Soldier boys emerged from the darkness. Guns gleamed dully. Bullet bandoliers and scars draped their bare chests. Ugly brands scored their faces. She knew why these soldier boys had come. She knew what they sought, and she knew, too, that if they found it, her best friend would surely die.

In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man–a bioengineered war beast named Tool–who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses. One is taken prisoner by merciless soldier boys, and the other is faced with an impossible decision: Risk everything to save a friend, or flee to a place where freedom might finally be possible.

This thrilling companion to Paolo Bacigalupi’s highly acclaimed Ship Breaker is a haunting and powerful story of loyalty, survival, and heart-pounding adventure.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of Ship Breaker, a Michael L. Printz Award winner and National Book Award finalist. He is also the author of The Windup Girl and Pump Six and Other Stories, and is a Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner. He lives in western Colorado with his wife and son.

Editorial Review

Bands of child soldiers roam from village to village, raping, pillaging and brutally murdering, all in the name of endless civil war. Against the backdrop of this blood-soaked chaos, two unlikely allies, a crippled teenage “war maggot” and a half-man/half-beast genetically altered killing machine, risk their lives and their freedom to save a boy forced into servitude by rebel soldiers. Mahlia and Tool (whom readers may recognize from Ship Breaker) venture deeper and deeper into the Drowned Cities, each fueled by unwavering loyalty. As they do, readers are given glimpses of proof that love and humanity can shine through even the most unimaginable darkness. Arguably, the novel’s greatest success lies in the creation of a world that is so real, the grit and decay of war and ruin will lay thick on the minds of readers long after the final page. The narrative, however, is equally well crafted. Told in the third person, the novel alternates between Mahalia and Tool’s stories, allowing both characters the time and space to imprint themselves on readers’ hearts. – Kirkus Reviews

Review: Paolo Bacigalupi brings chaos to life in ‘Drowned Cities’

The Los Angeles Times Book Review – April 22, 2012 (Excerpt)

Whether it’s a conscious or subliminal reaction to U.S. military involvement inIraq and Afghanistan, war is an increasingly common theme in modern young adult literature. But its horrors are rarely so thoroughly detailed as in Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Drowned Cities.” One of the more graphically violent young adult titles of late, “The Drowned Cities” reads like a dystopian mash-up of the Vietnam War and modern geopolitics, where survivalism battles personal loyalties in a brutal and chaotic world.

Suzanne Collins may have put dystopian literature on the YA map with “The Hunger Games,” her bestselling series inspired by television coverage of the Iraq war, but Bacigalupi is one of the genre’s masters, employing inventively terrifying details in equally imaginative story lines. About half of the “The Drowned Cities” takes place in the same flooded cityscape as Bacigalupi’s young adult debut, “Ship Breaker,” which won the prestigious Michael L. Printz award last year and was also nominated for a National Book Award. Both novels feature similar themes of scavenging and survival in an environmentally degraded future, but the titles are otherwise unrelated, with entirely different characters and quests.

“The Drowned Cities” opens with a festering prison scene. A genetically engineered killing machine named Tool is rotting behind bars, believed to be dead, until a jailer makes the fatal mistake of unlocking the gate and unleashing him into the wild. This fusion of tiger, dog, hyena and man is not the main protagonist but the sidekick to an orphaned teenage girl named Mahlia who helps heal the monster’s wounds. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

QUEEN OF MISFORTUNE
A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same strange who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

What if the world’s worst serial killer…was your dad?

Jasper (Jazz) Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.

But he’s also the son of the world’s most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could–from the criminal’s point of view.

And now bodies are piling up in Lobo’s Nod.

In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret–could he be more like his father than anyone knows?

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Barry Lyga

Barry Lyga is the author of several acclaimed young adult novels, including his debut, The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl. He knows way too much about how to dispose of a human body. Barry lives and writes in New York City. His website is www.barrylyga.com.

Editorial Review

After witnessing many of the crime scenes of his father’s 123 official kills in ways the police wish they could, 17-year-old Jasper “Jazz” Dent is glad his father’s in prison. Life with crazy Gramma, who raised “Dear Old Dad,” is hard enough, and now it’s in jeopardy thanks to Jazz’s social worker. When police discover a body in a field near town, Jazz becomes certain it’s a new serial killer. In spite of the objections of Lobo’s Nod Sheriff G. William Tanner, Jazz and his best friend, hemophiliac Howie, run their own investigation and uncover a pattern as bodies quickly pile up. Can Jazz help the cops find this new monster without becoming a suspect himself? YA rebel-author Lyga switches from goths and superheroes to serial killers and sociopaths with this grisly teen thriller. Jazz’s heightened self-consciousness is both believable and entirely in tune with regular teens. Readers of Dan Wells’ John Wayne Cleaver novels (I Am Not a Serial Killer, 2010, etc.) will find echoes of them here, though the writing is not as tight and the creep factor is lower. Also, the certain-sequel open ending is a bit of a letdown. – Kirkus Review

Not Just for Kids: ‘I Hunt Killers’ by Barry Lyga

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – April 1, 2012 (Excerpt)

A generation ago, young horror fans had to “read up” to adult authors such as Stephen King. Now novelists such as Barry Lyga are tailoring gore for a teen audience.

In “I Hunt Killers,” Lyga attempts one of the more daring concepts in recent years by a young-adult author. His multiple-murder mystery focuses on the son of a notorious serial killer who is forced to confront his fears that he will follow in his dad’s footsteps and must also reconcile his attraction to grisly deaths.

This extreme and utterly alluring narrative about nature versus nurture opens with the discovery of a naked woman’s body in a field on the outskirts of town. Seventeen-year-old Jazz Dent is observing the investigation from afar using a pair of binoculars he received as a gift from his dad before he was locked up — after committing 123 murders over a span of 21 years — for consecutive life sentences.

Jazz’s upbringing was alarmingly unusual. Raised on a steady diet of murder, he “had witnessed crime scenes the way the cops wished they could — from the criminal’s point of view.” The “trophies” in the Dent household included a lipstick, an iPod, a driver’s license and other mementos that were stashed in the basement rather than displayed on the mantle. Jazz’s brain felt “like a slasher movie.” [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Twelve-year-old Sarah Stein loves life in New York. Who wouldn’t, growing up in a cool TriBeCa loft with an artist dad and a chocolate-maker mom, rollerblading in Central Park, hanging out with friends? That is, until the day her parents tell her they’re divorcing. Forced to shuttle each day by bicycle between their separate residences on either side of the Brooklyn Bridge, Sarah soon discovers that the parents she thought she knew are as opposite as their new homes. She takes on a bizarrely split identity—one day she’s the daughter of the prim, social-climbing chocolatier, the next the streetwise, smart-aleck child of the downtown abstract painter. Sarah Stein becomes a stranger to herself. But that’s not the only thing that’s strange. Colliding with the cart of a homeless man one day while pedaling across the bridge, Sarah tumbles through a magical portal and into an upside-down world of double identities and second chances.

Through her friendship with the homeless Clarence Wind, a disgraced fireman missing since 9/11, and the love of her grandmother, a wise Holocaust survivor with her own hidden past, Sarah unlocks the mysteries behind the strangeness that she and Clarence share. In this witty, wonder-filled novel about broken homes and disconnected lives, with the majestic Brooklyn Bridge as backdrop and the legacies of the Holocaust and the Twin Towers as backstory, Sarah Stein’s adventures prove both heartbreaking and heartwarming, an enchantment for readers of all ages.

About Thane Rosenbaum

Thane Rosenbaum, author of the critically acclaimed novels The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke, and Elijah Visible, is also a law professor at Fordham Law School. He lives in New York City. www.thanerosenbaum.com

Book review: ‘The Stranger Within Sarah Stein’

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – March 24, 2012 (Excerpt)

Young adult novelists are increasingly tackling darker subjects: kidnappings, drugs, rape. But few have delved into so many dark subjects as novelist Thane Rosenbaum, who ventures into YA territory with his latest, “The Stranger Within Sarah Stein,” a novel revolving around divorce, Sept. 11, homelessness and the Holocaust.

What might be most odd about this combination of subjects is that the book isn’t glum at all. Told through the eyes of the perky, bike-riding 12-year-old Sarah Stein, the daughter of a candy-making mother and an artist-painter father, it works as more of a fantasy than as a dark rumination on tragedy. There is sadness between the lines, but also a bright fairy-tale aspect, a kind of “Willy Wonka” meets “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”

The book opens as Sarah’s parents decide to divorce, forcing her to shuttle, on bike, between her father’s loft in TriBeCa and her mother’s new Brooklyn pad, near the chocolate factory (Carly Cocoa’s Chocolate Factory — see what I mean about fairy tale?). Upset by her wrenched-apart life, Sarah slowly becomes two separate Sarahs, one who is girly but ditzy and lives in Brooklyn, another who is biker chic and lives in Manhattan. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

THE FALSE PRINCE is the thrilling first book in a brand-new trilogy filled with danger and deceit and hidden identities that will have readers rushing breathlessly to the end.

In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator of the king’s long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Four orphans are recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage knows that Conner’s motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on a sword’s point — he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be killed. But Sage’s rivals have their own agendas as well.

As Sage moves from a rundown orphanage to Conner’s sumptuous palace, layer upon layer of treachery and deceit unfold, until finally, a truth is revealed that, in the end, may very well prove more dangerous than all of the lies taken together.

An extraordinary adventure filled with danger and action, lies and deadly truths that will have readers clinging to the edge of their seats.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Jennifer A. Nielsen

Jennifer A. Nielsen is the author of ELLIOT AND THE GOBLIN WAR, the first book in a humorous middle-grade fantasy series. She lives at the base of a very tall mountain in northern Utah with her husband, their three children, and a naughty puppy.

Editorial Review

For years, Sage has survived by lying and stealing in Mrs. Turbeldy’s Orphanage for Disadvantaged Boys. When scheming Bevin Connor removes him, Sage assumes he will serve Connor, but he quickly discovers he’s one of four orphan boys chosen by Connor for a more dangerous game. Connor plans to secretly transform them into gentlemen and select one to impersonate Prince Jaron, who is missing and presumed dead. Carthya’s current king, queen and crown prince have been murdered, and war could erupt at any moment. When the regents meet in two weeks, Connor plans to produce long-lost “Prince Jaron,” who will rule as his pawn. Competition becomes fierce as the boys realize the one chosen to play Jaron will be the only survivor. Sage’s disdain, defiance and reckless arrogance mark him for failure, but his boldness, instinct and innate decency indicate there’s more than meets the eye. Could Sage become Prince Jaron? Sage reveals his story in the first person in slowly unfolding layers guaranteed to shock. Ruthless ambition, fierce action and plotting, complex characters and lots of sword play and hidden passages keep pages flipping. – Kirkus Reviews

Not Just for Kids: ‘The False Prince’ by Jennifer A. Nielsen

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – March 25, 2012 (Excerpt)

Most children want to be recognized as someone special. In “The False Prince,” Jennifer A. Nielsen takes that desire to an extreme with a romp of a medieval-themed, middle-grade novel. This kickoff to her new “Ascendance Trilogy” is a swashbuckling origin story about orphans forced to compete with one another for a chance to take the crown.

