Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Ghosted by Talia Tucker, which releases on November 10th 2026.

An entirely unhinged and spooky story about getting ghosted and getting revenge. What if you got ghosted and had the chance to do the funniest thing by haunting him right back? What if it consumed your every waking thought like a girl possessed, fighting for brain space with your sleep paralysis demon and your first serious girl crush? What then???

Keziah is very familiar with ghosts—after all, a sleep paralysis demon has been her closest companion for the last few years, and she’s constantly getting ghosted. Which isn’t really helping her get a date for the Homecoming dance. And then she meets a guy who just transferred to the all-boys school nearby. He’s charming, cute, and—unlike with her other dates—she actually sees potential with him.

Too bad he ghosts her, too.

This time, though, she isn’t going to take it so easily. Not when Guy and his friends mess with her real true love, Mr. Kim’s food truck, and especially not when she finds out the real reason Guy transferred in the first place. If he wants to ghost, she’ll haunt him right back to where he came from.

Enacting revenge while her sleep paralysis demon keeps bugging her certainly won’t be easy but, with help from a cute girl, let the real (and well-deserved) ghosting begin!

EXCERPT

PROLOGUE

IT STARTED IN JUNIOR HIGH—the nights when my consciousness would be awake while my body remained asleep. I’d be trapped within myself, unable to move or scream. I could only watch, wait, and regain control by moving one finger at a time, until my hands worked, then my arms, then the rest of me.

Naively, I believed I could simply outgrow my need to sleep. But after a few days without it, I felt like I was being followed by unseen eyes—yet no one would be there when I turned around. After a few weeks, a figure began appearing at the foot of my bed at night. It didn’t have a face or a body; it was only a pair of dazzling yellow eyes, deep set in corporeal darkness, staring at me.

Realizing I did, in fact, need sleep, I tried to find rest, only to awaken to those haunting eyes and an unrelenting pressure on my chest. I’d struggle to scream but wouldn’t be able to make a sound.

It didn’t take long for me to realize it was my sleep paralysis demon who had been watching me, waiting patiently for me to close my eyes.

Countless sleepless nights eventually led me to the conclusion that if I couldn’t beat him, I’d have to endure him. We entered negotiations wherein I promised to sleep every night to keep his hunger satiated, and in exchange, he would no longer need to paralyze my body.

I named him Steve, and we’ve been best friends ever since.

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘Ghosted’ by Talia Tucker appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from May a Divine Awaken by Michael A. Tinsley, which releases on November 3rd 2026.

For sixteen-year-old Marcus Azure, the unusual blemishes on his skin have always made him feel insecure and unwanted. Orphaned at a young age, stares and whispers incite rumors of him being cursed. But all Marcus wants is to gain respect as a worthy soldier and a protector for his land.

Hoping to gain acceptance and silence the rumors, Marcus competes for a coveted spot in the Land of Aypha’s elite military. Before Marcus can earn his place, a mysterious group of assassins incinerate his village, destroying all he knew. On his own once again, Marcus’s quest for answers takes him on a journey across new lands where he discovers his world is ruled by Divines—powerful warriors with abilities to manipulate metals, harness the wind, and control the shape of water. As Marcus plunges deeper into the Divine world, he encounters the former Queen of the Aminas, Sinclair Bonet. She reveals the attack on his land is tied to something far worse. A war across the eight Divine Lands of Pyris is coming. If Marcus and others are to survive, he’ll need to awaken a secret yet volatile power within him.

As the battle rages closer and secrets unravel, Marcus must confront the truth of whether the blemishes he was shunned for are truly a curse or a sign of something greater.

EXCERPT

When I wave to my squad mates, their laughter halts and they groan at my presence.

“Are you guys ready for Trials? I hear we’re up first this year,” I say.

“Ah, relax, Patches. It’s not like we can get further demoted,” says my squad leader, Bamboo. A ten-year vet, Bamboo is by far the oldest and most out of shape soldier within Squad 50. For whatever reason, Bamboo glorifies complacency and apparently has been this way ever since being removed from Squad 20 for conduct infractions.

“Trials is pointless, Patches. None of us are even competing to enter a new squad. Last place is perfectly fine.” Because of the skin blemishes around my right eye and hands, Bamboo and the others call me Patches. Between that and Sun Cursed, I’m not sure which is worse, but I know how it makes me feel, and how it dims my small ember of joy.

I roll my eyes in disgust and decide to break the news to them.

“Well, you guys will have to lose without me. Today I’m de­claring my intention to compete for a spot in the Lion Guard. This is the last time I’ll see you.”

A chuckle breaks out among the squad before they erupt into complete laughter. Bamboo slings his thick arm around my shoulder. “You’re right. It is the last time we’ll see you, because you’re going to

die. Take my advice, Marcus, the Lion Guard is not worth risking your life for.” Bamboo squeezes my lean arm. “Besides, it’s not like you have what it takes to become one of them.”

While Trials is a competition between fifty squads, compet­ing for the Lion Guard is far more rewarding but risky. I’ve heard the rumors of soldiers dying but this is the only way I can prove myself.

Feeling his grin settling over me, I push away from Bam­boo. He thinks I’m like him—lazy and complacent—but he’s wrong. And soon, I’ll prove it.

A loud bell rings as an announcer declares registration is now open.

“I’m heading over to register. Good luck, guys,” I say.

Bamboo sneers. “Wish you the same, but you’ll either be dead or back here with us. Same crappy duties, same crappy squad,” he says while the rest of my squad mates chuckle.

They’re idiots.

I make my way through the crowd of sweaty soldiers and head straight to one of the registration tents.

I find Asher as well as my other friend, Darius, waiting out­side. I salute Darius by placing my fist over my chest, which is protocol when in the presence of a Divine.

Darius waves off the salute. “Relax, Marcus. You don’t have to be so formal around me, at least not right now.” Darius has close-shaven hair and wears a long-sleeve black tunic with a gold lion crest on the heart side of his chest.

