The Phoenix Pencil Company

by Allison King · 2025

In this dazzling debut novel—blending history, fantasy, and family drama—Monica Tsai, a self-confessed recluse and college freshman, spends her days coding a program designed to connect strangers online while counting the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. Now in their nineties, they are her whole world, especially her grandmother Yun, who survived two wars in China before coming to America and whose memory has begun to fade. Determined to track down Yun's long-lost cousin Meng before it's too late, Monica connects with a young archivist who hands her a single pencil holding the key to a hidden family history. Through this discovery, Monica learns of her grandmother's youth in Shanghai, working at the Phoenix Pencil Company as WWII raged outside their door. There, Yun and Meng came into a power unique to the women of their family: the ability to Reforge pencils, reclaiming the stories and memories written with them. But when the government uncovers their secret, the cousins are forced into a life of espionage, betraying other people's stories to survive. Spanning decades and continents, The Phoenix Pencil Company is a moving story of magic, memory, and the bonds between grandmothers and granddaughters—a tale of long-lost connections mended across time and space that had readers smiling through their tears.