Elatsoe

One of TIME Magazine's Top 100 Fantasy Novels of All Time -- Now in Paperback!

Locus Award Winner—Best First Novel  

A National Indie Bestseller

Nebula Award Finalist

Lodestar Award Finalist

Ignyte Award Finalist

TIME’s Best 100 Fantasy Books of All Time

NPR Best of the Year

Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels for Youth

A BookPage Best of the Year

Chicago Public Library "Best of the Best"

PNBA Bestseller 

Publishers Weekly Best of the Year

Buzzfeed's Best YA SFF of the Year 

Shelf-Awareness Best of the Year

AICL Best YA of the Year

NECBA Windows & Mirrors Selection

NEIBA Award Finalist 

Tor Best of the Year

Kirkus Best YA of the Year

Publishers Weekly Flying Start

American Indian Youth Literature Award Finalist


“Groundbreaking.” —TIME

“Deeply enjoyable from start to finish.”—NPR

“Utterly magical.” —SyFyWire

“Atmospheric and lyrical...a gorgeous work of art.”—BuzzFeed

“One of the best YA debuts of 2020. Read it."—Marieke Nijkamp


★ “A fresh voice and perspective.”—Booklist, starred review

★ “A unique and powerful Native American voice.”–BookPage, starred review 

★ “A brilliant, engaging debut.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

★ “A fast-paced murder mystery.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

★ “A Lipan Apache Sookie Stackhouse for the teen set.” —Shelf-Awareness, starred review

A Texas teen comes face-to-face with a cousin’s ghost and vows to unmask the murderer.


Elatsoe—Ellie for short—lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals—most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby. When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered.

Who killed him and how did he die? With the help of her family, her best friend Jay, and the memory great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Elatsoe, must track down the killer and unravel the mystery of this creepy town and it's dark past. But will the nefarious townsfolk and a mysterious Doctor stop her before she gets started?

The breathtaking debut novel from Darcie Little Badger features an asexual, Apache teen protagonist -- and combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations, and fantasy elements, in one of the most-talked-about books in years.

Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in TIME as one of the best 100 fantasy books of all time. Elatsoe also won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and was a Nebula, Ignyte, and Lodestar finalist. Her second fantasy novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received the Newbery Honor, was a LA Times Book Prize Finalist, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Darcie is married to a veterinarian named Taran.