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Tag: Espionage

New books

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe homecoming, Ray Bradbury, illustrated by Dave McKean

The WISP series (Wonderfully Illustrated Short Pieces) represents an ingenious marriage of two creative forces: the artistry of today’s foremost illustrators and the literary legacy of beloved authors of popular short works for adults. The resulting offspring of this union are captivating, full-color illustrated editions of timeless classics that readers will want to savor and collect. For the first time ever, the series makes selected popular short works previously offered only in collections available in a unique, stand-alone format. Also for the first time, WISPs harness the talents of top illustrators for the benefit and delight of a new, older audience. This WISP presents RAY BRADBURY’S THE HOMECOMING, a little boy’s tale of his family reunion of vampires. This story was initially published in 1946 and later refashioned into further stories. Bringing this story to life are the wondrous illustrations of Dave McKean, whose delightful artwork perfectly matches the tale. (Goodreads)

First lines: “Here they come, said Cecy,” lying there flat in the High Attic dust.
“Where are they?” cried Timothy near the window, staring out.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsUnleashed, Sophie Jordan

Davy has spent the last few months trying to come to terms with the fact that she tested positive for the kill gene HTS (also known as Homicidal Tendency Syndrome). She swore she would not let it change her, and that her DNA did not define her . . . but then she killed a man. Now on the run, Davy must decide whether she’ll be ruled by the kill gene or if she’ll follow her heart and fight for her right to live free. But with her own potential for violence lying right beneath the surface, Davy doesn’t even know if she can trust herself.

First lines: The man I killed won’t leave me alone. He comes to me at night. The first time he intruded on my dreams I thought it was an isolated thing. A sudden troublesome nightmare that would fade with the night, never to return. But it does. He does. And I begin to realise he’s never going away.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsZafir, Pure Mason

Six months after Zafir has moved to Homs from Dubai with his parents, the excitement of living in a new city has worn off. But then he sees a body thrown from a moving car, and when no one stops to help – and he’s told to forget what he’s seen – he realises there’s a lot he doesn’t understand about life in Syria. A lot that no one will tell him. Soon after, the campaign for revolution in Syria begins, and Zafir’s parents argue about their country’s future. Things get worse when his father is arrested and his mother must leave Homs. As the conflict in the city escalates, everyday life becomes dangerous for a boy alone. (Goodreads)

First lines: Zafir shivered. It was an icy morning in the city of Homs and the wind felt sharp enough to strip the skin from his body. Tetah, his grandmother, has said it might even snow. Zafir hoped it would, but he wished winter didn’t have to be this cold.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe five stages of Andrew Brawley, Shaun David Hutchinson

Andrew Brawley was supposed to die that night. His parents did, and so did his sister, but he survived. Now he lives in the hospital. He serves food in the cafeteria, he hangs out with the nurses, and he sleeps in a forgotten supply closet. Drew blends in to near invisibility, hiding from his past, his guilt, and those who are trying to find him. Then one night Rusty is wheeled into the ER, burned on half his body by hateful classmates. His agony calls out to Drew like a beacon, pulling them both together through all their pain and grief. In Rusty, Drew sees hope, happiness, and a future for both of them. A future outside the hospital, and away from their pasts. But Drew knows that life is never that simple. Death roams the hospital, searching for Drew, and now Rusty. Drew lost his family, but he refuses to lose Rusty, too, so he’s determined to make things right. He’s determined to bargain, and to settle his debts once and for all. But Death is not easily placated, and Drew’s life will have to get worse before there is any chance for things to get better.

First lines: The boy is on fire. EMTs wheel him into Roanoke General’s sterile emergency room. He screams and writhes on the gurney as though the fire that burned his skin away burns still, flaring deep within his bones, where paramedics and doctors and nurses crowding around him, working desperately, will never be able to extinguish it.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe bargaining, Carly Anne West

The fact that neither of her parents wants to deal with her is nothing new to Penny. She’s used to being discussed like a problem, a problem her mother has finally passed on to her father. What she hasn’t gotten used to is her stepmother…especially when she finds out that she’ll have to spend the summer with April in the remote woods of Washington to restore a broken-down old house. Set deep in a dense forest, the old Carver House is filled with abandoned antique furniture, rich architectural details, and its own chilling past. The only respite Penny can find away from April’s renovations is in Miller, the young guy who runs the local general store. He’s her only chance at a normal, and enjoyable, summer.
But Miller has his own connection to the Carver House, and it’s one that goes beyond the mysterious tapping Penny hears at her window, the handprints she finds smudging the glass panes, and the visions of children who beckon Penny to follow them into the dark woods. Miller’s past just might threaten to become the terror of Penny’s future…(Goodreads)

First lines: The first thing I should see is Pop with his belt. He called me from the top of the stairs, so that’s where he should be waiting, leather and buckle in hand, knuckles bulging against his grip.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe winner’s crime, Marie Rutkoski

The engagement of Lady Kestrel to Valoria’s crown prince means one celebration after another. But to Kestrel it means living in a cage of her own making. As the wedding approaches, she aches to tell Arin the truth about her engagement…if she could only trust him. Yet can she even trust herself? For—unknown to Arin—Kestrel is becoming a skilled practitioner of deceit: an anonymous spy passing information to Herran, and close to uncovering a shocking secret. As Arin enlists dangerous allies in the struggle to keep his country’s freedom, he can’t fight the suspicion that Kestrel knows more than she shows. In the end, it might not be a dagger in the dark that cuts him open, but the truth. And when that happens, Kestrel and Arin learn just how much their crimes will cost them.

