Nick Brooks's Promise Boys is a trailblazing, blockbuster YA mystery about three teen boys of color who must investigate their principal’s murder to clear their own names. Promise Boys is set at Urban Promise Preparatory School, which promises to turn boys into men, plucking inner-city youths from their homes for around-the-clock academics, sports and extracurriculars. But when the principal ends up dead and the cops come sniffing around, a trio of friends come face-to-face with a slew of rotten secrets about the school, the community, their teachers and especially themselves.
Something cool happening in Ferrous City? Not a chance.
Until one day . . . when self-proclaimed genius inventor Ethan Fairmont runs into an abandoned car factory to avoid a local bully and accidentally stumbles across his ex-best friend Kareem, new-kid Juan Carlos, and an extraterrestrial visitor. Cheese the alien is stuck on Earth in need of some serious repairs, spicy snacks—and absolute, total secrecy. That’s easier said than done when mysterious agents descend on Ferrous City to search for Cheese. With time running out and their family and friends in potential danger, can Ethan, Kareem, and Juan Carlos pull off an intergalactic rescue before they’re all found out?
E.T. meets Stranger Things in the kickoff to Nick Brooks’s middle-grade series that weaves contemporary issues of racial profiling, industrial community struggles, and everyday life in a fast-paced out-of-this-world adventure.