s show, but she knows as well as anyone that the Corbeaus are pure magia negra, black magic from the devil himself. Simply touching one could mean death, and she's been taught from birth to keep away. But when disaster strikes the small town where both families are performing, it’s a Corbeau boy, Cluck, who saves Lace’s life. And his touch immerses her in the world of the Corbeaus, where falling for him could turn his own family against him, and one misstep can be just as dangerous on the ground as it is in the trees.
Available now at Amazon
— Audible — Barnes
& Noble — Books-a-Million — iBooks
— IndieBound
— Powell's
Praise for THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS
THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS is a gripping,
beautifully rendered story with prose reminiscent of Eva Luna and a
fantastical world as captivating as that of The Night Circus.
—Sabaa Tahir, NYT bestselling author of An Ember in the Ashes
An unmissable story that sets us between river
and treetops, between rival and lover, between age-old myth and hidden truth.
With characters and a writing style tinged in magic, Anna-Marie McLemore’s
debut will leave you enchanted till the last page. McLemore conjures the glow
of magic—in an old feud, in a new love, and in this beautiful story of how we
discover who we really are.
—Emery Lord, author of Open Road Summer
and The Start of
Me and You
The Weight of Feathers is a dazzling debut
full of imaginative flair, long-buried secrets, and hypnotic power. It drew me
in with its gorgeous passages and left me reeling with a fantastical story
about love and struggling against the confines of family and creating a life
all your own.
—Nova Ren Suma, author of The Walls Around Us,
17 & Gone, and
Imaginary Girls
This is a true work of young adult literature.
Anna-Marie McLemore draws us into a world that’s magical but still feels very,
very real, and gives us an exquisitely told tale of star-crossed love. The
romance pours onto the page because her writing is beautiful, fluid, lyrical.
Like water. Like air. It’s so wonderfully written it begs to be read aloud. You
can feel her sentences flowing over your tongue as you read. I never wanted
this story to end, but when it did, even that felt perfect.
—Robin Talley, author of Lies We Tell
Ourselves and What
We Left Behind
THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS is a gorgeous debut, lush
and heart-tuggingly romantic, full of bittersweet magic.
—Jessica Spotswood, author of The Cahill Witch
Chronicles and Wild
Swans, and editor of Petticoats &
Pistols
THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS is one of the most
stunning books I have read in years, and one that I desperately wish I had
written. Equal parts heartbreaking, insightful, and charming, it's a truly
unforgettable read. McLemore's gift for finding perfectly unique turns of
phrase astounds, but equally important is her ability to bring to
life fully-realized characters that you'll want to live
with long after you turn the last page of this exceptional debut.
—I.W. Gregorio, author
of None of
the Above
Scales and feathers touch and burn in McLemore's stunning debut. The beauty of the language wraps around you, not letting go until long after the final page.
—Jaleigh Johnson, NYT bestselling author of The Mark of the Dragonfly and Secrets of Solace
Lush, elegant language, peppered with Spanish and French phrases, lends this romance an ethereal feel well suited to the book's magical elements.
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, STARRED REVIEW
Readers beguiled by the languorous language—a striking mix of French and Spanish phrases, wry colloquialism, lush imagery, and elevated syntax—will find themselves falling under its spell. The third-person narration alternates between Lace and Cluck, doling out twists and building to a satisfying, romantic conclusion. A contemporary, magical take on an ever compelling theme.
Readers beguiled by the languorous language—a striking mix of French and Spanish phrases, wry colloquialism, lush imagery, and elevated syntax—will find themselves falling under its spell. The third-person narration alternates between Lace and Cluck, doling out twists and building to a satisfying, romantic conclusion. A contemporary, magical take on an ever compelling theme.
—Kirkus Reviews
McLemore’s prose is ethereal and beguiling, the third-person narration inflected with Spanish and French words and phrases that reflect the non-magical aspects of the Paloma and Corbeau heritage. The enchanting setup and the forbidden romance that blooms between these two outcasts will quickly draw readers in, along with the steady unspooling of the families’ history and mutual suspicions in this promising first novel.
—Publishers Weekly
In this tale of magical realism, the magic is so deftly
woven into the fabric of the story, readers might overlook the more subtle
moments. Told with skillful poetic nuances, this Romeo-and-Juliet story of
forbidden love will entice fans of Maggie Stiefvater’s “Raven Cycle” who wished
for a little more romance.
—School Library Journal
You’ve never read a love story quite like this…
Anna-Marie McLemore has created in entirely imaginative world and rich
characters that will pull you in as if she's spinning magic herself.
—Bustle
Author Anna-Marie McLemore gracefully develops a stirring blend of compelling mystery, vivid characters, and potent emotions. [T]his multicultural book is further fleshed out with strong commentary on human relationships, young love, and the very relevant threat of man-made environmental disaster.
—BUST Magazine
McLemore’s prose is vivid, with carefully chosen,
colourful details giving readers a clear sense of place and character. An air
of mysterious fantasy enshrouds the whole book, pulling the reader through it
as if in a spell. McLemore is a writer to watch.
—The Guardian