Sometime in the early 1980s on the Hob, where annoying three-foot dragons lay their eggs in the worst places, fifteen-year-old Penny Flat puts her all into beating her rival in cross country, instead of dealing with her mom’s move out of town and the loneliness that follows. As celebrations ramp up for the annual Ascalon hunt — the beloved dragon egg harvest — high school junior Thea Spenser crushes hard on her best friend Rita and sets a protest in motion that she hopes will stop the hunt in its egg-smashing tracks. And meanwhile, magic threatens to send them all back to the 1480s when George Spenser finds a gnarly dragon egg bigger than all the others, in a cave haunted by the ghost of George Redcross the dragon slayer.
Set it all to a bitchin’ New Wave soundtrack and you’ve got The Scorpio Races (Stiefvater) meets Leah on the Off-Beat (Albertalli), Wringer (Spinelli) meets Moxie (Mathieu), with dragons, protests, enchantment, a host of LGBTQ+ characters, and confusing-as-hell first love.
Genre: Historical young adult fantasy,
Word Count: 87,000 words
Justine Macauley Books 