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When cousins Zoe and Ian discover a mysterious glass puzzle in their Grandfather’s home in Tenby, Wales, they discover that their town is far more than they ever anticipated. They have always been adventurous, but when they put it together, horrible monsters called Scravens fly from the puzzle and escape into the town. They soon discover that the puzzle is a magical portal to another dimension; a dimension that the sunken island of Wythernsea has reappeared within. Can these two 11-year-olds really stop the Scravens from taking over their beloved town? Or worse, the entire world? The Glass Puzzle by Christine Brodien-Jones is a wonderfulRead More →

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Delightfully blending mystery, fantasy, and adventure, Mark Steensland’s Behind the Bookcase is chock full of everything there is to love about scary stories.  From a creepy “haunted” house, to hidden passages that lead to a sinister shadow world populated by creatures straight from nightmares, to a race against time to save our world from being overrun by evil, once you go behind the bookcase, you won’t want to venture out. Soon-to-be twelve year old Sarah does not want to spend her summer living in and fixing up her recently deceased grandmother’s run-down, spooky old house far away from her home and friends in Southern California.Read More →

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It was, I’m sure, pure coincidence that the two books I recently read had main characters named Jane whose death seemed all but inevitable.  Loosely connected by the thread of “Janes in constant danger”, Helen Keeble’s campy, funny debut  Fang Girl and Graham McNamee’s spooky Beyond took me from the dark nights in a British suburb to the even darker, rainy nights in a small village on Canada’s “rain coast.” Waking up disoriented, in a small dark space, to the sound of a mobile phone ringing, Xanthe “Jane” Greene, realizes very quickly that she is dead. No, actually, she’s not dead, she’s undead. As in vampire undead.Read More →

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Reminiscent in tone to his Magic Shop Books, Bruce Coville‘s latest, Always October, is an imaginative chase through a land of nightmares. Sixth grade friends, Jake Doolittle and “Weird Lily” Carker, take turns telling the story of their discovery of, journey through, and daring escape from, a parallel universe, Always October, that is filled with humanity’s fears, nightmares, horrors, and monsters (literally).  It all starts on the day when a baby is left on Jake’s doorstep with a note imploring him and his mom (his dad’s been missing for years) to take care of “Little Dumpling.”  Both Jake and his mom are quickly won overRead More →

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17 year old Jack’s summer job, as a “nanny” for an 8 and 12 year old brother and sister, seems like it would be a cake walk.  He’ll be making really good money and all he has to do is hang out with a couple of kids for a couple months.  The major downside is that the kids live on an isolated island off the mainland that’s devoid of any modern connectivity; sure, they have generator-powered electricity, but there’s no phone, no wi-fi or internet, and the only connection to the outside world is the twice weekly ferry that passes by the island.  Willing toRead More →

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Acclaimed British novelist Catherine Fisher (Incarceron – The Times’ Children’s Book of the Year) is back this Fall with a new subtly woven, spooky Faust-inspired, fantasy, Darkwater. In the early twentieth century in a windswept British village on the sea, 16 year old Sarah Trevelyan would give anything to regain the power, prestige, and wealth her family held for generations but lost in the folly of a card game gone wrong.  Reduced to living with her family’s only remaining loyal servant, Sarah’s sickly and broken father sinks deeper into a wasting illness while she is forced to humble herself as a scullery maid at the localRead More →

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Christopher Krovatin’s recent book Gravediggers: Mountain of Bones is designed for readers  who don’t mind horror or creepy concepts like zombies.  Following a plotline similar to that found in R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series, this book features three middle-schooler’s perspectives: Ian, a hard-headed athlete who thinks muscle will help him outrun any danger; Kendra, a sharp-minded library resident who relies on her brain to out-think a crisis; and PJ, a nervous camera addict who controls his fears by framing and directing shots. On a field trip designed to “separate the wolves from the poodles,” the trio engages with Homeroom Earth, an education program about survival in theRead More →

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What would you sacrifice for power? For love?  Would you give of yourself – your blood, your energy, your soul – for someone else if you loved them enough? To harness the power of the land, a sacrifice is required. A drop of blood onto the earth brings abundance and growth. A drop of blood into wine or food brings vitality and wellness. A drop of blood is the trade-off to release the magic, tying the giver to the gift, making the circle whole and the magic powerful.  To harness the trust and love of another, a sacrifice is required.  Sharing hopes and dreams bringsRead More →

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Chris Westwood’s Graveyard Shift combines the best elements from stories like Men in Black, GhostBusters, Harry Potter, and more into an action-packed fantasy adventure that will get your blood pumping.  It’s a quick, delightfully scary read full of magic and a couple of likeable middle school students embarking on an adventure of a lifetime. One sunny afternoon in the graveyard near his London apartment, Ben Harvester helps out an old man who appears to stumble from exhaustion over a nearby grave.  A few days later in a far-away town at his own aunt’s funeral, Ben again sees that same old man on the outskirts ofRead More →