The book opens with a boy running through the streets being chased by a cleaver-wielding butcher hoping to retrieve a stolen roast. The thief is Sage, a mischievous almost-15-year-old on the verge of being thrown out of an orphanage until he was purchased by a man identifying himself as a friend of the king’s court. Why this “friend” wanted such a delinquent isn’t immediately clear, but it becomes apparent as this man, Master Bevin Conner, wheels his horse-drawn carriage around the land of Carthya picking up other teen orphans with an uncanny resemblance to a missing prince.

Having collected four boys, Conner announces his intention “to conduct the greatest fraud ever perpetrated within the country.” He doesn’t provide any details. He does, however, allow the boys to leave if they aren’t interested in an admittedly dangerous plot that, if successful, could reap a major reward. One boy elects to depart. [Read the full article...]

The Sabina Strong Series Continues – Vampire’s Trill

Lorelei Bell has created another unique and mesmerizing mystery masterwork that tops its prequel Vampire Ascending in drama, fast-paced action, love, passion, heartache, and devastation. New friends, new adventures, shocking revelations, and harrowing experiences make for riveting reading in this second installment of the Sabrina Strong Series. Sabrina learns more details – through Vasyl’s recounting of his human and vampire life – of what her role as a sibyl means and how the past and the future will come together. She finally learns what role Vasyl has played in his search for the next sibyl and why she is so tremendously important. [Read more...]

Vampire’s Trill is available at Amazon.Com – including the Kindle Version, Barnes & Noble – including the Nook Version, and any other good bookstores.

Also available in the United Kingdom at Amazon.co.uk including the Kindle version.

Laurel Daneau has moved on to a new life, in a new town, but inside she’s still reeling from the loss of her beloved mother and grandmother after Hurricane Katrina washed away their home. Laurel’s new life is going well, with a new best friend, a place on the cheerleading squad and T-Boom, co-captain of the basketball team, for a boyfriend. Yet Laurel is haunted by voices and memories from her past.

When T-Boom introduces Laurel to meth, she immediately falls under its spell, loving the way it erases, even if only briefly, her past. But as she becomes alienated from her friends and family, she becomes a shell of her former self, and longs to be whole again. With help from an artist named Moses and her friend Kaylee, she’s able to begin to rewrite her story and start to move on from her addiction.

Incorporating Laurel’s bittersweet memories of life before and during the hurricane, this is a stunning novel by one of our finest writers. Jacqueline Woodson’s haunting – but ultimately hopeful – story is beautifully told and one readers will not want to miss.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Jacqueline Woodson

Born on February 12th in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline Woodson grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York and graduated from college with a B.A. in English. She now writes full-time and has recently received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults. Her other awards include a Newbery Honor, two Coretta Scott King awards, two National Book Award finalists, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Although she spends most of her time writing, Woodson also enjoys reading the works of emerging writers and encouraging young people to write, spending time with her friends and her family, and sewing. Jacqueline Woodson currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Editorial Review

Laurel and her family suffered devastating loss when her mother and grandmother were victims of a terrible storm (probably Katrina, from the timeline) in Pass Christian, Miss. Finally, they seem to be settling into a new life, in a new town, with new friends. Laurel joins the cheerleading squad and catches the eye of the school’s star athlete. Unfortunately, he is a methamphetamine, or “moon,” user. Before long, she joins him and begins a downward spiral that results in painful estrangement from all she loves. Life on the streets brings her into the path of Moses, who has known his own loss and uses his artistic ability to pay tribute to young people who are caught in the drug snare. Margaret A. Edwards Award–winner Woodson crafts a story of powerful emotional intensity through her poignant portrayal of a young woman lost and in pain. The depiction of small-town life, with its Dollar Store, Wal-Mart and limited economic opportunities adds texture and authenticity. This is beautifully written, with clear prose that honors the story it tells: “Hard not to think about not deserving this kind of beauty, this kind of cold. This…this clarity.” Most of all, it is populated with fully realized characters who struggle to make sense of tragedy. Laurel’s friend Kaylee urges her to “[w]rite an elegy to the past….and move on.” – Kirkus Reviews

Not Just for Kids: ‘Beneath a Meth Moon’ by Jacqueline Woodson

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – February 12, 2012 (Excerpt)

If there’s any common thread among drug addicts, it’s an aversion to feeling uncomfortable emotions. The cause of the emotion is unimportant. What matters is the individual’s inability to deal with it healthily.

This unsettling cause-and-effect pairing has long been a theme in the ever-expanding young adult canon, but it gets a timely makeover in “Beneath a Meth Moon.” The latest teen novel from National Book Award honoree Jacqueline Woodson fuses the devastation of Hurricane Katrina with a 15-year-old’s meth addiction. Described as an “elegy” on its title page, the novel mourns the drowning of a young woman’s mother and grandmother and the narrator’s unwitting embrace of methamphetamines as a result.

In less talented hands, such a concept with a one-two punch could easily be dismissed as sensationalism, but Woodson handles each aspect of her story with compassion and lyricism. Fifteen-year-old Laurel may not fully understand or even feel her sorrow, but Woodson channels it for her in a tone that explains without condescension.

Told in a pastiche of flashbacks from Laurel’s point of view, the book embraces the advice of a rehab counselor to “go backward. And don’t stop when it gets painful.” Those same sentences apply to Woodson’s construction of “Beneath a Meth Moon,” which begins with the story’s conclusion: A successfully rehabbed Laurel prepares to recount her struggles. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.

But that relief doesn’t last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.

Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship—one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to “fix” her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self—even if she’s not exactly sure who that is.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Emily M. Danforth

Emily M. Danforth was born and raised in Miles City, Montana. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she’s worked as the assistant director of the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference. She teaches creative writing and literature courses at Rhode Island College and is coeditor of The Cupboard. This is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

“Danforth’s narrative of a bruised young woman finding her feet in a complicated world is a tremendous achievement: strikingly unsentimental, and full of characters who feel entirely rounded and real. A story of love, desire, pain, loss—and, above all, of survival. An inspiring read.” (Sarah Waters, author of THE LITTLE STRANGER )

“This novel is a joy—one of the best and most honest portraits of a young lesbian I’ve read in years—lively, funny, brash, and oh, so true! An absorbing, suspenseful, and important book.” (Nancy Garden, author of ANNIE ON MY MIND )

“A beautifully told story that is at once engaging and thoughtful. THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST is an important book—one that can change lives. ” (Jacqueline Woodson, award-winning author of AFTER TUPAC AND D FOSTER and HUSH )

Not Just for Kids: ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – February 5, 2012 (Excerpt)

There’s something about the open spaces of the Great Plains that make the exploration of nascent homosexuality even more alienating and risky than the same experience in a big city or suburb. At least that’s the story detailed in Emily Danforth’s young adult debut, “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” a book that reads like a literary response to the Katy Perry hit “I Kissed a Girl” if it took place under a big Montana sky.

Cameron Post is just 12 when she kisses her best girl friend on a dare — ostensibly as practice for future liaisons with boys. “No one had ever told me, specifically, not to kiss a girl before, [but] nobody had to,” Cameron writes in a novel penned from her perspective. “It was guys and girls who kissed in our grade, on TV, in the movies, in the world. That’s how it worked.”

Yet Cameron not only kissed a girl. She liked it.

That realization is followed a few hours later by the news Cameron’s parents were killed in a car crash, but the sorrow she feels at her parents’ death is tempered with even greater relief that no one knew about her more-than-friendly lip lock in a hay loft — and guilt that the crash may have been God’s punishment. That juxtaposition of emotions speaks volumes about shame and the societal taboo of lesbianism, especially in a small Christian community. It also forms the emotional core of this powerful novel exploring the nature of sexual identity and whether it’s a choice. [Read the full article...]

‘Miseducation’: A Cowgirl Coming-Out Story For Teens

NPR Book Review – February 7, 2012 (Excerpt)

Reading a coming-out novel, for me, can feel like approaching a lit fuse. I know it’s going to explode, but I’m not sure when. Many of them follow a formula: character struggles with homosexual desire in a homophobic world; character falls in tormented, transformative love; character is unceremoniously outed. Boom. In the fallout, things usually get a lot worse before they get better. As a formula, especially within young adult fiction, the story isn’t new. But sometimes, a book appears that shows why the formula endures. It can still work because it is still true.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Emily M. Danforth’s debut, is a coming-out novel, but while it follows the formula’s general trajectory, it also transcends it and demonstrates why these stories still need to be told.

Written in the first person from Cameron’s perspective as she looks back on her so-called “miseducation,” the novel opens in 1989. Cameron is 12 years old, and her parents have just died in a car accident. When she learns that she has been orphaned, her first feeling is relief: Her parents won’t ever learn that only the day before, she had been kissing her best friend, Irene. Cameron’s guilt over the kiss — and her attraction to girls — becomes tangled with her grief in complicated ways. Danforth makes sure that the knot of emotions buried deep in Cameron isn’t unraveled quickly or easily. There are no shortcuts to Cameron’s story, and that’s the reason it works. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Cat’s Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman–but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories. Disturbing, hilarious, and compassionate, Cat’s Eye is a breathtaking novel of a woman grappling with the tangled knot of her life.

