About Book, Beast, and Crow
Do you like adventure stories that are secretly about friendship, like The Goonies? Have you gobbled up the books of Lev Grossman’s Magicians Trilogy, or binged episodes of the TV show adaptation on Netflix?
Are you suspicious of the seeming normalcy of your hometown? Do you enjoy bizarre urban legends, like Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil?
Do you long for a hidden door to appear that you can escape through, or perhaps, an invisible portal for your future self to step through just in the nick of time?
Have you ever taken a book out of the library and discovered that it wasn’t, in fact, a book at all, but a shape-shifting object with consciousness and a dry sense of humor? And did your cat warn you about it?
Are you beginning to grow antlers?
If you answered yes to any of the above, you will probably enjoy reading Book, Beast, and Crow. Here is the official jacket copy, which I didn’t write, because writing your own jacket copy is almost impossible.
Part The Hazel Wood, part Stranger Things, this spine-tingling, genre-bending novel from Elizabeth Byrne will leave readers breathless as they follow a group of teens who face catastrophic consequences after their friend gets bitten by the town’s most feared creature.
Anna Kellogg has always felt different. Growing up in Hartwood, New Jersey—where frequent disappearances are attributed to an urban-legend-like beast that dwells in the walled-in swamp at the center of town—can have that effect on people. But for Anna, it’s more than that. Since she was a child, she’s been plagued by episodes where she sees things others can’t see. Feeling different is one thing, but actually being different is another. If it weren’t for her best friend, Olivia, Anna’s not sure where she’d fit in.
But any hopes of having a normal senior year come to a halt when Olivia is attacked in the woods, bitten, and left for dead by a whirling cyclone of claws, fur, and teeth. Though Olivia survives, a sinister entity makes it clear that the mark had been set on Anna…and the miss has set in motion a catastrophic shift that will change Anna and her friends’ lives forever.
On bookstore shelves 3/12/24, and available to pre-order RIGHT NOW!
Praise for The Grave Keepers
“A lyrical and gorgeously uncanny coming of age story of incantatory power.” - Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble and Magic for Beginners
"At times deeply atmospheric and darkly haunting, The Grave Keepers takes us on a spine-tingling journey into a world much like our own, where more lies beneath than above." - Mindy McGinnis, Edgar Award-winning author of A Madness So Discreet
"An odd and lovely story with magical realistic touches." - Melissa Albert, author of The Hazel Wood
"Gothic surrealism as everlasting as a ghost's kiss blends with coming-of-age angst for the modern age...Byrne's masterful presentation of minute details makes the whole ritual world feel so real readers will want to Google it." - Kirkus Reviews
"While the premise alone is enough to give you goosebumps, it’s the outside world that intrudes upon the quiet life of the sisters, raised in relative seclusion by their cemetery owner parents. Well, and the scheming ghost. The scheming ghost is pretty intrusive, too." - BN Teen blog, in a list of "6 YA Books Set in Spooky Small Towns"
Available now at your local bookstore, as well as the internet: HarperCollins, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Amazon.
About The Grave Keepers
Lately, sixteen-year-old Athena Windham has been spending all her spare time in her grave.
Her parents—owners of a cemetery in Upstate New York—are proud of her devoutness, but her thirteen-year-old sister, Laurel, can’t understand it. Laurel hates her own grave. It’s so boring and chilly down there. She’d rather spend her time exploring the acres and acres of state forest that surround the Windhams’ property.
The Windham girls lead pretty secluded lives—their older sister died in a tragic accident the year before Laurel was born, and their parents’ protectiveness has made the family semi-infamous in their small town.
As the new school year begins, the outside world comes creeping in. Athena—a professional high school loner—grapples with a newfound enemy and, even more surprising, her first best friend. And homeschooled Laurel, sheltered and shy, finds herself face-to-face with a runaway boy who’s hiding out in an abandoned grave.
All the while, a ghost hangs around the Windham house and cemetery—the only grave keeper never to cross over, as far as she knows—messing with people’s graves, turning the Windhams’ lights off and on, spying on the sisters, and plotting how to keep the girls close to home and close to her . . . forever.