Gae Polisner
Gae Polisner has published 7 books. The recommended reading order starts with The Pull of Gravity (2013).
Gae Polisner is an American author who writes contemporary novels for young adults, often exploring themes of mental health, grief, and recovery. She made her debut in 2011 with The Pull of Gravity, which won the Bank Street Award and earned praise for its road-trip story about friendship and loss. The novel marked the beginning of a career built on emotionally honest fiction that gives teenagers room to feel heard.
Before publishing her first novel, Polisner practiced family law after graduating from law school. She had written poetry and short stories since childhood, but it took stepping away from legal work and several attempts at a manuscript before Farrar, Straus and Giroux bought The Pull of Gravity. That return to writing became permanent.
Her subsequent novels have drawn attention for their strong prose and their willingness to address difficult subjects directly. In Sight of Stars follows a teenager in psychiatric treatment and draws on the life and work of Vincent van Gogh. The Memory of Things is set in the days following September 11 and won the Golden Archer Children's Choice Award. Consider the Octopus, a STEM-focused novel about environmental science, received a starred review from Kirkus. Seven Clues to Home was selected by the Junior Library Guild. Polisner lives with her family and, when not writing, swims and listens to her sons' music.
Shelf & Shadows
Order of Standalone Novels
- TagschildrenDescriptionWhat do you owe someone who's gone—especially when they left something unfinished? Nick Gardner and Jaycee Amato are grappling with that question after their friend Scooter dies from a rare disease, leaving behind more than just grief. He left behind a mission: a signed first edition of *Of Mice and Men* and the ghost of a father who walked away when Scooter was just a baby. So Nick and Jaycee do what any teenagers would do when the world stops making sense—they hit the road. This isn't some sunny coming-of-age road trip with a playlist and snacks. It's a secret journey fueled by loyalty and loss, carrying a book that means everything and searching for a man who might mean nothing. Along the way, they're forced to reckon with what it means to show up for someone, even after they're gone, and whether closure is something you find or something you make. Gae Polisner writes grief without sentimentality, friendship without melodrama. *The Pull of Gravity* is about the weight we carry for the people we love and the strange, stubborn hope that drives us to finish what they started. It's tender and raw, a story that understands how hard it is to let go—and how much harder it is not to try.Publication dateFebruary 5, 2013Amazon rating4.6/5Print length224LanguageEnglishPublisherSquare Fish
- TagschildrenDescriptionGuilt has a way of freezing time. For fifteen-year-old Francesca, four years have passed since her younger brother Simon drowned on her watch. Four years of carrying that weight. Four years of being stuck. Then comes Frankie. A little boy she's hired to care for during the summer. A little boy who feels impossibly, unsettlingly familiar. He has Simon's mannerisms. Simon's laugh. Simon's way of tilting his head when he's thinking. Francesca knows it's impossible, knows grief can play tricks on the mind, but she can't shake the feeling that somehow, in some inexplicable way, Simon has come back to her. Caring for Frankie becomes both a lifeline and a reckoning—a chance to protect someone she failed to protect before, or perhaps a chance to finally forgive herself. But moving forward means more than just confronting the past. It means navigating the messy present too, including her growing feelings for her best friend's boyfriend. Gae Polisner crafts a tender, emotionally raw story about the impossible work of letting go. This is a novel about how we carry our losses, how we seek second chances in unexpected places, and how healing often arrives in the most complicated, bittersweet forms. Francesca's journey is painful and real, and her slow thaw feels earned.Publication dateMarch 25, 2014Amazon rating4.5/5Print length320LanguageEnglishPublisherLittle, Brown Books for Young Readers
