Courtney
New York Times Bestselling Author
Award Winning Young Adult Novelist
Travels from: Toronto, ON

“Summers’ latest masterful thriller takes on the world of wealth and privilege to examine questions of power, predatory behavior, and, ultimately, complicity, and agency… a heartbreaking, brutal, and devastatingly realistic novel.” ― Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

Courtney Summers is an “uncompromising writer” (Quill and Quire) with “a history of risky artistic choices” (Kirkus Reviews) “known for pushing boundaries” (Shelf Awareness) with a body of work that’s “not for the faint of heart” (The New York Times).

Hailed “a master of the bitch” (Electric Literature) for years of writing “nuanced, wrenching stories about angry [and] unlikable girls,” Summers’s reputation as an unapologetic and incisive storyteller has earned her praise from a readership that crosses category lines. Her critically acclaimed books have earned over 20 starred reviews, received numerous awards and honors—including the Edgar and ITW Thriller Awards. Courtney has reviewed for The New York Times and is the founder of the 2015 worldwide trending hashtag #ToTheGirls. She lives and writes in Canada.

Courtney's Featured Titles

I’m the Girl

Wednesday Books |
Young Adult Thriller

All sixteen-year-old Georgia Avis wants is everything, but the poverty and hardship that defines her life has kept her from the beautiful and special things she knows she deserves. When she stumbles upon the dead body of thirteen-year-old Ashley James, Georgia teams up with Ashley’s older sister Nora, to find the killer before he strikes again, and their investigation throws Georgia into a glittering world of unimaginable privilege and wealth–and all she’s ever dreamed. But behind every dream lurks a nightmare, and Georgia must reconcile her heart’s desires with what it really takes to survive. As Ashley’s killer closes in and their feelings for one another grow, Georgia and Nora will discover when money, power, and beauty rule, it’s not always a matter of who is guilty but who is guiltiest–and the only thing that might save them is each other.

I’m the Girl is a brutal and illuminating account of how one young woman feels in her body as she struggles to navigate a deadly and predatory power structure while asking readers one question: if this is the way the world is, do you accept it?

The Project

Wednesday Books |
Young Adult Thriller

BELIEVE HIM, BETRAY HER

1998: Six-year-old Bea doesn’t want a sister but everything changes when Lo is born early. Small and frail, Lo needs someone to look out for her. Having a sister is a promise, Mom says―one Bea’s determined not to break.

2011: A car wreck, their parents dead. Lo would’ve died too if not for Lev Warren, the charismatic leader of The Unity Project. He’s going to change the world and after he saves Lo’s life, Bea wants to commit to his extraordinary calling. Lev promises a place for the girls in the project, where no harm will ever come to them again . . . if Bea proves herself to him first.

2017: Lo doesn’t know why Bea abandoned her for The Unity Project after the accident, but she never forgot what Bea said the last time they spoke: We’ll see each other again. Six years later, Lo is invited to witness the group’s workings, meet with Lev, and―she hopes―finally reconnect with her sister. But Bea is long gone, and the only one who seems to understand the depths of this betrayal is Lev. If it’s family Lo wants, he can make her a new promise . . . if she proves herself to him first.

Powerful, suspenseful and heartbreaking, The Project follows two sisters who fall prey to the same cult leaderand their desperate fight back to one another.

Sadie

Wednesday Books |
Young Adult Thriller

“Today, WNRK is launching the first episode of our new serialized podcast, The Girls, created and hosted by West McCray.”

When popular radio personality West McCray receives a desperate phone call from a stranger imploring him to find nineteen-year-old runaway Sadie Hunter, he’s not convinced there’s a story there; girls go missing all the time. But when it’s revealed that Sadie fled home after the brutal murder of her little sister, Mattie, West travels to the small town of Cold Creek, Colorado, to uncover what happened.

Sadie has no idea that her journey to avenge her sister will soon become the subject of a blockbuster podcast. Armed with a switchblade, Sadie follows meager clues hoping they’ll lead to the man who took Mattie’s life, because she’s determined to make him pay with his own. But as West traces her path to the darkest, most dangerous corners of big cities and small towns, a deeply unsettling mystery begins to unfold―one that’s bigger than them both. Can he find Sadie before it’s too late?

Alternating between Sadie’s unflinching voice as she hunts the killer and the podcast transcripts tracking the clues she’s left behind, Courtney Summers’ Sadie is a breathless thriller about the lengths we go to protect the ones we love and the high price we pay when we can’t. It will haunt you long after you reach the final page.

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Master of the Bitch

“What is it like to write books about a world that hates women in a world that hates them? A more pertinent line of inquiry would be what it’s like to publish them. Whenever a book is in conversation with subjects like patriarchy and rape culture, so to—at every stage—is the response. Which is why, whenever I finish a book and the publication process begins, this is the question its release is essentially built around: How do we make people care about a girl?”

* This talk is best suited to an in-conversation and Q&A format, after Courtney gives a brief speech about her experiences writing and publishing books about young women designed to push readers out of their comfort zone and into a space that invites them ‘not to look away.’

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Focused Conversation and Q&A

Courtney can narrow her lens and speak about writing, publishing, and to the broader themes of any of her three most recent titles.

I’M THE GIRL
“Based loosely on the Epstein case, I’m the Girl is a bold, deeply intimate, and unflinching account of how one sixteen-year-old lesbian feels in her body as she struggles to navigate a deadly and predatory power structure that can only fail her while challenging readers to answer one question: if this is the way the world is, do you accept it?”

THE PROJECT
“Inspired by the early days of Peoples Temple, The Project explores the insidious duality, complexities, and contradictions of cults and by wrapping them up in a human story that does not seek to sensationalize its subject matter or define itself by how far removed we are from the world it presents—but how disconcertingly, and heartbreakingly, close.”

SADIE
“We live in a time where violence against women and girls is often consumed as a form of entertainment. The consequence of that is an indifference to female pain and suffering unless we’re entertained by it. Maybe it’s not a missing girl’s responsibility to entertain anyone. Maybe the real question is: what is our responsibility to a missing girl?”

Courtney’s Substack

Courtney’s Press Kit & Reader Resources

Honors, Awards & Recognition

New York Times Bestseller
Indie Bestseller
Finalist, 2023 ITW Thriller Award for I’m the Girl
Winner, 2022 ITW Thriller Award for The Project
Finalist, 2022 Audie Award for The Project
Finalist, 2022 Amy Mathers Teen Book Award for The Project
Winner, 2021 Templo Revista’s Best Foreign Standalone Award for All the Rage
Winner, 2020 Ontario Library Association’s White Pine Award for Sadie
Winner, 2019 Edgar Award for Sadie
Winner, 2019 Canadian Children Book Centre’s John Spray Mystery Award for Sadie
Winner, 2019 Audie Award for Sadie
Winner, 2019 ALA Odyssey Award for Sadie

Media Kit

By clicking the link below you will be directed to a Google Docs Folder
where you can download author photos and cover images.

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