Fun thread! I like seeing all these queries in one place. I have two...
The more recent one:
As a young girl, Nima was found wandering in the desert by the Tribe of Sand. Now at seventeen, she’s the storyteller for her adoptive tribe, weaving tales for their entertainment and yearning for the wholeness that, she believes, can only come from knowing the truth of her past.
When the sultan from the nearby Tribe of Stars demands that Nima be brought in as his new storyteller, she has no choice but to go. She plans to escape his dark, stifling palace, even though it means traveling back through a desert full of windhaunts—memory-stealing spirits that roam the dunes. The tribespeople speak of the Old Unity, a time when the Tribes of Sand and Stars were one, and as Nima grows closer to one of the sultan’s sons, she discovers more about the Old Unity, as well as secrets of her missing parents and an impending invasion of windhaunts. The only chance the tribes have of defeating the windhaunts is through working together. Nima must use her stories to discover—and create—the truths of her past and the shared history of her tribes in order to preserve her freedom, save her people from windhaunts, and reunite the Tribes of Sand and Stars.
TALES OF SAND AND STARS is an 89,000-word young adult fantasy reminiscent of One Thousand and One Nights that will appeal to fans of Rae Carson’s The Girl of Fire and Thorns.
And the older one:
One month before her sixteenth birthday, Amalia’s only desire is to become a Companion—a “wife” to the Dolces, the old male witches who rule her non-violent coven. Because male witch infants haven’t survived since the Caust virus destroyed most of Witch and Humankind seventy years ago, it is considered an honor to mate with the Dolces and continue the pure lines of Witchkind.
But as soon as Amalia is chosen to be a Companion, her mother tells her a shocking secret: Amalia has a twin brother, smuggled from the city-coven and into the nearby Black City when he was only one day old. Witch twins need each other to survive past age sixteen, so Amalia must sneak out of her city-coven to find him. Amidst the Black City’s populace of mixed-breed thieves, dark creatures, and flesh-traders, Amalia has one month to restore the powerful twin magic fueled only by their connection. If she fails they will not only lose their powers, but their freedom, and ultimately, their lives.
THE KEY TO SELENE is a 91,000-word fantasy that will appeal to fans of Caragh M. O’Brien’s Birthmarked and Veronica Rossi’s Under the Never Sky.