Like Asher and me, Darius grew up in Eden, a vast vil­lage that lies between the Great Lands of Aypha and Amina. Separated by gender, males live in Aypha, while females reside in Amina. Only in Eden are both genders allowed to live together. But at thirteen, boys and girls of Divine blood are ripped from Eden and sent to defend their respective lands. As Norms—that is, those without Divine blood—Asher and I had nothing to worry about. We could have stayed in Eden for the rest of our lives. While many children of Divine blood feared being taken away, I loved the thought of it. To me, becoming a soldier meant becoming something worthy of life. A soldier has purpose—to protect and ensure their homeland has peace. When I discovered I could join the Aypha military without being a Divine, I quickly jumped at the chance, as did Asher. It wasn’t till after joining that we learned that interactions between Divines and Norms aren’t common—with one exception.

“You do understand what this means if you become soldiers of the Lion Guard?” Darius asks. “You will be accompanying Divines on real missions.”

“Yes, we get it,” Asher says, annoyed. “Still doesn’t make you better than us.”

There’s always been a friendly rivalry among the three of us. But no one is more competitive than Asher.

“You just won’t let it go, will you?” says Darius. He smiles and extends his hand to Asher. “You’re just as talented as me. Just because I’m a Divine, I would never think I was better than you.” Darius turns to me, and the corners of his lips turn upward.

“Now, did Asher put you up to this? I can see why he would want to join the Guard, but I was surprised to hear that you do as well.”

“It was actually my idea. I’m tired of being at the bottom. Tired of—”

I cut my words short, bottling up how I feel.

Darius nods in understanding. “Well, I’m glad both of you are competing, and once you make it in the Guard, there’s so much I want to show you. Being back with my dad, there’s so many things he’s taught me that I just didn’t get in Eden.” Darius cuts his smile back, not wanting to offend me. “Hey, if you all are ready, let’s go ahead and proceed.”

Darius holds back the threaded beads of the tent entrance to let us pass through. His gesture is something a Divine would normally never do for a Norm.

Inside the tent, there’s already a long line of soldiers waiting to register. When we reach the front, we find an older man with salt-and-pepper hair sitting at a long wooden table. On both sides of him are stacks of papyrus paper and he yawns when we approach.

“Name and current squad,” the registrar says bluntly, his eyes never looking up.

“Marcus Azure, Squad Fifty.”

“Asher Bomani, Squad Fifty.”

The man grabs a stack of papers and rummages through them until he finds our profile information. He takes a reed pen and dips it into a bowl of ink. “Which squad are you com­peting to enter?”

“The Lion Guard,” I say.

A wave of wrinkles appears along the man’s forehead. The black ink at the tip of his pen spills and stains my profile sheet.

“You can’t be serious,” the man says.

“Very serious,” I respond.

“But you need a Divine to authorize your participation.”

“That would be me,” says Darius, approaching the table.

The registrar looks up and upon seeing the gold lion em­blem on Darius’s tunic, he rises to his feet and salutes.

“At ease,” Darius says.

The man returns to his seat, disbelief still lingering on his face. “My apologies but this is the first time we’ve had anyone from such low-ranking squads compete. There’s a high chance they could be—”

“We know the consequences,” I snap, my sharp tone catches everyone off guard, including me.

There’s a long pause from the registrar before he finally concedes and pulls two dark gray training suits from under the table. “You two will need to hurry up and change,” he says.

A confused look appears on Asher’s face. “And why’s that? Trials isn’t until tomorrow.”

The registrar looks to Darius, as do we.

“Trials is tomorrow for everyone who wants to be in a better squad,” Darius says. “But for those who want to be part of something great, to be part of a command filled with Divines, the competition begins now.”

Excerpted from May a Divine Awaken by Michael A. Tinsley. Copyright © 2026 by Michael A. Tinsley. Published in the United States by Storehouse Voices, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Unexpected Afterlife of Salon Rose by Amy B. Scher, which is out now.

College hopeful Salon Rose arrives to the Nowhere in Between, a way-station between life and death, only to learn she’s been murdered. Returning to the life she had before is not an option, but before Salon can move on, she is determined to discover who was responsible for her death.

With the help of her new friends–all recently deceased–and maybe even a fresh crush, Salon must learn to let go if she has any hope of getting out of there. Even if it means confronting some hard to swallow truths.

EXCERPT

1

the first dead body i ever see is my own.

no.
no.
noooo.
you have got to be kidding me.
this cannot be what i think it is.

my body is arranged in a perfectly straight line on a shiny silver metal table. the tag on my toe says “office of the coroner, plainsville nj.” the fluorescent lights clinging to the water- stained ceiling are the only signs of life. there’s a mess of lunch-bag-brown files stacked up on the counter next to me, a jenga tower of folders. and next to that, an abandoned sweaty diet coke sits precariously on the edge.

my kryptonite.
i would kill for a sip right now.
the lights beam down on my translucent skin, which is

honestly not far from my natural coloring. i resent fluorescent lights. such an injustice to a girl’s complexion. they also remind me of school, which is exactly where i should be right now. i’d usually say that school’s the last place i’d ever want to be, but algebra 2 actually sounds delightful.

my long, blond hair is stringy and twirled out into a disheveled pile. it looks like a colony of worms trying to slide away. i should have washed it last night. my normally full, red cheeks that pop when i crack up (according to mom) are sunken and wilted. my mascara is smeared across my left eye, all the way to the bridge of my freckle-ridden nose. to add to the visual, i am as naked as the day i was born. but considering the current situation, i think we can agree i have much bigger problems to deal with.

because i am d-e-a-d.

dead as my beloved goldfish, swim shady, who perished last month in the infamous tank-tipping tragedy. she was on her way to the guinness world records for goldfish longevity at the ripe age of seventeen. eighteen is the record neither one of us will ever see now.

