The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats.. Nor do they have tails.But they are most assuredly dead.Nebula and Alex Award winner P. Djèlí Clark introduces a brand-new world and a fantastical city full of gods and assassins.. An Indie Next Pick, LibraryReads Top Ten Selection, Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Selection, and Best-Of Book according to BookRiot. Eveen the Eviscerator is skilled, discreet, professional, and here for your most pressing needs in the ancient city of Tal Abisi. Her guild is strong, her blades are sharp, and her rules are simple. Those sworn to the Matron of Assassins―resurrected, deadly, wiped of their memories―have only three unbreakable vows.. First, the contract must be just. That’s above Eveen’s pay grade.. Second, even the most powerful assassin may only kill the contracted. Eveen’s a professional. She’s never missed her mark.. The third and the simplest: once you accept a job, you must carry it out. And if you stray? A ﬁnal death would be a mercy. When the Festival of the Clockwork King turns the city upside down, Eveen’s newest mission brings her face-to-face with a past she isn’t supposed to remember and a vow she can’t forget.

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins

One of TIME Magazine's Top 100 Fantasy Novels of All Time -- Now in Paperback!. Locus Award Winner—Best First Novel  . A National Indie Bestseller. Nebula Award Finalist. Lodestar Award Finalist. Ignyte Award Finalist. TIME’s Best 100 Fantasy Books of All Time. NPR Best of the Year. Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels for Youth. A BookPage Best of the Year. Chicago Public Library "Best of the Best". PNBA Bestseller . Publishers Weekly Best of the Year. Buzzfeed's Best YA SFF of the Year . Shelf-Awareness Best of the Year. AICL Best YA of the Year. NECBA Windows & Mirrors Selection. NEIBA Award Finalist . Tor Best of the Year. Kirkus Best YA of the Year. Publishers Weekly Flying Start. American Indian Youth Literature Award Finalist. “Groundbreaking.” —TIME. “Deeply enjoyable from start to finish.”—NPR. “Utterly magical.” —SyFyWire. “Atmospheric and lyrical...a gorgeous work of art.”—BuzzFeed. “One of the best YA debuts of 2020. Read it."—Marieke Nijkamp. ★ “A fresh voice and perspective.”—Booklist, starred review. ★ “A unique and powerful Native American voice.”–BookPage, starred review . ★ “A brilliant, engaging debut.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review. ★ “A fast-paced murder mystery.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review. ★ “A Lipan Apache Sookie Stackhouse for the teen set.” —Shelf-Awareness, starred review. A Texas teen comes face-to-face with a cousin’s ghost and vows to unmask the murderer.. Elatsoe—Ellie for short—lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals—most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby. When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered.. Who killed him and how did he die? With the help of her family, her best friend Jay, and the memory great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Elatsoe, must track down the killer and unravel the mystery of this creepy town and it's dark past. But will the nefarious townsfolk and a mysterious Doctor stop her before she gets started?. The breathtaking debut novel from Darcie Little Badger features an asexual, Apache teen protagonist -- and combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations, and fantasy elements, in one of the most-talked-about books in years.

Elatsoe

Yume Kitasei's The Deep Sky is an enthralling sci fi thriller debut about a mission into deep space that begins with a lethal explosion that leaves the survivors questioning the loyalty of the crew.. They left Earth to save humanity. They’ll have to save themselves first.. It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.. As the mystery unfolds on the ship, poignant flashbacks reveal how Asuka came to be picked for the mission. Despite struggling through training back on Earth, she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America. But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left.. With the crew turning on each other, Asuka is determined to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission―or worse, the bomber strikes again.

The Deep Sky: A Novel

A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.. Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences…. Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a "knead" for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.. Tao starts down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past close in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.

