Medusa
From National Book Award finalist Katherine Marsh: Percy Jackson meets Wednesday Addams in this fantastical adventure about Ava, who attends a boarding school for the descendants of Greek monsters and uncovers a terrible secret that could change the world forever. One of Kirkus's most anticipated books of 2024!
Ava Baldwin has always tried to keep her anger in check, just like her mom taught her. But when know-it-all classmate Owen King tries to speak over her yet again, Ava explodes . . . and Owen freezes, becoming totally unresponsive.
Although Owen recovers, Ava's parents whisk her off to her mother’s alma mater, the Accademia del Forte, a mysterious international boarding school in Venice. There, Ava and her brother, Jax, discover that the Olympian gods founded the Accademia to teach the descendants of mythological monsters how to control their emotions and their powers and become functioning, well-adjusted members of society.
But not everything at the Accademia is as it seems. After her friend Fia is almost expelled for challenging a teacher, Ava realizes the school is hiding a dangerous secret. To uncover the truth, Ava and her new friends embark on an adventure that could change the way they view history, mythology—and themselves—forever…or end their lives.
Katherine Marsh
Katherine Marsh has a gift for finding the heartbeat in history, the hidden corners, overlooked voices, and deeply human moments that echo into the present. Her stories, often set against sweeping backdrops of political unrest and social change, don’t just recount the past, they ask what it means to live through it, especially when you're young and searching for your place in a world that doesn't always make sense.
Before she was crafting award-winning novels, Marsh was steeped in stories of a different kind. As a journalist and editor, she learned how to chase truth through the noise, a skill that now gives her fiction its remarkable sense of urgency and clarity. Whether writing about a Syrian refugee hiding beneath the streets of Brussels in Nowhere Boy or exploring the trials of immigration and identity in The Lost Year, she doesn’t shy away from hard questions. Instead, she meets them head-on with empathy and grace.
The Myth of Monsters
In a Venetian boarding school where history’s shadows cling to every stone, legends are not just remembered, they are alive. At the Accademia del Forte, students carry the blood of creatures once branded as monsters in Greek myth. Their powers are unruly, their emotions dangerous, and their place in the world carefully controlled by gods who still demand obedience.
The Myth of Monsters consists of two books and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
