A hidden world. A murdered mother. A girl who refuses to look away.

Fourteen-year-old Sophia Sprite's world ended the day her parents died. Shipped off to live with her eccentric grandfather in Elwha, Washington-the man the whole town dismisses as the "crazy Bigfoot guy"-she expects nothing but loneliness and grief.

Then she finds the trunk in the attic.

Hidden among her mother's possessions are objects that shouldn't exist: a cloak that bends light around the wearer, boots designed for terrain no human has ever mapped, and a whistle tuned to a frequency only certain beings can hear. Her mother, Sophia discovers, led a secret life as a bridge between humanity and the Northborn-an ancient species of intelligent hominids who have remained hidden beneath the earth for sixty thousand years.

And she didn't die in an accident. She was murdered.

An enemy older than human civilization

As Sophia ventures into the underground world her mother devoted her life to protecting, she uncovers a conspiracy that threatens both species. Kragorth, a Northborn elder consumed by hatred for humanity, has spent millennia preparing for this moment. His weapon won't just kill humans-it will drive them to destroy themselves, and no one will ever know the Northborn were involved.

Sophia's mother got too close to exposing him. Now Sophia is walking the same dangerous path-and Kragorth has noticed.

Unlikely allies. Impossible odds.

With the help of a gruff leprechaun carrying four hundred years of grief, a Northborn warrior who loved her mother like a sister, a sarcastic hybrid who belongs fully to neither world, and two human friends brave enough to follow her into the impossible, Sophia must do what her mother couldn't: bring the truth to light before it's too late.

But the deeper she goes, the more complicated the questions become. Can two species learn to trust each other? Is her grandfather's lifetime of searching about to be vindicated-or is the truth more dangerous than the mystery? And what will Sophia have to sacrifice to honor the legacy her mother left behind?

Perfect for fans of:

• Rick Riordan's mythological adventures

• Cryptid fiction and Bigfoot legends

• Stories about found family and unlikely friendships

• Heroes who are scared but brave anyway

"Sophia Sprite and the Sasquatch Secret" is a YA adventure about grief, courage, and the radical act of choosing hope over hatred. It's about the families we're born into and the ones we build. It's about a girl who stumbled into an impossible world-and discovered she was exactly the person it needed.

First in a new series from Brian Young, author of The Sacred Vein Series.