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Readers who enjoy dystopian literature, especially the variety presented in books like The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins or 1984 by George Orwell, will likely take pleasure in book one of The Torch Keeper series by Steven Dos Santos.  In this new world, benign terms like incentives, recruits, and shelved mask unspeakable malignancy for an Establishment that is focused on genetic engineering and on manufacturing biological weapons. The Culling features Lucian Spark, a sixteen-year-old boy who lives in The Parish, a community formed after Earth was destroyed by the Ash Wars.  Life in The Parish is ruled by The Establishment, which has very strictRead More →

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Jeffrey Salane has created an action-packed book for tweens with his new novel, Lawless. Although the book has multiple settings, the story largely occurs in the southern hemisphere atLawlessSchool, a private and exclusive school for the children of master criminals.  The story’s protagonist is twelve-year-old M Freeman, whose doting dad gave her the moon but is now dead and has remained a beautiful mystery for six years.  M’s mother, an impeccably stylish artist mogul and unstoppable workhorse has little time for M.  Home-schooled and living in a house the size of a small castle, M feels neither like a princess nor a prisoner.  Instead, sheRead More →

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That Time I Joined the Circus by J. J. Howard isn’t a typical runaway story but it is one rich in circus sounds and sensations.  The author’s obsession with music is obvious in the lyrical headnotes to each chapter and in the many allusions that occur in the text—making this a book for music lovers and for those who live their lives with their own sound track or play list. Although the circus plays a role in Howard’s text, this is really Xandra Ryan’s story—her disparate identity is obvious in her many names: Lexi, Alex, and even X.  Feeling like Doormat Girl who only getsRead More →

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Imagine if the living could see and experience the energy left behind by departed human beings.  Similar to television shows like Ghost Whisperer and movies like The Sixth Sense, Kim Harrington’s latest book, The Dead and Buried explores this notion of spectral visitations.  Five-year-old Colby can both see and communicate with the ghost of Kayla Sloane, whose bedroom he now occupies after his family purchased the home at6 Silver Road where Kayla died and may have been murdered. Determined to save her brother from the ghost and its threats of harm, Jade Kelley—a seventeen year old senior at Woodbridge High—promises the spirit she’ll solve the mystery surroundingRead More →

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Linda Gerber’s recent release, Lights, Camera Cassidy captures common tween conflicts such as searching for independence, navigating identity issues, and developing relationships with the opposite sex.  Twelve year old Cassidy Barnett, daughter of reality television stars, likes a challenge and craves attention—until she is in the spotlight and experiences all the drawbacks of the limelight, which demands she wear a plastic smile and practice her princess wave.  When she sneaks out of the house while in Valencia, Spain, to take video and pictures for the blog she writes to stay connected to her deceased grandfather, Cassidy inadvertently catches a contrabandista in the act of committingRead More →

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Readers of science fiction or dystopian literature like Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy will likely find fascination in Alaya Dawn Johnson’s inaugural young adult novel, The Summer Prince.  For her story’s setting, Johnson has created Palmares Três, a dream city which rose from the ruins of a world ravaged by plague, war, and destruction.  The city is governed mostly by women since men have done so much to destroy the world with their war games and power plays.  To keep the world from ever dying again, the Queen of Palmares Três creates a composite of the best that the previous world had to offer,Read More →

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Set in the early 1940s, Kimberly Newton Fusco’s upcoming release, Beholding Bee, features Beatrice Rose Hockenberry, an adolescent girl whose life readers follow from age eleven to thirteen.   During this time of victory gardens, sugar rations, and fuel stamps, Bee—whose  parents died when she was four—works for a travelling carnival show and lives in the back of a hauling truck with sixteen year old Pauline as her guardian. Bee’s greatest nemesis is Ellis, the owner of the show, who threatens to put Bee on display in the freak show because she has a birthmark, “the color of rose at dusk” (4), that stretches from her hairlineRead More →

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Book One in the Three Doors Trilogy by Emily Rodda, The Golden Door, tells the story of three brothers: Dirk, Sholto, and Rye who are residents of Southwall, a community in the city of Weld governed and over-regulated by a suspicious Warden. Eighteen-year-old Dirk is brave and determined if not a bit of a conspiracy theorist who thinks the Warden is up to no good.  Sholto is equally determined but dark and cynical, although the thirst for knowledge glows in him.  As an apprentice Healer, he tends to seek out peace. Rye, the youngest, is cautious, perceptive, and pragmatic. Their home, previously a place of peaceRead More →

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Although Lauren Morrill’s debut novel, Meant to Be, tells the story of Julia Lichtenstein, a junior at Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts, it also tells the turbulent tale of teen relationship building, the random chaos of life and love. Julia, who doesn’t know the word fun because it wasn’t on the SATs, is a stickler for history and geography and rules.  Because of her reputation, she has earned nicknames like Book Licker, Professor, and Little Miss Guidebook.  When she signs up for the class’ spring break field trip toLondon, she hopes to immerse herself in the rich culture and history of the place, butRead More →