watching my body here like this is freaking me the hell out.

i am not supposed to be dead. i’m not even in the middle of my life yet. i have so much unfinished business (today alone, forget my fifteen-year life plan), it’s not even funny.

in this weird, floaty place—wherever i am—it’s light, but i feel totally in the dark. my body is on the table, but another part of me is still alive in this white space built of fog; except, it’s bright and translucent. it’s as if i’m on one side of a steamed-up window and my former life is on the other.

i don’t know how i’m seeing what i’m seeing.

i need to try and get out of here. but that seems way beyond my current skill level.

wait, i don’t even know… am i still attached to my body?

i mean, how do i get around?
more importantly, why am i here?
most importantly, what happened to me?

like, what the actual fuck is going on??

i once heard that our brains may continue to work for ten minutes after we die. which means in some way, we might actually be aware of our death.

i start to panic.

is that what this is right now? what if there’s been some glitch, and my brain has outlasted me? and now i’m stuck in some weird in-between world forever? where are all the angels and escorts and spirit guides that mom insists are always around when you need them most?

for starters, it would be nice if they could help me get to my phone. i think i hear it buzzing from somewhere in the distance. i probably have hundreds of texts piling up, a thought that honestly makes me feel like dying all over again. alive or dead, i refuse to be one of those people with 40,000 unread notifications.

also, where is my mom? to say i really need her is an understatement. i have to find her.

when my mom’s big brother, my uncle artie, died a couple years ago, mom started saying things like “he would have wanted me to use his camera,” and “he would love the dinner i’m planning.” one day, the week after he died, i caught her kneeling in the garden, wearing his oversized harley-davidson t-shirt and her floppy straw-brimmed hat, planting radishes for artie, honoring him in her daily rituals. did artie even eat radishes? i wanted her to sell the camera, eat all the radishes herself (which would be disgusting), and let us have mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner every night because uncle artie would never know. i love my mom so much that all i wanted was for her to stop elongating our pain and admit artie was gone. it made me sad that she believed so fully that artie was anywhere at all. the world stayed the same without him, and i needed her to stay the same, too. why would uncle artie care what was going on, anyway? although, he certainly would have wanted to know if we were smoking weed.

i thought when you died, you were just dead. fertilizer for the ground around you, or whatever. but here’s the thing about dead people that i didn’t understand until now: they do know what’s going on after they die. or, at least i know.

my mom would consider the irony of my postmortem realization completely hilarious. she’d comb her strawberry- blond waves out with her fingertips and tease me: “for all those podcasts and shows you listen to, salon, you really didn’t learn anything useful at all, did you?” after uncle artie died, she insisted that i’d developed an “unhealthy preoccupation with death” (her words, not mine). but it wasn’t that at all. i just think everyone’s grief has its own language. for example, mom spent hours watching online tutorials to learn the jasmine stitch—widely considered the most difficult crochet stitch to master. but for me, it was true crime podcasts, because getting lost in someone else’s story can give you a weird kind of break from your own. so, with mom and i, our distractions were obviously different, but the reasons we needed them were the same. we were both just trying to stay busier than the grief.

i study my body again in the morgue.

it hasn’t moved, which i guess is a relief. i feel like i’ve already started to look paler, sadder, and deader. god, i wish i had gone with my friend juliet to those laser sessions. i wish i was anywhere with my best friends right now. i wish i was anywhere but here.

rigor mortis lasts 24 hours. i don’t seem to be quite there yet, but it’s inevitable. in no time at all, i’ll be completely stiff. what if i get frozen in time and space? can you imagine? Will my entire existence fade away without resolution? would everything i’ve worked for be just one giant moot point forever?

my head hurts like there’s a rubber band tied around it a hundred times over—and there’s a whirling in my chest where my breath is supposed to be.

but i force myself to try to get it together. if i lose the plot now, there’s no coming back.

plus, i can still see some version of myself, so i must be … sort of semi-okay, right?

i remember how mom was always worried something would happen to me (slow down! be careful who you trust! you think you’re invincible!) and my boyfriend liam was the same. but i swear to god, those two worried about everything. let me assure you that prior to this, i was doing just fine. it was going to be a perfect summer—my last summer before college, where i would major in criminal justice and become a modern-day catherine willows, called to every major CSI investigation in my state. except, it turned out to also be my last summer, period. not perfect at all.

just last night, my biggest worry was which outfit to wear to the halloween in june party i was going to, even though my boyfriend liam had to cancel last minute with food poisoning. of course, i felt bad he was sick, but i mean, who orders the surf and turf at a diner right off the highway on half-price night?

my brain carries me back to when i first met liam almost two years ago—in french class, when the leaves were the colors of condiments. he won me over with his emerald-green eyes (only bestowed upon two percent of the population); messy, golden-blond hair; and the deepest dimples you’ve ever seen. it didn’t hurt that his french was impeccable, and he had straight As in the looks department. liam is the kind of guy who’s smart without trying and has good teeth without any intervention. he can convince anyone of anything with his mouth alone. he can almost form a smile without turning up the corner of his lips at all.

things started casually enough between us, when i’d stayed up too late again and fell asleep in class one monday morning. halfway through the period, i woke up to see that liam had moved seats to the one directly in front of me, protecting me from being found out by mrs. walker. when the bell rang at the end of class, liam passed me a page of notes from his notebook, filling me in on everything i had missed during my snooze. i thanked him profusely, but he only said a cool “aucun problème, mon ami,” like it was no big deal. he usually sat behind me, constantly tasked with picking up items i’d accidentally dropped—pens, gum, even a tampon once—returning each item with equal patience. before i knew it, i’d fallen hard for him—harder than when amy mcmillian, our school’s head cheerleader, tumbled off the human pyramid and broke both legs while eyeing liam for herself. no need to feel bad about amy, though, because when her legs healed, she fell in love with joey, the quarterback. it was tout est bien qui finit bien (french for “all’s well that ends well!”)

