Six titles whose protagonists are "trapped in the in-between"

Daniel José Older is the New York Times bestselling author of the Middle Grade historical fantasy series Dactyl Hill Squad, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, Star Wars: Last Shot, and the award winning Young Adult series the Shadowshaper Cypher, which won the International Latino Book Award and was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Young Readers’ Literature, the Andre Norton Award, the Locus, the Mythopoeic Award, and named one of Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person Should Read.

Older's The Book of Lost Saints, a magic-realist epic about a Cuban-American family, is his first non-Y.A. novel.

At The Week magazine, he tagged six books whose protagonists are "trapped in the in-between," including:

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi (2018).

Emezi's debut is a gorgeous and triumphant novel about surviving, healing, finding the self, and transcendence. The prose itself feels like a character, it's so alive. And the ­format — this is a story told by the various Igbo spirits that inhabit our half-Nigerian ­protagonist — is everything I've ever wanted from a book.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue