Emmy Laybourne

Emmy Laybourne creates speculative fiction for younger readers with fast-moving group dynamics and questions of responsibility. Ransacker concludes the Berserker duology, following Sissel Hemstad and her siblings after their flight from Norway to nineteenth-century Montana. Sissel can find precious metals through an inherited ability, a gift that attracts commercial and political interest while complicating her relationship with James Peavy, a Pinkerton operative. Feiwel & Friends released Ransacker in 2019. Laybourne's earlier Monument 14 trilogy places a group of children inside a superstore after a cascading disaster, while Sweet and its companion works also test characters within heightened social systems. Ransacker brings historical fantasy, romance, family loyalty, and industrial ambition together. Its western setting expands the mythology introduced in Berserker and gives Sissel's unusual power an economic meaning, turning personal inheritance into a question about who controls land, wealth, and the future.