Nicole M. Wolverton

When legends bite back. Lemon Ziegler wants to escape the rural town of Devil’s Elbow and go to college—but that's impossible now that she’s expected to impersonate a lake monster for the rest of her life. Her family has been secretly keeping the tradition of Old Lucy, the famed monster of Lake Lokakoma, alive for generations by staging sightings to keep tourists coming. Lemon can’t disappoint her grandparents . . . or tell her secret to her friends, including Troy Ramirez, who has been secretly in love with Lemon for years, afraid to tell her lest he ruin their friendship. When a real lake monster starts eating people, Lemon spills the secret to her best friends, and they must figure out how to stop the monster before it kills half the town.

THE TRAJECTORY OF DREAMS, chosen as #15 on Typographical Era's Best Reads of 2013. Lela White hasn't been the same since the space shuttle disintegrated into a bright blue sky when she was a ten year old girl--since her mother disappeared without a word or explanation. As an adult, Lela's life revolves around planning for the worst case scenario: the day she might have to kill to keep the space shuttle from exploding again. When a Russian cosmonaut on loan to the U.S. shuttle program finds himself drawn to Lela, he puts her carefully-constructed world at risk of an explosion as surely as he does his own upcoming launch. As Lela's universe unravels, no one is safe. “The Trajectory of Dreams is unsettling, beautifully written, and truly original. In Lela White, Nicole Wolverton has created one of the most haunting characters in contemporary fiction. This is a remarkable debut.” –Emily St. John Mandel, author of STATION ELEVEN