Serwa Boateng

Best-selling author Rick Riordan presents best-selling YA author Roseanne A. Brown's middle grade debut about a pre-teen vampire slayer with a strong helping of Ghanaian folklore. For most kids, catching fireflies is a fun summer activity. For twelve-year-old Serwa Boateng, it's a matter of life and death. That's because Serwa knows that some fireflies are really adze, shapeshifting vampires from the forests of Southeastern Ghana. Adze prey on the blood of innocents, possessing their minds and turning them into hulking monsters, and for generations, slayers like Serwa and her parents have protected an unknowing public from their threats. Serwa is the best adze slayer her age, and she knew how to use a crossbow before she could even ride a bike. But when an obayifo (witch) destroys her childhood home while searching for a drum, do Serwa's parents take her with them on their quest to defeat her? No. Instead, they dump Serwa with her hippie aunt and cryptic-obsessed cousin in the middle of Nowheresville, Maryland "for her own safety." Now, instead of crossbows and battle armor, she's dealing with mean girls and algebra, and for the first time in her life she doesn't have to carry a staff everywhere she goes, which is . . . kind of nice, actually. Just as Serwa starts to get the hang of this whole normal girl who doesn't punch vampires every day thing, an adze infiltrates her school. It's up to her to whip some of her classmates into monster-fighting shape before all of them become firefly food. And when she uncovers a secret that upends everything she thought she knew about her family's role in the slayer vs. adze war, Serwa will have to decide which side of herself--normal girl or slayer--is the right one. After all, seventh grade is hard enough without adding vampires to the mix. Complete your middle grade action-adventure collection with these titles: Rick Riordan Presents: Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia Rick Riordan Presents: The Storm Run

"Rosie writes her characters with such lyrical power, wit, and empathy that you can't help falling in love with Serwa Boating, her family, and her friends."--Rick Riordan, New York Times best-selling author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series After a lifetime of fighting creatures of black magic, twelve-year-old Serwa Boateng has just learned a devastating secret: she herself is half vampire! Now not only is she dealing with vampire puberty, she's on the run from the organization of Slayers she trained her whole life to join. Serwa's only ally is her aunt Boahinmaa, an obayifo who urges Serwa to embrace her vampire side. Boahinmaa and her underlings are on the hunt for the Midnight Drum, from which they hope to free Serwa's grandmother. When they learn that the Abomofuo have hidden the Midnight Drum deep within the Smithsonian Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., what do they do? Stage a heist to steal it, of course! For their plan to succeed, Serwa will have to get close to her rival, a Slayer named Declan Amankwah, without revealing her true nature. Declan gets under her skin like no one else...and might just force Serwa to confront some truths she's tried hard to deny. With both sympathy and laugh-out-loud humor, Rosanne A. Brown captures all the discomfort of a girl stuck between two worlds in this second book in the unputdownable Serwa Boating saga.

Best-selling author Rick Riordan presents the thrilling conclusion to Roseanne A. Brown's middle grade trilogy about a pre-teen girl who, as half-Slayer and half-vampire, is caught between two worlds. Serwa Boateng has gone head-to-head with vampires, witches, and even a death god. But now, with the fate of the magical world at stake, she'll have to face her toughest foe yet: her own grandmother. Finally free after decades of being trapped inside the Midnight Drum, the dreaded obayifo Nana Bekoe seeks the destruction of the Abomofuo. Even worse, she has Serwa's father under her thrall. Now, the hunters have become the hunted, as the Slayers' defenses are powerless in the face of an enemy who has access to all their secrets. Serwa's only chance of saving her father might just lie with the Keepers, an organization whose powers exist outside the normal rules of magic. But the Keepers are even more secretive than the Abomofuo, and finding them will require Serwa to trek across the United States. At least she has her friends by her side for the journey . . . friends who currently hate her guts. The survival of everything and everyone Serwa has ever loved hinges on her completing this final hunt without losing herself in the process. Serwa Boateng has been a Slayer. She's been a vampire. But now, it's time for her to become something else entirely: a hero. Endorsed by Rick Riordan, author of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, now a hit series on Disney+.