Dead Remnants

When high school senior Ashen Deming dies in a bus crash, she finds herself in an afterlife where tensions mount between Warders of the dead and Light and Unseen spirits. On a bus with her best friend, Jacob, Ash dies in an explosion and wakes to a world that blends the dead with the living—a ghost world with the living world just out of phase. Ash must choose to go through the Divide or to side with the Warders, Light, or Unseen, but all she truly wants is to find Jacob. Navigating the afterlife with an old cowboy named Macajah and Max, a WWII soldier, Ashen learns about Drifters—souls stuck in a “nightmarish limbo”—like Jacob. When a war ensues for the right to the souls of the living, Ash is caught fighting for Jacob and all mortal souls. Though some scenes feel excessively graphic and the lore is initially insufficiently explained, Forbes’s creative debut offers a fanciful take on the afterlife, interwoven with Native and Western history. Ages 14–up. (Self-published)