i was bummed liam couldn’t go to the halloween in june party last night, but i’m not gonna lie, a tiny (tiny) part of me was excited to spend the whole night with just my best friends. soon, i’d be without them for pretty much the first time ever, all the way on the other side of the country for school. so, the night was going to be all about us. then, i guess i died. and here we are.

how, though? did i fall into the pool at sarah’s party and drown? tumble off her terrace? choke on a twix on the car ride home? i always eat them too fast. why am i always so quick and careless? case in point: i’ve been in three very minor fender benders since i got my license (although only two were my fault).

still, this is extra, even for me.

yesterday, i was a normal teenager worrying about normal things.

today, what fresh hell is this?
a spark in the universe and everything changes.
wait, someone’s coming!
the door opens and a small, kind-looking woman in a white coat comes toward my body and stands by my side. she crosses her wrists behind her back and tilts her head, letting out a quick sigh.

“another young girl, dead before her time,” she whispers, shaking her head. “tragic.”

perfectly said.

from here, within this strange and new world, i know almost nothing at all. but here’s what i have so far: whether it was a ridiculous mistake or something else that killed me, it doesn’t matter. it will be over my dead body that i accept it without a fight.

oh, and hi. i’m salon rose, i’m seventeen years old, and this is the story of an unsolved mystery—but hopefully not for long.

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘The Unexpected Afterlife of Salon Rose’ by Amy B. Scher appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Scorpion Deep by CG Drews, which is out now.

The only thing Jonathan Covey wants from the gloomy, moldering isle of Kelcarrow is to leave it. Summer is ending, and his friends are looking forward to college on the mainland, unaware that Jonathan was not accepted to join them. He’ll be left behind with nothing but the ocean’s haunts and a rising dread of being abandoned.

In an act of wild desperation, Jonathan pays a tithe to Scorpion Deep, an eldritch sea god who many of the locals have dismissed as myth. He wants to forget the past, he wants to follow his friends, and most of all he wants to finally escape.

To his shock and horror, the ritual works—Scorpion Deep awakens. And despite his terror, Jonathan can’t help but feel drawn toward the ageless entity that seems just as mutually obsessed with him. As scales start growing down his spine and Scorpion Deep’s adoration of him turns bloody, Jonathan realizes the only way to end the nightmare is to destroy the monster one way or another.

But once a god has awoken, the only way to be free is to pay a price of blood.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and the cover for Clandestine by Cynthia Murphy, which releases on July 27th in the US and July 29th 2027 in the UK.

But first, here’s what Cynthia had to say about her upcoming release:

“Clandestine was one of those stories that hit me like a sledgehammer. I went from feeling like I’d never have a good idea again to giving this dusty town and these characters life in less than twelve weeks. I wrote it with such a sense of urgency—not just for me, but for Devan and Raze and their story—and I can’t wait for readers to meet them. At its very heart its a story of acceptance and the people in our lives who love us for who we are—even if they’re not quite human…”

“I said, how unlucky are we?”

“Unlucky? I do not think so.”

“You don’t? Why?”

Raze pulled her closer, mumbling into her hair. “Because I have lived lifetimes and never felt this way.”

In the small, forgotten town of Clandestine, Devan Bond has always felt out of place. Raised by her great aunt and uncle after her mom disappeared, Devan’s rebellious spirit has only grown stronger. But when a reckless act leaves her grounded for the summer, she discovers a dark secret buried in the dried-up lakebed – a handsome, mysterious boy named Raze, who harbours a sinister past as a crossroads demon and is thirsty for revenge.

As a strange illness spreads through the town, Devan and Raze’s fates become intertwined in a dangerous dance of love, sacrifice and the supernatural. Will they break free from the town’s deadly grip, or be consumed by the very forces they’re desperate to escape?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cynthia Murphy is the bestselling author of a number of YA thrillers, including the BookTok sensation Win Lose Kill Die. She has a long-standing love affair with all things scary, reading Point Horrors before graduating to Stephen King in her misguided teens. Studying for a degree in Art History and Archaeology meant that she developed a thirst for anything old, beautiful and very often dead. She tries to combine this with contemporary settings in her writing to make unique and chilling modern stories. Cynthia lives in her hometown of Manchester with her husband and their rescue dog, Loli, who you will see a lot of on TikTok and Instagram @CynthiaMurphyYA

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal: Clandestine by Cynthia Murphy appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Mark of the Warrior by Shannon Lee and Fonda Lee, which releases on October 27th 2026.

Two brothers. Two nations. One destiny.

Exiled as a traitor after the Guardian’s Tournament, Li Jun has vowed to retrieve the stolen Scroll of Heaven and to honor his father’s dying request: find his mother and twin brother, Sai.

Fleeing into the East in search of their friend Ren, Jun and his longtime rival Yin Yue have no choice but to trust the two breathmarked women who saved their lives but who answer to the mysterious and draconian Council of Virtue that tore Jun’s family apart and banished him and his father a decade ago.

Recovering the Scrolls of Heaven or Earth in order to stop the brewing war that threatens to devastate East and West alike isn’t Jun’s only seemingly insurmountable challenge. The twin he was separated from in childhood is now the High Keeper who resides in the Sun Pagoda, protecting the precious Scroll of Earth from all potential enemies…including Jun.

The fate of the entire land hinges on an inevitable reckoning between brothers that will test their skills, their loyalties, and everything they thought they knew about themselves and the nature of destiny.

EXCERPT

From Mark of the Warrior by Shannon Lee and Fonda Lee. Copyright © 2026 by the authors, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

ONE

The East was a place of falling leaves and memories.

The bite of autumn was in the air, the first threat of frost stirring the wind that tugged the red and orange leaves from their branches. It reminded Jun of a similar fall morning when he was six years old, when he’d been abruptly thrust into exile, his life torn asunder.