- Tagsyoung-adultmysteryromancechildrenhistorical-fictionDescriptionWhat do you do when the world collapses and you find someone who needs saving more than you do? Kyle Donohue is sixteen when he watches the first tower fall from his classroom window at Stuyvesant High School. Fleeing across the Brooklyn Bridge in the chaos, he finds a girl covered in ash, wearing costume wings, perched in the shadows. His father—a detective—is unreachable, likely heading into the disaster. His mother and sister are in California. So Kyle does the only thing that feels right. He takes her home. The girl can't remember her name. She can't remember anything. And as Kyle tries to piece together who she is, something shifts. The mystery matters less than the connection forming between them in those suspended days after September 11th. Gae Polisner tells their story in alternating voices, capturing the strange intimacy of trauma and the way two people can anchor each other when everything else is unmoored. This is a novel about memory and forgetting, about the stories we tell ourselves to survive. It's about a city reeling and two teenagers finding each other in the wreckage. The question isn't just who she is. It's whether Kyle will want to let her go once he finds out.Publication dateSeptember 6, 2016Amazon rating4.4/5Print length288LanguageEnglishPublisherSt. Martin's Griffin
- Tagsyoung-adultromancechildrengraphic-novelsfantasyDescriptionWhat happens when the person who taught you to see the world suddenly vanishes from it, leaving you to navigate the wreckage alone? Seventeen-year-old Klee's entire universe revolved around his father, the man who opened his eyes to the masterworks hanging in New York City's great museums, who wove stories from myth and magic into the fabric of their everyday lives. His father was his compass, his interpreter, his guide through both art and existence—until death severed that connection, leaving Klee adrift in a reality that no longer makes sense. Now Klee must find a way to exist in a world drained of the color and meaning his father once provided, grappling with a grief so profound it threatens to unmake him entirely. Gae Polisner crafts a portrait of loss that understands how the death of a parent can feel like the death of your own ability to perceive beauty, to find coherence in chaos. This is a novel about the particular devastation of losing the person who taught you how to look at things, and the painstaking work of learning to see again on your own terms. Polisner writes with the kind of emotional precision that makes grief feel both unbearably specific and achingly universal, offering readers not easy comfort but the harder gift of recognition and the faint promise of survival.Publication dateMarch 13, 2018Amazon rating4.4/5Print length256LanguageEnglishPublisherWednesday Books
- Tagsyoung-adultromancechildrenDescriptionA title like that demands an explanation. Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me announces its stakes in seven words. This is a story about disillusionment, about what happens when your heroes fail you. JL is fifteen. Her mother is gone. Her father has retreated into silence and depression. She finds solace in books, in the Beat writers her mother loved, in Kerouac's restless search for meaning on the open road. But when her father's condition worsens and the adult world proves unreliable, JL takes matters into her own hands. She sets out on a journey of her own, carrying her mother's ashes and a desperate hope that movement might equal healing. What she discovers instead is messier, harder, and more real than any romanticized road trip narrative. Gae Polisner writes grief without sentimentality. She understands how anger and love coexist in the same breath, how a teenager can be both fiercely independent and achingly vulnerable. This is a novel about the gap between literary myth and lived experience, about learning that survival sometimes means letting go of the stories that no longer serve you. JL's voice is sharp, honest, unflinching. Her journey is not about finding herself—it's about finding a way forward when the map you've been given no longer makes sense.Publication dateApril 7, 2020Amazon rating4.6/5Print length288LanguageEnglishPublisherWednesday Books
- DescriptionNora's running. Not from something, but toward it—though she doesn't know what yet. Her mother's gone, her father's checked out, and home has become a place she can't recognize anymore. So she takes off with nothing but a backpack and a cryptic list of seven clues her mother left behind, each one a breadcrumb leading somewhere she's never been. This is a scavenger hunt with stakes. Each clue pulls Nora deeper into her mother's past, into secrets that reshape everything she thought she knew about her family. The journey isn't just geographical—it's emotional archaeology, digging through layers of loss and longing to find what's buried underneath. Polisner and Baskin write with a tenderness that never tips into sentimentality, capturing the raw ache of a kid trying to piece together a life that's fallen apart. What sets this apart is its refusal to offer easy answers. Nora's quest isn't about finding her mother or fixing her father—it's about discovering what home means when the old definition crumbles. The prose is spare and honest, the kind that trusts readers to feel without being told how. It's a story about grief, yes, but also about resilience and the strange, stubborn hope that keeps us moving forward even when we don't know where we're going.Publication dateJune 9, 2020Amazon rating4.8/5Print length208LanguageEnglishPublisherKnopf Books for Young Readers
