Young Adult Fiction

In the chaos of disaster, finding other people may bring salvation or a new set of dangers where menace, death, friendship, and love are found in the surprising fissures of a drowning world. 

18-year-old Jack wakes from a blackout to find an apocalyptic landscape, the earth split open and a violent flood engulfing the farming valley where he lives. Orphaned and homeless, Jack begins searching for signs of life. But someone, or something, is stalking him. Through flooded farmlands and mountain terrain, survival rests on a razor-thin edge, the loss or discovery of food and tools the difference between life and death. Jack struggles through a transformed world and into a new life, haunted by the demons and scars of the old.

Set in the near future, Ship in the Sky is a coming-of-age literary work of fiction. Cormac McCarthy's The Road for young adults.

A Booklist Starred Review 

A big-hearted coming-of-age debut about a tiger, a Russian, a model airplane, unexplainable disaster, and a bewildered twelve-year-old boy just trying to find his place in the world.

It’s 1981 in Texarkana, Texas, and Noah Ellis is trying hard to remember. Still reeling from the loss of his father in a suspicious tragedy, Noah is in a tragedy of his own—one that results in another inexplicable death, this time leaving Noah to suffer from severe amnesia. 

After that day, everything changes. Noah becomes an unwitting star in a highly publicized trial. Girls start to notice him, and kids who once bullied him now allow him to run with their pack—at a cost. Standing as always in his big brother’s shadow, Noah also has a little sister he must look out for. But Noah’s still stuck on that day and the accident he can’t remember. As town secrets come to light and summer draws to a close, Noah must find a way to salvage all that he’s lost, and to learn what is truly precious.