About Margaret Atwood

MARGARET ATWOOD, whose work has been published in over thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, her novels include Cat’s Eye, shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; and her most recent, Oryx and Crake, shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize. She lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

Herself the daughter of a Canadian forest entomologist, Atwood writes in an autobiographical vein about Elaine Risley, a middle-aged Canadian painter (and daughter of a forest entomologist) who is thrust into an extended reconsideration of her past while attending a retrospective show of her work in Toronto, a city she had fled years earlier in order to leave behind painful memories. Most pointedly, Risley reflects on the strangeness of her long relations with Cordelia, a childhood friend whose cruelties, dealt lavishly to Risley, helped hone her awareness of our inveterate appetite for destruction even while we love, and are understood as characteristically femininea betrayal of other women that masks a ferocious betrayal of oneself. Atwood’s portrayal of the friendship gives the novel its fraught and mysterious center, but her critical assessment of Cordelia and the “whole world of girls and their doings” also takes the measure of a coercive, conformist society (not quite as extreme as in the futuristic The Handmaid’s Tale ). Emerging “the stronger” for her latecoming understanding of herself, Risley in the final pages rises above the ties that bound her, transcendently alive to the possibilities of “light, shining out in the midst of nothing.” – Publishers Weekly

When Elaine Risley returns to her hometown, Toronto, for a retrospective show of her paintings, she finds more than critical acclaim. Local streets, long-gone landmarks, and elements in the paintings themselves trigger memories of her transient childhood traveling across Canada with her entomologist father; of adolescence marred by the cruel teasing of three friends; and of love affairs with her first art teacher and mentor, and with Jon, her first husband. In addition, Elaine is haunted by thoughts of her chief tormentor/best friend, Cordelia, whom she last saw years ago in a mental institution. Atwood’s focus on the inner landscape of Elaine’s youth and early adult years will appeal to older teenagers. - Alice Conlon, University of Houston for School Library Journal

Teen Girls, Mean Girls: A Tale Of Karmic Revenge

NPR Book Review – January 30, 1012 (Excerpt)

Anyone familiar with upstate New York knows its formidable ice-greased winters, where the backs of your thighs sear and chap, and your teeth clatter like rickety marionettes. But the first time I saw my soon-to-be best friend, she wore only a flimsy poncho, short skirt, no pantyhose and, most amazingly, open-toed shoes.

Both in our early 20s, enrolled at the same university as grad students, we spent years synchronizing our tastes. She tattooed her arm in the exact same spot as mine. I began to sport cleavage just like her. She dyed her hair dark; I highlighted mine. But what began in enchantment eventually ended in disillusionment. She’d inform me of people who didn’t “like” me and spared me none of the snarky put-downs supposedly said behind my back by a mutual friend. I’ll never know if those comments were true — only that they wounded me.

In the wake of this friendship’s demise, another friend recommended Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. “Very few books explore female friendship at this level of intensity,” she said. “It will help you.”

I devoured it within two sleepless nights. Then I read it again, slowly, this time to savor it. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Austin Parker is on a journey to bring truth, beauty, and meaning to his life.

Austin Parker is never going to see his eighteenth birthday. At the rate he’s going, he probably won’t even see the end of the year. The doctors say his chances of surviving are slim to none even with treatment, so he’s decided it’s time to let go.

But before he goes, Austin wants to mend the broken fences in his life. So with the help of his best friend, Kaylee, Austin visits every person in his life who touched him in a special way. He journeys to places he’s loved and those he’s never seen. And what starts as a way to say goodbye turns into a personal journey that brings love, acceptance, and meaning to Austin’s life.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

From Megan Bostic

I am just a mere human girl trying to make it in this crazy world. I’m the mother of two crazy beautiful girls, living in the rainy, but lovely Pacific Northwest. Novelist, blogger, amateur poet, total flirt, self-proclaimed Facebook addict, and all around great girl, I also love making videos. I’ve done a chronicle of my writing journey on youtube.

Editorial Review

A boy decides he wants to live the last weeks of his life helping others get their own lives into better shape.

Unless they read the back cover of the book, readers won’t learn until late in the story that 17-year-old Austin is dying of leukemia. Meanwhile, it becomes increasingly clear that Austin, thin and weak, has embarked on some kind of mission. Because he never got his driver’s license, he enlists best friend Kaylee to drive him around the Seattle area as he meets with people whom he knows have problems. While Kaylee waits in the car, Austin tries to talk them into making better decisions in their lives. He also treats Kaylee to some Seattle sights and an expensive dinner. Underneath it all, however, Austin looks for the courage to tell Kaylee that he loves her as more than a friend. But will he have time? Bostic writes this graceful, affecting tale without pretension, simply by focusing on Austin himself. She avoids the maudlin, merely writing a boy who knows what he wants and showing his family and his friends as they move toward the final scenes. Perhaps it’s because of that simplicity that the story concludes with such a powerful emotional punch. – Kirkus Reviews

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

A dark and provocative novel from the author of The Secret Year

Ryan spends most of his time alone at the local waterfall because it’s the only thing that makes him feel alive. He’s sixteen, post-suicidal, and trying to figure out what to do with himself after a stint in a mental hospital. Then Nicki barges into his world, brimming with life and energy, and asking questions about Ryan’s depression that no one else has ever been brave enough – or cared enough – to ask. Ryan isn’t sure why he trusts Nicki with his darkest secrets, but that trust turns out to be the catalyst that he desperately needs to start living again. Jennifer R. Hubbard has created a riveting story about a difficult but important subject.

About Jennifer Hubbard

Jennifer R. Hubbard (www.jenniferhubbard.com) is the author of The Secret Year. She lives and writes near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Editorial Review

Evocative symbols, carefully drawn details and hints of romance enrich a spare, redemptive character study.

Home from a stay at Patterson Hospital following a suicide attempt, Ryan hikes to a powerful waterfall each morning to stand under the crushing spray. Nicki, the younger sister of a boy Ryan knows from school, sees him there one day in August and strikes up a conversation. For the first time, Ryan finds himself opening up to someone besides the two Patterson friends he now talks to by phone and online. As trust, familiarity and perhaps attraction build between the two, Ryan and Nicki reveal pieces of their personal histories, though each still harbors secrets. Defying both sensationalism and cliché, the narrative explores Ryan’s suicide attempt and its aftermath with what Ryan calls “Patterson Honesty: the truth, stripped down of all formalities, all politeness.” Although much is made of understanding the past—the shame and numbness that led to Ryan’s attempt, the unknowable reasons behind Nicki’s father’s completed suicide—the story is also about moving forward: Can intimacies built inside a place like Patterson survive outside? How can the parents of a teen who attempts suicide trust their child again? What can we ever truly know about ourselves and each other? – Kirkus Reviews

Not Just For Kids: ‘Try Not to Breathe’ by Jennifer R. Hubbard

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – January 15, 2012 (Excerpt)

Suicide is the third-leading cause of death for young people ages 10 to 24, claiming 4,400 lives annually, according to theU.S. Centers for Disease Control. That statistic alone is alarming, but at least 149,000 more young people attempt suicide and survive each year. It’s this second statistic that Jennifer R. Hubbard humanizes in her young-adult novel “Try Not to Breathe,” about a teenage boy struggling to find meaning after attempting to take his own life.

The book opens with Ryan standing under a waterfall that “pounded my mind blank … so I couldn’t think,” he writes in a story told from his perspective. Ryan, 16, knows the waterfall is dangerous. Someone had died there doing the same thing not too long ago, yet Ryan prefers the numbness that comes from risk-taking to the pain and self-doubt of personal interaction — most of all with girls. He’s been teased by crushes for staring at them and taken advantage of by others. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

The year is 2009.  Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.

That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future.

Desperate to somehow return to 2009 to save Holly but unable to return to his rightful year, Jackson settles into 2007 and learns what he can about his abilities.

But it’s not long before the people who shot Holly in 2009 come looking for Jackson in the past, and these “Enemies of Time” will stop at nothing to recruit this powerful young time-traveler.  Recruit… or kill him.

Piecing together the clues about his father, the Enemies of Time, and himself, Jackson must decide how far he’s willing to go to save Holly… and possibly the entire world.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Julie Cross

Julie Cross lives outside Chicago, where she works at the local YMCA.  This is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

“A good thriller moves forward at high speed, but only a superlative thriller can take you on a breathtaking journey through the fourth dimension. Julie Cross’s ingenious story  is vividly imagined and splendidly rendered, hitting just the right notes with liberal doses of suspense, intrigue, and romance. Throw in a pitch-perfect cast of engaging characters, and you’ve got a blockbuster young adult debut that will keep readers glued to the pages.” —Sophie Littlefield, Award-Winning author of BANISHED

For time traveler Jackson Meyer, the past is the key to his increasingly dangerous future. But who can he trust? The CIA? His mysterious father? Or his conspiracy-theory addicted best friend? A maze of ingenious twists and turns, TEMPEST takes you on a magic carpet ride that will have you flipping pages to the end. —Jana Oliver, author of THE DEMON TRAPPER’S DAUGHTER

“Jackson Meyer is a 19-year-old Upper East Sider with a loving and loyal girlfriend, a brilliant and funny best friend and an unexpected and exciting new talent. Jackson can suddenly “jump” back and forth in time. Cross takes readers on a thrilling ride as Jackson struggles to harness his abilities in a desperate attempt to learn the truth about who he is and, even more importantly, who he can trust. The characters are…complex and distinct, they will work their way into readers’ hearts and stay with them long after the book is finished.
Equal parts adventure, romance, science fiction…readers will turn the last page and find themselves wishing they could “jump” to the future and read the sequel.”—KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review

“Debut author Cross launches a trilogy with an exciting and complex page-turner about difficult choices. Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer can travel in time, but he’s no Doctor Who—he can only make short jumps backward, and he can’t change anything. It’s all harmless experimentation until his girlfriend, Holly, is shot when two gunmen attempt to kidnap him. Panicked, Jackson jumps back two years and gets stuck there. The consequences of unprepared time travel and Jackson pretending to be his 17-year-old self are amusing, but as he explores his life and pursues Holly (now his girlfriend-to-be), the already gripping story escalates. Jackson discovers his father’s secret life with a shadowy government agency called Tempest, and father and son become tangled with violent rival time travelers determined to alter the course of history. As Jackson explores his powers, he has no idea which side to trust or who is trying to kill him, and failure to make the right decisions threaten worldwide repercussions. It’s a story packed with moments both tender and electric—Cross’s zippy writing and fresh plot are an exhilarating combination.”—Publishers Weekly

Not Just for Kids: Julie Cross’ ‘Tempest’

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – January 22, 2012 (Excerpt)

The dramatic potential of time travel has been exploited for decades in kid lit and in recent months has become something of a micro trend in modern young adult fiction, with books including Jay Asher’s “The Future of Us” and Ian McDonald’s “Planesrunner.”

There’s something about the vicarious thrill of watching characters alter life as they know it, the escapism of moving between realities, that’s irresistibly adventurous and empowering. In “Tempest,” the kickoff to a thriller series for young adults from debut author Julie Cross, the rules are just slightly different from other titles predicated on the ability to bend the laws of physics.

As Jackson Meyer explains in the book’s journal-entry opener, “[I]t’s not as exciting as it sounds. I can’t go back in time and kill Hitler. I can’t go to the future and see who wins the World Series in 2038.” Alas, Jackson can, at first, merely “jump” a few hours into the past, as he did when he first discovered his unique ability: During a French poetry class at New York University. One minute he was dozing off; the next he was waking up to a door slamming in his face outside a campus dormitory. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Godspeed was fueled by lies. Now it is ruled by chaos.

