VENOM & VOW

From married writing team Anna-Marie and Elliott McLemore comes a lush YA fantasy novel about owning your power and becoming who you really are.

Keep your enemy closer. Cade McKenna is a transgender prince who doubles for his brother Patrick, current ruler of Adare. Valencia Palafox is a young dama to the princess of Eliana, and also an infamous boy assassin known as Gael. Valencia has made Patrick her newest target, not knowing that the first time she meets him, she's really meeting Cade. Cade has placed Gael under his protection, not knowing that Gael has fatal plans for the Adare prince. And when Cade and Valencia blame each other for an enchantment that takes both their families, neither of them realizes that they have far more dangerous enemies - and working together starts to draw them closer, something they never imagined was possible. Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) writes magical realism and fairy tales that are as queer, Latine, and nonbinary as they are. Their books include The Weight of Feathers, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature and was the winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award; Wild Beauty, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist best book of 2017; Blanca & Roja, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice; Miss Meteor (co-authored with Tehlor Kay Mejia); Dark and Deepest Red, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List selection; The Mirror Season, which has recently received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and School Library Journal; Lakelore, which has received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness; and Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix (Fall 2022), which was longlisted for the National Book Award. Elliott McLemore is a nonbinary trans guy who comes from mountains and loves trees. As a child, he romped in dresses, fought with plastic swords, and dreamed up his first stories. Between then and now, he has focused on academic and professional writing, research, and advocacy, including work toward adding nonbinary gender markers to California identity documents.