First lines: She cut herself opening the envelope. Kestrel has been eager, she’d been a fool, tearing into the letter simply because it had been addressed in Herrani script. The letter opener slipped. Seeds of blood hit the paper and bloomed bright.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsUnder my skin, James Dawnson

Seventeen-year-old Sally Feather is not exactly a rebel. Her super-conservative parents and her treatment at the hands of high school bullies means that Sally’s about as shy and retiring as they come – but all that’s about to change. Accidentally ending up in the seedier side of town one day, Sally finds herself mysteriously lured to an almost-hidden tattoo parlour – and once inside, Sally is quickly seduced by its charming owner, Rosita, and her talk of how having a secret tattoo can be as empowering as it is thrilling. Almost before she knows what she is doing, Sally selects sexy pin-up Molly Sue, and has her tattooed on her back – hoping that Molly Sue will inspire her to be as confident and popular as she is in her dreams. But things quickly take a nightmareish turn. Almost immediately, Sally begins to hear voices in her head – or rather, one voice in particular: Molly Sue’s. And she has no interest in staying quiet and being a good girl – in fact, she’s mighty delighted to have a body to take charge of again. Sally slowly realises that she is unable to control Molly Sue… and before long she’s going to find out the hard way what it truly means to have somebody ‘under your skin’. (Goodreads)

First lines: I can’t say I wasn’t warned. This is what all those stories told us about. This is the dark at the heart of the forest; this is the Big Bad Wolf; this is both the serpent and the apple. There are warnings everywhere – in the Bible, on TV, in nursery rhymes. I always thought they were metaphors or allegories to get me to go to bed, to make me eat my vegetables. I ignored them. I think we all do.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsFrozen Charlotte, Alex Bell

We’re waiting for you to come and play. Dunvegan School for Girls has been closed for many years. Converted into a family home, the teachers and students are long gone. But they left something behind…Sophie arrives at the old schoolhouse to spend the summer with her cousins. Brooding Cameron with his scarred hand, strange Lilias with a fear of bones and Piper, who seems just a bit too good to be true. And then there’s her other cousin. The girl with a room full of antique dolls. The girl that shouldn’t be there. The girl that died. (Goodreads)

First lines: The girls were playing with the Frozen Charlotte dolls again. The schoolmistress had given them some scarps of fabric and ribbon from the sewing room to take out to the garden. They were to practice their embroidery skills by making little dresses and bonnets for the naked porcelain dolls.
“They’ll catch their death of cold otherwise,” the teacher had said.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsQuake, Patrick Carman

Faith Daniels and Dylan Gilmore are in love, and they have a special ability called a pulse: they can move things with their minds. They’re caught in the middle of a deadly war with two other pulses: Clara and Wade Quinn, who have joined forces with Hotspur Chance, the most wanted man in the world. At the start of Quake, Faith and Dylan are holed up in a spectacular abandoned mountain lodge (once used in the film The Shining 71 years before), and their Intel friend Hawk leaves them in the middle of the night, in spite of a newly blossoming love with a girl named Jade. Hawk’s plan is to penetrate the Western State and make contact with a sleeper cell working on the inside that will give them valuable information about Hotspur’s violent plan. But while Hawk is searching for answers on the inside, Faith and Dylan are still fighting on the outside. In a series of hair-raising battles, the second pulses duel it out, only to raise the body count on both sides. During the battles, Faith and Dylan discover an even great strength: the power of their combined love. Together, Faith and Dylan might just be able to save the world with a quake that is big enough to change the course of history. (Goodreads)

First lines: I used to draw things and make little notes but I don’t do that anymore. I’m too tired. I’ve let so many details slip away these past months because living is a lot of work or because I grew out of writing things down or I just got lazy. I woke up one day and realised I wasn’t writing things down anymore. I guess it happens.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsBurning Kingdoms, Lauren DeStefano

After escaping Internment, Morgan and her fellow fugitives land on the ground to finally learn about the world beneath their floating island home.
The ground is a strange place where water falls from the sky as snow, and people watch moving pictures and visit speakeasies. A place where families can have as many children as they want, their dead are buried in vast gardens of bodies, and Internment is the feature of an amusement park. It is also a land at war. Everyone who fled Internment had their own reasons to escape their corrupt haven, but now they’re caught under the watchful eye of another king who wants to dominate his world. They may have made it to the ground, but have they dragged Internment with them? (Goodreads)

First lines: Snow. That’s the word the people of the ground have for this wonder.
“Goddamn snow,” our driver mumbles for the second time, as the mechanical arms sweep the dust from the window. It’s like a stab to the heart hearing a god referred to so unkindly. I wonder which god he means.

New books

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsA song for Ella Grey, David Almond

Claire is Ella Grey’s best friend. She’s there when the whirlwind arrives on the scene: catapulted into a North East landscape of gutted shipyards; of high arched bridges and ancient collapsed mines. She witnesses a love so dramatic it is as if her best friend has been captured and taken from her. But the loss of her friend to the arms of Orpheus is nothing compared to the loss she feels when Ella is taken from the world. This is her story – as she bears witness to a love so complete; so sure, that not even death can prove final. (Goodreads)

First lines: I’m the one who’s left behind. I’m the one to tell the tale. I knew them both, knew how they lived and how they died. It didn’t happen long ago. I’m young, like them. Like them? Can that be possible? Can you be both young and dead?

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe boy with the tiger’s heart

When Nona’s guardian kills himself, she is immediately suspected of murdering him. In a world where nature and darkness are feared, where wild animals are killed or held captive and cities are illuminated by permanent light, who will believe her innocence? Nona must flee with her only friend – a bear who is strangely human. In their desperate attempt to escape capture, Nona and her bear encounter two strange boys, Caius and Jay. Together, the four of them will hide, and fight, and make the deadliest of enemies in their desperate race to a forbidden place called The Edge – where nature is unrestrained, where there is light and shade, forest and mountain, and where there are no shackles or boundaries. (Goodreads)

First lines: The snow falls heavily that night and in the morning lies in deep drifts, which smooth over the shapes of the edges of the jagged rocks and grassy knolls. It hides the bog holes that lie at the edge of the marshes and covers the recks of the burnt-out cars.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsMortal Heart (The fair assassin book III), Robin LaFevers

Annith has watched her gifted sisters at the convent come and go, carrying out their dark dealings in the name of St. Mortain, patiently awaiting her own turn to serve Death. But her worst fears are realized when she discovers she is being groomed by the abbess as a Seeress, to be forever sequestered in the rock and stone womb of the convent. Feeling sorely betrayed, Annith decides to strike out on her own. She has spent her whole life training to be an assassin. Just because the convent has changed its mind doesn’t mean she has…(Goodreads)