It’s been three months since Amy was unplugged. The life she always knew is over. And everywhere she looks, she sees the walls of the spaceship Godspeed. But there may just be hope: Elder has assumed leadership of the ship. He’s finally free to enact his vision – no more Phydus, no more lies.

But when Elder discovers shocking news about the ship, he and Amy race to discover the truth behind life on Godspeed. They must work together to unlock a puzzle that was set in motion hundreds of years earlier, unable to fight the romance that’s growing between them and the chaos that threatens to tear them apart.

In book two of the Across the Universe trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Beth Revis mesmerizes us again with a brilliantly crafted mystery filled with action, suspense, romance, and deep philosophical questions. And this time it all builds to one mind-bending conclusion: They have to get off this ship.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Beth Revis

Beth Revis (www.AcrosstheUniverseBook.com) is the New York Times bestselling author of the Across the Universe trilogy. A Million Suns is her second book. Beth lives in rural North Carolina with her husband and dog, and believes space is nowhere near the final frontier.

Editorial Review

Opening soon after the bleak ending of Across the Universe (2011), this captivating middle volume takes Godspeed’s 2,763 residents through commotion, twists and game-changers.

Sixteen-year-old Elder (he refuses the title Eldest, despite being the ship’s leader now) learned in the trilogy openerthat Godspeed’s weakened engine offers no chance of planet-landing for many decades. But Elder’s been studying physics, and he’s newly skeptical. Confronting the Shippers who physically run Godspeed begins a string of surprising reveals, and so does a set of clues left by a cryogenically frozen rebel. Among this population that’s been shipborn for generations, Earthborn Amy sticks out like a sore thumb (in race-coded ways that are troubling when examined closely). Amy wants off the 10 square miles of this metal-walled spaceship. The environment (levels; elevators; fields under a solar lamp; crammed stacks of city buildings) gives the plot (food hoarding, rape, riots, revolution) an acute tension. Amy and Elder alternate narrating in first person. Their voices aren’t distinct, their actions and characterizations frustrating in many ways, but it hardly matters: Revis’ shining brilliance is the fierce tension about survival (is Godspeed deteriorating? can people survive terrorism inside an enclosed spaceship?) and the desperate core question of whether any generation will ever reach a planet.

Setting and plot are the heart and soul of this ripping space thriller, and they’re unforgettable. (Science fiction. 14 & up) – Kirkus Reviews

Not Just for Kids: ‘A Million Suns’ by Beth Revis

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – January 8, 2012 (Excerpt)

More than 80 years ago, Aldous Huxley imagined a genetically engineered society whose inhabitants were willfully drugged into submission. In the “Across the Universe” trilogy, author Beth Revis takes that pioneering concept and sets it afloat in space with a cast of cloned and cryogenically frozen characters who, in the second installment of this bestselling sci-fi series, become increasingly mutinous.

As “A Million Suns” opens, it’s unclear if the ship, known as Godspeed, will live up to its well-intentioned name. Is it moving toward its destination or merely floating motionless in some unknown galaxy? No one understands Godspeed’s exact location in relation to the planet it’s been traveling toward for 250 years, but one thing is certain: The ship is falling apart.

The Feeders, or farmers, aren’t able to produce enough food. And Godspeed’s leadership is in question now that its new ruler, 16-year-old Elder, has taken its inhabitants off the drug that had supplicated them into allegiance for more than two centuries.

Elder is a clone who was bred to lead, but he’s new to the job. The former leader was killed off in the series opener, and his successor, Orion, was put on ice. But before Orion was bathed in cryogenic fluid and put in a deep freeze along with the other “frozens,” he recorded a series of video messages and hid them for Amy — who was born on Earth and, as Orion believes, can figure out the best solution to the ship’s problems, both mechanical and otherwise. [Read the full article...]

Barry’s Irish Tea – 80 bags

Golden Blend $6.45 + Shipping
Decaffeinated $8.45 + Shipping
Breakfast Blend $5.45 + Shipping
Classic $6.55 + Shipping

Bombed, beaten, banned, and imprisoned, the Reverend Fred J. Shuttlesworth led the civil rights struggle for equality in Birmingham, Alabama, using nonviolent actions to protest segregation in schools, stores, buses, and the hiring of police officers. He pressed his congregation to register to vote and to cast their ballots for civil rights supports. Eugene “Bull” Conner, backed by the Ku Klux Klan, became a symbol of racist hatred and violence as he organized the Southern segregationists to rally against Shuttlesworth. With a spacious design that includes archival pictures and primary source documents on almost every page, this accessible photo-essay recounts the events in three sections that focus first on the Preacher (“Fred”), then on the Commissioner (“Bull”), and finally, on their confrontation. For readers new to the subject, the biographies will be a vivid, informative introduction, but even those who have some familiarity with the landmark events will learn much more here. Thorough source notes document the sometimes harrowing details and provide opportunities for further research, as does a list of suggested readings. Never simplistic, Brimner shows the viewpoints from all sources: some middle-class blacks resented “Fred’s” heavy-handed style – fiery, confrontational, dictatorial – even if they agreed with the goals; some whites in Birmingham did not wish to see an end to segregation, though their voices were drowned out. A penetrating look at elemental national history. –Booklist

A fascinating look at one of the most crucial places ad periods in the civil rights movements through two polar opposites. . . . A clean, graphically interesting design abets a well-researched, engaging narrative that contributes a more nuanced view of the period that is often seen. (author’s note, further reading, source notes, index) –Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

The relative fame of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks tends to obscure other primary, important players in the Civil Rights Movement. One of these was the Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a Baptist minister who served churches in Alabama from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Committed to his belief in the equality of all people before God, he was the driving force in bringing about the integration of Birmingham; and in this endeavor, he had help from a most unexpected source. Eugene “Bull” Conner was the Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety and strong proponent of the city’s segregation ordinances. His enforcement techniques were legendary: dogs, fire hoses, brutality. Klan supported and driven by a set of beliefs as strong as, but counter to, Shuttleworth’s, Conner was a in large part responsible for turning the tide of public opinion in favor of civil-rights progress. In this highly pictorial book, Brimner limns the characters of both men and the ways in which their belief systems and personalities interacted to eliminate the segregation from the Birmingham statutes. Black-and-White pages and red sidebars containing supporting information on topics such as the murder of Emmet Till and Autherine Lucy’s attempt to integrate the University of Alabama make this a visually arresting book. The writing style is lively and informative. A brief bibliography, excellent source notes, and a sound index round out this volume, which can stand alongside Russell Freedman’s Freedom Walkers (Holiday House, 2006) and Brimner’s own Birmingham Sunday (Calkins Creek, 2010) as fine examples of both civil-rights history and photo-biographies. –School Library Journal

Larry Dane Brimner’s ‘Black & White’: Nonviolent confrontation and civil rights

The Washington Post Book Review – January 3, 2012

The nonviolence credo adopted by the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and ’60s did not, of course, mean a lack of action or agitation. Leaders used the courts, demonstrations, public opinion and economic power to chip away at the South’s segregationist policies. A handsome introduction to an ugly time, “Black & White” tells how the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth cannily utilized an unabashed racist, Eugene “Bull” Connor, to advance equality in Birmingham, Ala., and beyond. Larry Dane Brimner presents these two men as stubborn personalities on a collision course. One felt guided and protected by God to push for civil rights, to the point that he was considered by many to be dictatorial. The other was just as determined to maintain the racial status quo. Aided by a wealth of pertinent photographs, Brimner chronicles their interactions through the years, culminating in the events of May 1963. While the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. weighed whether young people should participate in protests, Shuttlesworth and hundreds of Birmingham’s youth went on ahead. With Connor voted out of office but still in charge of the police, Shuttlesworth, who died in October, knew the timing was crucial. The resulting footage of children and teenagers being blasted by water cannons helped persuade the nation to pass crucial civil rights legislation.

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl…

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

About Marissa Meyer

Marissa Meyer was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington, home of Almond Roca and Stadium High School, which was made famous when Heath Ledger danced down the stadium steps in 10 Things I Hate About You. Marissa didn’t actually go to Stadium High School, but she did attend Pacific Lutheran University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. She still lives in Tacoma, now with her husband. Cinder is her YA debut.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Although it packs in more genres than comfortably fit, this series opener and debut offers a high coolness factor by rewriting Cinderella as a kickass mechanic in a plague-ridden future.

Long after World War IV, with a plague called letumosis ravaging all six Earthen countries, teenage Cinder spends her days in New Beijing doing mechanical repairs to earn money for her selfish adoptive mother. Her two sisters will attend Prince Kai’s ball wearing elegant gowns; Cinder, hated because she’s a cyborg, won’t be going. But then the heart-thumpingly cute prince approaches Cinder’s business booth as a customer, starting a chain of events that links her inextricably with the prince and with a palace doctor who’s researching letumosis vaccines. This doctor drafts cyborgs as expendable test subjects; none survive. Cinder’s personal tenacity and skill, as well as Meyer’s deft application of “Cinderella” nuggets—Cinder’s ill-fitting prosthetic foot (loseable on palace steps); a rusting, obsolete car colored pumpkin-orange—are riveting. Diluting them is a space-fantasy theme about mind-controlling Lunars from the moon, which unfortunately becomes the central plot. A connection between Cinder’s forgotten childhood and wicked Lunar Queen Levana is predictable from early on.

Despite the simplistic and incongruous-feeling telepathic-enslaver theme, readers will return for the next installment in this sharp, futuristic “Cinderella” tale. (Science fiction/fairy tale. 12-15) – Kirkus Reviews

Not Just for Kids: ‘Cinder’

The Los Angeles Times Book Review – January 1, 2012 (Excerpt)

Few fairy tales have been as endlessly reimagined and riffed upon as Cinderella. The beloved rags-to-riches story of an oppressed beauty whose kind nature is rewarded with the rare happily-ever-after ending has been turned into countless movies, ballets, books — even an ice show. Now it’s getting a feminist, futuristic makeover in Marissa Meyer’s terrific young-adult debut, “Cinder,” the kickoff to the four-book Lunar Chronicles series that will incorporate fellow fairy-tale heroines Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Snow White.

It’s clear from the first page in this inventive and fast-moving novel that 16-year-old Cinder isn’t your average princess in the making. She’s a cyborg who, instead of a glass slipper, is outfitted with an uncomfortably small robotic foot that her abusive adoptive stepmother hasn’t prioritized for an upgrade. Cinder is the best mechanic in the sprawling metropolis of New Beijing and could easily jury-rig a replacement appendage, but she doesn’t have money for the parts because her stepmom has co-opted Cinder’s earnings to dress her two biological daughters in the finest gowns for an upcoming ball. Being a “wirehead,” as her stepsister says, Cinder isn’t allowed to attend the coronation-cum-dance-party of the handsome Prince Kai. The closest she’ll get is fixing her stepfamily’s hovercraft.