And here he was again.

“We’ll stop and rest here,” Water suggested, leading them away from the road into a nearby clearing. It was only midafternoon and they hadn’t gone more than a couple dozen li, but no one put up an argument. The grueling pace and injuries Jun and Yin Yue had sustained during their flight to reach the Snake Wall had taken a toll, and they needed time to recover. A week ago, Water and Lure had led them through a secret crossing in the Snake Wall under the cover of a cloudy, moonless night, passing shadowy patrolmen bribed to look the other way and keep their mouths shut. Since then, they’d been traveling slowly, taking the much- needed time to regain their strength and prepare themselves for whatever lay ahead.

Jun dropped onto a nearby fallen log and carefully eased off the sling that had been holding his injured left shoulder immobile. Gingerly, he rolled it out, feeling the joint protest with stiffness but no longer with pain. The puncture wound from Old Man Zhang’s spike- tipped cane had sealed up, leaving an unsightly scar but no lingering damage. Lure came over and had Jun lift his arm over his head and move it around as she examined it. “You’re a quick fix,” she observed, impressed.

“Thanks to you,” Jun said, stretching his shoulder across his body, trying to gently bring mobility back into his disused muscles. He was lucky to have made it through the Guardian’s tournament and the encounter against the Moon Righteous Sabers with his life, and without suffering far worse damage. With proper care, he’d always been able to heal quickly and bounce back from injury. Back in his Iron Core school training days, he’d noticed that some of his classmates would be aching for a week after heavy sparring and conditioning.

“Ah, to have the metabolism of a young man,” Water said with a smile, coming up next to her apprentice. “And you’re more fortunate than most, to have such an abundance of Dragon’s Breath. Chang said it was the most he’d ever seen in anyone who isn’t breathmarked.”

Sifu Chang. Worry twisted Jun’s stomach into knots. He could only hope the blind flutist and his daughter, Ren, were safe. They had escaped Cobu’s soldiers and fled into the East; Jun knew that much from Lure’s uncanny ability to lead them steadily and unerringly toward the owner of the silk scarf tied around her belt. Wherever Ren went, Lure could find her. But Jun had no way of knowing if Chang and Ren were sick or injured, if they’d found sanctuary somewhere, or if they were in as much danger on this side of the Snake Wall as they had been on the other.

If only Ren had shared her plans with him earlier, given him more than a cryptic clue to go on. He’d spent so much time with her yet had never really been brought into her confidence. To Chang and Ren and the rest of the Silent Flute Society, he’d been a convenient wrench in General Cobu’s otherwise uncontested plans to subvert the Guardian’s Tournament and seize complete power in the West. And even on that front, he’d failed. He’d been Guardian for less than a day, and now Cobu was on the march. War hung in the air as surely as the coming winter.

Not for the first time, Jun wished he’d never left Cheon. He wouldn’t have any more power to stop Cobu than he did now, but at least he’d be at home, training by day and working at the opera house by night, sitting down with his father for a late supper after the performances were over. The two of them would talk about the fighters in the Guardian’s Tournament without Jun ever having to set foot in the arena himself. And his father would be alive. Sad and resigned, perhaps, but still alive, instead of in the ground, buried by strangers, without even his disobedient son to pour libations on his grave. How deeply Jun wished he’d been more grateful for an uneventful day.

Jun got to his feet. Fighting for his life had at least kept him from thinking too much. Now that he wasn’t in immediate danger, he had far too much time on his hands to sink into worry and regret. Crossing the clearing, he went over to where Yin Yue was sitting on the ground, leaning his back against a tree, struggling to adjust the canvas straps around the stump where his right hand used to be.

“Need a hand?” Jun jested, hoping to make the older student smile. Instead, Yin Yue made a noise of frustration and dropped his false appendage to the ground. The pitchfork that Yin had lashed to his maimed limb in order to fight the Sabers was hardly practical for daily tasks, so one night Lure had whittled a piece of firewood into a fake hand for him. It only had two big fingers and a curved thumb, so it looked more like a crab claw than a hand, but at least it was semi- functional and not as heavy. The problem was keeping it stabilized on Yin’s arm without it coming loose while keeping the straps, which Lure had fashioned by tearing a grain sack into strips, from chafing against Yin’s still- healing limb.

“This is pointless,” Yin Yue exclaimed, and dropped his forehead onto his bent knees.

“I don’t know about you,” Jun said, “but I’m starting to get antsy. Feeling up for some light sparring?”

Training was where Jun could feel in control and centered. He could silence the doubts in his mind with physical exertion, find some measure of peace in the practice of violence. Recovery was all well and needed, but just because they were in the East didn’t mean they were out of danger. Far from it. He wouldn’t put it past General Cobu to send more bounty hunters like Old Man Zhang after him.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and from Where We Go at Night by Ikwo Ntekim, which releases on October 27th 2026.

To name a thing is to see it, and no one can see the folk if they don’t want to be seen.

As far as seventeen-year-old Trixie Godfrey is concerned, her hometown of Woods Crossing would be perfect —if not for the dark world of fae and magic lurking in the shadows. Growing up, her grandfather, Pops, never allowed her to get close to them—those aberrations, Mama used to say.

But on graduation night, when Trixie sneaks home past curfew she witnesses Pops’ brutal murder in a moment so sudden, so inhuman she can no longer avoid the fae. Those without the Sight will blame wild animals, calling Pops’ death an accident, a tragedy, but Trixie knows the truth because she has the Sight. She spent years burying her “gift”, but she needs to revive it now.

Determined to get justice for Pops and rid Woods Crossing of its monsters, Trixie ventures into the intriguing but deceitful world of the fae—only to find herself caught in a power struggle between ancient families more terrible and crueler than hers could ever be. Or so she thinks….

