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Dirk Lloyd, I mean Jamie Thomson, continues his harrowing, humorous tales of exile in Dark Lord: Schools Out. While Dirk has “acclimated” to the inane and foolish customs of the humans amongst whom he’s been exiled, he still chaffs and the confines of his magic-deprived, powerless human banishment.  His attempt to return to The Darklands has gone tragically wrong and instead of finding himself back home, somehow his minion Sooz has been transported there instead.  Tormented by the injustice of this, the Dark Lord insists that Chris, his only remaining minion, help him contact Sooz and save her from what Dirk knows will be aRead More →

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Kai and Ginny are neighbors and best friends. Truly inseparable, two peas in a pod, they have spent everyday together since they were toddlers. As they have grown older, Kai and Ginny have planned their lives and futures together; get married, run off to New York, and pursue Kai’s dream of being a famous musician. Kai lives with his grandmother, Dalia, who is less than approving of Ginny. She refers to her as “neighbor girl” and sees Kai wasting his talent and dreams every second that he spends with her. Grandma Dalia is known to believe in some strange ideas, such as the evil SnowRead More →

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Ok, I am so glad to be a vegetarian.  All those terrible things that I could imagine happening at massive feedlots, huge industrial slaughterhouses, and behind the guise of corporate “farming”, happen in Paolo Bacigalupi’s nightmarish comedy Zombie Baseball Beatdown.  Milrow Meat Solutions processes enough beef to feed people in seven states, which means acres and acres of cows packed into feedlots in filth and excrement up to their bellies, a plant the size of a small city that employs vast quantities of undocumented workers who, for 24 hours a day, race to process thousands upon thousands of cuts of beef, and a research andRead More →

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In Rich Wallace‘s Wicked Cruel, three stories take place in a small New England town that’s full of cemeteries from Colonial times,  old roads that wind through the woods and end nowhere, and more than one strange old character.  Urban legends that spring from stories told and retold, always based on a “reliable source”, these stories are a little crazy, a little scary, and just believable enough to grab ahold and drag you in. When sixth grader Jordan is watching a video online he catches a glimpse of a kid in the crowd who used to attend elementary school with him. Crazy thing is, LorneRead More →

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Suzanne Lafleur, author of Listening for Lucca, brings readers into a magical world where there is more to life than teenage drama. Siena isn’t sure what she calls her “special intuition”. She is able to feel, hear, and see things that other people cannot. At first, she assumes her imagination is taking her for an adventure when she catches herself remembering vivid dreams. In her most recent dream, she sees this beautiful house, right off the lake in Maine. There is a calm breeze, a relaxing atmosphere, and a family who occupies the house. This family seems strangely similar to Siena’s, but she cannot figureRead More →

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A teenage girl with an unknown power, her guy best friend with whom she’s so comfortable she doesn’t even consider romance, and a mysterious guy, brooding, beautiful, and seemingly dangerous who is suddenly everywhere she turns.  Twilight?  No, actually, these three teens are the main characters in The Fallen Series author Lauren Kate‘s new trilogy, Teardrop. Seventeen year old Eureka Boudreaux is a strong-willed, beautiful, and depressed.  Just months ago she lost her best friend, her mom Diana, to a rogue wave that inexplicably swept their car, and only their car, from a bridge connecting the Florida Keys to the mainland.  Now Eureka, wracked withRead More →

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A tale of star crossed lovers of a different sort unfolds in Page Morgan’s The Beautiful and The Cursed. The story takes place in 1890’s Paris, France, a time where royals ruled the world. Lady Charlotte moves her daughters, Lady Ingrid and Lady Gabriella, from an English mansion to a French abbey she plans to remodel into an art gallery. Her son, Lord Fairfax, was sent to France two months earlier to scout out the location. The move could not have come at a better time for Lady Ingrid. Her reputation in London had taken a nosedive when she accidentally set her friend’s home onRead More →

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I love a good, spine-tingling mystery.  Smart detectives, heart-pumping tension, dark and spooky locales, they’re all it takes for me to get lost for hours.  And I especially love it when the plot is so well constructed  it weaves in and out on itself, and is chock full of false clues, hidden gems, and tiny, realistic details that sparkle and pop like a faulty flashlight on a pitch-black night.  So imagine my thrill as I was drawn into The Screaming Staircase, the first book in New York Times best-selling author of the Bartimaeus series Jonathan Stroud‘s, new series Lockwood & Co. For the past fifty years,Read More →

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“Have you ever heard of suicide by river? You just wade out deeper and deeper, and before long the current carries you away. And by then there is nothing you can do about it.” (7)  When Kiandra was 7, her mother did just that. With no warning, no goodbye, nothing  – just walked into the river beside their home and let herself be swept away.  Now, 10 years later, Ki is still drowning in grief.  She won’t let her anger and confusion about her mother’s suicide go, hiding it deep inside, nursing it like a cancer.   Although her grieving father moved them far awayRead More →