These Deathless Shores

Low debuts with a gritty Peter Pan retelling about what happens to Neverland’s lost boys when they grow up. Peter alone remains forever young, replacing his cohort with new children whenever the other lost boys fall prey to the passage of time—if Peter doesn’t kill them first. Former lost boys Jordan and Baron were cast in the role of the twins by Peter, though they weren’t biologically related or even similar in appearance beyond their Hanwa ethnicity. Jordan, the only girl, would normally have been forced into Wendy’s old role of mother, but she used magic Dust to disguise herself as a boy, and ended up developing a dependence on the stuff. Years later, the pair have been forced to return to the Outside, the world beyond Neverland, where Baron suffers debilitating anxiety, and Jordan has switched from Dust to karsa, running the drug for a crime syndicate. Unlike Baron, Jordan is determined to reclaim her place on Neverland. But doing so means changing the role she plays in Peter’s story: she must become the villain. Low takes the childlike wonder of the original and turns it on its head. Fans of dark fairy tale retellings won’t want to miss this. Agent: Sara Megibow, KT Literary. (July)