The Hazel Wood (Thorndike Press Large Print Literacy Bridge)

An Amazon Best Book of February 2018: My favorite books, especially those that lurk in well-trod genres like young adult fantasy, are those tales that sink a grappling hook in your chest and drag you through a maze of plot twists and surprises until you're hollowed out and yet supremely satisfied at the final page. The Hazel Wood, a creepy, abrasive, and marvelous debut novel, does just that. Teenager Alice knows fairy tales aren't real, though they certainly have affected her own life: Decades ago her grandmother penned a slim volume of brutal fairy tales set in the fictional Hinterland and then promptly shut herself off from the world in her hidden estate. Alice and her mother have been on the road ever since, rarely staying in one place for more than a few months. But when Alice's mother disappears, taken by people who bear a nightmarish resemblance to the characters in her grandmother's stories, Alice turns to Hinterland superfan and sorta-friend Ellery Finch to help her track down her mother and her grandmother's long-lost estate. Alice blazes with a rage and a grace that spurs her and the reader through the weird and brambly paths that lead to the truth behind her grandmother's dark stories and Alice's own childhood. Mesmerizing and menacing, The Hazel Wood rings with a voice and an authenticity driven by a talented author who distills into storytelling magic the moments of power and helplessness spawned by the realization that the world is not as we imagined it to be. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review

Melissa Albert is the founding editor of the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog and the managing editor of BN.com. She has written for McSweeney's, Time Out Chicago, MTV, and more. Melissa is from Illinois and lives in Brooklyn. The Hazel Wood is her first novel.