The Teller of Small Fortunes

"Funny, wild, witty, and profound.”―Victor LaValle. "A wild and wonderful debut, teeming with music, family and art."—New York Times. "Magical, lyrical, gritty, otherworldly…hype like Bayou Classic in the 90s."—P. Djèlí Clark. One of the Best Fantasy Books of 2022: New York Times; Oprah Daily; Vulture; Gizmodo; Boston Public Library. A fun and fantastical love letter to New Orleans unfolds when a battle for the city's soul brews between two young mages, a vengeful wraith, and one powerful song in this wildly imaginative debut.  Nola is a city full of wonders. A place of sky trolleys and dead cabs, where haints dance the night away and Wise Women help keep the order. To those from Away, Nola might seem strange. To Perilous Graves, it’s simply home.. Perry knows Nola’s rhythm as intimately as his own heartbeat. So when the city’s Great Magician starts appearing in odd places and essential songs are forgotten, Perry knows trouble is afoot.. Nine songs of power have escaped from the piano that maintains the city’s beat, and without them, Nola will fail. Unwilling to watch his home be destroyed, Perry will sacrifice everything to save it. But a storm is brewing, and the Haint of All Haints is awake. Nola’s time might be coming to an end.

The Ballad of Perilous Graves

Since the dawn of time, life has been comfortable and predictable. The gods have wrested pockets of Creation from Chaos, formed civilizations, and built entire realities. Now, the nature of Creation is changing and the Divine are losing their divinity.Rosemary, daughter of the God of Creation, can no longer deny this when a strange delegation from Dawnland braves the paths through Chaos and survives. Come to negotiate trade and protection agreements with the Divineof Meadowsweet, it is the butterfly woman who so captivates Rosemary. The weight of her sorrow, the heaviness of her secrets.For the soul is a battleground. Clouds are massing along the horizon, and Rosemary...She must survive the storm.

The Necessity of Rain

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Perfect for fans of Alice Hoffman, Isabel Allende, and Sarah Addison Allen, a family searches for the truth hidden in their past in this “expertly woven tale of family power, threaded with as much mystery as magic” (V.E. Schwab, #1 New York Times bestselling author).. The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers—not for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed into a ceiba tree, leaving them with more questions than answers. Seven years later, her gifts have manifested in different ways for Marimar, Rey, and Rhiannon, granting them unexpected blessings and powers. But soon, a hidden figure begins to tear through their family tree, picking them off one by one as it seeks to destroy Orquídea’s line. Determined to save what’s left of their family and uncover the truth behind their inheritance, her descendants travel to Ecuador—to the place where Orquídea buried her secrets and broken promises and never looked back. Alternating between Orquídea’s past and her descendants’ present, The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina is a “spellbinding tale, both timeless and fresh, that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page. Prepare to fall in love” (Kim Liggett, New York Times bestselling author).

The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina: A Novel

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “One of the year’s strongest fantasy novels” (NPR), an imaginative retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale from the bestselling author of Uprooted.NEBULA AND HUGO AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Public Library . With the Nebula Award–winning Uprooted, Naomi Novik opened a brilliant new chapter in an already acclaimed career, delving into the magic of fairy tales to craft a love story that was both timeless and utterly of the now. Spinning Silver draws readers deeper into this glittering realm of fantasy, where the boundary between wonder and terror is thinner than a breath, and safety can be stolen as quickly as a kiss.. Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty—until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk—grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh—Miryem’s fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. She will face an impossible challenge and, along with two unlikely allies, uncover a secret that threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike.. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Time, Tordotcom, Popsugar, Vox, Vulture, Paste, Bustle, Library Journal. “A perfect tale . . . A big and meaty novel, rich in both ideas and people, with the vastness of Tolkien and the empathy and joy in daily life of Le Guin.”—The New York Times Book Review. “Gorgeous, complex, and magical . . . This is the kind of book that one might wish to inhabit forever.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review). “Cool and clever and . . . dire and wonderful.”—Laini Taylor, author of Strange the Dreamer. “The Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale has never been as captivating. . . . Spinning Silver further cements [Novik’s] place as one of the genre greats.”—Paste