EXCERPT

PROLOGUE
TEN YEARS AGO

I was seven the first time I saw an aberration, though at the time I didn’t think of her as something to be feared. I had a habit of wandering in the surrounding woods when Mama was too busy homemaking to play with me. Not that I needed much encouragement at that age; all she had to do was flick her cigarette in the direction of the back door for me to go running out. “Keep the swing in sight,” she’d holler after me from the kitchen table, Daddy seated nearby with his arm around her waist as she rolled out dough. Mama and Daddy were each other’s biggest focus and distraction; they couldn’t bear to be apart. It didn’t take long to notice they either checked in on me during the first fifteen minutes or not at all.

My favorite thing to do on days like this was explore the East Woods. If I walked thirty minutes against the afternoon sun, through the bramble with only my shadow to keep me company, I’d reach a clearing where sunlight filtered through willow branches and neon leaves. It was there I went to talk with the trees and share my seven-year-old burdens. Until they started talking back.

She walked out of an oak tree, but for years I told myself she came around it. After all, when she appeared, it had been too bright to see exactly where she’d come from.

She was striking, taller than Mama and—to my embarrassment I admitted—much more beautiful. Angelic, even. I thought perhaps Mary mother of God had come all the way down from heaven to scold me for daring to disobey Mama and leaving the yard. Her crown was the first thing I registered, haloed around her head—seven, no, eleven copper spikes connected at the tips by a string of fire opals. Silver threads and strings of citrine and black pearls were so finely woven into her kinky tar-black hair I couldn’t tell where her jewels began and her hair ended. Her gown, despite having adopted the same color and texture as the tree she came from, ridges and all, swayed in glittering shades of bark when she moved. And her skin—her skin was not tan or brown or anything common, but bronzed and impossibly smooth. She was a belabored carving polished to perfection with oil.

No brown woman had any business looking that ethereal. She

had to be a fairy-tale princess. The kind of princess found in books Daddy once tried to get me to read before he began tossing them behind my bed, calling them fools’ tales.

“Miss, are you lost?” I had asked her, never frightened, only amazed.

She tilted her head and mimicked me. Her words came out fragmented, as though from a broken speaker. As though she weren’t used to speaking. “Miss, are you lost?”

“What’s your name?” I tried again. “What’s your name?”

“Mama calls me Trixie, but I don’t think I like it.”

She considered this carefully, drumming her fingers on her chin. Each fingertip was encased in a filigreed claw ring sharp enough to carve out a heart. “Tricks-y?”

“No, Trixie. Like, ‘Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.’ I mean, that’s not why they named me that. I like Trisha just fine, but—”

It happened like a skipped beat.

One moment she was across the clearing, the next right in front of me. My words halted in my throat, lodged like a stuck chicken bone. Thinking back, I was probably her height now, but back then she seemed absolutely giant. She bent so close I could taste her breath, honeyed. She put a claw to my lips, cool despite the day’s heat. “You should know better, little one.” She tsked. “You smell of Daniel Godfrey, so you should know to always keep your name to your person.”

I blushed furiously. I tried to focus on her words.

Keep my name? I thought.

“Your name in its entirety,” she responded like she could read my mind. “You may be wondering, What’s in a name but letters and spaces? To us, they are entire lives lived and everything that transpires in between.”

“I don’t . . . Do you mean like a secret?” I managed to ask.

“Like a secret,” she confirmed with a long, sharp-toothed smile. “Well, then how would people know what to call me?”

“Give them a different name. Or a half name. Any name that doesn’t show who you are.”

“I don’t think Mr. Petrelli is gonna go for that.” I giggled, imagining telling my second-grade teacher to call me something new. “What do I call you, then? If we’re to be friends, we should have names for each other.”

“Friends?” Her face split into a wide grin; she was even more beautiful. “Yes, let us be friends! I’ll be your Auntie Hattie and you’ll be my Trixie.”

I’ll never know how it happened, but I turned up at home with twelve hours behind me and a furious trio of parents before me. “I wasn’t gone that long,” I cried as Mama spanked me with a switch from Pops’s oak tree. He said he’d planted it himself when he was a boy, but just last week Mr. Petrelli told us oak trees took hundreds of years to get that big, so Pops must have been fibbin’.

Whack!

“It was one hour! I checked my watch the whole time.”

Mama’s anger could not be contained. I hollered so loud, Jesus himself would have said it wasn’t that serious, but still I wailed and eventually Daddy had to step into the hallway before calling the sheriff’s office. He had to let them know I’d made it back home safe and sound.

Pops eventually wrestled the switch from Mama. “Can’t beat the melanin out of her, Nicky.”

“That’s not—” Mama dropped her voice to a whisper, and peered around the corner to make sure Daddy was still on the phone. “She’s seen that Black Madonna. I know it. I can feel it in my gut.”

“Please, Nicky, we both know how Sightless you are,” Pops scoffed. “My Sight may not be twenty-twenty, but I’ve seen enough to know that . . . that she ain’t holy. She is not good. A-and Brad does not approve of your goings-on. He says we should have her baptized.”

“If he’s that bothered, Brad and his God are welcome to find a new house to live in like he’s been promising for years.”

“Keep your voice down!” Mama hissed.

Pops continued unfazed. “You wouldn’t know the Black Madonna, as you call her, from one of Trixie’s dolls. Now, unhand my baby girl.” Tucking me into bed that night, Pops kissed me on my forehead and whispered, “Don’t be too mad at her. We do silly things when we’re scared. But tell me, you really saw them, didn’t you?”

Who was them? I shook my head, Mama’s beating still fresh in my mind.

“Young lady, if you learn to lie this young, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?” He tsked at my silence. “You saw them, didn’t you?”

This time I nodded. “Just one lady.”

Maybe Pops would tell me what I had seen and help me make sense of Mama’s explosion. Maybe he’d know where I had been during those lost hours.