First lines: For most, the bleak dark months when the black storms come howling out of the north is a time of grimness and sorrow as people await the arrival of winter, which brings death, hunger and bitter cold in its wake. But we at the convent of Saint Mortain welcome winter with open arms, for it is Mortain’s own season, when he is full upon us.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsTalon, Julie Kagawa

Long ago, dragons were hunted to near extinction by the Order of St. George, a legendary society of dragon slayers. Hiding in human form and growing their numbers in secret, the dragons of Talon have become strong and cunning, and they’re positioned to take over the world with humans none the wiser.
Ember and Dante Hill are the only sister and brother known to dragonkind. Trained to infiltrate society, Ember wants to live the teen experience and enjoy a summer of freedom before taking her destined place in Talon. But destiny is a matter of perspective, and a rogue dragon will soon challenge everything Ember has been taught. As Ember struggles to accept her future, she and her brother are hunted by the Order of St. George. Soldier Garret Xavier Sebastian has a mission to seek and destroy all dragons, and Talon’s newest recruits in particular. But he cannot kill unless he is certain he has found his prey: and nothing is certain about Ember Hill. Faced with Ember’s bravery, confidence and all-too-human desires, Garret begins to question everything that the Order has ingrained in him: and what he might be willing to give up to find the truth about dragons. (Goodreads)

First lines: “Ember, when did your parents die, and what was the cause of death?”
I stifled a groan and tore my gaze from the car window, where the bright, sunny town of Crescent Beach shimmered beyond the tinted glass. The air in the black sedan was cold and stale, and, annoyingly, the driver had engaged the child safety locks so I couldn’t roll down the window.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe hangman’s revolution (W.A.R.P book II) Eoin Colfer

Young FBI agent Chevie Savano arrives back in modern-day London after a time-trip to the Victorian age, to find the present very different from the one she left. Europe is being run by a Facsist movement known as the Boxites, who control their territory through intimidation and terror. Chevie’s memories come back to her in fragments, and just as she is learning about the WARP program from Professor Charles Smart, inventor of the time machine, he is killed by secret service police. Now they are after Chevie, too, but she escapes–into the past. She finds Riley, who is being pursued by futuristic soldiers, and saves him. Working together again, it is up to Chevie and Riley to find the enigmatic Colonel Clayton Box, who is intent on escalating his power, and stop him before he can launch missiles at the capitals of Europe. (Goodreads)

First lines: Towards the end of the twentieth century, Scottish professor Charles Smart succeeded in stabilizing a time tunnel to Victorian London (constructed from exotic matter with negative energy density, duh). Within months the FBI had established the Witness Anonymous Relocation Program to stash federal witnesses in the past.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsRevolution, Deborah Wiles

It’s 1964, and Sunny’s town is being invaded. Or at least that’s what the adults of Greenwood, Mississippi, are saying. All Sunny knows is that people from up north are coming to help people register to vote. They’re calling it Freedom Summer. Meanwhile, Sunny can’t help but feel like her house is being invaded, too. She has a new stepmother, a new brother, and a new sister crowding her life, giving her little room to breathe. And things get even trickier when Sunny and her brother are caught sneaking into the local swimming pool — where they bump into a mystery boy whose life is going to become tangled up in theirs. (Goodreads)

First lines: The first thing we do, me and Gillette, is make sure everybody is asleep. Daddy and Annabelle (I still can’t call her Mama) go to bed after watching the Lawrence Welk show on television. Parnell will be home at midnight, after he sweeps the floors and locks the doors on the corner of Fulton and West Washington Streets. Little Audrey-champion sleeper- has been snoring for hours, so we don’t worry about her.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsParanoia (Book II of the Night Walkers), J.R Johansson

In the aftermath of the events that nearly killed him, Parker Chipp is trying to learn to cope better with life as a Watcher. And it seems to be working…until he wakes up in jail with a hangover and 12 hours of missing time. Darkness has somehow taken control and Parker doesn’t have a clue how to stop him. He finds an unlikely ally in Jack, the mysterious guy in the motorcycle jacket who offers to help Parker master his abilities as a Watcher. But even as they practice, the darkness inside Parker is getting more and more powerful, taking over Parker’s body and doing everything he can to destroy Parker’s life. When Jack reveals that there is another kind of Night Walker, known as a Taker, Parker starts to wonder if the strange things happening in Oakville are more than just a coincidence. After all, people are more than just sleepwalking. They’re emptying their savings accounts with no memory of doing so, wandering into strange parts of town and disappearing, they’re even killing other people–all in their sleep. If Parker wants to find out what’s happening or have any hope of seeing his father again, he’ll have to defy Jack and put his own life in danger…because the more he learns about these other Night Walkers, the more certain he becomes that his life isn’t the only one that could be lost. (Goodreads)

First lines:Weird stuff was going down in Oakville, and this time I was definitely – well, fairly – sure that I had nothing to do with it. The Sunday morning news headline on the muted television above the kitchen counter read: Another mysterious withdrawal.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsFiendish, Brenna Yovanoff

When Clementine was a child, dangerous and inexplicable things started happening in New South Bend. The townsfolk blamed the fiendish people out in the Willows and burned their homes to the ground. But magic kept Clementine alive, walled up in the cellar for ten years, until a boy named Fisher sets her free. Back in the world, Clementine sets out to discover what happened all those years ago. But the truth gets muddled in her dangerous attraction to Fisher, the politics of New South Bend, and the Hollow, a fickle and terrifying place that seems increasingly temperamental ever since Clementine reemerged. (Goodreads)

First lines: When I was little, everything twinkled. Trees and clouds all seemed to shine around the edges. At night, the stars were long tails of light, smeared across the sky like paint. The whole county glowed.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsBlind, Rachel De Woskin

