A moody, coming-of-age tale for fans of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Nimona, filled with fairies and ogres and magic galore.
In OCTOBER GIRL: BOOK ONE (Maverick; October 2025) we meet Autumn Ackerman, who grew up believing in fairies and magic and princesses who defeated dragons. But now that she’s eighteen and facing a future stuck behind the counter of her small town’s coffee shop, she’s starting to wonder if this is all there really is to her life.
But then she meets her childhood imaginary friend, Barnaby, in the alley behind the coffee shop one night. Autumn’s entire world is turned upside down.
Drawn into the strange and mysterious world of the Night Folk, fantastic creatures that inspired all of humanity’s myths about gods and monsters, Autumn is about to discover that there is more to her world than she ever dreamed of as a little girl, and that world is far more dangerous than she could ever have imagined. With the help of Barnaby and Evan Fade, the tragic young boy who inherited the local bookstore, Autumn has to protect herself from the coldly terrifying Mr. Balloon long enough to discover the truth about the Night Folk and her own past.
THE OCTOBER GIRL: BOOK ONE
By Matthew Dow Smith
Release Date: October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781960578594
Author/Illustrator, Matthew Dow Smith (He/Him)
Matthew Dow Smith is a writer and comic book artist whose work has appeared in Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, DC’s Starman, and many others.
He was the writer of the X-Files: Origins comic book series, the third volume of the Dark Crystal: Creation Myths graphic novel series, and several Doctor Who comic book stories for IDW, the BBC, and BBC America.
He is the writer and artist of DC’s middle grade graphic novel Misfits of Magic, and creator-owned digital comics Amelia Shadows: Daughter of Darkness, Johnny Chaos, and Arch-Nemesis.
He lives on the east coast of the US.
“The October Girl is a very special project for me. It’s a story I’ve wanted to tell for more than 30 years, and now, thanks to Mad Cave/Maverick, I finally can,” Dow Smith said. “I’ve spent the last 30 years drawing people in tights fighting each other, and as much fun as that can be, my head was full of people in long coats and skeleton trees and strange little creatures. There just wasn’t a place for the kinds of stories I wanted to tell. But now, with a growing audience for comics outside of tights and capes, I could finally let all these things out of my head.”
The October Girl is now available for pre-order on the official website, and will be available at your favorite bookstore, local comic shop, and digital comic reader on October 21st, 2025!
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