Books with author Merrie Destefano

Yesterday, Rachel went to sleep listening to Taylor Swift, curled up in her grammy’s quilt, worrying about geometry. Today, she woke up in a ditch, bloodied, bruised, and missing a year of her life.She doesn’t recognize the person she’s become: She’s popular. She wears nothing but black.Black to cover the blood.And she can fight.Tell no one.She’s not the only girl to go missing within the last year…but she’s the only girl to come back. She desperately wants to unravel what happened to her, to try and recover the rest of the Lost Girls.But the more she discovers, the more her memories return. And as much as her new life scares her, it calls to her. Seductively. The good girl gone bad: sex, drugs, and raves, and something darker…something she still craves. The rush of the fight, the thrill of the win—something she can’t resist, that might still get her killed…

2019 YARWA Athena Award Winner For Excellence in Young Adult & New Adult Fiction: YA/NA Speculative, Second Place WinnerThe Valiant was supposed to save us. Instead, it triggered the end of the world.Earth is in shambles. Everyone, even the poorest among us, invested in the Valiant's space mining mission in the hopes we'd be saved from ourselves. But the second the ship leaves Earth's atmosphere, our fate is sealed. The alien invasion begins. They pour into cities around the world through time portals, possessing humans, forcing us to kill one another.And for whatever reason, my brother is their number one target.Now the fate of the world lies in the hands of me, a seventeen-year-old girl, but with the help of my best friend, Justin--who's suddenly starting to feel like more--maybe if we save my brother, we can save us all...

2019 Silver Medal Winner, Young Adult Fiction — Horror/Mystery, Independent Publisher's Moonbeam Children's Book Awards2019 Realm Award Winner in Supernatural/Paranormal/HorrorFrankenstein meets Dracula in this Gothic retelling of Mary Shelley’s classic tale."Beautiful and atmospheric.""Merrie takes the reader on a Gothic horror thrill ride through Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin's eyes…”"Shade hit the ground running from page 1.""Again, Merrie Destefano keeps a relentless, page-turning pace that will leave you at the end breathless and anxious…”“A beautifully written story that reminded me of the TV miniseries, The Frankenstein Chronicles, which I also loved.”“Shade is an imaginative and fantastical recreation of not just Frankenstein, but the entire tale regarding how Mary Shelley came up with the story!”“Merrie Destefano breathes new life into the Gothic horror genrewith SHADE, a gorgeously written re-imagining of FRANKENSTEIN from the point-of-view of Mary Godwin.”“With its haunting imagery, electrical tension, and compelling characters, SHADE will appeal to fans of Ransom Rigg's MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN and Angela Carter's THE BLOODY CHAMBER.”A holiday in Switzerland is supposed to lift Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin’s spirits. She wants to forget the past and have fun. In fact, everyone in her party is running away from one indiscretion or another—from her fiancé Percy Shelley to Lord Byron to Mary’s stepsister, Claire. But from the moment Mary arrives at Byron’s villa, she knows something is wrong. He rushes her indoors and forbids all of them to go out at night, claiming that the horrible weather has driven wild animals down from the mountains.The only person who doesn’t seem to be running away from anything is a handsome, young Italian doctor, John Polidori. Instead, he is fervently pursuing local folk legends and a new scientific theory that claims people can be raised from the dead.But it’s not until they all challenge one other to write ghost stories that the real danger begins. In a nightmare, Mary envisions a patchwork man animated by Galvanism and she begins writing Frankenstein. Likewise, fueled by local legends, John writes The Vampyre—one of the first vampire stories ever written.What neither one of them knows is that they are conjuring a dark evil. Before long, all of their lives will be in danger—for neither of these characters are imaginary. Far from it.For fans of the Netflix program, THE FRANKENSTEIN CHRONICLES, AND I DARKEN by Kiersten White, SOMETHING STRANGE AND DEADLY by Susan Dennard, and BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA.