Imagine this: You are fourteen, watching the fireworks at a 4th of July party, when a rocket backfires into the crowd and strikes your eyes, leaving you blind. In that instant, your life is changed forever. How do you face a future in which all your expectations must be different? You will never see the face of your newborn sister, never learn to drive. Will you ever have a job or fall in love? This is Emma’s story. The drama is in her manysmall victories as she returns to high school in her home town and struggles to define herself and make sense of her life, determined not to be dismissed as a PBK – Poor Blind Kid. This heartfelt and heart wrenching story takes you on Emma’s journey and leaves you with a new understanding of the challenges to be faced when life deals a devastating blow. (Goodreads)

First lines: Going blind is a bit like growing up. Maybe because the older you get, the more you have to close your eyes partway. From the time I was tiny, if I thought the words, When I die, I’ll be dead forever, I could actually understand, in my bone marrow, what forever meant.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe truth against the world, Sarah Jamila Stevenson

When Olwen Nia Evans learns that her family is moving from San Francisco to Wales to fulfill her great-grandmother’s dying wish, she starts having strange and vivid dreams about her family’s past. But nothing she sees in her dreams of the old country–the people, the places–makes any sense. Could it all be the result of an overactive imagination . . . or could everything she’s been told about her ancestors be a lie?Once in Wales, she meets Gareth Lewis, a boy plagued by dreams of his own–visions he can’t shake after meeting a ghost among the misty cairns along the Welsh seaside. A ghost named Olwen Nia Evans.

First lines: “Right over there, behind the old church.” Gareth’s mother pointed. “You used to love rolling down that hill. Over and over until you got dizzy.” She laughed, the wind blowing her pale hair out of its ponytail and whipping it around. Gareth glanced up from his phone. The hill looked a lot smaller than it had seemed in his memory.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe fire wish, Amber Lough

Najwa is a jinni, training to be a spy in the war against the humans. Zayele is a human on her way to marry a prince of Baghdad—which she’ll do anything to avoid. So she captures Najwa and makes a wish. With a rush of smoke and fire, they fall apart and re-form—as each other. A jinni and a human, trading lives. Both girls must play their parts among enemies who would kill them if the deception were ever discovered—enemies including the young men Najwa and Zayele are just discovering they might love. (Goodreads)

First lines: The earth and all her layers sped past while I traveled to the surface. I was smoke and flame, swirling through granite, through shale and sand. It took only a moment, then I emerged, myself again.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsMayday, Jonathan Friesen

Seventeen-year-old Crow will stop at nothing to protect her younger sister—even if it costs her her own life. But then she’s given a chance to come back and make things right. There are a few catches, though. First, she won’t come back as herself. And before she can set things straight, she’ll have to figure out what’s what—and things aren’t exactly as clear-cut as she remembered.
(Goodreads)

First lines: Let’s start with where I’m not. I’m not in dark tunnel walking toward a bright light. I’m not drifting toward heaven, looking down on my body. I’m seated in the front of an amubulance -alone- waiting. I’me not sure if this is a normal rest stop before the long trip; I’ve never died before.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsStarbreak, Phoebe North

The Asherah has finally reached Zehava, the long-promised planet. There, Terra finds harsh conditions and a familiar foe—Aleksandra Wolff, leader of her ship’s rebel forces. Terra and Aleksandra first lock horns with each other . . . but soon realize they face a much more dangerous enemy in violent alien beasts—and alien hunters.
Then Terra finally discovers Vadix. The boy who has haunted her dreams may be their key to survival—but his own dark past has yet to be revealed. And when Aleksandra gets humanity expelled from the planet, it’s up to Terra, with Vadix by her side, to unite her people—and to forge an alliance with the alien hosts, who want nothing more than to see humanity gone forever.
(Goodreads)

First lines: I’ve never kept a journal before. Never thought about it. It’s not how my brain works, not really. I see colours, the way shadows mingle with light. But words? I could take them or leave them, or so I always thought. One of my ancestors kept a journal. All about how she arrived on the Asherah, how she came to live inside the dome. How she hated it there. She thought she was trapped in the deepness of space. She could never forget it- how her freedoms had been taken from her, one by one, by the High Council.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsI’m just me, M.G Higgins

Nasreen and Mia are two very different girls. But they stand out at Arondale High. And kids make assumptions about the only Muslim and the new black girl–the only African American–in school. “Who let you into the suburbs?” Samantha asks. Everyone gawks. Nasreen has kept her head down for years. Eighteen months and she’s out, she tells herself. Off to college. Mia is bold. Yeah, she wishes she were somewhere else, but she’s not going to take the bullying lying down. She has to live her life. Graduate. Get into a good school. The school administrators are ignorant. And worse. The bullying escalates. Both at school and online. The girls come up with a plan to fight back. To regain some dignity. To turn the tables on the bullies. (Goodreads)

First lines: I knock on my brother’s door. His rap music is so loud, I’m sure he can’t hear me. I pound louder. “Jaffar! Open up!”
The volume goes down. He opens his door a crack and glares at me.
“What?”
I clear my throat. He never lets me forget he’s older than me.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsEvil librarian, Michelle Knudsen

When Cynthia Rothschild’s best friend, Annie, falls head over heels for the new high-school librarian, Cyn can totally see why. He’s really young and super cute and thinks Annie would make an excellent library monitor. But after meeting Mr. Gabriel, Cyn realizes something isn’t quite right. Maybe it’s the creepy look in the librarian’s eyes, or the weird feeling Cyn gets whenever she’s around him. Before long Cyn realizes that Mr. Gabriel is, in fact . . . a demon. Now, in addition to saving the school musical from technical disaster and trying not to make a fool of herself with her own hopeless crush, Cyn has to save her best friend from the clutches of the evil librarian, who also seems to be slowly sucking the life force out of the entire student body!

First lines: Italian class. The shining highlight of my Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Not because I am any good at Italian (I’m not), or because I like the teacher (I don’t.) It’s because Ryan Halsey sits one row over and two rows up from where I sit, which is absolutely perfect for forty-five minutes of semi-shameless staring.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsEden, Joanna Nadin

After her cousin Bea is killed in a house fire, Evie returns to her childhood home of Eden, full of guilt for what might have been. She is not the only one seeking redemption. Bea’s boyfriend, Penn, arrives in Cornwall, desperate to atone for a terrible mistake. And as Penn and Evie’s feelings for each other intensify, Evie slowly unravels the dark truth behind Bea’s tragic death.

