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Good kids, bad choices
The timely web novel by award-winning teen author Shanti Hershenson—only on Patreon.
A fire is starting at Littlewood Charter School—or has the damage been done?
Lena Hackett is beginning her freshman year how all teenagers fear: new city, new school, and new friends. Life in Temecula is not the same as in Northern California, but placed in a well-praised charter school, Lena is doing her best to thrive. Until, an altercation with her prejudiced history teacher gets her sent to sickly-sweet Ms. Johnson’s office—and then detention.
Natalia Malone is doing her best to forget Littlewood. Forget about the bigoted administration and suffering students, the board meetings, the cramped principal’s office, the guilt-tripping emails, the manipulative phone calls—Natalia needs to shirk the battles she once fought. That is, if she is going to find success as a musician. It’s been nearly two years since her expulsion. It can’t be that hard to move on, right?
Wrong. As Lena and her newfound friends provoke change in their community to finish what began years ago, Natalia knows she can’t turn away forever—but doing so will bring her between her bright future and her troubled past.
As Shanti Hershenson’s longest work, Good Kids, Bad Choices is a mammoth novel combining complex American politics, school-wide issues, and the experience of being a teenager in an onerous era.
Helipads in Heaven
World-renowned author Dillon Hershkop has everything she wants in life, but getting there hasn’t been easy. Now thirty years old, she has achieved almost everything she dreamed of as a young girl: A dazzling career, a devoted fan base, and a picture-perfect family—but despite all of this, she is also painstakingly bored.
That is why, when Dillon receives the opportunity to become the test subject for a time-traveling experiment hosted by JPL’s brand new Center for Experimental Science, she seizes the opportunity to explore La Cañada—and the places she grew up around—without any immediate reservations. In exchange, she can write a brand new memoir both about time travel and the nearly forgotten experiences that shaped her into the talented woman she is today. That is, if she returns.
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Dillon is soon thrown head-first as an adult spectator into the complicated world of her ten-year-old self—fondly nicknamed Goose—from her love of helicopters, writing, and all things Elton John, to her unreceptive fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Vincent, her sourly judgemental classmates, and the missed opportunities of a fourth-grade writer with a smothered voice.
As she observes the childhood she does not entirely remember, she begins to realize that there are reasons for the holes in her memories—things she must not remember, because if she does, it may become impossible to stand back and watch the oil of her bottled-up trauma be poured into a fire from a distance. And if she goes against the direct orders of the laboratory, the effects of tampering with a nearly unknown science may permanently disrupt the fabrics of time, space, and Dillon’s existence.
You Won't Know Her Name
A haunting novel told in poetry.
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“I thought they were my best friend…”
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There lives a little girl whom you will never know the name of, and for her, a terrible storm is coming. She is going to a new, public middle school knowing no one but her sister, and the horrors are absolutely endless.
But she doesn’t expect what is to come.
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In her first few months of school, terrible and unspeakable things begin to happen, that go beyond what is considered “normal”. Finding the courage to get away from the wrong people is a difficult thing, but when a horrific incident occurs, she finds herself running from who she once thought to be friends.
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Now lost and alone, The Girl turns to one thing to help her get through her darkest moments. Writing poetry is the one way she can express her anger, and when her school announces that they will be hosting an open-mic night, she knows she has to enter. But entering means that she will have to face her demons, and it could be her worst nightmare…
"What does silence do in a world where we were born to speak?" -Excerpt, You Won't Know Her Name​
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Pontus and Electra to the depths of the sea
Heartwarming, beautiful, and uniquely devastating—an environmental tale of love under the sea.
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Welcome to the lonely life of Pontus. Until the most pivotal moment of his life (other than the day a thick darkness consumed the waters), he believes he is the only great white shark in his underwater world.
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Welcome to the lonely life of Electra. Until the most unexpected moment of her life (other than the day a monster snatched her mother from the waters), she believes she will never find comfort in another again.
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Together, Pontus and Electra find meaning in their lives through unconditional love and the hope and joy of company in an expansive ocean. But plagued by humanity's horrors and a drizzle of existential dread, their bonds are tested, and the innocence of a romance under the sea will never be so simple again.
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As unconventional as it is captivating, Pontus and Electra to the Depths of the Sea is both a romance and a tragedy told in poetry. It is a testament to the terrors of our habitats and a story of true love outside human norms. As an award-winning teen author’s third work of poetry, it stands out as a book every person who cares about the environment should experience at least once.
neverdying
If you could live forever, would it be a gift… or a disease?