Or so it seems until an attractive 19-year-old shows up at Cinder’s workshop with a broken android whose repair is a matter of national security, he says. Despite the young man’s disguise in a gray hooded sweatshirt, his copper-brown eyes and tousled black hair immediately identify him as the prince even before the retina display scanner in Cinder’s eye confirms it or the cooling fan overheats in Cinder’s C3PO-esque robotic assistant. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

My wish is to fall cranium over Converse in dizzy daydream-worthy love.

If only it were that easy.

Marcie has been dragged away from home for the summer—from Idaho to a family summerhouse in New Hampshire. She’s left behind her friends, a group of freaks and geeks called the Leftovers, including her emo-rocker boyfriend, and her father.

By the time Labor Day rolls around, Marcie suspects this “summer vacation” has become permanent. She has to start at a new school, and there she leaves behind her Leftover status when a cute boy brings her breakfast and a new romance heats up. But understanding love, especially when you’ve watched your parents’ affections end, is elusive. What does it feel like, really? Can you even know it until you’ve lost it?

Love & Leftovers is a beautifully written story of one girl’s journey navigating family, friends, and love, and a compelling and sexy read that teens will gobble up whole.

About Sarah Tregay

Sarah Tregay is a graphic designer. When she isn’t jotting down poems at stoplights, Sarah can be found hanging out with her “little sister” from Big Brothers Big Sisters. She lives in Eagle, Idaho, with her husband, two Boston terriers, and an Appaloosa named Mr. Pots.

Editorial Review

A girl cheats on her boyfriend, regrets it and writes it all in poems in this new verse novel.

Marcie moves to New Hampshire with her depressed and inattentive mother when her parents split. Her dad, it seems, is gay and has begun life with a new boyfriend. Marcie wants to return to Idaho and her friends, the “leftovers” in her high school, including her own boyfriend, musician Linus. Meanwhile, however, she meets drop-dead handsome J.D. and allows an innocent friendship with him to become a romance. When she does return to Idaho to live with her father, her relationships with both Linus and the other friends she left behind have changed. Tregay’s choice to write in verse works well, her spare but effective language artfully evoking what otherwise might be a conventional high-school romance. Personalities stand out well, especially Marcie, Linus and J.D. Marcie’s loneliness and guilt drive the story until its resolution. The father’s completely accepted gay relationship, although mostly in the background, adds an element of interest. It all feels realistic and makes for an interesting, attractive novel.

A verse novel with real depth to accompany all that white space. (Fiction. 12 & up) – Kirkus Reviews

Advertisement

CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is the story of James Sveck, a sophisticated, vulnerable young man with a deep appreciation for the world and no idea how to live in it. James is eighteen, the child of divorced parents living in Manhattan. Articulate, sensitive, and cynical, he rejects all of the assumptions that govern the adult world around him–including the expectation that he will go to college in the fall. he would prefer to move to an old house in a small town somewhere in the Midwest. Someday This Pain Will BE Useful to You takes place over a few broiling days in the summer of 2003 as James confides in his sympathetic grandmother, stymies his canny therapist, deplores his pretentious sister, and devises a fake online identity in order to pursue his crush on a much older coworker. Nothing turns out how he’d expected.

“Possibly one of the all-time great New York books, not to mention an archly comic gem” (Peter Gadol, LA Weekly), Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is the insightful, powerfully moving story of a young man questioning his times, his family, his world, and himself.

About Peter Cameron

PETER CAMERON is the author of several novels, including Andorra and The Weekend. He lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

Though he’s been accepted by Brown University, 18-year-old James isn’t sure he wants to go to college. What he really wants is to buy a nice house in a small town somewhere in the Midwest—Indiana, perhaps. In the meantime, however, he has a dull, make-work job at his thrice-married mother’s Manhattan art gallery, where he finds himself attracted to her assistant, an older man named John. In a clumsy attempt to capture John’s attention, James winds up accused of sexual harassment! A critically acclaimed author of adult fiction, Cameron makes a singularly auspicious entry into the world of YA with this beautifully conceived and written coming-of-age novel that is, at turns, funny, sad, tender, and sophisticated. James makes a memorable protagonist, touching in his inability to connect with the world but always entertaining in his first-person account of his New York environment, his fractured family, his disastrous trip to the nation’s capital, and his ongoing bouts with psychoanalysis. In the process he dramatizes the ambivalences and uncertainties of adolescence in ways that both teen and adult readers will savor and remember. – Michael Cart, Booklist

Cameron’s meticulously voiced novel begins as a comedy of manners, wittily disarticulating a certain class of New Yorker, so it takes the reader awhile to catch onto the fact that it’s actually a story about the psychological pain that comes from loneliness and the difficulty in making emotional connections. The virtuoso first-person narrative is related by the protagonist, James Sveck, an 18-year-old boy who is as smart as he is alienated. Hiding his fears behind a curtain of disinterested contempt, James, who is gay but unwilling to either discuss or test it, likes only two people in his life, his wise and accepting grandmother and the man who manages his mother’s art gallery. In the course of the story, James comes to realize that he can’t wall himself off forever, finally making a maladroit and unsuccessful attempt to reach out. Cameron’s power is his ability to distill a particular world and social experience with great specificity while still allowing the reader to access the deep well of our shared humanity. – Kirkus Reviews

Teenage Struggles In A Painful Post-Sept. 11 World

NPR Book Review – December 26, 2011 (Excerpt)

I picked up Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, by Peter Cameron, in a bookstore. In the first two pages, in which the narrator refers to his sister as “a bit of a linguistic zealot” and worries about his mother’s announcing “in a disturbing brainwashy way” that she plans to spend her third honeymoon in a city she hates, I was hooked.

So hooked, that since then, I’ve actually bought copies and given them away to total strangers — it’s a rather embarrassing practice, but that is how much I want to create a word-of-mouth movement that would rouse the world into recognizing the book’s sheer excellence.

There is a certain guilty pleasure of diving in, which comes from acknowledging that it’s awkward to be an introvert in a world of extroverts; that the teen years are usually not the best years of our lives, despite all hype to the contrary; and that it can be terrifying to reach out for the things we want.

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You is the story of James Sveck, who is facing his upcoming freshman year of college with a considerable lack of enthusiasm. Instead, he longs for beautiful old houses, preferably in some cozy town far from New York City, where he currently lives.

Nobody around him quite understands why an 18-year-old boy should develop a sudden passion for Midwestern real estate. However, the novel is set in 2003, and the reader can’t help wondering if James’ search for a “safe” place to live isn’t partly a response to the terrorist attacks two years earlier. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

I’m telling you why we broke up, Ed. I’m writing it in this letter, the whole truth of why it happened.

Min Green and Ed Slaterton are breaking up, so Min is writing Ed a letter and giving him a box. Inside the box is why they broke up. Two bottle caps, a movie ticket, a folded note, a box of matches, a protractor, books, a toy truck, a pair of ugly earrings, a comb from a motel room, and every other item collected over the course of a giddy, intimate, heartbreaking relationship. Item after item is illustrated and accounted for, and then the box, like a girlfriend, will be dumped.

About Daniel Handler And Maira Kalman

DANIEL HANDLER has written for grown-ups under his own name and for younger readers under the name Lemony Snicket. He was dumped at least three times in high school.

MAIRA KALMAN, acclaimed artist and designer, has created many books for both grown-ups and children. Her heart was broken in high school by a boy who looked like Bob Dylan.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

“Characters are vivid, and their portrayal is enriched by realistic dialogue….Hander offers a heartbreaking, bittersweet, and compelling romance with a unique angle and flare.” (School Library Journal, starred review )

“As objects from the box are revealed in Kalman’s vividly rendered paintings, readers are taken beneath the surface of what will no doubt be one of the most talked-about romances in teen literature….A poignant, exhilarating tale of a love affair gone to the dogs.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review )

“The Lemony Snicket author (writing under his own name) convincingly inhabits the mind of Min, a teenage girl reeling from her first heartbreak. This poignant, bittersweet novel centers on a box of objects infused with memories of her brief, unforgettable love.” (Entertainment Weekly )

Not Just for Kids: ‘Why We Broke Up’ details a teen romance

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – December 25, 2011 (Excerpt)

Most of us have been there, experiencing the unprecedented high of a first love followed by the debilitating low when it crumbles. But few of these tragic trajectories have been written about as poignantly as in “Why We Broke Up.” The young-adult debut from Daniel Handler, a bestselling author better known as Lemony Snicket, is an illustrated novel that is its own series of unfortunate events, chronicling a brief but intense teen relationship gone wrong.

Penned as an elaborate ”Dear John” letter written by high school junior Min Green to her ex Ed Slaterton, “Why We Broke Up” doesn’t begin with words but an artfully rendered end paper that shows a baby blue delivery truck parked at the end of a driveway. The truck belongs to Min’s friend, who has driven her to Ed’s house to drop off a box containing all the mementos of their 38-day love affair. “Fragile,” reads the lid.

It’s ironic that this box, filled as it is with “the prizes and the debris of this relationship,” is the same shade and shape as a gift from Tiffany’s since it contains items of such negative, emotional value. But it’s equally unusual that Ed and Min even started to date to begin with. According to her friend, Min has “all the qualities Ed Slaterton looks for in his millions of girlfriends.… You have two legs.” Ed is a senior and co-captain of the basketball team. Min is a junior who’s greatest interest is old movies. Yet there was something between them — beyond hormones — that prompted the two to go out. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

With the first two books in the Acacia Trilogy, Acacia and The Other Lands, David Anthony Durham has created a vast and engrossing canvas of a world in turmoil, where the surviving children of a royal dynasty are on a quest to realize their fates—and perhaps right ancient wrongs once and for all. As The Sacred Band begins, one of them, Queen Corinn, bestrides the world as a result of her mastery of spells found in the ancient Book of Elenet. Her younger brother, Dariel, has been sent on a perilous mis­sion to the Other Lands, while her sister, Mena, travels to the far north to confront an invasion of the feared race of the Auldek. Their separate trajectories will converge in a series of world-shaping, earth-shattering battles, all ren­dered with vividly imagined detail and in heroic scale.

David Anthony Durham concludes his tale of kingdoms in collision in an exciting fashion. His fictional world is at once realistic and fantastic, informed with an eloquent and dis­tinctively Shakespearean sensibility.