First lines: I still dream of Eden. Not the burnt, broken shell it is now, now even the sweating, stifling coffin it became that last summer, when it was shrouded in dust sheets, awaiting burial like a corpse. No, the Eden in my mind if the one from my childhood, when my entire world was contained within it’s cool, granite walls and high hedges, and my imagination played out on its velvet lawns and in the creeping dampness of the woods.

Non fiction

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsBrown girl dreaming, Jaqueline Woodson

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become. (Goodreads)

First lines: I am born on a Tuesday at University Hospital
Columbus, Ohio
USA
a country caught
between Black and White

New Fiction

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsI’ll give you the sun, Jandy Nelson

Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah’s story to tell. The later years are Jude’s. What the twins don’t realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world. (Goodreads)

First lines: This is how is all begins.
With Zephry and Fry – reigning neighbourhood sociopaths- torpedoing after me and the whole forest floor shaking under my feet as I blast through air, tree, this white-hot panic.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsLies my girlfriend told me, Julie Anne Peters

When Alix’s charismatic girlfriend, Swanee, dies from sudden cardiac arrest, Alix is overcome with despair. As she searches Swanee’s room for mementos of their relationship, she finds Swanee’s cell phone, pinging with dozens of texts sent from a mysterious contact, L.T. The most recent text reads: “Please tell me what I did. Please, Swan. Te amo. I love you.”
Shocked and betrayed, Alix learns that Swanee has been leading a double life–secretly dating a girl named Liana the entire time she’s been with Alix. Alix texts Liana from Swanee’s phone, pretending to be Swanee in order to gather information before finally meeting face-to-face to break the news. Brought together by Swanee’s lies, Alix and Liana become closer than they’d thought possible. But Alix is still hiding the truth from Liana. Alix knows what it feels like to be lied to–but will coming clean to Liana mean losing her, too?(Goodreads)

First lines: An earthquake shakes the ground beneath me and I swim to consciousness, grasping for a handhold. Mom’s voice slithers into my dream state.
“Alix? Honey?”

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsUncaged, John Saniford and Michelle Cook

Shay Remby arrives in Hollywood with $58 and a handmade knife, searching for her brother, Odin.
Odin’s a brilliant hacker but a bit of a loose cannon. He and a group of radical animal-rights activists hit a Singular Corp. research lab in Eugene, Oregon. The raid was a disaster, but Odin escaped with a set of highly encrypted flash drives and a post-surgical dog.
When Shay gets a frantic 3 a.m. phone call from Odin—talking about evidence of unspeakable experiments, and a ruthless corporation, and how he must hide—she’s concerned. When she gets a menacing visit from Singular’s security team, she knows: her brother’s a dead man walking. What Singular doesn’t know—yet—is that 16-year-old Shay is every bit as ruthless as their security force, and she will burn Singular to the ground, if that’s what it takes to save her brother.(Goodreads)

First lines: The naked girl stared at herself in the motel mirror, a little sick with what she was about to do. She was slender, with muscles in her arms and shoulders, and red hair that fell to her waist.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsIllusions of fate, Kiersten White

Jessamin has been an outcast since she moved from her island home of Melei to the dreary country of Albion. Everything changes when she meets Finn, a gorgeous, enigmatic young lord who introduces her to the secret world of Albion’s nobility, a world that has everything Jessamin doesn’t—power, money, status…and magic. But Finn has secrets of his own, dangerous secrets that the vicious Lord Downpike will do anything to possess. Unless Jessamin, armed only with her wits and her determination, can stop him.(Goodreads)

First lines: Dear Mama,
I am most certainly not dead. Thank you for your tender concern. I will try to write more often so you don’t have to worry so between letters. (Because a week’s silence surely means I have fallen prey to a wasting illness or been murdered in these boring, grey streets.)

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsMessenger of Fear, Michael Grant

I remembered my name – Mara. But, standing in that ghostly place, faced with the solemn young man in the black coat with silver skulls for buttons, I could recall nothing else about myself.
And then the games began. The Messenger sees the darkness in young hearts, and the damage it inflicts upon the world. If they go unpunished, he offers the wicked a game. Win, and they can go free. Lose, and they will live out their greatest fear. But what does any of this have to do with Mara? She is about to find out…(Goodreads)

First lines: My eyes opened. I was on my back. A mist pressed close, all around me, so close that it was more like a blanket than a fog. The mist was the colour of yellowed teeth and it moved without a breath of breeze, moved as if it had a will.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsMisty Falls, Joss Stirling

Misty is a one-girl disaster zone. Born with a Savant ‘gift’ that means she can never tell a lie, her compulsive truth-telling gets her into trouble wherever she goes.So when she meets Alex: gorgeous, confident, and impossibly charming, Misty instantly resolves to keep her distance . . . Someone so perfect could never be hers, surely? But a dark shadow has fallen across the Savant community. A serial killer is stalking young people who have these special mental powers. Soon one of them will be taken to the edge of death . . . and beyond.(Goodreads)

First lines: “On the Misty scale of disasters, one to ten, where would you put it?” Summer asked me.
I stared miserably at my two best friends as they clustered together on the screen of my laptop. Summer looked sympathetic, Angel amused.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsCity of halves, Lucy Inglis

London. Girls are disappearing. They’ve all got one thing in common; they just don’t know it yet…
Sixteen-year-old Lily was meant to be next, but she’s saved by a stranger: a half-human boy with gold-flecked eyes. Regan is from an unseen world hidden within our own, where legendary creatures hide in plain sight. But now both worlds are under threat, and Lily and Regan must race to find the girls, and save their divided city.(Goodreads)

First lines: “Okay, so what have we got?” Lucy’s Dad paced the kitchen in his shirt and tie, running his fingers through his fading blond hair.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsFalls the shadow, Stefanie Gaither

When Cate Benson was a kid, her sister, Violet, died. Two hours after the funeral, Cate’s family picked up Violet’s replacement. Like nothing had happened. Because Cate’s parents are among those who decided to give their children a sort of immortality—by cloning them at birth—which means this new Violet has the same smile. The same perfect face. Thanks to advancements in mind-uploading technology, she even has all of the same memories as the girl she replaced. She also might have murdered the most popular girl in school.
At least, that’s what the paparazzi and the anti-cloning protestors want everyone to think: that clones are violent, unpredictable monsters. Cate is used to hearing all that. She’s used to defending her sister, too. But Violet has vanished, and when Cate sets out to find her, she ends up in the line of fire instead. Because Cate is getting dangerously close to secrets that will rock the foundation of everything she thought was true.(Goodreads)

First lines: I took some of the flowers from my sister’s funeral, because I thought her replacement might like them as a welcome-to-the-family present. An hour’s drive later, most of the velvety petals had little tears and creases in them, because I couldn’t seem to get my fingers to hold still.