“Trixie, I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said as he smoothed my covers, tucking me in further. “Your mama is right on one thing— there are no innocent faeries, and you’d do good to remember that. The best of them will steal your socks from your feet and say you weren’t wearing them in the first place; the worst will set your feet on fire so you never get the chance to steal them back. But the last thing you want to do is be afraid of them. Spend enough time with them and you’ll find they’re just children who never outgrew their playtime follies.”

“Faeries?” I said, my heart galloping. “So faeries . . . are real? Auntie Hattie is a faerie? Or is it Black Madonna?”

Pops tousled my head. “She told you to call her Hattie?”

“Well, Auntie Hattie,” I clarified. “But why does Mama call her the Black Madonna? She’s very brown, if anything.”

“When no one is lookin’, your mama can be a little superstitious. Even with her poor Sight, she once caught a glance of your Auntie Hattie without her jewels and beauty, and it frightened her because she couldn’t make sense of what she saw.”

“Mama needs glasses?”

“A special kind of prescription. Without it, her own shadow makes her jump. But at the end of the day”—Pops leaned in and I stilled, ready to receive the secret—“Auntie Hattie is more girl than monster, not from heaven but from the soil itself. She is without teeth; she will not harm you. That you saw her in the first place means your Second Sight is quite powerful. Or perhaps she was in a playful mood and let you gaze upon her. Either way it takes courage to see what’s in front of you.”

I was beaming at being called powerful and brave by the most powerful man I knew. “I have a Second Sight.”

“We Godfreys have that ability to see what may not want to be seen, even if they layer on the heaviest of Glamours. I have it, and you have it too. The Second Sight is a gift that has to be used, and if you go years shoving it down as your mother has, it will do what unwanted things do and simply disappear.”

“I want to see where Auntie Hattie lives.”

Pops peered at me from the top of his glasses, contemplating. “One day, when you’re a little older. I need to get some things ready before I take you. Make sure it’s fit for a visit from the likes of Trixie Godfrey. Until then, let’s keep this faerie talk our little secret. Yes? Promise?”

“Promise,” I said, spitting in my palm like I’d seen the big kids at the playground do and holding it out for Pops to shake.

But over the next four years promises would be broken and everything would change. Daddy would die, and a year after that, Mama would up and leave. In the months after Daddy’s untimely accident, it became clear Mama couldn’t or wouldn’t lift a finger to take care of me, and I grew lonelier, living in the cloud of her sadness. It fell on Pops to raise me, but he was barely around himself. He was always disappearing on long afternoon walks and evening strolls. When he’d return, he’d be wearing odd clothes made of rich materials I’d never seen around the house, and I imagined Auntie Hattie had gotten her faithful subjects to weave them for him, custom made in her magical kingdom. As far as I was concerned, Pops was living in a fairy tale, and I could maybe join him if only I was on my best behavior.

But try as I might, Pops never honored his promise to take me with him to Auntie Hattie’s. To combat my requests, he always had an excuse followed by another. First it was “My knee is acting up again,” and then “Who’ll keep your mama company?” and finally “Auntie who, now? You ain’t got any aunties.”

There was a time living with him that I fully thought I was going crazy, and the only way to keep my sanity was proving for myself Auntie Hattie had indeed been real, and not a figment of my imagination. So, not unlike Pops, I began sneaking away to the clearing where I had first seen Auntie Hattie. She hadn’t left a calling card, but I knew in my gut if I practiced patience and kept going to the place we’d first met, I’d inevitably run into her again. And that’s exactly what happened. Auntie Hattie visited me in the clearing time and time again. She, like Pops, refused to show me her home, but it was no matter because I grew content with the knowledge she had indeed been real. To not rouse suspicion, I’d go to the clearing every other week and we’d play all sorts of games and trade stories. We did this through the summer until one day without warning she failed to show up. And no matter how many times I returned, she never did.

Spending time with Pops became everything. Sure, I had to

share that time with his unknowable world, but my options for company were limited, and you know what they say about beggars and their options. The moment Pops set foot in the house, it would be as though the sun came out and Mama’s depression had no place to hide. Laughter, light, and normalcy could always be found in Pops, and when he got home, I’d be standing there with open arms saying, Welcome back. I have missed you.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Sign of the Raven by Pippa Dunn, which is out November 10th 2026.

LONDON, 1889.

Ashlyn Threadneedle leads a double life. By day she works as a government messenger. By night she escapes into vivid lucid dreams, navigating the Stream—a world in which the only boundary is her own imagination. But when her long-dead mother unexpectedly appears in a dream, Ashlyn is certain the Stream is hiding secrets, ones that contradict everything she knew about her past—and threaten to undo the future of everyone she loves.

In her quest for answers, she joins the Corvi Signum, a secret society of dreamers fighting to protect the Stream from an insidious enemy powerful enough to manipulate people’s thoughts and seize control of London. For Ashlyn to have any hope of preserving her own mind, she must first unravel the mysteries of both her family and the Stream. But a world of dreams is a treacherous place. Time slips backward and forward as easily as sand through an hourglass, and if Ashlyn and her fellow dreamers fail in their mission, then nowhere—neither waking nor sleeping—will be safe.

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The Truly Devious series is one of my favourite YA mystery series of all time. It is constructed with such care, compelling characterisation and twists that devastate you. With The Velvet Knife, Stevie Bell is back with a vengeance.

Stevie is such a fantastic protagonist with brilliant observational skills and a deep, fierce love for those she loves. She is very much carrying the weight of her previous cases in this book though and grappling with an immense guilt for those who have died, for what she perceives as her fault. Also within this, she is dealing with the disintegration of her relationship and how this has completely knocked her worldview. Her love was all-consuming and now has nowhere to be channelled into. This is possibly one of the lowest points where we’ve met Stevie and that funk is palpable from the opening chapters. Through a series of events, she ends up in New York City and is confronted with yet another murder but she might be one of the only people who sees it that way. Throughout the story, she is trying to battle with her trauma and the way it has sharpened her instincts, dialling up paranoia and those existing feelings of abandonment and fear that have shaped her. Your heart just shatters for her, paying testament to how well Johnson has developed this character over the series.