Turning 16 should be wonderful. It isn’t. Because that's when Kira Callahan finds out all her family secrets—and one of those secrets has already killed two people in her family.Now she’s next on the list...The locals in Crescent Moon Bay shun Kira after the mysterious deaths of her mother and sister. Rumors circulate that her mother went mad and indulged in a killing spree. Kira worries that one day she’ll do the same thing, especially since she's starting to look more and more like her mother—the crazy murderer.All Kira Callahan wants to do is swim, hang out with her best friend, Sean, and ignore the kids who torment her at high school.That is, until the day she gets invited to a party. For three minutes her life is perfect—she even kisses Sean. Then somebody spikes her drink and some girls from out of town lure her into the ocean and hold her underwater.Kira soon discovers that the group of wild teenagers who have come to visit Crescent Moon Bay are not as innocent as they seem.In fact, nothing is as it seems—not the mysterious deaths of her sister and mother, not her heritage, not even her best friend. And everything seems to hinge on the ancient Celtic legends her mother used to tell her as a child.A new twist on Irish folklore, FATHOM is one part Young Adult romance, one part urban fantasy and one part gothic mystery, filled with Celtic sea legends. Note: This book is a clean, paranormal romance that deals with childhood bullies. For fans of teen and young adult mermaid books, sea creatures, and English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh folktales.

To survive, she made a secret deal in the Underworld...Riley discovers her true Selkie/human heritage at a young age, when a dreadful sea monster tries to kill her. She manages to escape, but her early years are spent bouncing around from one Selkie home to the next, where she's treated like a slave. The small amount of royal blood that flows through her veins is not enough to get her a seat in the Selkie High Court, but it's enough to make her feared and loathed.At fifteen, she runs away to the far country of Scotland and the Shiant Islands, where she pleads for sanctuary among the blue-skinned Na Fir Ghorm, a dangerous race of mermaid-like sea creatures. Their King--Poseidon--agrees to let her in if she'll make a pledge to him. She has no choice but to accept his terms, not knowing that Poseidon plans to use her for a dark, secret plan.A new twist on Irish folklore, FURY is one part Young Adult romance, one part urban fantasy and one part gothic mystery, filled with Celtic sea legends. Note: This book is a clean, paranormal romance. For fans of teen and young adult mermaid books, sea creatures, and English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh folktales.

Yesterday, Rachel went to sleep listening to Taylor Swift, curled up in her grammy’s quilt, worrying about geometry. Today, she woke up in a ditch, bloodied, bruised, and missing a year of her life.She doesn’t recognize the person she’s become: She’s popular. She wears nothing but black.Black to cover the blood.And she can fight.Tell no one.She’s not the only girl to go missing within the last year…but she’s the only girl to come back. She desperately wants to unravel what happened to her, to try and recover the rest of the Lost Girls.But the more she discovers, the more her memories return. And as much as her new life scares her, it calls to her. Seductively. The good girl gone bad: sex, drugs, and raves, and something darker…something she still craves. The rush of the fight, the thrill of the win―something she can’t resist, that might still get her killed…

He wore the key to death around his neck.A teenage runaway’s post-apocalyptic world comes tumbling down when she discovers a survivor in a field of dead bodies.Condemned as a runaway and sentenced to work as a Cleaner, fifteen-year-old Anna now spends her days searching for valuables in a field of dead warriors. Her life goes from bad to worse, however, when she stumbles upon a plague carrier, a boy her age who could kill her entire camp with a single drop from the flask he carries around his neck.Approximately 26 pages long, THE PLAGUE CARRIER is the first story in Merrie Destefano’s new series set in a post-apocalyptic United States, where survivors are still recovering from a Civil War. East of the Mississippi, peace reigns and the people are free. But west of the Mississippi is a different story. Here, the countryside is ravaged by erratic thunderstorms and tornadoes, and the inhabitants continue to battle one another using advanced forms of chemical warfare. Here, anyone who breaks the law is sold into slavery, where he must serve in a labor camp until his sentence is fulfilled.