- DescriptionThis book asks you to reconsider what you know about connection. Two authors, two voices, one story about reaching across distance when the world feels impossible. Gae Polisner and Nora Raleigh Baskin craft a dual narrative that moves between two teenagers who find each other through letters, through honesty, through the kind of vulnerability that only strangers can offer. The octopus becomes the through-line. A creature of intelligence and isolation. A symbol of adaptability. The story unfolds as correspondence between JT, grappling with family upheaval and his own sense of displacement, and Olivia, navigating her own struggles with identity and belonging. Their letters become a lifeline. The prose is direct, unsentimental, but deeply felt. Polisner and Baskin understand how young people speak when they're not performing, when they're just trying to be seen. The result is a quiet book that lands hard—a story about how we save each other by telling the truth, about how connection doesn't require proximity, only presence. It's a book that trusts its readers to sit with discomfort, to find hope in small gestures, to believe that understanding matters even when solutions feel out of reach.Publication dateApril 5, 2022Amazon rating4.5/5Print length272LanguageEnglishPublisherHenry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Frequently Asked Questions about Gae Polisner
Gae Polisner writes standalone novels. The books can be read in any order. The list of her published novels is: The Pull of Gravity (2013), The Summer of Letting Go (2014), The Memory of Things (2016), In Sight of Stars (2018), Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me (2020), and two additional titles. Each novel tells a distinct story.
A good starting point for Gae Polisner's books is any title that catches your interest, as they are all standalone novels. The Pull of Gravity was published in 2013, followed by The Summer of Letting Go in 2014. The Memory of Things was released in 2016, and In Sight of Stars in 2018. Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me came out in 2020. Reading any of these will introduce you to her writing.
No, you do not have to read Gae Polisner's books in order. Each of her novels is a standalone story. They do not share characters or plotlines that require prior reading. You can begin with any book that appeals to you. The publication order includes The Pull of Gravity (2013), The Summer of Letting Go (2014), The Memory of Things (2016), In Sight of Stars (2018), and Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me (2020), among others.
Gae Polisner writes standalone novels. Each book offers a complete story and does not require reading other titles in a series. Readers can pick up any of her novels and find a self-contained narrative. Her published works include The Pull of Gravity (2013), The Summer of Letting Go (2014), The Memory of Things (2016), In Sight of Stars (2018), and Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me (2020), among others.
Gae Polisner has written at least six novels. Her published works include The Pull of Gravity (2013), The Summer of Letting Go (2014), The Memory of Things (2016), In Sight of Stars (2018), and Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me (2020). Information indicates there are two more titles beyond this list, bringing the total count to at least eight books.
The first book Gae Polisner wrote was The Pull of Gravity, published in 2013. This novel marked her debut. It is followed by The Summer of Letting Go in 2014, The Memory of Things in 2016, and In Sight of Stars in 2018. Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me was published in 2020. All of her books are standalone works.
Gae Polisner's most recent book is Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me, published in 2020. Prior to this, she released In Sight of Stars in 2018. Other earlier standalone novels include The Memory of Things (2016), The Summer of Letting Go (2014), and The Pull of Gravity (2013). She has also published two additional titles.
Gae Polisner writes young adult novels. Her books explore themes relevant to teenagers and young adults, often focusing on coming-of-age experiences, relationships, and personal growth. Titles like The Summer of Letting Go and The Memory of Things delve into these areas. Her work is characterized by relatable characters and emotional depth.
We verified the reading order for Gae Polisner's books by cross-referencing official publication dates, ISBN databases, and publisher catalogs.
Last verified: April 2026
Shelf & Shadows. (…). “Gae Polisner Books in Order.” Retrieved …, from https://www.shelfandshadows.com/authors/gae-polisner