Today on the site, I’m delighted to welcome back Nicole Melleby to reveal the cover of her upcoming Middle Grade, Brady Mason’s Perfect Fit, releasing January 13th, 2026 from Little, Brown! Here’s the story:

ANNIE meets Vogue’s Anna Wintour in this middle grade novel about a sports-obsessed foster kid who, through a twist of fate, reunites with her glamorous birth mom.

Brady Mason couldn’t care less about fashion. She likes what she knows: baseball, comfortable clothes, and pork roll with egg and cheese. When Brady’s friends notice that she looks strangely like fashion editor Elena Lavigne, they start the rumor that Brady is Elena’s long-lost daughter. They’ll make a few TikTok videos, get some fun buzz online about their similarities, and that will be the end of it.

But when a DNA test confirms that Brady is Elena’s long-lost daughter, she’s summoned to Manhattan to live with her. The only problem: Elena’s high-fashion life clashes with Brady’s tomboy antics, and Elena doesn’t know how to be a mother any more than Brady knows how to be a daughter. But the more time passes, the more Brady sees what they have in common, and she starts wondering…if she and Elena are both searching for a family, could the two of them be the right fit?

Balancing humor and heart, here is a winning story of hard-fought growth and found family.

And here’s the delightful cover, designed by Patrick Hulse with art by Svetla Radivoeva!

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Nicole Melleby, a Jersey native, is the author of highly praised middle-grade books, including the Lambda Literary finalist Hurricane Season and ALA Notable Children’s book How to Become a Planet. She is currently on the faculty of the Hamline University MFA for Writing for Children and Young Adults, and lives with her wife and their cats, whose needs for attention oddly align with Nicole’s writing schedule.