Time, Technology & the Stakes of Growing Up
Two acclaimed series for middle-grade and YA readers · Grades 5–12
Ricardo Gómez's YA fiction puts young readers at the center of history's most consequential moments — and technology's most urgent dangers. His two series offer page-turning adventure while asking the questions that define a generation: Who controls the past? Who shapes the future? What does it mean to fight for truth?
When magical bookmarks choose their Guardians, they don't just grant the power to travel through history — they assign a responsibility. Across five books, a diverse group of teenagers discovers that the battle for intellectual freedom evolves with each generation: from burning books, to erasing thoughts, to rewriting the past itself.
When beloved librarian Eleanor Parker dies under mysterious circumstances, her grandson Milo inherits more than grief — he inherits her silver bookmark, her secret mission, and an ancient lineage of Guardians who can step into the bodies of those who fought censorship throughout history. From Nazi book burnings to Mao’s Cultural Revolution to Argentina’s Dirty War, Milo witnesses firsthand how dangerous words become when powerful people fear them. But the most dangerous discovery is waiting back home in Oakville, Ohio: the Lancasters, time-traveling “Erasers” who don’t just ban books — they erase all evidence that certain ideas ever existed.
The series begins with a grandmother’s death and a boy’s awakening. It will end with the fate of memory itself.
Kindle · Paperback · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/FightingBookBans
Zoe Williams hears voices. Not ghosts — something stranger. When she touches the bookmark that chose her as its second Guardian, she connects with writers history tried to silence: poets whose work was burned, speakers whose words were banned. Lately, she’s been glimpsing something that shouldn’t be possible — warnings from people who don’t exist yet. When HarmonyAI rolls out neural interface trials at their high school, promising to “optimize” thought by filtering “harmful” content, Zoe sees where it leads. She’s already heard the silence at the end of that road. Armed with typewriters and analog resistance, the Guardians fight back the only way they can: by preserving what algorithms can’t touch.
Kindle · Paperback · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/UnwrittenWorld
The thought police have been defeated. But something worse has taken their place. HistoryLens AI doesn’t burn books or control thoughts — it rewrites history itself. Japanese internment becomes “voluntary relocation.” Indigenous boarding schools become “cultural education programs.” The victims’ own stories are being used to teach future compliance. When a new generation of Guardians — Grace, Carlos, Alex, and Jasmine — discovers that authentic histories of oppression are being sanitized into tales of cooperation, they realize the threat has evolved: you don’t need to ban the truth if you can make people believe the comfortable version happened instead.
Kindle · Paperback · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/FightingDeepfakes
January 2, 2026. U.S. forces capture Venezuela’s president. Two days later, the administration announces the “Donroe Doctrine”: American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. Milo’s amber bookmark burns with a weight he’s never felt before. It pulls him through seven decades of American intervention — CIA operations in Iran, the fall of Allende’s Chile, Nicaragua’s brutal civil war — each witness revealing another piece of Heritage Clarity, a three-generation conspiracy to erase interventionism from American memory. The Guardians expose it to the world. Congressional hearings begin. But as one adversary warns: “The pattern doesn’t care if people see it. It just keeps going.”
Kindle · Paperback · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/DonroeDoctrine
An ancient Maya artifact, dormant for five centuries, suddenly awakens. The obsidian witness was created during the Maya collapse to anchor itself to moments of civilizational fracture. Now it recognizes what’s coming. When a massive federal immigration operation descends on Minneapolis — the largest in American history — Milo and Zoe are pulled to opposite ends of the crisis: Zoe trapped with detained families in a standoff, Milo forced to witness processing operations at the Texas border. The obsidian won’t release them until the moment completes. When empire comes home, what does it mean to witness — and is witnessing enough?
Kindle · Paperback · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/EmpireComesHome
[Kindle $6.99] [Paperback $14.99]
[Audiobook — Audible · Apple Books · Amazon]
Two Seattle teenagers. Eight volumes. Ten thousand years of suppressed human history — and a present-day battle to keep it from being erased forever.
Each volume stands alone as an archaeological adventure. Together, they build an epic argument: that sophisticated civilizations flourished on every continent, long before European contact, and that the fight to remember them is inseparable from the fight for freedom today.
Cuchu Ramirez dreams of ancient cities that textbooks insist never existed. Matias Kim dismisses history as “dead people’s problems.” When their Seattle high school faces its first federal “compliance review” — systematic censorship of archaeological evidence — these unlikely partners discover that certain artifacts can carry witnesses across time. Their first journey: Caral, Peru (3500 BCE), Poverty Point, Louisiana (3400 BCE), and Uruk, Mesopotamia (3200 BCE). What they find shatters everything they’ve been taught: sophisticated urban planning, international trade, and literacy emerging simultaneously across continents. The textbooks didn’t get it wrong by accident.