About David Anthony Durham

David Anthony Durham received the 2009 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of Science Fiction for Acacia and The Other Lands (the first two volumes of the Acacia trilogy). Author of the historical novelsGabriel’s Story, Walk Through Darkness, and Pride of Carthage, he was handpicked by George RR Martin to write for his Wild Cards series of collaborative novels.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

“Durham brings his sci-fi Acacia Trilogy to a satisfying close. Samuel R. Delany meets Cormac McCarthy meets J.R.R. Tolkien as the striking and subtly powerful Corinn Akaran settles into queenship over the Known World just in time to take up arms with the Other Lands…. [Durham] takes time to paint scenes in words that other writers might brush away…and [his] pages are full of thrilling action that would do Tolkien proud. A close, yes—but with wiggle room for more Acacian adventures. At any rate, on the strength of this installment, Durham’s many fans will be clamoring for more.”.—Kirkus Reviews 

“This triumphant conclusion to the Acacia trilogy vindicates Durham’s resurrection of a major character in 2009′s The Other Lands. Corinn Akaran, queen of Acacia, used her ever-growing magical powers to revive her brother Aliver to aid her defense of her kingdom. But there are no simple resolutions to the challenges facing Corinn and her siblings, and the gap widens between the means she employs and the ends she pursues. Durham provides a graphic and chilling look at how far Corinn is willing to go to advance her cause as she brutally massacres opposing armies, and that’s just the beginning. A smooth plot, Corinn’s well-developed character, and Durham’s stellar prose and rich imagination will have many traditional fantasy fans hoping for future books set in this turbulent world.”—Publishers Weekly

“The conclusion of Durham’s trilogy…ties the threads of these separate stories unto a satisfying climactic world-changing battle. Strong writing, intriguing characters, and a richly detailed background—along with the possibility for future development of Durham’s scenario—make this fantasy epic a winner for those who enjoy large-scale fantasy along the lines of George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series.—Library Journal

David Anthony Durham’s ‘The Sacred Band,’ Book III of the Acacia Trilogy

The Washington Post Book Review – December 23, 2011 (Excerpt)

The knock against heroic fantasy is that much of it devolves into a simplistic story of good vs. evil set against a backdrop of pale reflections of feudal Europe. But the best examples, like the grandly sprawling Acacia trilogy by David Anthony Durham, serve as a powerful rebuttal of this criticism. His final volume, “The Sacred Band” — following “Acacia” (2007) and “The Other Lands” (2009) — provides a deeply satisfying conclusion to an ethnically diverse series in which Durham has proved just as comfortable exploring the uses of power as conjuring up strange magic.

Acacia is part of the Known World, existing between northern aggressors and southern sorcerers. At the center of a story covering more than a decade stand four heirs to the legacy of murdered Acacian emperor Leodan Akaran: the idealistic Aliver; the strong-willed Corinn, now queen of the realm; the eventually battle-tested Mena; and Dariel, who changes during the course of the novels from a brigand to a man with a fierce moral core. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

A stunning modern-day fairy tale from acclaimed author Anne Ursu

Once upon a time, Hazel and Jack were best friends. But that was before he stopped talking to her and disappeared into a forest with a mysterious woman made of ice. Now it’s up to Hazel to go in after him. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” Breadcrumbs is a story of the struggle to hold on, and the things we leave behind.

About Anne Ursu

Anne Ursu is the author of the three middle-grade novels that comprise the Cronus Chronicles trilogy: The Shadow Thieves, The Siren Song, and The Immortal Fire. She teaches at Hamline University’s MFA program in Writing for Children and is a lifelong Minnesota Twins fan. Anne lives in Minneapolis with her son and cats.

Editorial Reviews

“Devastatingly brilliant and beautiful…Ursu has sculpted a rich and poignant adventure that brings readers deep into the mysterious, magical, and sometimes frightening forests of childhood and change. Breadcrumbs is one of those rare novels that turned me on my head then sat on my heart and refused to budge.” (Ingrid Law, Newbery Honor-winning author of Savvy )

“This is a lyrical book, a lovely book, and a smart book; it dares us to see stories as spreading more widely, and running more deeply, than we had imagined.” (Gary Schmidt, Newbery Honor-winning author of The Wednesday Wars )

Like a fairy-tale heroine, Hazel traverses the woods without a breadcrumb trail to save a boy who may not want to be saved in this multi-layered, artfully crafted, transforming testament to the power of friendship. (Kirkus Reviews (starred review) )

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

‘Breadcrumbs’: Young Readers Follow A Wintry Tale

NPR Book Review – December 20, 2011 (Excerpt)

Welcome to the third installment of NPR’s Backseat Book Club, where we select a book for young readers — and invite them to share their thoughts and questions with us and the author.

Our selection for December is a perfect holiday story: the enchanting modern-day fairy tale Breadcrumbs, by Anne Ursu, author of the popular Cronus Chronicles trilogy.

Ursu tells NPR’s Michele Norris that Breadcrumbs was inspired in large part by her own “snow coated” memories of growing up in Minnesota: “When you’re a kid and you look out the window and it’s snowing and that seems so magical and the world just becomes something else, something other. Everything is quiet, and it feels like it’s almost your kingdom to go out and conquer.”

Navigating the wintery world of Breadcrumbs are best friends Hazel and Jack, fifth-graders in a working-class Minneapolis neighborhood. Adopted as a baby from India, Hazel feels like an outsider, especially after her parents split up and she’s forced to attend a new school. Meanwhile, Jack is facing his own family challenges, and the two friends begin to drift apart.

Their all-too-familiar problems are given a supernatural twist when Jack disappears, supposedly lured into the forest by a woman in white. It’s up to Hazel to brave the wintry woods and find her friend. [Read the full article...]

The Girl Without A Past

A Children’s Novel by Judith P. Vaughan

After being lured into a devious trap, eleven years old twins, Samantha and Alex Covington find themselves transported to a parallel world. They appear in the middle of the forest, a dangerous place were Minotaurs and Trolls roam freely. There they discover that they are not the only victims when they are rescued by Lilly, a girl whose life clock has stopped and all of her past memories erased. They are about to have a mystery on their hands, a mystery that is related to their kidnapping. The clock is ticking —Samantha and Alex must hurry and find a way to get back home before their kidnapper finds them first, if not they will suffer the same fate as their new friend, Lilly.

Kindle Edition: Amazon Kindle Store

All other eBook formats: Smashwords.Com

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

There is not one you. There are many yous. There is not one world. There are many worlds. Ours is one of billions of parallel earths.

When Everett Singh’s scientist father is kidnapped from the streets of London, he leaves young Everett a mysterious app on his computer. Suddenly, this teenager has become the owner of the most valuable object in the multiverse—the Infundibulum—the map of all the parallel earths, and there are dark forces in the Ten Known Worlds who will stop at nothing to get it. They’ve got power, authority, and the might of ten planets—some of them more technologically advanced than our Earth—at their fingertips. He’s got wits, intelligence, and a knack for Indian cooking.

To keep the Infundibulum safe, Everett must trick his way through the Heisenberg Gate his dad helped build and go on the run in a parallel Earth. But to rescue his Dad from Charlotte Villiers and the sinister Order, this Planesrunner’s going to need friends. Friends like Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, her adopted daughter Sen, and the crew of the airship Everness.

Can they rescue Everett’s father and get the Infundibulum to safety? The game is afoot!

Editorial Reviews

“Smashing adventure fiction that spans the multiverse without ever losing its cool or its sense of style. Ian McDonald is one of the greats of science fiction, and his young adult debut is everything you could hope for: romantic, action packed, wildly imaginative, and full of heart.” –Cory Doctorow, author For the Win

“This is science fiction adventure at its best, and at its core is Everett, the heroic little geekling that we all wanted to be as kids… With “Ten Known Worlds” as part of this book’s lore… I want an interdimensional passport ASAP… The adventure simply never stops… Snappy dialogue…and fascinating details round out this marvelous series debut.” –Speculative Fiction Examiner

“Science fiction rules in this stellar series opener about a boy who travels to parallel universes. What joy to find science fiction based on real scientific concepts… In his debut for teens, established science-fiction writer McDonald builds a world just different enough to charm readers into believing, populating it with entertaining, quirky characters, spicing up the story with Punjabi cooking and a secret dialect (complete with glossary) and explaining the multiverse theory in readily comprehensible terms. Suspense rules, and Everett’s advantages come from both his football goalie skills and his intelligence. Shining imagination, pulsing suspense and sparkling writing make this one stand out. As [character] Sen would say, “fantabulosa bona.”" –Kirkus Reviews

Not Just for Kids: ‘Planesrunner’ by Ian McDonald

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – December 18, 2011 (Excerpt)

It’s an alluring idea that somewhere, somehow there’s an alternate version of the life you’re currently living. It might be better. It could be far worse. But if it exists, and it’s possible to get there, why not at least visit? That’s the basic idea at the center of “Planesrunner,” the first book in the Everness series and the young-adult debut from award-winning sci-fi novelist Ian McDonald.

In the case of 14-year-old Everett Singh, his visit to an alternate version of modern-day London might never have happened if it weren’t for his father’s kidnapping, which happened in the middle of a rainy, Monday evening rush hour 10 days before Christmas. One minute, father and son were bicycling along a busy thoroughfare heading to a lecture on nanotechnology trends. The next, Everett’s dad was snatched off the street and thrown into the back of an Audi. The question is: Why?

Everett knew his dad was a quantum physicist who was more than a little interested in getting his son to understand the Many Worlds Theory, which posits that reality is not a single unfolding history but multiple realities wherein all possible alternative histories and futures coexist. Everett probably wouldn’t have thought his dad’s research at Imperial College had anything to do with the disappearance until his dad’s boss showed up wanting to know if Everett’s father had given him anything — a memory stick, perhaps, or a data DVD or file transfer — some piece of the long-term, big-budget project he was working on to find experimental evidence of the existence of parallel universes. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

Set in the future when teenagers are monitored via camera and their recorded actions and confessions plugged into a computer program that determines their ability to succeed. All kids given a “score” that determines their future potential. This score has the ability to get kids into colleges, grant scholarships, or destroy all hope for the above. Scored‘s reluctant heroine is Imani, a girl whose high score is brought down when her best friend’s score plummets. Where do you draw the line between doing what feels morally right and what can mean your future? Friendship, romance, loyalty, family, human connection and human value: all are questioned in this fresh and compelling dystopian novel set in the scarily forseeable future.

