New Release Spotlight: Sep. 2, 2025

Welcome to September! Fall is my favorite time of year, and this will be the first one I’ve experienced since we returned from Mexico. We lived in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, where temperatures ranged from about 80-90 degrees year-round. This meant we didn’t really have an autumn, so I am very ready for it now. Bring on the pumpkin spice and cool, crisp breezes!

January, May, and September are usually the strongest months for new book releases, so it doesn’t surprise me that this week’s Spotlight has some fantastic new titles. For me, picture books look best this week, but I’m also excited for Sisters in the Wind (YA Thriller from an award-winning author), Falling Like Leaves (YA romance set in autumn), and The Last Resort (MG Adventure with interactive puzzles).

The three Canva presentations for the September Spotlight will release via email on Tuesday, September 30. You can join my email list here.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Ever since Lucy Smith’s father died five years ago, “home” has been more of an idea than a place. She knows being on the run is better than anything waiting for her as a “ward of the state”. But when the sharp-eyed and kind Mr. Jameson with an interest in her case comes looking for her, Lucy wonders if hiding from her past will ever truly keep her safe.

Five years in the foster system has taught her to be cautious and smart. But she wants to believe Mr. Jameson and his “friend-not-friend”, a tall and fierce-looking woman who say they want to look after her. They also tell Lucy the truth her father hid from her: She is Ojibwe; she has – had – a sister, and more siblings, a grandmother who’d look after her and a home where she would be loved.

But Lucy is being followed. The past has destroyed any chance at safety she had. Will the secrets she’s hiding swallow her whole and take away any hope for the future she always dreamed of?

When the past comes for revenge, it’s fight or flight.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Outgoing Vinnie Smith has her NYC future planned with her best friend Lilah. Meanwhile, her childhood friend Roo Carpenter is barely getting by, having dropped out of high school to work a shady job and support his mom.

But when Vinnie’s world starts falling apart ― plagued by severe headaches, rejected as drama captain, and betrayed by Lilah ― she decides to fix Roo’s life instead. They hit the road across inland Australia in her mom’s old Kombi, reliving their past adventures.

As they travel, Vinnie’s unresolved grief over her mom resurfaces, her health deteriorates, and unexpected, intense feelings for Roo begin to threaten their friendship. Can they navigate their emotions and find a way forward, or will everything they’ve ever known come crashing down?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Ellis has a plan: spend her senior fall prepping her application for Columbia, get into their journalism program, and set the foundation for a respectable career. So when her parents announce that not only are they separating, but Ellis has to move with her mom from New York City to Bramble Falls, Connecticut, to live with her aunt and cousin, it couldn’t come at a worse time.

From past summers spent in Connecticut, Ellis knows Bramble Falls is idyllic and charming. But it also seems to be full of distractions. There’s local barista Cooper Barnett, Ellis’s one-time best friend and first kiss who now wants nothing to do with Ellis. And then there’s the Falling Leaves Festival, a local autumnal celebration run by Ellis’s aunt where people from all over come to see Bramble Falls’s beautiful foliage. The house is stuffed with decorations, and every conversation seems to center around the festival.

Dragged to every oh-so-charming event from apple picking to pumpkin carving, Ellis can’t stop bumping into Cooper…or falling for the quaint town and its quirky residents. As her return to Manhattan gets repeatedly delayed, Ellis finds herself caught between two very different places—and the futures they represent.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

In the city of Puck’s Port, where motorized vehicles fill the streets and new technological marvels abound, something rotten is lurking under the surface. A violent murder at the docks seems to point to a fey killer, igniting a powder keg of distrust between the city’s humans and its fey inhabitants — folks who wield wonderful but often uncontrollable magical power.

Gristle Senan Maxim Junior finds himself caught in the middle. Forced into the reluctant role of private investigator, like his late father, he’s working to solve the mystery of this fiery murder…mainly because his sister, Hawthorne Stregoni, is a fey herself with an unfortunate penchant for setting things ablaze.

Hawthorne is part of an experimental study to control feyism but struggles to keep her powerful magic in check in a country that hates what she is. Can she and Gristle work together to find the true instigator of the murder before it’s too late?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

There were so many things Edwin Hodge didn’t know when he paid $10 for a cool poster of Kobe Bryant at the local flea market.

He didn’t know that hidden within the frame of the poster was an original drawing by Pablo Picasso, one of the most famous artists in history. He didn’t know the Picasso might be worth millions of dollars. He didn’t know that kids at school were going to treat him differently, or that he would become a world famous social media superstar.

And he sure didn’t know that people would tap his phone, follow him home, break into his house, or threaten to burn it down. He didn’t know the Picasso was going to ruin his life.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

On a gloomy November night, eleven-year-old Tiphany Stokes saves an old lady from collapsing in the street. An antique doll named Gretel watches them, longing for Tiph to rescue her from life in a shop window.