The Valiant was supposed to save us. Instead, it triggered the end of the world.Earth is in shambles. Everyone, even the poorest among us, invested in the Valiant’s space mining mission in the hopes we’d be saved from ourselves. But the second the ship leaves Earth’s atmosphere, our fate is sealed. The alien invasion begins. They pour into cities around the world through time portals, possessing humans, forcing us to kill one another.And for whatever reason, my brother is their number one target.Now the fate of the world lies in the hands of me, a seventeen-year-old girl, but with the help of my best friend, Justin―who’s suddenly starting to feel like more―maybe if we save my brother, we can save us all…

A broken heart. An infamous holiday gone wrong. A deadly curse brought to life. A holiday in Switzerland is supposed to lift Mary Wollstonecroft Godwin’s spirits. She wants to forget the past and have fun. In fact, everyone in her party is running away from one indiscretion or another—from her fiancé Percy Shelley to Lord Byron to Mary’s stepsister, Claire. But from the moment Mary arrives at Byron’s villa, she knows something is wrong. He rushes her indoors and forbids all of them to go out at night, claiming that the horrible weather has driven wild animals down from the mountains. The only person who doesn’t seem to be running away from anything is a handsome, young Italian doctor, John Polidori. Instead, he is fervently pursuing local folk legends and a new scientific theory that claims people can be raised from the dead. But it’s not until they all challenge one other to write ghost stories that the real danger begins. In a nightmare, Mary envisions a patchwork man animated by Galvanism and she begins writing Frankenstein. Likewise, fueled by local legends, John writes The Vampyre—one of the first vampire stories ever written. What neither one of them knows is that they are conjuring a dark evil. Before long, all of their lives will be in danger—for neither of these characters are imaginary. Far from it.

Frankenstein meets Dracula in this Gothic retelling of Mary Shelley’s classic tale.A holiday in Switzerland is supposed to lift Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin’s spirits. She wants to forget the past and have fun. In fact, everyone in her party is running away from one indiscretion or another—from her fiancé Percy Shelley to Lord Byron to Mary’s stepsister, Claire. But from the moment Mary arrives at Byron’s villa, she knows something is wrong. He rushes her indoors and forbids all of them to go out at night, claiming that the horrible weather has driven wild animals down from the mountains.The only person who doesn’t seem to be running away from anything is a handsome, young Italian doctor, John Polidori. Instead, he is fervently pursuing local folk legends and a new scientific theory that claims people can be raised from the dead.But it’s not until they all challenge one other to write ghost stories that the real danger begins. In a nightmare, Mary envisions a patchwork man animated by Galvanism and she begins writing Frankenstein. Likewise, fueled by local legends, John writes The Vampyre—one of the first vampire stories ever written.What neither one of them knows is that they are conjuring a dark evil. Before long, all of their lives will be in danger—for neither of these characters are imaginary. Far from it.For fans of the Netflix program, THE FRANKENSTEIN CHRONICLES, AND I DARKEN by Kiersten White, SOMETHING STRANGE AND DEADLY by Susan Dennard, and BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA.

Three thousand years ago, a war began between the immortals and the mortals. It's a war that continues to this day... Before history began, a legendary queen battled a foreign army, braved the death of her husband, and faced betrayal at the hand of someone she trusted. This is the story of Eire, Queen of the Faeries, the Immortal One, and the leader of the Tuatha de Danann. To this day, her homeland, Ireland, bears her name, and this is the story of the war that drove the Immortal Ones into exile. It's also the tale of how she found help from an unexpected place, leading her to a love like she had never known before. Fairytale Christmas is a story that spans thousands of years. It's also the beginning of all of our fairytales and legends; it's where mortals and immortals survive because they love one another, proving that love is the greatest gift of all. This is the first installment in the Saga of the Fair Folk, a journey that lasts until the end of time.