About Lauren McLaughlin

Lauren McLaughlin grew up in the small town of Wenham, Massachusetts. After college and a brief stint in graduate school, she spent ten “unglamorous” years writing and producing movies before abandoning her screen ambitions to write fiction full-time. Though she fondly remembers much of her time in Massachusetts—the marina, the beach, various teenage escapades—she cannot, for the life of her, remember her SAT scores, her GPA, or any of the numbers that once summed her up. You can visit her at LaurenMcLaughlin.net

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

“The bold, aggressive narrative condemns both No Child Left Behind-style testing and current financial policies, cautioning about what could happen to social mobility in the face of stark inequity.” – Kirkus

“Most dystopian fiction takes place within an established totalitarian regime, but Scored allows readers to witness the very first stages of a changing society.” - VOYA

“A tense and chilling look at a near future that’s all too recognizable. Scored will bring out the rebel in every reader.” -Scott Westerfeld, author of Goliath

“the most rounded, thought-provoking and pulse-pounding exploration of the surveillance society I’ve yet read.” - Cory Doctorow

Reader Review

I added this to my ‘to read’ list after writing a post for our library blog on the slew of teen dystopia novels with one word titles. I read this after Matched and Bumped. I felt this one was at least equal, if not better, than the others, but looking at them together, I think the cover design let this one down. The summary on the back also failed to play up the romance.

And, speaking of that, here’s what I liked about Scored:
- the relationship between Diego and Imani. I didn’t feel invested in the relationships in Matched and Bumped, but the one here was funny and enjoyable. There was a subtle repeating motif between Diego’s one visible eye (he has a carefully sculptured hair style that covers the other) and the single eyes of the cameras. Two very different gazes.
- the author succeeded in making the main character do bad things without losing the reader’s sympathy for her. This is a tricky thing to pull off, and it worked well here.
- characters come in a variety of ethnic groups and socioeconomic demographics. This is openly acknowledged, including the tension this can cause, without taking over the plot.
- Mr Carol. I’m sure Imani will look back and appreciate him some day.
- the fact that it wraps up in a single book. Major plus.

Things I wasn’t so into:
- Dystopic fiction always claims to be an account of a ‘foreseeable future’ which I find silly. Dystopias are metaphors for society as it is today. The Time Machine was about fears in society at the end of the nineteenth century; Nineteen Eighty-Four was about the post WWII years. Scored reflects the unease in recent decades around the education system and economy in the USA. This book would never have been written in, say, Finland, which enjoys one of the highest literacy rates in the world and free university education.
- Along those lines, this was a very USA myopic book, but of course it was written with that audience in mind, so I understand that. Still, I think Imani could have made a good argument against the Score by describing other country’s successful education systems in the year 2011 where being from the poorest, smallest town was no barrier to attending the best university.
- You know that feeling when you hear older generations making remarks like ‘the internet has destroyed interpersonal relationships!’ and you just roll your eyes because you are married to someone you met on Twitter? Scored has a few of those technological paranoia moments. I’m Gen Y, and they always grate with me, so I’d imagine it’s worse for the current generation of teens who have never known a world without the internet. The line from the software developer, that he’d written software ‘smarter than us’ was probably the height of that for me.

Going by the length of this review, the book certainly had me thinking, so this is a good choice for teens who like books that make them think. I thought it would be enjoyble to both younger and older teens. – Natz2-D2, Amazon.Com Customer Review

Advertisement

CRIMSON DAWN
Book One of the Darklife Saga by Ronnie Massey

Two Women Hunting A Rogue Vampire

Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

It’s 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They’ve been best friends almost as long – at least, up until last November, when Josh did something that changed everything. Things have been weird between them ever since, but when Josh’s family gets a free AOL CD in the mail,his mom makes him bring it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they’re automatically logged onto their Facebook pages. But Facebook hasn’t been invented yet. And they’re looking at themselves fifteen years in the future.

By refreshing their pages, they learn that making different decisions now will affect the outcome of their lives later. And as they grapple with the ups and downs of what their futures hold, they’re forced to confront what they’re doing right – and wrong – in the present.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

Jay Asher’s first novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list, with foreign rights sold in over 30 countries and more than 1,000,000 copies in print in the US alone. Visit his website at www.jayasher.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jayasherguy.

Carolyn Mackler (www.carolynmackler.com) is the author of the teen novels The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (A Michael L. Printz Honor Book), Tangled, Guyaholic, Vegan Virgin Valentine, and Love and Other Four-Letter Words. In 2008, Carolyn was a judge for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. She lives in New York City with her husband and two young sons.

Editorial Reviews

“These two top-of-their-game authors don’t disappoint.” - Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review

“A clever, timely story that will attract any teen with a Facebook account.” – Booklist, Starred Review

“Without question a page-turner.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Highly engaging.a tremendously likable, soul-searching romantic comedy and a subtle reminder to occasionally unplug and live in the moment.” School and Library Journal

Not Just for Kids book review: ‘The Future of Us’

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – November 20, 2011 (Excerpt)

With the exception of the psychically inclined, most people would prefer to let their futures remain unknown, fearing that what they discover might influence their current choices and, as a result, alter what was otherwise meant to be.

In the inventive new young adult novel, “The Future of Us,” two Pennsylvania teenagers aren’t given that choice.

Emma Nelson was a middle-of-the-road 16-year-old, running track and practicing saxophone at Lake Forest High when her divorcee dad gave her a guilt gift — a hand-me-down computer. The year was 1996, when PCs were as bulky as televisions and the Internet was accessed with dial-up service.

Facebook is still years away, yet the social networking site popped up on Emma’s computer screen after she downloaded an AOL CD-ROM that promised to give her 100 hours of free Web access. Emma Nelson, the site said, was 31 years old. And she was married. Though the elder Nelson shared the same birthday and liked the same movies and comfort foods, Emma was taken aback by this other Emma Nelson, who was contemplating highlighting her hair and wondering why her husband hadn’t come home over the weekend, according to her status updates. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

Fifteen-year-old Will Besting is sent by his doctor to Fort Eden, an institution meant to help patients suffering from crippling phobias. Once there, Will and six other teenagers take turns in mysterious fear chambers and confront their worst nightmares—with the help of the group facilitator, Rainsford, an enigmatic guide. When the patients emerge from the chamber, they feel emboldened by the previous night’s experiences. But each person soon discovers strange, unexplained aches and pains. . . . What is really happening to the seven teens trapped in this dark Eden?

Patrick Carman’s Dark Eden is a provocative exploration of fear, betrayal, memory, and— ultimately—immortality.

About Patrick Carman

Patrick Carman is the New York Times bestselling author of such acclaimed series as the Land of Elyon and Atherton and the teen superhero novel Thirteen Days to Midnight. A multimedia pioneer, Patrick authored The Black Circle, the fifth title in the 39 Clues series, and the groundbreaking Skeleton Creek and Trackers books. He lives in Walla Walla, Washington, with his family.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

A spooky, psychological thriller. With seven different characters who have seven different fears, there is bound to be someone for readers to relate to in one way or another…the supernatural twist at the end will leave teens with more questions than answers. (School Library Journal )

Not Just for Kids: ‘Dark Eden’ by Patrick Carman

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – November 13, 2011 (Excerpt)

The seven video screens in the new young adult thriller “Dark Eden” flicker in black and white — not only as described in the book’s text but through an accompanying downloadable app that plays out the story’s action in video snippets viewable on iPhones, iPods, iPads and Android devices. The back cover of the latest multimedia creation from bestselling author Patrick Carman also incorporates a QR code allowing potential readers to watch the ominously creepy “Dark Eden” trailer.

Is it a book? A film? An audio book? “Dark Eden” is all three — an effort on the author’s part to encourage reluctant readers to embrace the written word through technological enticements. But even in its humble print form, without any of the bells and whistles and gadgetry, “Dark Eden” is a compelling read that transposes the best aspects of classic horror storytelling onto a modern backwoods adventure reluctantly experienced by seven terrified teens.

Each of them suffers from a fear — of rabid dogs, rickety ladders, kidnapping. None of them understands why they’re so afraid, despite years of psychotherapy. So their doctor corrals them together, driving them deep into a wooded area somewhere on L.A.’s outskirts and dropping them off on a dirt trail, saying only, “A cure is waiting for each of you down that path.” [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

Not so very long ago, Eragon—Shadeslayer, Dragon Rider—was nothing more than a poor farm boy, and his dragon, Saphira, only a blue stone in the forest. Now the fate of an entire civilization rests on their shoulders.

Long months of training and battle have brought victories and hope, but they have also brought heartbreaking loss. And still, the real battle lies ahead: they must confront Galbatorix. When they do, they will have to be strong enough to defeat him. And if they cannot, no one can. There will be no second chances.

The Rider and his dragon have come further than anyone dared to hope. But can they topple the evil king and restore justice to Alagaësia? And if so, at what cost?

This is the much-anticipated, astonishing conclusion to the worldwide bestselling Inheritance cycle.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Christopher Paolini

Christopher Paolini is the author of three other bestselling novels about Alagaësia: Inheritance is the fourth and final volume in the cycle. Christopher lives in Montana, where the natural landscape has been a major inspiration in the creation of his stories. You can find out more about Christopher and the Inheritance cycle at alagaesia.com.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Reader Review

I have been a Christoff Panini fan since 2003, when the first book in his highly original and never-been-done-before take on fantasy literature was published. I believe the first book back then was deemed Errorgon. I am happy to report to one and all that Panini continues his groundbreaking literary masterpiece series with Inheritance. I dare say that it is the best in the whole series of highly intelligent fantasy literature that is better than anything Michael Crichton has ever put out.

In the past, Panini always wrote about this dragon and this young lad who rode on this dragon. In this installment, said dragon has apparently flown away because the lad stupidly left its cage door open. This results in ensuing hilarity as the lad teams up with a green ogre and a blonde princess to track down his pet dragon. The plot of this novel is unbelievably trailblazing because I have never, ever heard or, rather, read of such an ingenious and clever story that has never, ever been attempted before.

I have to sheepishly confess that back in 2003, I had doubts about Panini as an author. He had serious trouble with properly writing compound sentences, dependent clauses and appropriate predicates; simultaneously, he had a hard time avoiding comma splices and dangling modifiers, that twit!

However, his writing and his storytelling prowess have improved to the degree that he is now a much better author than not only Michael Crichton, but also John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Bill O’Reilly, Mary Shelley, Saul Bellow, Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote and William S. Burroughs. He may even be a little bit better than Dr. Seuss, too. In short, please make Panini richer and buy Inheritance. I personally offer you my book-lover’s guarantee that even if you have to dig deep into your unemployment check (because Obama refused to create any jobs since he misdirected taxpayer money into the public sector through his idiotic shovel-ready jobs nonsense), you will have no regrets with Inheritance. - Hassan Z. Brockovich Sr., Amazon.Com Customer Review

Christopher Paolini offers answers about Eragon and friends in ‘Inheritance’

The Washington Post Book Review – November 8, 2011 (Excerpt)

Oh, how quickly they grow up. Just eight years ago, Eragon was an orphaned farm boy, and his inventor was a home-schooled wunderkind. Today, the dragon rider possesses immortal­ity, a light-up sword and enough magic to levitate Hogwarts. And Christopher Paolini, now in his 20s, is an internationally best-selling author. The fourth and final volume of the series, “Inheritance,” is being released Tuesday with a massive 2.5 million-copy print run.

