Fantasy

A floating space station, the Imperium, was once a laboratory but has been crafted into a hotel for the extremely wealthy in Pitkin’s thriller. The first group arrives, and the team onboard is ready to show off the unique features of a stay, including a view of Earth and a supervised spacewalk. Chloe, a biophysicist who misses having her work be the focus of the station, assists in making the visitors feel welcome. It doesn’t help that her boyfriend, the CEO of the hotel, can’t make it at the last minute. She quickly learns that something sinister is happening and that some of the staff she thought she could trust are part of a global terrorist group called The Reckoners. While Chloe remains in hiding, the visitors are taken hostage, and the demand is eight billion dollars. With no hope of rescue and no way to communicate with anyone on Earth to send help, Chloe takes matters into her own hands. This mashup of the films Die Hard and Gravity is an action-adventure reader’s dream. The pacing is relentless and claustrophobic, making it impossible to stop turning the pages. Pitkin has written a winner.

A supernatural mystery—part Stranger Things, part Enola Homes, but very much itself—set in 1909 Boston. Young Artie Quick, a Filene’s basement “shopgirl” by day, is fascinated by criminal behavior and signs up to study Criminal Investigation at the YMCA’s Evening Institute for Men. One problem? Artie is a young woman, and to pass, she has to adopt male drag and attempt to alter her voice. While she still lives with her working-class family, most of her time she’s at well-off Theodore’s digs—her charming if awkward best friend. Theodore is as obsessed with magic as Artie is with crime, and the two take on a case: the investigation into unnatural screams heard at night in the Boston Common by homeless men and petty criminals. What seems like a minor quest ends up taking the two on a sojourn that reveals the abduction of young women, a cover-up by city officials, and the existence of a spirit underneath the city, ready to wield even greater destruction. This book is way, way over the top—and is sure to delight its intended audience. Artie grows to love her menswear, and seems to love women as well, and her embrace of her queerness is just one of the many transformations in the book. For young adults on up.

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