Accelerant

by T.L. Simpson

From the Printz Honor-winning author of Cope Field

After his best friends are attacked at a Pride demonstration, anime nerd Briar Stokes grabs a length of pipe, dons a Japanese demon mask, and hops on his street bike with one goal: to enact violent revenge against the white supremacists infesting his rural Missouri community.

What he doesn’t know is how deep the roots of hate grow, nor how much they’ve entangled his own family. But when his quest for vengeance pits him against his own stepbrother, who faces radicalization by that same hate group, Briar soon learns the hard way that violence doesn’t stop violence . . . It accelerates it.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication October 20, 2026

About the author

T.L. Simpson is an award-winning journalist and novelist living in Arkansas. He is currently the editor of his hometown paper. His fiction draws from his experiences growing up in the Ozarks, covering both sports and crime. Simpson lives in the Arkansas River Valley, between the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains with his wife and four children.

Reviews

[Dakota Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

With his third book, T.L. Simpson has upped the game once again. With characters as textured as tree bark and their lives as gritty as Ozark dirt, ACCELERANT launches readers into a clash between far-right extremism, love, abandonment, acceptance, and dependence. Simpson continues to prove that sometimes the most gut-wrenching stories of kith, kin, and chaos are in our own backyard.

[T.L. Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one is for the hate haters