NOVA REN SUMA

Dani Noir: available now from Simon & Schuster / Aladdin. Imaginary Girls: coming Summer 2011 from Dutton.

Nova’s debut YA novel, Imaginary Girls, which Penguin called “reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s supernatural family dramas,” is the story of two sisters, their strong bond, and the dead body that threatens to break it. Inspired by Nova’s high school haunts in Woodstock, NY, beloved baby sisters and regretted crushes, magical realism and ghost stories, it is due out from Dutton, an imprint of Penguin, in hardcover tentatively in Summer 2011.

Poaching a swim at the Ashokan Reservoir outside Woodstock as a teenager... one of the inspirations for this novel.

For the true story of how this novel came to be, and all the struggles and re-starts that went into it, check out this blog post on distraction no. 99, Nova’s writing blog.

And for Dutton’s announcement about the novel in Publishers Weekly, see here.

One day this page will be updated with a cover and more! Stay tuned.

The front and back cover of DANI NOIR. Art by Marcos Calo.

Summary:
Fade in on thirteen-year-old Dani. It’s the summer before eighth grade, and she’s stuck in her nowhere mountain town with only her favorite noir movies at the Little Art theater to keep her company. But when a big secret invades the scene in real life, Dani can’t let it go. All she knows is someone’s been lying, and it all has something to do with a girl in polka-dot tights… Armed with a vivid imagination, a flair for the dramatic, and her knowledge of all things Rita Hayworth, Dani sets out to uncover the truth, and learns more about herself than she ever thought she could.

DANI NOIR came out in hardcover and ebook in 2009 from Simon & Schuster / Aladdin and will be out in paperback on September 21, 2010. It was named an Amazon.com Editors’ Pick for the “Top 10 Children’s Books: Middle Readers” for 2009.

For more about the book, and to read the first chapter online for free, visit the book’s official website: DaniNoir.com.