Kindle $6.99 · Paperback $14.99 · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/DawnOfCivilizations
Dr. Crow Feather, their Indigenous Studies professor, teaches Cuchu and Matias something the artifacts can’t: witness responsibilities extend beyond curiosity to cultural sovereignty and community consent. You don’t just take knowledge — you ask permission. Their second journey documents San Agustín, Colombia (2000 BCE), Spiro Mounds, Oklahoma (2000 BCE), and Stonehenge, England (2500 BCE). Meanwhile, Heritage Foundation 2.0 reveals a terrifying new capability: altering search results and suppressing archaeological evidence in real time.
Kindle $6.99 · Paperback $14.99 · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/BuildersOfMonuments
Teaching pre-Columbian achievements is now a federal crime. Cuchu and Matias coordinate with underground educator networks across three countries while their third temporal mission documents what the law wants buried: Chavín de Huántar, Peru (1200 BCE), early Cahokia, Illinois (1200 BCE), and Knossos, Crete (1450 BCE) — proof that international trade and cooperative governance operated at continental scales centuries before European maritime expansion ever began.
Kindle $6.99 · Paperback $14.99 · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/BronzeAgeNetworks
The opposition has evolved beyond politics into something darker. Heritage Foundation 2.0’s consciousness manipulation now targets memory and motivation directly — digital platforms alter content in real time, and traditional knowledge becomes the only defense against attacks on the neurological foundations of community cooperation. Cuchu and Matias journey to Paracas, Peru (500 BCE), the Adena Culture, Ohio (500 BCE), and the Nok Culture, Nigeria (500 BCE), where global technological leadership flourished while Europe still struggled with basic ironworking.
Kindle $6.99 · Paperback $14.99 · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/IronAgeInnovations
Eight months in, Cuchu and Matias are no longer uncertain teenagers. They lead resistance networks spanning twelve countries. But when Heritage Foundation 2.0 begins literally erasing people’s memories of why they wanted educational freedom, leadership isn’t enough. Their journey to Teotihuacán, Mexico (150 CE) and Hopewell, Ohio (200 BCE) teaches them what the ancient world already knew: governance under pressure requires cooperation across vast distances, without centralized authority — and the cost of that cooperation is carried by the people who show up.
Kindle $6.99 · Paperback $14.99 · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/ClassicalFlourishing
Reality itself has become the battlefield. Heritage Foundation 2.0’s consciousness modification now erases memories of multicultural cooperation on a global scale. Everything Cuchu and Matias have documented could vanish — not from libraries, but from human minds. Their journey to Chichen Itza (900 CE), Cahokia at its peak (1050 CE), and Great Zimbabwe (1200 CE) takes them to civilizations at the height of their political and cultural power. The enemy’s target is precisely these moments: proof that human achievement doesn’t require European origin.
Kindle $6.99 · Paperback $14.99 · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/MedievalConnections
The last learning journey. The hardest one. Machu Picchu (1470 CE), Mesa Verde (1400 CE), Angkor Wat (1400 CE) — human achievement at its apex, just decades before European contact reshapes everything. These civilizations reveal not primitive cultures awaiting discovery, but sophisticated societies whose disruption was a catastrophe, not a beginning. Heritage Foundation 2.0 now attacks ancestral knowledge networks directly. Cuchu and Matias must decide what they are willing to sacrifice — because the final confrontation will demand everything.
Kindle $6.99 · Paperback $14.99 · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/ThresholdofChange
The final confrontation. Heritage Foundation 2.0 threatens complete reality replacement: not just censorship, not just memory manipulation, but the permanent rewriting of human consciousness. Cuchu and Matias’ last journey takes them to Tenochtitlan (1519 CE), Duwamish villages in the Seattle area (1590 CE), and Benin City, Nigeria (1590 CE) — the threshold between sophisticated Indigenous civilizations and the European disruption that reshaped the world. They face the choice their entire journey has prepared them for: use temporal power for individual victory, or accept cosmic responsibility that prioritizes community protection over personal survival. The ending is theirs to choose.
Kindle $6.99 · Paperback $14.99 · Audiobook → https://mybook.to/VoicesintheStorm
Percy Jackson · A Wrinkle in Time · The Giver · Magnus Chase · The City of Ember
Both series can be used in middle school and high school classrooms across the US. Educator guides, discussion questions, and curriculum connections available. Ricardo is available for author visits — virtual and in-person.
Before chapter books and YA series, there are board books. Noah's World is Ricardo Gómez's contribution to the youngest shelves: a 24-page celebration of the differences that make us human and the feelings that make us the same.
Different hair. Same giggles. Different eyes. Same wonder. Different skin. Same hugs.
Every page features text in English, Spanish, and Italian — ideal for multilingual families, multicultural preschool and daycare settings, and any child growing up in a beautifully diverse world. Bold, high-contrast illustrations designed for young eyes.
→ Perfect for: baby showers and first birthday gifts · multicultural and immigrant families · preschools and daycare centers · building home libraries that reflect the real world
Children's board book · English, Spanish & Italian · Ages 0–3
[Paperback $15.00] https://mybook.to/NoahWorld
© Ricardo Gómez · ricardogomez.net [Books] [About] [Amazon Author Page] [Substack: substack.com/@storiesacrossborders100]
"Stories that cross borders, centuries, and ways of knowing."