Fans who have grown up with the series will be speed-reading the 880-page finale this week to find out if Eragon and Saphira and their allies will free Alagaesia from the evil King Galbatorix. Also hanging in the balance is the fate of Eragon’s half-brother, Murtagh, and his dragon, Thorn, who have been coerced by Galbatorix. For those disheartened by the lack of resolution in the third novel, “Brisingr,” “Inheritance” offers a propulsive plot and plenty of answers.

Paolini began writing the first book, “Eragon,” when he was 15, and his parents, who owned a press, published it. He traveled to schools and Renaissance fairs, hand-selling his opus, until Carl Hiaasenpicked up a copy for his son on a fly-fishing vacation and put in a good word at Knopf. The rest is publishing history.

Eragon and his blue dragon, Saphira, were an endearing duo, but critics, including this one, noted the novel’s debt to everyone from J.R.R. Tolkien and Anne McCaffrey to George Lucas. (I caught a David Eddings reference or two in the new one.) But Paolini had readers at “dragon.” [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

Henk was more popular and athletic than Helmer, his identical twin, while growing up on a small rural Netherlands farm. Henk was their father’s favorite son. Naturally lovely Riet chooses to marry him instead of Helmer. After Henk dies in an auto accident a couple of months before the wedding, Helmer is forced to leave college and return to the family farm. With deep bitterness, he spends days mucking the stalls and milking cows. Now, 37 years later, Helmer moves his invalid father upstairs to get him out of the way and slowly transforms the living space to be more suitable for a bachelor. After a few correspondences from recently widowed Riet, Helmer agrees to take in her teenage son. She feels that hard farm work will give him some direction. Colmer’s superb translation allows the novel’s authentic voice to be heard by American readers. Bakker captures Helmer’s true feelings with excellent inner dialogue. His ongoing feud with his father instills an unusual bond between the two. Teens will appreciate the setting of farmland, canals, windmills, and green pastures, and some will see how family dynamics are ongoing and changing.—Gregory Lum, Jesuit High School, Portland, OR for School Library Journal

About Gerbrand Bakker

Gerbrand Bakker (b. 1962) studied Dutch language and literature and worked as a subtitler for nature films before becoming a gardener. The Twin, his first adult novel, appeared in Dutch in 2006 and was awarded the Golden Dog-Ear, a prize for the best-selling literary debut.

Editorial Reviews

“The charm of Bakker’s book is how finely every element is balanced, how perfectly the story is paced. … Bakker shows a fine gift for laconic comedy. … The great pleasure of this novel is how it has just enough plot to allow us to relish its beautifully turned observations of birds and beasts, weather and water.”
—Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books

“Tense with unuttered yearning … The greatness of this book lies … in a mounting intricacy of feeling as life begins to burgeon out of a stony, wasted existence. … But instead of something terrible happening … rillets of sweetness and joy arise, little springs of gladness. … In the end … this becomes a kindhearted book, kind to both characters and reader.”
—Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe

“The novel has all the careful observation and and delicate shading of a painting by one of the Dutch masters – Bakker sees beauty and complexity in the smallest corners of everyday life and portrays them with a quiet mastery that gives his story both great weight and great lightness.”
—The Quarterly Conversation

Bound Together: Breaking Those Toxic Family Ties

NPR Book Review – October 24, 2011 (Excerpt)

I found The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker, sitting on a coffee table at a writers’ colony in 2009. It carried praise from J.M. Coetzee for its “restrained tenderness and laconic humor,” which seemed ample justification for using it to avoid my own writing.

I finished it, weeping, a day later, and have been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since. I’ve recommended it again and again, and while I can’t say it’s entirely undiscovered — it won the 2010 IMPAC Dublin Award — no one I know ever seems to have heard of it.

The novel, told in the first person, is deliberately, deceptively simple. The plot is minimal, the language plainly descriptive. The characters reveal themselves through spare dialogue and gestures. The humor is dark.

It begins: “I’ve put Father upstairs. I had to park him on a chair first to take the bed apart. He sat there like a calf that’s just a couple of minutes old … with a directionless, wobbly head and eyes that drift over things.”

The “I” is Helmer, a 55-year-old dairy farmer whose identical twin, Henk, died some three decades before. Their mother is dead now, too, leaving only Helmer to care for his aging father — the same father who favored Henk and who, after Henk’s death, reclaimed Helmer for the farm. “You’re done in Amsterdam,” Father said, with typical economy, his words crushing Helmer’s dream of studying Dutch language and literature. Ever since, Helmer has been frozen in place. [Read the full article...]

Barry’s – The Finest Quality Teas from Ireland

Barry’s Irish Tea – Breakfast Blend, Golden Blend, Decafinated – The finest quality teas with a uniquely refreshing flavour and a bright golden color.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

The Mortal War is over, and sixteen-year-old Clary Fray is back home in New York, excited about all the possibilities before her. She’s training to become a Shadowhunter and to use her unique power. Her mother is getting married to the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace at last. And—most importantly of all—she can finally call Jace her boyfriend.

But nothing comes without a price.

Someone is murdering Shadowhunters, provoking tensions between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that could lead to a second, bloody war. Clary’s best friend, Simon, can’t help her. His mother just found out that he’s a vampire and now he’s homeless. Everywhere he turns, someone wants him on their side—along with the power of the curse that’s wrecking his life. And they’re willing to do anything to get what they want. Not to mention that he’s dating two beautiful, dangerous girls—neither of whom knows about the other one.

When Jace begins to pull away from her without explaining why, Clary is forced to delve into the heart of a mystery whose solution reveals her worst nightmare: she herself has set in motion a terrible chain of events that could lead to her losing everything she loves. Even Jace.

Love. Blood. Betrayal. Revenge. The stakes are higher than ever in City of Fallen Angels.

About Cassandra Clare

Cassandra Clare made her fiction debut with The Mortal Instruments series, which has been on many bestseller lists. Cassandra lives in an old Victorian house in western Massachusetts with her fiancé, their cats, and lots and lots of books. Visit her website at CassandraClare.com. Learn more about The Mortal Instruments series at MortalInstruments.com. Learn about her new trilogy The Infernal Devicesat TheInfernalDevices.com.

Reader Review

City of Fallen Angels is book four of The Mortal Instruments series that was originally meant to be a trilogy. Someone has been killing Shadowhunters who previously belonged in Valentine’s Circle and leaving their bodies around the city. This provokes hostility between Downworlders and Shadowhunters. Internal feuding among vampires is ripping the Downworld community apart, and only Simon, the Daylighter who everyone wants on their side, can decide the outcome. Unfortunately for them, he wants nothing to do with Downworld politics. Meanwhile, Jace and Clary investigate a mystery that has deeply personal consequences for them, consequences that may strengthen their relationship, or rip it apart forever. Love, blood, betrayal and revenge: the stakes are higher than ever. (Synopsis modified from Wikipedia)

I really don’t know why this book has gotten so many negative (and often quite rude) reviews! I love this series, and while this was not my favorite, I love this book as well.

I did desperately miss Magnus and Alec, and I wanted to know more about Maia and Kyle. Jace came across more sad and pitiful, but not necessarily in an endearing way. I have a love/hate attitude toward the ending. I feel like that is what the whole book was leading up to–Jace is mysteriously conflicted and then his fears are realized–and we’re left hanging, of course. So, his annoying behavior throughout the book actually makes more sense in the end. Clary was just so-so this time. She’s still not the strong heroine I want her to be, but she isn’t completely weak and boring either. She just sort of floated along through the whole narrative, which would have been perfectly okay if there had been more depth in some of our other favorites (previously mentioned).

Other than that, I was okay with the plot and all the subplots. I still love Simon, and I think he was a more meaningful star than Clary, which I think was intentional. It seems like there is much less demon fighting and more relationship issues happening, so maybe that’s why many people were a bit turned off this time. Even in the pivotal action scene near the end, it is more about Jace and Clary than what they are fighting against. I don’t mind all the relationship stuff, so I never once found myself completely bored with the story.

I did take a long break in the middle of reading this because I was so inundated with my other work I had to put my reading-for-pleasure aside. It took a few minutes for me to get my bearings again when I continued the story this week, but then I was sucked right back into the Shadowhunter world.

I’m anxious to see how this ending plays out. Will Jace overcome this evil? Will his and Clary’s relationship survive? Will Clary ever toughen up and be able to stand up for herself (more like Isabelle)? I wonder if Camille will return, and does she really know a way for Alec to become immortal. Hopefully Cassandra will heed the fans’ advice that we get more of Alec and Magnus (By the way, you can learn more about Camille and Magnus in Clockwork Angel)!

If you are a Mortal Instruments fan, I don’t know how you can resist checking this volume out as well. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did!  - Cassie McCown, Amazon.Com Customer Review

The Mortal Instruments Series

In 2004, Clare started working on her first-published novel City of Bones, inspired by the urban landscape of Manhattan. City of Bones was released by Simon & Schuster in 2007.

City of Bones, a contemporary fantasy story revolving around characters Clary Fray, Jace Wayland, and Simon Lewis became a New York Times bestseller upon its release. City of Ashes and City of Glass completed the trilogy. In 2009, a fourth installment, City of Fallen Angels, was announced. It was recently published April 5, 2011.

Clare has stated that City of Fallen Angels is actually the start of a second Mortal Instruments cycle, which will include two other books named City of Lost Souls and City of Heavenly Fire. She said this new cycle is going to be centered on the same characters as in the first cycle, as well as a few new characters we will meet in the new books.

In 2009 Clare also announced a new series of prequels called The Infernal Devices set in the same universe as The Mortal Instruments, but in the Victorian era. This series is planned to consist of three books:The Clockwork Angel, published on August 31, 2010, The Clockwork Prince, expected to be published December 6, 2011, and The Clockwork Princess, slated for release in November 2012.

The Mortal Instruments series has been optioned for film by Unique Features and Constantin Films. First-time writer Jessica Postigo has been hired to write the screenplay, based on the first book in the series. Also, Lily Collins has been cast as the lead role of Clary Fray, and Harry Potter and Twilight actor Jamie Campbell Bower has been cast opposite her as Jace Wayland.

VAMPIRE ASCENDING
by Lorelei Bell

Sabrina Strong is a Touch Clairvoyant who knows a secret. She knows her mother was turned into a vampire when Sabrina was ten. Now that she is grown up, a powerful magnate in the Chicago business world hires her to reveal the identity of who relentlessly murders vampires in his ultra-modern stronghold of a hotel. [Read More...]

Vampire Ascending is now available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.