New books

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe Deadly Sky, David Hill

It’s 1974, and a dark, cold New Zealand winter. So when Darryl’s mum announces she is going to the remote Pacific island of Mangareva for work, and she’s taking him with her, he is thrilled. But even as Darryl soaks up the warmth and peaceful beauty of French Polynesia, his holiday is darkened by violent anti-nuclear protests. Plus there’s Alicia, with her furious outbursts against all Pacific nuclear tests. Darryl knows she’s talking rubbish. What he doesn’t know is that when he boards Flight 766 to start flying home, his life and the lives of others will be changed forever. (Publisher’s website.)

First lines: There were about ten ships. No, more than that. Twelve, fifteen, nearly twenty of them. Black silhouettes on the sea, too far away for Darryl to see properly, but he could pick the long guns of the battleship, the high sides and flat decks of aircraft carriers. Others lay around them, completely still, facing in all directions.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsDragon shield, Charlie Fletcher

Something dark has woken in the British Museum, and it has stopped time, literally freezing the city in its tracks. The people are there, but unmoving, unseeing – like statues. The statues, on the other hand, can move, and are astonished at what they see. In the Great Ormond Street Hospital, Will and Jo are suddenly plunged into this world of statues – and find themselves pursued by murderous dragons. With help from a couple of friendly statues, Will and Jo must escape the evil that stalks them in the streets of London. (Goodreads)

First lines: The British Museum sprawls across 22 acres of London, with nearly 100 separate galleries stretching two and a half miles around it. Only a tiny fraction of the 8 million or so objects it contains are ever on display at one time. It’s not juts big; it’s vast, and stuffed with treasures. And secrets.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe Unbound: an Archived novel, Victoria Schwab

Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books. Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive. Last summer, Mackenzie Bishop, a Keeper tasked with stopping violent Histories from escaping the Archive, almost lost her life to one. Now, as she starts her junior year at Hyde School, she’s struggling to get her life back. But moving on isn’t easy — not when her dreams are haunted by what happened. She knows the past is past, knows it cannot hurt her, but it feels so real, and when her nightmares begin to creep into her waking hours, she starts to wonder if she’s really safe. Meanwhile, people are vanishing without a trace, and the only thing they seem to have in common is Mackenzie. She’s sure the Archive knows more than they are letting on, but before she can prove it, she becomes the prime suspect. And unless Mac can track down the real culprit, she’ll lose everything, not only her role as Keeper, but her memories, and even her life. Can Mackenzie untangle the mystery before she herself unravels? (Goodreads)

First lines: My body begs for sleep. I sit on the roof of the Coronado, and it pleads with me, begs me to climb down from my perch on the gargoyle’s broken shoulder, to creep back inside and the down the stairs and through the still-dark apartment into my bed – to sleep.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsSinner, Maggie Stiefvater

Everybody thinks they know Cole’s story. Stardom. Addiction. Downfall. Disappearance. But only a few people know Cole’s darkest secret — his ability to shift into a wolf. One of these people is Isabel. At one point, they may have even loved each other. But that feels like a lifetime ago. Now Cole is back. Back in the spotlight. Back in the danger zone. Back in Isabel’s life. Can this sinner be saved? (Goodreads)

First lines: I am a werewolf in L.A. You asked why I did it. Did what? -The whole thing, Cole. The everything. You mean the last five weeks. You mean me burning down your place of work. Getting kicked out of the only sushi restaurant you liked. Stretching your favourite leggings and then tearing them running away from the cops.
You mean why I came back here.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe crystal heart, Sophie Masson

When 17-year-old army conscript Kasper Bator is chosen to join the elite guard that keeps watch over a dangerous prisoner in a tower, he believes what he’s been told: the prisoner is a powerful witch. But when he meets the prisoner, Kasper’s life will change forever—for the prisoner is no witch, but a beautiful young girl. The daughter of the country’s enemy, the Prince of Night, Izolda has been held hostage since she was three. And she is in imminent danger, for a prophecy says she must die on her 16th birthday if Krainos is to be saved from the Prince of Night. Kasper decides to help her escape. As the days pass, their friendship turns into real love, but their hiding place won’t stay safe forever. (Goodreads)

First lines: There was once a woddcutter’s son who was as brace as lion. His country was in danger and he knew he must answer the call. So one day he saddled his horse and set out along the winding road to…
The world shattered in noisy pieces as I jerked awake, staring right into the furious face of Captain Gawel looming over me.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsJust call my name, Holly Goldberg Sloan

Emily Bell has it all. She’s in love with a boy named Sam Border, and his little brother has become part of her family. This summer is destined to be the best time of their lives–until a charismatic new girl in town sets her sights on Sam. Now Emily finds herself questioning the loyalty of the person she thought she could trust most. But the biggest threat to her happiness is someone she never saw coming. Sam’s criminally insane father, whom everyone thought they’d finally left behind, is planning a jailbreak. And he knows exactly where to find Emily and his sons when he escapes…and takes his revenge. (Goodreads)

First lines: The most life-changing events happen on the most ordinary days. I was normal that his mom wasn’t home. She was the one who worked, so he didn’t see her much during the week. When Sam walked through the front door, his little brother, Riddle, was in the playpen staring off at nothing as h chewed a hole in the yellow mush designed to keep a prisoner.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsOpposition, Jennifer L. Armentrout

