For immediate release
The Olympic Peninsula Gets Its Own Fantasy Series, and Bigfoot Is Only the Beginning
Sophia Sprite and the Sasquatch Secret, set in Elwha, Washington, is out now in audiobook narrated by Audie Award winner Bahni Turpin. Paperback and hardcover are available now; the ebook arrives November 23.
CHICAGO, October 17, 2026. Author Brian Young spent eight years in the Seattle area hiking the trails of the Olympic Peninsula with one eye on the ferns. Now he has written the Peninsula a fantasy series of its own. Sophia Sprite and the Sasquatch Secret, the first book in a planned five-book series for readers 10 and up, is set in Elwha, Washington, the small Olympic Peninsula community west of Port Angeles. In Young’s telling, the coffee shop on Main Street is called the Bigfoot Brew, the diner serves Sasquatch-Sized Portions, and a third-generation family research center displays a nineteen-inch footprint cast pulled from the mud three miles north of the Elwha River in 1982. The audiobook, narrated by Audie Award winner and Audible Narrator Hall of Fame inductee Bahni Turpin, is out now on Audible and Amazon. Paperback and hardcover editions are available now, and the ebook arrives November 23.
Fourteen-year-old Sophia Sprite grew up in Seattle. When her parents are killed in a rockslide on a hiking trail, she is sent west to live with the grandfather she barely knows, the man all of Elwha calls the crazy Bigfoot guy. Then she finds a key hidden in her mother’s music box. The key opens a trunk. The trunk holds a trail into the Olympic rainforest, and the trail leads to the Northborn, a people who have stayed hidden for sixty thousand years. They knew her mother, and they know she was murdered. With a leprechaun, a Northborn warrior, and two loyal friends, Sophia goes after a secret someone wants kept buried.
Washington has logged more Bigfoot sightings than any other state, according to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, and Young built Elwha from years of weekends spent in the places where those reports come from.
“Anyone who has stood in the Elwha valley on a gray morning knows the feeling that the forest is older than you and paying attention,” Young said. “I spent eight years out there and never stopped looking over my shoulder. Sophia’s story is what happened when I finally asked what might be looking back, and why it had stayed hidden for so long.”
The audiobook runs 9 hours and 39 minutes and is performed by Turpin, whose credits include The Hate U Give, Children of Blood and Bone, and The Underground Railroad. She gives distinct voices to a cast that includes a leprechaun several centuries old, a seven-foot Northborn warrior, a Seattle teenager who has just lost everything, and the villain who took it from her.
“Hearing Bahni Turpin bring Sophia to life is the closest I’ll ever come to seeing the movie in my head,” Young said.
BookLife Reviews, the review service Publishers Weekly runs for independent authors, called the novel “an unflinching, heartfelt examination of the choices, tasks, and emotions that come with growing up,” praising its “nuanced beats that avoid forced life lessons” and noting that “the engaging cast of secondary characters offers welcome levity and balance.”
Young queried 129 literary agents before publishing the book himself. “The passes mostly said the same thing: nobody knew which shelf a book about a fourteen-year-old girl and a Sasquatch belonged on,” he said. “Readers on the Peninsula will not have that problem.” The second book, Sophia Sprite and the Banshee Bargain, moves the series to the fae courts of Ireland and Scotland and is in progress.
Sophia Sprite and the Sasquatch Secret is available now in audiobook on Audible and Amazon. The paperback (ISBN 978-1-7341794-1-5) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and independent bookstores, and libraries can order through Ingram. The hardcover is available on Amazon. The ebook releases November 23 and is $4.99 on preorder through launch week, after which the price rises to $8.99. Chapter one of the audiobook and the first three chapters of the text are free at brianyoungauthor.com.
Young is available for interviews and podcast appearances, and for virtual visits with schools, libraries, and book clubs across the Olympic Peninsula and the Puget Sound region.
About the author
Brian Young grew up in Utah and spent eight years in the Seattle area, where he developed a lasting habit of hiking the trails of the Pacific Northwest and keeping one eye out for Sasquatch. Those years in the old-growth forests of the Olympic Peninsula planted the seeds for the Sophia Sprite series. He is also the author of The Sacred Vein Series, a historical adventure saga set in the American West. Sophia Sprite and the Sasquatch Secret is his first book for young readers. He lives in Chicago.
At a glance
- Title
- Sophia Sprite and the Sasquatch Secret (Book 1 of the Sophia Sprite series)
- Author
- Brian Young
- Narrator
- Bahni Turpin, Audie Award winner and Audible Narrator Hall of Fame inductee
- Audience
- Readers 10 and up; middle grade and young adult fantasy
- Setting
- Elwha, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula west of Port Angeles
- Audiobook
- Out now on Audible and Amazon; 9 hours, 39 minutes, unabridged
- Paperback available now everywhere books are sold, ISBN 978-1-7341794-1-5; hardcover available now on Amazon
- Ebook
- November 23, 2026; $4.99 on preorder through launch week, then $8.99
- Review
- “Sincere coming-of-age sees teen make room for grief and wonder.” BookLife Reviews
- Free sample
- Chapter 1 audio and the first three chapters at brianyoungauthor.com
- Series
- First of five planned books; Book 2, Sophia Sprite and the Banshee Bargain, is in progress
Media contact
Brian Young | hello@brianyoungauthor.com | brianyoungauthor.com
A PDF of this release, review copies (print, ebook, and Audible download codes), high-resolution cover art, author photos, and the audiobook sample are available on request.
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