Stories that help young readers find their light.
An independent publisher of middle-grade fiction — books for readers roughly ages 8 to 14. We believe young readers are ready for real ideas, and the best way to hand those ideas to them is through a story worth staying up late to finish.
The Beacon Keepers: First Light
Leo Morales counts his steps to his locker every morning — thirty-seven, exactly. He likes order. What he doesn't like is the folded note that falls out of his locker one afternoon, summoning him and two classmates he barely knows to a back-alley shop called Ziggy's Skate & Drone. Time to find your light, the note says.
What Leo, Jada, and Max find there isn't a prank. It's a question. And the answer they work out together will turn three kids who don't quite fit into something their school didn't know it needed.
Why we exist
Most books written to "teach" kids about leadership, teamwork, or character end up sounding like the adults who wrote them. They explain. They moralize. They hand down lessons from a height. Kids can smell it a mile away, and they put the book down.
We started Lordsburg Press because we believe the alternative is better. A middle-schooler figuring out who to trust, how to lead without bossing, how to keep a promise when it costs something — that is a story. Just characters the reader can walk beside, making the kinds of choices the reader is quietly wrestling with in their own life.