Katy knows the world changed the night the Luxen came. She can’t believe Daemon welcomed his race or stood by as his kind threatened to obliterate every last human and hybrid on Earth. But the lines between good and bad have blurred, and love has become an emotion that could destroy her—could destroy them all.
Daemon will do anything to save those he loves, even if it means betrayal.They must team with an unlikely enemy if there is any chance of surviving the invasion. But when it quickly becomes impossible to tell friend from foe, and the world is crumbling around them, they may lose everything— even what they cherish most—to ensure the survival of their friends…and mankind.
War has come to Earth. And no matter the outcome, the future will never be the same for those left standing. (Goodreads)

First lines: Back in the day, I had this plan for the off chance that I was around for the whole end-of-the-world thing. It involved climbing up on my roof and blasting R.E.M’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” as loud as humanly possible, but real life rarely turns out that cool.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsBreaking Point, Kristen Simmons

After faking their deaths to escape from prison, Ember Miller and Chase Jennings have only one goal: to lay low until the Federal Bureau of Reformation forgets they ever existed.
Near-celebrities now for the increasingly sensationalized tales of their struggles with the government, Ember and Chase are recognized and taken in by the Resistance—an underground organization working to systematically take down the government. At headquarters, all eyes are on the sniper, an anonymous assassin taking out FBR soldiers one by one. Rumors are flying about the sniper’s true identity, and Ember and Chase welcome the diversion….Until the government posts its most-wanted list, and their number one suspect is Ember herself. Orders are shoot to kill, and soldiers are cleared to fire on suspicion alone. Suddenly Ember can’t even step onto the street without fear of being recognized, and “laying low” is a joke. Even members of the Resistance are starting to look at her sideways. With Chase urging her to run, Ember must decide: Go into hiding…or fight back? (Goodreads)

First lines: The Wayland Inn was behind the slums, on the west end of Knoxville. It was a place that had festered since the War, buzzing with flies that bred in the clogged sewers, stinking of dirty river water brought in on the afternoon breeze. A place that attracted those who thrived in the shadows. People you had to seek to find.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe healer’s apprentice, Melanie Dickerson

Rose has been appointed as a healer’s apprentice at Hagenheim Castle, a rare opportunity for a woodcutter’s daughter like her. While she often feels uneasy at the sight of blood, Rose is determined to prove herself capable. Failure will mean returning home to marry the aging bachelor her mother has chosen for her—a bloated, disgusting merchant who makes Rose feel ill.
When Lord Hamlin, the future duke, is injured, it is Rose who must tend to him. As she works to heal his wound, she begins to understand emotions she’s never felt before and wonders if he feels the same. But falling in love is forbidden, as Lord Hamlin is betrothed to a mysterious young woman in hiding. As Rose’s life spins toward confusion, she must take the first steps on a journey to discover her own destiny. (Goodreads)

First lines: The townspeople of Hagenheim craned their necks as they peered down the cobblestone street, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Duke of Hagenheim’s two handsome sons. The top-heavy, half-timbered houses hovered above the crowd as if they too were eager to get a peek at Lord Hamlin and Lord Rupert.

Graphic novels:

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsCourtney Crumin #5: The witch next door, Ted Naifeh

Holly Hart is new to Hillsborough and witchcraft. When her family moves in next to Courtney, the two girls quickly become friends. But as Courtney watches Holly making the same mistakes she once made, she begins to have second thoughts about teaching the girl magic. And when Holly sees the aftermath of the other children’s “adventures” with Courtney, her suspicions cause her to make a dangerous decision. (Goodreads)

Non fiction

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsInside the Maze Runner: the guide to the Glade, Veronica Deets

The first book in James Dashner’s New York Times bestselling Maze Runner series is soon to be a major motion picture. Featuring the star of MTV’s Teen Wolf, Dylan O’Brien; Kaya Scodelario; Aml Ameen; Will Poulter; and Thomas Brodie-Sangster, the movie will be in theaters September 19, 2014. The Maze Runner is perfect for fans of The Hunger Games and Divergent.
Explore the Glade and uncover the secrets to the Maze in the ultimate Maze Runner movie companion book. This action-packed volume features more than 100 thrilling full-color photographs, up-close profiles of the Gladers, and details about the Glade, the Maze, and more! A must-have for fans of the Maze Runner series, who’ll want to learn all they can before The Maze Runner movie hits theaters on September, 19, 2014. (Goodreads)

New Fiction

nullThe year of the rat, Clare Furniss (305 pages)
The world can tip at any moment…a fact that fifteen-year-old Pearl is all too aware of when her mom dies after giving birth to her baby sister, Rose. Rose, who looks exactly like a baby rat, all pink, wrinkled, and writhing. This little Rat has destroyed everything, even ruined the wonderful relationship that Pearl had with her stepfather, the Rat’s biological father.Mom, though…Mom’s dead but she can’t seem to leave. She keeps visiting Pearl. Smoking, cursing, guiding. Told across the year following her mother’s death, Pearl’s story is full of bittersweet humor and heartbreaking honesty about how you deal with grief that cuts you to the bone, as she tries not only to come to terms with losing her mother, but also the fact that her sister—The Rat—is a constant reminder of why her mom is no longer around. (Goodreads)

First lines: The traffic light glows red through the rainy windscreen, blurred, clear, blurred again, as the wipers swish to and fro. Below it, in front of us, is the hearse. I try not to look at it.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsTorn away, Jennifer Brown (276 pages) Born and raised in the Midwest, Jersey Cameron knows all about tornadoes. Or so she thinks. When her town is devastated by a twister, Jersey survives — but loses her mother, her young sister, and her home. As she struggles to overcome her grief, she’s sent to live with her only surviving relatives: first her biological father, then her estranged grandparents. In an unfamiliar place, Jersey faces a reality she’s never considered before — one in which her mother wasn’t perfect, and neither were her grandparents, but they all loved her just the same. Together, they create a new definition of family. And that’s something no tornado can touch. (Goodreads)