Though none of these three characters realizes it, their worlds are about to change: Gretel will no longer be a precious prisoner. The old lady—is she a witch?—will discover the secret hidden in her long-neglected dollhouse. And Tiph—whose parents rejoice that she is “never any trouble”—will become a thief, a dog walker, an actor, and best of all, a friend.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Twelve-year-old Lila has two goals for the summer:

1. Win back the friends who ditched her for being “too dramatic”

2. Stop being so dramatic

But then Lila’s estranged Grandpa Clem dies, throwing a wrench in her plans. Now she’ll have to spend the summer in Ohio while her parents decide what to do with Grandpa Clem’s creepy Victorian Inn. It’s supremely unfair. How can she show off the “new and improved” Lila from so far away?

Even worse, strange things keep happening. En route to Ohio, the family gets into a scary car accident. No one’s hurt, but the remainder of the trip is… odd. At every rest stop, Lila sees people in weird old-fashioned clothes. People no one else can see or hear…

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

The building you live in has probably been around longer than you, so you may think it’s been there forever. But no matter where you live, a whole lot happened before your home was built.

In Before I Lived Here, a boy peels away each layer of the history of the land his house sits on. Follow along from the construction of the neighborhood back to the planning of it; from the ranchers and log cabins that predated it, back to the region’s Indigenous people and their eviction from the land…all the way back to the time of the dinosaurs.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

I was born by the river in a little tent.
Oh, and just like the river, I’ve been a-runnin’ ever since.
It’s been a long, a long time coming,
but I know a change gonna come. Oh yes, it will.

The immortal lyrics of Sam Cooke’s inspiring civil rights anthem are among the most powerful in music history. Written as an ode to the struggles and joy of Black Americans living under the oppression of Jim Crow, “A Change Is Gonna Come” became a rallying cry for justice and equality when it was shared in 1964.

Now, more than sixty years later, the fight for freedom continues, and these sweeping lyrics remain as important and soul stirring as ever.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

What is it like to be little? What is it like to be big?

Award-winning poet Joyce Sidman explores both in this lyrical picture book. Whether it’s a small bubble writing to the enormous sky, or a mighty oak reassuring its tiny acorn, these surprising and delightful poems examine how we’re all connected—in both big and small ways.

Brilliantly illustrated by Caldecott artist Melissa Sweet, Dear Acorn (Love, Oak) will have readers dreaming up messages of their own to this big, beautiful world. 

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

First, the flower grew wild―a yellow blossom with bracts that turn brilliant red in winter. The ancient Nahuas cultivated it; then it inspired Mexico’s most famous Christmas legend.

After the flower caught the eye of Mexico’s first US ambassador, it became known as the Poinsettia. Yet it has many more names and traditions―and even more colors!

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Everything is changing for Carmela. Her older sister, Franca, has new, mean friends, and Carmela is feeling lost and lonely. So she decides to go for a walk—to walk until she can’t anymore, then walk a bit more. Her walking takes her to a strange tower, and what she finds there will transform her life forever.

In this companion to The Queen in the Cave, her authorial debut, renowned illustrator Júlia Sardà ventures into a mesmerizing world where mermaid grease washes away envy, a giant’s hair helps you face bullies, a circular library holds all your secrets, and a dome of crystal prisms opens a view to the cosmos. Dreamlike and filled with whimsy, the artist’s kaleidoscopic patterns, decorative borders, glowing colors, and layered, elaborately detailed imagery will bewitch young readers as readily as the title character does Carmela—and beckon them to return for many a visit.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Let Stephen King, global bestselling and award-winning author, and Maurice Sendak, beloved creator of the Caldecott Medal–winning Where the Wild Things Are, guide you into the most deliciously daring rendition of the classic Grimm fairy tale yet. But will you find your way back out? 

With a personal introduction from Stephen King, the beautiful book has been created in close collaboration with The Maurice Sendak Foundation. This stunning storybook makes the perfect gift for fans of King, Sendak, and the Brothers Grimm. 

MY NOTE:

Illustrator Maurice Sendak passed away in 2012. The illustrations for this book were originally drawn in 1997 for an opera, not for a picture book. Stephen King worked with the Maurice Sendak Foundation to create the story of “Hansel and Gretel.” It’s a rare collaboration where the text was written to go with the illustrations, not vice versa.

This is a retelling of the original story, but King added some elements, such as a dream sequence of the witch flying, to fit the illustrations. You can read more about it here.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Little rebels have a way of finding each other. When these three youngsters come together while playing outside, they feel the pull—these are their people.

Little rebels ask questions. They use language to shape the world, and when no words are right, they make up new ones. They imagine, trust their intuition, and aren’t ashamed to change their minds.

Playing together in good times leads to working together through trouble. When the local lagoon dries up and a bird friend is trapped in the dry bed, the little rebels call on ancestors to show them what to do. Nobody gets left behind.