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A doctor created a genetic mutation meant as a gift to society—to those at random in future generations who were born with it: Immortality. But the risk of overpopulation and questions rising about the imbalance of only few being Immortals brings the ruthless President Wilde to a different stand—a facade of peace and equality whereas Immortals are executed daily—thus creating the ruination of the United States… and the world soon after.
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Scarlett Caldwell is a girl of many mysteries—but along with that, she’s an Immortal. Having run away from a very young age and forced to forget the part of her identity that could get her assassinated, she turns to very few of her friends and spends the majority of her days hiding in the Immortals Legion, a compound for Immortals in hiding. But times are changing and tensions are only growing—Scarlett knows she can’t stay hidden forever. When she encounters an unfairly attractive Exterminator who, despite seeming rigid, has an amusing thing or two to say, she is left absolutely livid. But beyond that, beyond all the parts of him that she hates, there’s a secret. And Scarlett will do anything to unravel it.
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Cain Hawkins is an Exterminator, a member of the country’s new authority specially trained to hunt down and exterminate the remaining Immortals. He truly believes that being an Exterminator is what he is meant for—despite what he may or may not know. And when a skirmish with an Immortal on the street leaves him questioning every last bit of himself, he will have to rise to stand with his president and failing country, or run from everything he was conditioned for. Besides, Cain has a secret: He is an Immortal too.
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Their first encounter is far from the last, for an opportunity rises for the two to (unwillingly) work together. Already, they are left with a spark—a spark of hope for a future where Immortals are not prosecuted. And no matter if Cain sees the spark or not, the question still remains: How long will it be until a single spark ignites a fire?
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TUCK EVERLASTING meets STAR WARS in this compelling and romantic novel by 14-year-old author, Shanti Hershenson.
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The bane of Angelfall academy
"Much like creativity, magic works in bizarre ways."
As the daughter of two world-famous writers, twelve-year-old Devan Cyrano cannot believe her luck (or could it be misfortune?) when she is accepted into Angelfall Academy for the Writer’s Mind, an elite boarding school for the most talented young writers in the world. The only problem is that Devan has not written anything remotely significant, instead suffering from a twelve-year-long plague of writer’s block fueled by the pressures her perfect writer parents have placed upon her.
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As Devan explores Angelfall Academy’s state-of-the-art technology and navigates the twists and turns of the school and its prestigious student body, their yearly writing contest, petty academic rivalries, and simulations meant to enhance (and perhaps take away) a writer’s imagination, a peculiar plot-twist turns Devan’s life upside down. She soon discovers that her stories are coming to life before her eyes, and the characters are beginning to speak to her, begging her to finish the novel she is struggling to write. This could be a writer’s dream come true, except when the novel’s villain appears and threatens to unravel Devan’s entire existence.
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Now, Devan Cyrano must face the daunting task of finishing her first novel and surviving the sixth grade at a peculiar boarding school–while, similar to all of her favorite book characters, trying to save the universe as she knows it…
For fans of Netflix's WEDNESDAY and DEAD POET'S SOCIETY comes an imaginative and spell-binding novel from fifteen-year-old author Shanti Hershenson.
Little green man
“I’m not going to parties or practicing underage drinking. I’m not sneaking out to see my secret boyfriend. I’m literally searching for aliens.”
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Meet seventeen-year-old Birdie Buckley. She’s an alien enthusiast from a small town in Colorado called Mount Pifork, a miserable place where everyone knows everyone, anything that deviates from the norm is looked down upon and, to top it off, there may or may not be aliens lurking. At least, that’s what Birdie thinks.
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Ever since she was young, she has been searching for proof that humans are not alone in the universe—and so far, that research has not taken her very far. Until, one night she captures her boldest piece of evidence yet. This sends her on a spiraling journey that opens up a million harrowing questions, because she may not be the only one aware of the anomaly.
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Joining forces with Sol, the mysterious new boy at her high school and the one person who shares her interests, Birdie looks deeper into bizarre occurrences, her community's hidden history, and even a strange observatory on the outskirts of town that she swears was never there before. The more she investigates, the more her findings begin to make sense and the more the truth becomes clear—and that truth may be her dream come true, or her biggest fall from grace.
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Perfect for fans of E.T. and the X-Files, Little Green Man takes readers on an eccentric investigation that challenges the definition of alien and explores the overshadowed side of the high school experience.