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Having been abandoned by a mother who can’t love like a normal mom, fifteen-year-old Sarah-Mary and her eleven-year-old brother Caleb live with their Aunt Jenny in Hannibal, Missouri.  And even though Sarah-Mary is normally a rule-abiding, responsible girl, her best friend Tess Villalobos convinces her to exchange school for a road trip to St. Louis to see the Gateway Arch.  While there, a mild case of claustrophobia and acrophobia overwhelms Sarah-Mary.  Because she passes out, she is found out, so her aunt tightens the rules and sends Sarah-Mary to Berean Baptist, a strict private school, not only to teach her the value of discipline but toRead More →

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Forced to kill or die, Archer Aurontas has a history of horror as a cage fighter for the impressors.  Wishing to be whole again, he looks to Sefia, a girl who is focused, determined, and daring.  The daughter of Lon and Mareah who were hoping to shape the future, Sefia is known as the traitors’ child and as a girl whose life is illuminated by magic. Hoping to atone for what Sefia sees as the sins of her parents, people who helped to set in motion the prophesy for the Red War, Sefia steals the Guard’s greatest weapon, a weapon of paper and ink.  ThisRead More →

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With tears in her eyes and her best friend’s blood on her hands, at age 14, Androma Racella is banished from her home planet, Arcadius.  Although a freak accident accounted for Kalee’s death, Andi had taken a vow to protect General Cortas’ daughter, a vow that she failed to keep. While alone and fighting to survive, Andi meets Dextro Arez, a Tenebran Guardian and the most notorious bounty hunter in the Mirabel Galaxy who teaches her the art of combat.  When Dex chooses duty over his heart, Andi steals his starship in an act of revenge.  Living for the thrill of a life dangling on theRead More →

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Living in a world where books are thought to clutter the mind and technology is shunned in favor of a photographic memory called Knowing, Samara Archiva wants to heal the Knowing with Forgetting so that the Knowing can find peace.  Without Forgetting, pain is a constant for the Knowing, and many commit suicide to escape the process of reliving excruciating memories that never fade.   Knowing, which essentially means to remember too much, leaves no room for imagination or dreaming, and from an early age, the Knowing are taught the importance of concealing emotion and for caching memories.   Caching, a special privilege of the Knowing, involvesRead More →

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Despite the world’s efforts to destroy them, Wilhelminia and Gerhard keep each other alive.  Born into the Royal House of Heidle, Wil and Gerdie are spares, the youngest and scrawniest children of the king of Northern Arrod, the world’s wealthiest nation.  Wil, like her queen mother, is a restless wanderer, a child in love with the free air.  Although Wil is also a champion for justice, a darkness lurks in her blood, a curse that has scarred her, leaving a birthmark.  Gerdie, forever the pragmatist, believes that spells and curses are nonsense.  A scientist who clings to logic, Gerdie thinks magic is a fairy tale. Read More →

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The daughter of two scientists, Shade Darby is thirteen years old when the Dome appears and sits astride the 101 at Perdido Beach, California.   Shade’s mother, Dr. Heather Darby of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, is called in to explain the Dome, an anomalous, impenetrable, initially opaque, and terrifying enclosure that captured all children younger than fifteen and ejected all persons older.  Because curiosity runs deep in her genetic makeup, each day Shade—against her mother’s orders—watches the terror that is the FAYZ: Fallout Alley Youth Zone, where Gaia, a demented young goddess rules , maiming and murdering.  Unlike the original healing and life-giving character inRead More →

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Somewhat like the choose-your-own-adventure books with alternate endings, Jane Unlimited by Kristin Cashore occasionally leaves the reader with the feeling of being lost in a maze, confused by the various plot twists and turns or coming upon a similar detail and experiencing déjà vu.  Although Cashore’s book is intended for linear, cover-to-cover reading, when the book’s protagonist, Jane, approaches an important choice, the reader follows her down that path to see how the decision plays out. The novel begins on a boat, with Jane travelling to Tu Reviens, a house on an island and a place of opportunity.  She had promised her deceased aunt MagnoliaRead More →

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If you’re the sort of person who secretly reads the end of a novel first, then Emily Lockhart’s new book Genuine Fraud was written with you in mind because it begins with Chapter 18 and works its way to Chapter 1. Lockhart writes about two young women: Imogen Sokoloff and Jule West Williams, two orphans and school friends who defy social conventions but have histories that bind them.  Imogen, a New York City, private-school blond, is an open-minded, confident, and desirable friend and hostess who draws people in with her power, money, enthusiasm, and independence.  She refuses to strive for greatness or to work toward other people’s definitionsRead More →

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Although a work of fiction, A Promising Life by Emily Arnold McCully reads like nonfiction with its rich history of the early 1800s and its biographic-like details.  The novel tells the story of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, born among explorers on the Lewis and Clark Expedition to Toussaint Charbonneau and Sakakawea.  Half French Canadian and half Shoshone, Baptiste is métis American, but he finds himself caught by social circumstances that don’t wholly accept him.  Called Pompey, or Pomp, which means “the promising one,” Baptiste is favored by William Clark, so when his parents leave him in Clark’s care and travel upriver from St. Louis to aRead More →