• Age: 9 to 12
• Grade: 5 to 12

Sweeping in scope and timeless in tone, No Place like Home is a middle-grade portal fantasy unlike any other

Lan, a teenager who recently came to Canada from Vietnam, spends every day searching for a sense of belonging. Books are the only things that make her feel at ease. But it comes as a shock when a mysterious wind whisks her right into the pages of her latest fantasy read. More shocking still is the fact that she herself summoned this wind!

Plunged into the magical world of Silva, Lan realizes she has much to offer protagonists Annabelle and Marlow. Once a homesick reader and bystander rooting for the very characters that now stand before her, Lan is a budding witch who suddenly has the power to help their quest. Somewhere inside her lies the ability to not only save Annabelle and Marlow’s home, but also to shape a familiar tale into something new.

As Lan faces off against tree guardians, moving corn mazes, heart-eaters and thoughtless kings, she finds that Silva is not so different from Toronto: new homes can be messy. Now, torn between several places at once, Lan begins to confront an important question: how do you redefine a lost home?

LINH S. NGUYỄN is a Vietnamese immigrant to Canada who straddles many intersecting worlds. Her stories revolve around home, liminality and living between cultures. She graduated from the University of Toronto as an English major and went on to pursue her master’s in Arts, Creativity and Education at the University of Cambridge. She loves to ride horses, swim in the ocean and design creative, community-engaged programming to foster opportunities for under-represented artists. No Place Like Home is Linh S. Nguyễn’s debut novel.

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