Allison King Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Allison King is a published Asian American author.

She is also a software engineer. She is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When it comes to technology, the work that this author has done can be described as everything from semi-conductors to platforms for community conversations to even data privacy.

Allison’s debut novel was titled The Phoenix Pencil Company. She has also written short stories and they have been featured in places such as Diabolical Plots, Fantasy Magazine, and LeVar Burton Reads. She is a 2023 Reese’s Book Club LitUp fellow.

The Phoenix Pencil Company is the debut fictional novel from Allison King. It is a Reese’s Book Club Pick. If you have been searching for something that is new, fun and fresh to read, you’re going to want to check out this book that others are calling ‘dazzling’!

In this fascinating debut, a nearly-forgotten magic that has been hidden for some time of Reforging pencils exists. This practice means that the objects are taken and that the memories that are inside of them come back to life. They have the power to change a young woman’s relationship that she has with grandmother, as well as healing long lost connections that have been made across time and space.

For Monica Tsai, much of the time that she spends during the day is on her computer. There she goes through the details of her regular life and journals them, along with the coding for a program whose goal is to connect strangers online.

She is a recluse through her own words, and she has always had a difficult time when it comes to making friends. Now that she is a freshman in college, she is finding herself more and more making an escape into the digital world. There she counts the days that are left until she can go home to her grandparents, who she really cares about.

Her grandparents have reached their nineties in age, and Monica finds that she is constantly worrying about them. This includes Yun, her grandmother. She went through two wars in China and survived them before eventually coming over the United States, and now her memory has started to fade.

Yun does not often speak about the past, but even so, Monica’s goal is to ultimately track down and find the cousin that Yun was separated from all those years ago. It isn’t long before the same program that Monica is doing her best to build ends up connecting her to a young woman. The gift of a single pencil from this woman ends up holding a clue.

Monica slowly starts looking into things more and before she knows it, there is an entire hidden family history that she discovers. This comes together and is interwoven with Yun’s own personal memories as she is writing about the years that she had in Shanghai while she worked at the Phoenix Pencil Company.

While World War II goes on right outside of their door, Yun and her cousin Meng find out about a special power that the women in their family have, which is the ability to Reforge a pencil’s words. When the government finds out about their secret, however, they end up finding out that they are being pushed into a life of espionage, where they must betray the stories of others simply just to survive.

Putting together a family saga that crosses generations, this is a debut novel that asks the questions who owns and who inherits the stories that we have? The secrets and the answers that come up on these pages may just have the power to connect a family once more and put a legacy back together. Read this book from Allison King to absorb it all for yourself!