We are delighted to be revealing the cover for Accelerant by T. L. Simpson, which is set against the backdrop of wildfires plaguing rural Missouri, and follows two brothers reunited after their family’s separation and confront one another across ideological lines, as one faces radicalization by a white supremacist criminal organization, and the other seeks revenge against that same group for attacking his friend’s Pride demonstration.
Releasing on October 20th 2026 from Flux Books, read on to discover the cover (illustrated by Robert Filip with designer Kate Liestman), and the synopsis.
Accelerant is available to pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org and North Star Editions, but first, here’s what T.L. had to say about his cover!
“Briar Stokes is a nerdy anime-loving kid stuck in the remote Ozarks who decides to play vigilante against a hate group just outside his community. His favorite film is Akira, so I wanted to evoke that movie’s famous red bike with Briar’s red Kawasaki Ninja. Plus, I knew that, just like in the book, everything needed to be on fire. The artist nailed Briar’s look. I couldn’t be happier with the result.”
From the Printz Honor-winning author of Cope Field
After his best friends are attacked at a Pride demonstration, anime nerd Briar Stokes grabs a length of pipe, dons a Japanese demon mask, and hops on his street bike with one goal: to enact violent revenge against the white supremacists infesting his rural Missouri community.
What he doesn’t know is how deep the roots of hate grow, nor how much they’ve entangled his own family. But when his quest for vengeance pits him against his own stepbrother, who faces radicalization by that same hate group, Briar soon learns the hard way that violence doesn’t stop violence . . . It accelerates it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T. L. Simpson is an award-winning journalist and novelist living in Arkansas. He is currently the editor of his hometown paper. His fiction draws from his experiences growing up in the Ozarks and covering both sports and crime. Simpson lives in the Arkansas River Valley, between the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains, with his wife and four children.
