MASL Book Trailer Winner
Fire & Heist: Owen L. from Heritage Middle School
About the Author
Sarah Beth Durst is the award-winning author of over twenty fantasy books for kids, teens, and adults, including Spark, Drink Slay Love, and The Queens of Renthia series.
Sarah was born in Northboro, Massachusetts, a small town that later became the setting for her debut novel. At the age of ten, she decided she wanted to be a writer. (Before that, she wanted to be Wonder Woman, except with real flying ability instead of an invisible jet. She also would have accepted a career as a unicorn princess.) And she began writing fantasy stories. She later attended Princeton University, where she spent four years studying English, writing about dragons, and wondering what the campus gargoyles would say if they could talk.
Sarah lives in Stony Brook, New York, with her husband, her children, and her ill-mannered cat. (from the author's website)
For more information about Sarah Beth Durst, visit her website (Sarah Beth Durst)
About the Book
In Sky’s family, leading your first heist is big. Stealing treasure can be difficult, especially when you’re a wyvern … a human that can turn into a dragon. Sky knows she can be successful but then she uncovers a dark secret about were-dragons–a truth more valuable and dangerous than she ever expected.
The author set out to write a stand-alone fantasy that combines elements of Ocean's Eleven with were-dragons, and she delivers. Sky is from a prominent were-dragon family. She recruits a group of accepting human friends to help her raid another were-dragon family's vault and solve her mother's disappearance along the way. The plot is so richly described that readers will be engaged in this world populated by shape-shifting dragons living among humans. Weaved into the fast-paced story is a rich history of lore to relay the deeper connections were-dragons have with gold and one another. The book swiftly moves into action from the opening scene as Sky realizes that she must use her deft skills to retrieve an item that holds the answer to two potential mysteries. Readers get fun insight into her dual life as a teenage girl attending school and her role within her shape-shifting family --School Library Journal (Dec. 1, 2018)
A fantasy heist long on worldbuilding and short on theft. Following her mother’s midheist disappearance, Sky Hawkins wants to determine what happened and repair her grieving family and their fall in wyvern society. Wyverns, this Earth’s famous-for-being-famous people, are formerly shape-shifting dragons exiled from Home. They look like and live among humans but have their own customs and rules; hoard size conveys status, and teens come of age with a first heist. --Kirkus Reviews (Oct. 15, 2018)
Read an excerpt
Lexile: HL650L
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