In fact characterisation is such a strength of these books with a brilliant cast of supporting characters, both old and new faces gracing the pages. The inter-personal arcs in the series are a shining light and I enjoyed how they appeared in this book, getting developed further and encountering interesting beats for these characters we have come to know and love. Of course, Stevie and David’s relationship is a prominent focus as Stevie reels from the emotional explosion in her life. However, I did also like how Johnson explicitly confronts the way Stevie is treating both herself and those around her in the aftermath. Difficult conversations are had and she must face the consequences of her actions. Johnson also excels at deftly sketched characterisation through the historical timeline. That storyline is dark and draws you into its world quickly, grounding you in an immersive sense of time and place. You can see the net start to close in on some characters and it has a genuinely chilling atmosphere. The consequences of actions taken in that timeline are also still rippling through into the present. Johnson seems to be grappling with guilt and trauma as key themes, especially how we may choose to confront them, and asking if people truly have the capacity to make amends.

This is not a book that plays around. The opening chapter is instantly chilling and sends your heart to the pit of your stomach. As usual, Johnson has created a true puzzle-box of a book that rewards attention to detail and has such powerful parallels with real-life historical cases and the state of our current world. There is a palpable rage within these pages. It is a book very much preoccupied with the abuse of power and manipulation. The series has never shied away from these themes but this is a new angle on them and feels cognisant, especially in terms of controlling and twisting the narrative.

The Velvet Knife shows that Johnson will knock it out of the park every single time.

The Velvet Knife is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.

Will you be picking up The Velvet Knife? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis

Return to the world of Truly Devious as Stevie Bell and her friends travel to New York to solve a murder in the next standalone mystery from New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson.

Stevie might be the greatest teenage detective Ellingham Academy and the world has ever seen, but even she can’t figure out what happened with her boyfriend, David. What she needs is a distraction: a good old-fashioned murder. Stevie is much happier dealing with dead people. They’re a lot less confusing—they don’t send cryptic texts and make out with other girls in British pubs.

But then Stevie gets exactly what she wanted when a dead body turns up in the middle of a Manhattan apartment complex, and this one is . . . complicated. Caught in a web of messy alive-people feelings, Stevie finds herself questioning all human connection. Is magnetism only manipulation? Can you trust anyone? Does anyone realize that they’re joining a cult—before it’s too late? And are things with David really over?

The post Review: The Velvet Knife by Maureen Johnson appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

This is one of my favourite YA horror series – it just has everything with great characterisation, tight plotting and a wonderful balance of heart, humour and horrific moments. It has buckets of blood and genuinely feels scary but also has plenty of dark comedy and warmth. Wood toes the line expertly and that initial pitch of Scream meets Scooby Doo still holds up for me.

We open with quite a campy cold open of another case (which did feel very tongue-in-cheek Scooby-Doo-esque) and immediately you feel like you are home. The characterisation in this trilogy has always been stellar but Wood goes up another gear in this book. These are not the same people we met at the start of Let’s Split Up, for better or for worse. Their friendship is a brilliant bond, but it is also fracturing as they each try and live with the events of the previous two books. The ramifications are keenly felt here and I liked that Wood very much grapples with the concept of guilt as a central theme. They are dealing with the weight of lives lost and the personal consequences of certain actions, but ultimately what happened was not their fault. Survivor’s guilt is devastating and Wood explores this with nuance.

Because you have taken these characters into your heart, there is so much more to lose in this final chapter. The story Wood has crafted is tense and spine-chilling. I mean an abandoned theme park in the cold and darkness is eerie enough on its own, before you add in isolation and bodies starting to stack up. Every page is drenched in blood and you can really feel the evolution of the trilogy as the core four face possibly their darkest times yet.

The twists in this book are next-level. It dials up the stakes to eleven and somehow makes the atmosphere even more terrifying than the previous books. Nothing and no one is safe as this isolated scarefest starts to bring the nightmares to life for real.

A throughline in this trilogy that I have really enjoyed is an exploration of the true crime industry and how it exploits real-life suffering into neatly packaged and sensationalist tales. Since Let’s Split Up, it has been present through the media interest in these cases and in a meta way with the in-universe books about their previous stories. We go one step further here with the choice of location and the secrets buried within there. While I won’t reveal exactly what Wood is discussing, there is a really nuanced thread about the ongoing impact of trauma and the different ways people may confront it. Our core four have stared into the face of evil and lived to tell the tale but the scars it has left on each of them are still throbbing. How each of them has chosen to continue their life after the events of book two is fascinating, particularly as they come back together for this final adventure. By choosing to set this trilogy before the incredible rise of the Internet, Wood shows the groundwork for the true crime stories we are all familiar with now. There is plenty to delve into around the power of the press, the manipulation of narratives but primarily the way in which we confront real-life horrors.

One Last Scare is an excellent conclusion to a standout trilogy, packed full of thrillers and chills. I have thoroughly loved this series and am sad to bid goodbye to the Sanera Four. Wood is an exceptional talent and I cannot wait to see what he turns his hand to next.

Will you be picking up One Last Scare? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis

When Cam, Jonesy, Amber and Buffy are invited to experience a new theme park called Chillshore, the gang jump at the chance of some down-time together. They can kick back on this remote island, check out the rides, no chance of any gruesome murders or mystery-solving in sight. Right? Wrong.

Death has come to Chillshore, with creepy cabins in the woods, gruesome discoveries lurking beneath frozen water, decades-old secrets cracking open like black ice. None of their fellow guests can be trusted and no-one is safe.

As the body count rises, can the Sanera Four survive, or will this be their One Last Scare?

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