by Twenty years ago, I began imagining a story about three disabled teenage girls who discover they possess elemental powers. The idea stayed with me, growing and changing as I grew and changed, waiting for the right moment to be told. That moment has arrived. The EleMenTs Series is complete, and all three novels are now available.
Elle is Deaf. Meen is blind. Teena has cerebral palsy. Thrown together in a New York City group home as wards of the state, these three young women share something beyond their circumstances: the ability to command the elements themselves. Elle bends the wind through the same hands that shape American Sign Language. Meen controls fire and temperature, her blindness becoming a tactical advantage when she can feel heat signatures others cannot see. Teena moves the earth, feeling through stone and concrete the way she learned to feel every obstacle the world placed in her path.
Their names encode their identity. Take the right letters from Eleanor, Mingzhu, and Christina Sarah, and you spell EleMenTs. They are wind, fire, and earth. In the second book, Tal arrives to complete the quartet, a girl with autism who counts everything and trusts no one, until she discovers she can feel water the way the others feel their elements. Four girls. Four elements. And an organization called Prometheus Applied Sciences that will stop at nothing to acquire them.
Book One: Beneath the City
Beneath the City introduces the three protagonists as they meet in the group home and discover what they can do. In the tunnels beneath New York, they learn to trust each other and to understand that their disabilities were never weaknesses. The foster care system sees them as problems to be managed. Society sees their disabilities before their humanity. But something is watching them, and the tunnels hold secrets that will change everything.
Available now: Kindle Edition $3.99 | Paperback $14.99 | Free PDF
Book Two: The Invisible Hand
The Invisible Hand picks up three months after the tunnel. The girls have been practicing in secret, but they know they’re being watched. When a new volunteer named Sarah arrives at the group home asking too many questions, they realize Prometheus Applied Sciences has found them. Tal’s arrival changes the dynamics, completing the elemental set and forcing the girls to choose between hiding and fighting. When Prometheus springs its trap, staying hidden is no longer an option.
Available now: Kindle Edition $4.99 | Paperback $14.99 | Free PDF
Book Three: The Reckoning
The Reckoning takes the fight to Washington. One year later, the girls travel to the capital for a Senate hearing on a registration bill that would force everyone with abilities to identify themselves to the government. Vance, the agent who once hunted them, returns with evidence that exposes Verdant Agricultural Holdings as the shadow corporation behind Prometheus. Hundreds of people with abilities come forward publicly, refusing to hide any longer. Senator Morrison, who championed the registration bill, faces a choice between persecution and protection. The conclusion of the trilogy asks what it means to be seen, and whether visibility is liberation or the final vulnerability.
Available now: Kindle Edition $4.99 | Paperback $14.99 | Free PDF
Why This Story Matters
This is not a story about overcoming disability. I have no patience for narratives that treat disability as an obstacle to be conquered or a lesson for the able-bodied to learn from. The EleMenTs Series is about power that exists because of disability, not despite it. Elle’s Deafness shaped how she perceives vibration and movement; when wind became her element, she already knew how to feel the world in ways hearing people do not. Meen’s blindness gave her decades of practice reading her environment through non-visual means; fire and heat were extensions of senses she had already developed. Teena’s cerebral palsy taught her that the body does not always cooperate with intention; when earth became hers to command, she finally had a domain that responded to her will.
The villains in this story are not monsters or aliens. They are corporations and committees, systems and structures, the ordinary machinery of power that decides who counts as human and who counts as resource. Prometheus Applied Sciences wants to study and control people with abilities. The Senate wants to register and track them. The foster care system wants to manage them until they age out and become someone else’s problem. These are the antagonists because these are the forces that disabled people actually face. I wanted to write a fantasy that felt true.
The trilogy runs approximately 72,000 words across its three volumes. It is written for young adult readers but contains nothing that would embarrass an adult picking it up. The prose is direct, the action is consequential, and the characters are allowed to be angry, afraid, and occasionally wrong. I did not soften the story for a presumed audience. Young readers deserve the same respect as any other audience.
Read the Complete Series
All three books are available now in Kindle, paperback, and free PDF editions. You can explore the complete series at the EleMenTs Series page on BolesBooks.com, or begin with Beneath the City and follow the girls from the tunnels of New York to the halls of the Senate.
The EleMenTs have arrived. The world will have to deal with them.
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