Gretchen McNeil is the author of YA books including the Agatha Christie-inspired Ten; the Don't Get Mad series, coming soon to the BBC and Netflix; and the #MurderTrending series, continuing this month with #MurderFunding, an anarchic horror comedy about a reality TV show gone disturbingly wrong. We talked to McNeil about what really scares her, how her performer's past influenced her writing, and being the teen with all the bad ideas.

Today our special guest is Derek Millman, author of the new novel Swipe Right for Murder. Millman burst onto the YA scene last year with his darkly funny debut Scream All Night, set in an off-kilter world of B-movie monsters. Swipe Right for Murder is part classic noir story, part 2019 coming of age, and absolutely page turning throughout. Millman sat down with B&N's Melissa Albert to talk about his obsessions, inspirations and the stories that have fed his one-of-a-kind imagination. 

I'm not Dying with You Tonight is the story of two high school seniors who find themselves thrown together when a fight at a sporting event ignites into widespread violence of a kind that's become heartbreakingly familiar.  As events spiral out of control, Lena and Campbell — who are most certainly not friends — will need each other to make it through the night, get to safety and pick up the pieces.  It's a propulsive story that unfolds over the course of hours, but the conversations that readers are going to want to have — about racism, prejudice and reality, and what it means to cross seemingly enormous divides between us — are going to go on for a long time.  We were so lucky to have authors Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal with us to talk about their enthralling debut — they dropped into the studio just as I'm Not Dying With You Tonight hit bookshelves everywhere.

If we had to name two things we're maybe most obsessed with on the B&N YA Podcast, they would be amazing debuts, and fascinating twists on classic tales. So we're thrilled today to have as our guest Erin A. Craig, whose brilliantly conceived debut novel House of Salt and Sorrows is coming next week — a story that mingles eerie atmosphere, a tantalizing mystery, and a twist, of course, on one of the most haunting and beguiling of classic fairy stories, The Twelve Dancing Princesses. House of Salt and Sorrow hits bookshelves on August 6th, and in the run up to its arrival, Craig spoke with B&N's Melissa Albert about how her background stage-managing lavish productions helped spark her writer's imagination.

For six books and counting, author Serena Valentino has enraptured readers with her stunning upendings of the tales of favorite heroes and villains in her Disney Villains series, reimagining beloved tales like Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid. The golden thread that linked these stories? Her mischievous, troublemaking trio, The Odd Sisters, who finally get to share their version of things in their very own edition of the series. B&N Teen Blog editor Sona Charaipotra, author of Symptoms of a Heartbreak, talked to Valentino about the new book, whether she was intimidated at reimagining beloved Disney faves, how she maps and connects her sprawling world, and which of the Odd Sister is most like her.

TK

In Astrid Scholte's inventive and beguiling mashup of murder mystery and fantasy, Four Dead Queens, the world of Quadara is a carefully divided realm in which technology and nature, commerce and beauty, reason and emotion are carefully sorted out among four wildly different regions, each with its own queen representing her people's unique character. Teenage thief Keralie Corrington is drawn into an intrigue that threatens to overturn the balance at the heart of this world — and Keralie's cunning and professional skill may be crucial to untangling a deadly conspiracy — if she can survive the ordeal. We talked with Astrid Schulte by phone about her approach to worldbuilding, the Stephen Spielberg film that inspired her career, and how she went about pursuing her goal of writing in her words, a fantasy version of Agatha Christie. 

Sarah Dessen is a YA queen, the beloved author of over a dozen contemporary YA novels exploring themes of loss, first love, assault, family ties, and all the confusing, heartbreaking, thrilling moments when things change forever for her young protagonists. Her new book, The Rest of the Story, centers on a lakefront town divided between the working-class families who live there year round, and the wealthy families who just summer there, and the girl whose fraught family history straddles both. We talked to Dessen about her teen years, her long career, and how the YA landscape has changed since her debut.