Books by Karuna Riazi

The Gauntlet

by Karuna Riazi

A trio of friends from New York City find themselves trapped inside a mechanical board game that they must dismantle in order to save themselves and generations of other children in this action-packed debut that’s a steampunk Jumanji with a Middle Eastern flair.

Nothing can prepare you for The Gauntlet…

It didn’t look dangerous, exactly. When twelve-year-old Farah first laid eyes on the old-fashioned board game, she thought it looked…elegant.

It is made of wood, etched with exquisite images—a palace with domes and turrets, lattice-work windows that cast eerie shadows, a large spider—and at the very center of its cover, in broad letters, is written: The Gauntlet of Blood and Sand.

The Gauntlet is more than a game, though. It is the most ancient, the most dangerous kind of magic. It holds worlds inside worlds. And it takes players as prisoners.

The Gauntlet

by Karuna Riazi

A trio of friends from New York City find themselves trapped inside a mechanical board game that they must dismantle in order to save themselves and generations of other children in this action-packed debut that’s a steampunk Jumanji with a Middle Eastern flair.

Nothing can prepare you for The Gauntlet…

It didn’t look dangerous, exactly. When twelve-year-old Farah first laid eyes on the old-fashioned board game, she thought it looked…elegant.

It is made of wood, etched with exquisite images—a palace with domes and turrets, lattice-work windows that cast eerie shadows, a large spider—and at the very center of its cover, in broad letters, is written: The Gauntlet of Blood and Sand.

The Gauntlet is more than a game, though. It is the most ancient, the most dangerous kind of magic. It holds worlds inside worlds. And it takes players as prisoners.

Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love

by Sangu Mandanna, Anna-Marie McLemore, Adi Alsaid, Rebecca Roanhorse, Rin Chupeco, Elsie Chapman, Jay Coles, Caroline Tung Richmond, S. K. Ali, Sandhya Menon, Karuna Riazi, Sara Farizan, Phoebe North

“A briliant multicultual collection that reminds readers that stories about food are rarely just about the food alone.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A stunning collection of short stories about the intersection of family, culture, and food in the lives in teens, from bestselling and critically acclaimed authors, including Sandhya Menon, Anna-Marie McLemore, and Rin Chupeco.

A shy teenager attempts to express how she really feels through the pastries she makes at her family’s pasteleria. A tourist from Montenegro desperately seeks a magic soup dumpling that can cure his fear of death. An aspiring chef realizes that butter and soul are the key ingredients to win a cooking competition that could win him the money to save his mother’s life.

Welcome to Hungry Hearts Row, where the answers to most of life’s hard questions are kneaded, rolled, baked. Where a typical greeting is, “Have you had anything to eat?” Where magic and food and love are sometimes one in the same.

Told in interconnected short stories, Hungry Hearts explores the many meanings food can take on beyond mere nourishment. It can symbolize love and despair, family and culture, belonging and home.

The Battle

by Karuna Riazi

The game begins again in this gripping follow-up to The Gauntlet that’s a futuristic middle eastern Zathura meets Ready Player One!

Four years after the events of The Gauntlet, the evil game Architect is back with a new partner-in-crime—The MasterMind—and the pair aim to get revenge on the Mirza clan. Together, they’ve rebuilt Paheli into a slick, mind-bending world with floating skyscrapers, flying rickshaws run by robots, and a digital funicular rail that doesn’t always take you exactly where you want to go.

Twelve-year-old Ahmad Mirza struggles to make friends at his new middle school, but when he’s paired with his classmate Winnie for a project, he is determined to impress her and make his very first friend. At home while they’re hard at work, a gift from big sister Farah—who is away at her first year in college—arrives. It’s a high-tech game called The Battle of Blood and Iron, a cross between a video game and board game, complete with virtual reality goggles. He thinks his sister has solved his friend problem—all kids love games. He convinces Winnie to play, but as soon as they unbox the game, time freezes all over New York City.

With time standing still and people frozen, all of humankind is at stake as Ahmad and Winnie face off with the MasterMind and the Architect, hoping to beat them at their own game before the evil plotters expand Paheli and take over the entire world.

For the Rest of Us 13 Festive Holiday Stories to Celebrate All Seasons

by Sonora Reyes, Kosoko Jackson, Preeti Chhibber, Abdi Nazemian, Katherine Locke, Cory McCarthy, A. R. Capetta, Natasha Díaz, Dahlia Adler, Candace Buford, Laura Pohl, Karuna Riazi, Aditi Khorana, Kelly Loy Gilbert

Fourteen acclaimed authors showcase the beautiful and diverse ways holidays are observed in this festive anthology. Keep the celebrations going all year long with this captivating and joyful read!

