Elysium Girls

Elysium Girls is a dazzling young adult fantasy set in a Dust Bowl-era Oklahoma town, where two powerful goddesses, Life and Death, play a ruthless game with human lives. Seventeen-year-old Sal Wilkinson is tasked with leading her community as the apocalypse looms. When an accident leads to her exile with a mysterious outsider named Asa, they uncover a hidden group of exiled girls, including a powerful witch. Together, they must challenge the very rules of the goddesses' game to save their world. This book explores themes of fate versus free will, leadership, found family, and includes LGBTQ+ romance, making it a compelling read for teens aged 12-18 who enjoy complex world-building and high-stakes adventure.

A lush, dazzlingly original young adult fantasy about an epic clash of witches, gods, and demons. Elysium, Oklahoma, is a town like any other. Respectable. God-fearing. Praying for an end to the Dust Bowl. Until the day the people of Elysium are chosen by two sisters: Life and Death. And the Sisters like to gamble against each other with things like time, and space, and human lives. Elysium is to become the gameboard in a ruthless competition between the goddesses. The Dust Soldiers will return in ten years' time, and if the people of Elysium have not proved themselves worthy, all will be slain. Nearly ten years later, seventeen-year-old Sal Wilkinson is called upon to lead Elysium as it prepares for the end of the game. But then an outsider named Asa arrives at Elysium's gates with nothing more than a sharp smile and a bag of magic tricks, and they trigger a terrible accident that gets both Sal and Asa exiled into the brutal Desert of Dust and Steel. There Sal and Asa stumble upon a gang of girls headed by another exile: a young witch everyone in Elysium believes to be dead. As the apocalypse looms, they must do more than simply tip the scales in Elysium's favor--only by reinventing the rules can they beat Life and Death at their own game in this exciting fantasy debut.