The leaves are falling and the scent of pumpkin spice is wafting out of coffee houses everywhere. Two sure signs that October is finally here. So, find a comfy spot. grab a warm drink, and pick up one of our October New Releases to keep you company this month.
Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen By Geri Halliwell-Horner
A sweeping adventure filled with a hidden island, family secrets, shocking betrayals, amazing music, and girl power, by iconic Spice Girl, songwriter and author Geri Halliwell-Horner.
It’s time to find your power.
Suddenly orphaned and alone, Rosie Frost is sent to the mysterious Bloodstone Island–home not only to a school for extraordinary teens, but also a sanctuary for endangered species. There, Rosie confronts a menacing deputy headmaster, a group of mean kids intent on destroying her, and shocking family secrets. She also discovers that history can come to life in ways she never could have imagined.
When the island itself comes under threat, Rosie knows she must enter and win the Falcon Queen games in a desperate bid to save it.
But Rosie can’t do it alone. She finds that believing in herself–and her friends–is the first step to finding the power she never knew she had.
Eli Over Easy by Phil Stamper
From the acclaimed author of Small Town Pride, Phil Stamper, comes a heartfelt coming-of-age middle grade novel about grief, love, loss, and finding your way forward in the vein of Kate Allen’s The Line Tender and Jules Machias’s Both Can Be True.
The last few months have been pretty tough for Eli. He moved to New York City and left his small town in Minnesota with his extended family and everyone he knows. He hasn’t made any new friends. And his mom died unexpectedly, shattering his whole world. He misses Mom more and more every day, but Dad refuses to talk about her, leaving Eli alone in his grief.
Then Eli finds a stash of instructional cooking videos his mom made, revealing her dream of being a celebrity chef. With the help of the cute new neighbor boy, Mathias, Eli decides to follow his mother’s recipes using her videos. If he can re-create his mom’s special dishes, then maybe a part of her can stay with him forever. But what happens when the videos run out?
Mari and the Curse of El Cocodrilo by Adrianna Cuevas
From Pura Belpré Honor–winning author Adrianna Cuevas comes Mari and the Curse of El Cocodrilo, a new middle grade novel about a young Cuban American girl who must fight to break a curse of bad luck set upon her by El Cocodrilo when she rejects her family’s traditions.
If Mari Feijoo could, she would turn her family’s Peak Cubanity down a notch, just enough so that her snooping neighbor and classmate Mykenzye wouldn’t have anything to tease her about. That’s why this year, there’s no way that Mari’s joining in on one of the big-gest Feijoo family traditions–burning the New Year’s Eve effigy her abuela makes.
Only Mari never suspects that failing to toss her effigy in the fire would bring something much worse than sneering words at school: a curse of bad luck from El Cocodrilo. At first, it’s just possessed violins and grade sabotaging pencils, but once El Cocodrilo learns that he becomes more powerful with each new misery, her luck goes from bad to nightmarish as the curse spreads to her friend Keisha.
Instead of focusing on Mari’s mariachi band tryout and Keisha’s fencing tournament, the pair, along with their friend Juan Carlos, are racing against the clock to break the curse. But when Mari discovers her family’s gift to call upon their ancestors, she and her friends will have to find a way to work with the unexpected help that arrives from the far corners of Mari’s family tree. Only will it be enough to defeat El Cocodrilo before he makes their last year of elementary school the worst ever and tears their friendship apart?
See what else is coming out in October over at From the Mixed-Up Files of Middle-Grade Authors.