From Lunar New Year to Solstice, Día de Los Muertos to Juneteenth, and all the incredible days in between, it's clear that Americans don't just have one holiday. Edited by the esteemed Dahlia Adler and authored by creators who have lived these festive experiences firsthand, this joyful collection of stories shows that there isn't one way to experience a holiday.

With stories by:

Dahlia Adler, Sydney Taylor Honor winner of Going Bicoastal

Candace Buford, author of Good as Gold

A. R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy, authors of the Once & Future series

Preeti Chhibber, author of Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot

Natasha Díaz, award-winning author of Color Me In

Kelly Loy Gilbert, Stonewall Book Award winning author of Picture Us in the Light

Kosoko Jackson, USA Today bestselling author of The Forest Demands Its Due

Aditi Khorana, award-winning author of Mirror in the Sky

Katherine Locke, award-winning author of This Rebel Heart

Abdi Nazemian, Stonewall Book Award-winning author of Only This Beautiful Moment

Laura Pohl, New York Times bestselling author of The Grimrose Girls

Sonora Reyes, Pura Belpré Honor winner of The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School

Karuna Riazi, contributor to The Grimoire of Grim Fates

Sabrena Swept Away

by Karuna Riazi

JLG Gold Standard Selection

This lush reimagining of the classic characters from The One Thousand and One Nights is for fans of The Last Mapmaker, Mañanaland, and Graciela in the Abyss. Sabrena's family has always claimed they are descended from the legendary sailor Sinbad. But when the sea calls Sabrena to a whole new world, she'll have to fight for her own story.

Sabrena's destiny--her qadr--is strong. Or so her family has always said. After all, according to her dad, they are the descendants of the legendary Sinbad the sailor, who sailed the seven seas in The One Thousand and One Nights. But Sabrena has felt anything but strong lately. Mostly, she has felt worried. Worried about being the new girl in a school everyone else has attended since kindergarten, worried about Grandma's memory failing and her stories getting more outlandish, worried about Mom deciding that Grandma can't even live at home anymore. Worried about the strange--almost fantastical--things that keep happening whenever she's around water.

And then, one day, the sea's call will not be denied. It floods into her life and sweeps her away, to be fished out of an ocean both strange and oddly familiar. It only takes her a moment to realize that she's in the stories spun by the legendary queen Scheherazade. Yet no one has ever heard of Sinbad, nothing seems to be going quite as it does in the tales as she knows them, and a frightening jinn is terrorizing the kingdom. Can Sabrena find the courage to claim her destiny before it's too late

Writing in Color Fourteen Writers on the Lessons We've Learned

by Chloe Gong, Adiba Jaigirdar, Kat Zhang, Julie C Dao, Joan He, Kosoko Jackson, Cindy Pon, Yamile Saied Méndez, Axie Oh, Julian Winters, Darcie Little Badger, Laura Pohl, Karuna Riazi, Gail D. Villanueva

Rethink the way you approach writing in this “honest, useful craft book that all fledgling writers need” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) from fourteen diverse authors that demystifies craft and authorship based on their experiences as writers of color—perfect for fans of Fresh Ink and Our Stories, Our Voices.

So, you’re thinking of writing a book. Or, maybe you’ve written one, and are wondering what to do with it. What does it take to publish a novel, or even a short story? If you’re a writer of color, these questions might multiply; after all, there’s a lot of writing advice out there, and it can be hard to know how much of it really applies to your own experiences. If any of this sounds like you, you’re in the right place: this collection of essays, written exclusively by authors of color, is here to encourage and empower writers of all ages and backgrounds to find their voice as they put pen to page.

Perhaps you’re just getting started. Here you’ll find a whole toolkit of advice from bestselling and award-winning authors for focusing on an idea, landing on a point of view, and learning which rules were meant to be broken. Or perhaps you have questions about everything beyond the first draft: what is it really like being a published author? These writers demystify the process, sharing personal stories as they forged their own path to publication, and specifically from their perspectives as author of color.

Every writer has a different journey. Maybe yours has already started. Or maybe it begins right here.

Contributors include: Julie C. Dao, Chloe Gong, Joan He, Kosoko Jackson, Adiba Jaigirdar, Darcie Little Badger, Yamile Saied Méndez, Axie Oh, Laura Pohl, Cindy Pon, Karuna Riazi, Gail D. Villanueva, Julian Winters, and Kat Zhang.