Seventeen-year-old Penelope (Pen) has lost everything—her home, her parents, and her ten-year-old brother. Like a female Odysseus in search of home, she navigates a dark world full of strange creatures, gathers companions and loses them, finds love and loses it, and faces her mortal enemy.

In her signature style, Francesca Lia Block has created a world that is beautiful in its destruction and as frightening as it is lovely. At the helm is Pen, a strong heroine who holds hope and love in her hands and refuses to be defeated.

“Block writes about the real Los Angeles better than anyone since Raymond Chandler.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Hers is a voice so unique that nobody will ever be able to imitate it.” —Cindy Dobrez, Chairwoman of the committee that awarded Block the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005

Praise for Pink Smog: Becoming Weetzie:

* “Newcomers and longtime fans alike will find much to savor in this nuanced meditation on what is lost, and what is gained, in the process of becoming an artist.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

* “An intoxicating mix of mystery, fantasy, and romance told in her signature poetic style and peopled by guardian angels, witches, a goddess, and a demon.” —Booklist, starred review

Praise for Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books:

“Ms. Block’s far-ranging free association has been controlled and shaped . . . with sensual characters. The language is inventive Californian hip, but the patterns are compactly folkloristic and the theme is transcendent.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Magic is everywhere in Block’s lyrical and resonant fables. At once modern and mythic, her series deserves as much space as it can command of daydream nation’s shrinking bookshelves.” —Village Voice

Praise for The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold:

* “[Block] uses language like a jeweled sword, glittering as it cuts to the heart.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

* “Block sets out to revisit nine fairy tales, filling her stories with gritty, even headline-grabbing issues. The darkness of these conflicts and subjects proves the strength of the magic she describes: the transfiguring power of love.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Praise for Psyche in a Dress:

“It is Block’s genius to cast the gods with all their beauty and horror, manipulativeness and self-destructiveness, cruelty and tenderness into a modern society that feels a lot like California. . . . Riveting and brilliant, this is a must for most YA collections.” —School Library Journal