LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN (AND ERIC WALTERS)

In September, Orca Book Publishers will follow up its hugely successful Seven series aimed at boys with a batch of seven linked titles for girls. Set in 1964, the Secrets series tells the connected but distinct stories of a group of orphaned teenagers who find themselves on their own after the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls burns to the ground. Considered old enough to fend for themselves, the young women are cast out and begin the process of uncovering their varied pasts while struggling to forge new, adult lives. Seven series authors Eric Walters (who developed the concept for Seven and Secrets) and Norah McClintock each contribute an instalment, as do YA luminaries Kelley Armstrong, Vicki Grant, Kathy Kacer, Marthe Jocelyn, and Teresa Toten, who will no doubt add their own flair.

(cover: Beldan Sezen)

COMICS AND GRAPHICA

Arsenal Pulp Press is hoping for big things from German artist and author Beldan Sezen’s Snapshots of a Girl, an autobiographical coming-of-age and coming-out graphic novel (Oct.).  In celebration of the 70th anniversary of the character’s creation, in October Drawn & Quarterly will release Pippi Longstocking: The Strongest in the World! by Astrid Lindgren and Ingrid Vang Nyman. The Invention of Hugo Cabret author Brian Selznick works his usual magic with words and pictures in his illustrated novel The Marvels (Scholastic, Sept.), which traces five generations of a legendary family, beginning with a shipwreck in 1766.

GENERATION INSTAGRAM

The third instalment in beauty-editor-turned-author Chantel Guertin’s Pippa Green series is due from ECW Press in September. In Leading Lines, fledgling photog Pippa juggles boy trouble, family drama, and faulty friendships. Montreal playwright Emil Sher is releasing his debut YA novel, Young Man with Camera (Scholastic Canada, Oct.), in which a bullied young man named T— snaps pictures of an attack on a homeless woman, only to find himself even more in the bullies’ crosshairs.