Spinning Silver: A Novel

. Wall-E meets Hatchet in this New York Times bestselling illustrated middle grade novel from Caldecott Honor winner Peter BrownCan a robot survive in the wilderness? When robot Roz opens her eyes for the first time, she discovers that she is all alone on a remote, wild island. She has no idea how she got there or what her purpose is--but she knows she needs to survive. After battling a violent storm and escaping a vicious bear attack, she realizes that her only hope for survival is to adapt to her surroundings and learn from the island's unwelcoming animal inhabitants. As Roz slowly befriends the animals, the island starts to feel like home--until, one day, the robot's mysterious past comes back to haunt her.From bestselling and award-winning author and illustrator Peter Brown comes a heartwarming and action-packed novel about what happens when nature and technology collide.

The Wild Robot (Volume 1) (The Wild Robot, 1)

One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess searching for her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.. Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of powerful magic - but is now little more than a decaying ruin.. Priya is a maidservant, one of several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to attend Malini's chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, as long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides. But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya's true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled . . .

The Jasmine Throne

Octavia E. Butler meets Marvel’s Black Panther in The Deep, a story rich with Afrofuturism, folklore, and the power of memory, inspired by the Hugo Award–nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’s rap group Clipping. . Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu. Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are. The Deep is “a tour de force reorientation of the storytelling gaze…a superb, multilayered work,” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a vividly original and uniquely affecting story inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping.

The Deep

“Open Throat is what fiction should be.” ―The New York Times Book ReviewOne of Elle’s Best Summer Books of 2023, and one of i-D’s Fiction to be Excited for in 2023. Named a Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, Vanity Fair, BuzzFeed, The Boston Globe, Nylon, Alta, Shondaland, Chicago Review of Books, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Literary Hub.. A lonely, lovable, queer mountain lion narrates this star-making fever dream of a novel.. A queer and dangerously hungry mountain lion lives in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign. Lonely and fascinated by humanity’s foibles, the lion spends their days protecting a nearby homeless encampment, observing hikers complain about their trauma, and, in quiet moments, grappling with the complexities of their gender identity, memories of a vicious father, and the indignities of sentience. . When a man-made fire engulfs the encampment, the lion is forced from the hills down into the city the hikers call “ellay.” As the lion confronts a carousel of temptations and threats, they take us on a tour that spans the cruel inequalities of Los Angeles and the toll of climate grief. But even when salvation finally seems within reach, they are forced to face down the ultimate question: Do they want to eat a person, or become one?. Henry Hoke’s Open Throat is a marvel of storytelling, a universal journey through a wondrous and menacing world recounted by a lovable mountain lion. Feral and vulnerable, profound and playful, Open Throat is a star-making novel that brings the mythic to life.

Open Throat: A Novel

Celestial

Hi friend! I’m Steph – let’s devour some otherworldly stories together.

Steph

During this phase, we're reviewing manuscripts and deciding which book we want to publish. At the end of this phase, we offer an author a book deal.

Consideration

As the manuscript goes through several phases of editorial work, the cover and interior design takes place, while format decisions about paper stocks and printing treatments are made.

Editorial & Design

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Reading is better in community, and I’m grateful to welcome you to mine! I’ve been a content creator most of my life & an avid reader my entire life. Celestial is our home base to celebrate imaginative stories from galaxy-wide voices. (Think: fantasy, horror, sci-fi, magical realism & beyond.) I love being playful with my recommendations, but I always read with intention – this is a discerning and deliberately diverse space. Join my chaotic community … and let’s have fun while uplifting all voices. 

steph ✨ 📚 ✡︎ (@starrysteph)

Hi! I'm Steph. You can mostly find me on booktok (@starrysteph). I love reading & sharing book reviews and recommendations.

book reviews & recs 📚 • animal lover 🐇 • actor & content creator 🎭