First lines: Marin wanted to teach me the East Coast Swing. It was pretty much her only goal in life. She was constantly pulling on my arms or standing in front of the TV, her hands on her square little hips, sparkle nail polish glinting and ratty rose-colored tutu quivering.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsAfter the end, Amy Plum (322 pages)World War III has left the world ravaged by nuclear radiation. A lucky few escaped to the Alaskan wilderness. They’ve survived for the last thirty years by living off the land, being one with nature, and hiding from whoever else might still be out there. At least, this is what Juneau has been told her entire life.
When Juneau returns from a hunting trip to discover that everyone in her clan has vanished, she sets off to find them. Leaving the boundaries of their land for the very first time, she learns something horrifying: There never was a war. Cities were never destroyed. The world is intact. Everything was a lie. Now Juneau is adrift in a modern-day world she never knew existed. But while she’s trying to find a way to rescue her friends and family, someone else is looking for her. Someone who knows the extraordinary truth about the secrets of her past. (Goodreads)

First lines: I crouch low to the ground, pressing my back to the ancient spruce tree, and raise my crossbow in one hand. Keeping my eye on the precious shard of mirror embedded in my weapon, I inch it out from behind the tree. In the reflection, I spot something moving behind a cedar across the snowy clearing.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsTake me on, Katie McGarry (455 pages)Champion kickboxer Haley swore she’d never set foot in the ring again after one tragic night. But then the guy she can’t stop thinking about accepts a mixed martial arts fight in her honor. Suddenly, Haley has to train West Young. All attitude, West is everything Haley promised herself she’d stay away from. Yet he won’t last five seconds in the ring without her help. West is keeping a big secret from Haley. About who he really is. But helping her-fighting for her-is a shot at redemption. Especially since it’s his fault his family is falling apart. He can’t change the past, but maybe he can change Haley’s future. Hayley and West have agreed to keep their relationship strictly in the ring. But as an unexpected bond forms between them and attraction mocks their best intentions, they’ll face their darkest fears and discover love is worth fighting for. (Goodreads)

First lines: A door squeaks open at the far end of the barren hallway and the clicking of high heels echoes off the row of mteal post-office boxes. I attempt to appear causual as I flip through the mail. All of it leftovers from our previous life: my brother’s mixed martial arts magazine, an American Girl doll catalog for my sister, another seed and gardening catalog for my mother. Collection notices for my father.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsDangerous creatures, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (327 pages)Ridley Duchannes will be the first to tell you that she’s a bad girl. She’s Dark. She’s a Siren. You can never trust her, or even yourself when she’s around. Lucky for her, Wesley “Link” Lincoln can never seem to remember that; quarter Incubus or not, his heart is Mortal when it comes to Ridley. When Link heads to New York City to start a music career, Ridley goes along for the ride-and she has her own reasons. As if leaving small-town Gatlin for the big city, trying to form a band, and surviving life with a partially reformed Siren isn’t hard enough already, Link soon learns he has a price on his head that no Caster or Mortal can ever pay. (Goodreads)

First lines: There are only two kinds of Mortals in the backwater town of Gatlin, South Carolina-the stupid and the stuck. At least, that’s what they sat. As if there are any kinds of Mortals anywhere else. Please. Luckily, there’s only one kind of Siren no matter where you go in this world or the Otherworld.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsMoon at Nine, Deborah Ellis (214 pages)Fifteen-year-old Farrin has many secrets. Although she goes to a school for gifted girls in Tehran, as the daughter of an aristocratic mother and wealthy father, Farrin must keep a low profile. It is 1988; ever since the Shah was overthrown, the deeply conservative and religious government controls every facet of life in Iran. If the Revolutionary Guard finds out about her mother’s Bring Back the Shah activities, her family could be thrown in jail, or worse.
The day she meets Sadira, Farrin’s life changes forever. Sadira is funny, wise, and outgoing; the two girls become inseparable. But as their friendship deepens into romance, the relationship takes a dangerous turn. It is against the law to be gay in Iran; the punishment is death. Despite their efforts to keep their love secret, the girls are discovered and arrested. Separated from Sadira, Farrin can only pray as she awaits execution. Will her family find a way to save them both? (Goodreads)

First lines: Ancient demons roam an ancient land. They dwell in the valleys of lurk in the mountains. They hide among the grains of sand and sleep beside the scorpions. They watch the humans go on about their insignificant business 0 shopping in the markets, heeding the call to prayer, taking care of their children. The humans are busy. The demons go unnoticed.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe other side of nowhere, Steve Johnson (209 pages)When Johnno and his friends survive the freak storm that rips apart their yacht, they’re just glad to be alive. That is, until reality hits: they’ve washed up on an uninhabited island with few supplies, no phone and no way to get home. The situation becomes even more desperate when the four teenagers discover they are not alone on the island. There’s a hideout where men with guns are covering up a dark secret that they will protect at any cost. With nowhere to run, Johnno and his friends are forced into a dangerous game with the criminals as they fight to save one of their own. (Goodreads)

First lines: “Matty?” I puffed. “You still alive back there?” I could see him out of the corner of my eye, his head down and tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth. “Course I am,” he wheezed back, “Doing better than you.”

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe Minnow, Diana Sweeny (263 pages)Tom survived a devastating flood that claimed the lives of her sister and parents. Now she lives with Bill in his old shed by the lake. But it’s time to move out—Tom is pregnant with Bill’s baby. Jonah lets her move in with him. Mrs Peck gives her the Fishmaster Super Series tackle box. Nana is full of gentle good advice and useful sayings. And in her longing for what is lost, Tom talks to fish: Oscar the carp in the pet shop, little Sarah catfish who might be her sister, an unhelpful turtle in a tank at the maternity ward. And the minnow. (Goodreads)

First lines: “I think Bill is in love with Mrs. Peck,” I confide to an undersized blue swimmer crab that has become all tangled up in my line. The little crab doesn’t appear to be the slightest bit interested, so I finish pulling it free and toss it over the side of Bill’s dinghy.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsZero Hour, Will Hill (700 pages)When Jamie Carpenter’s mother is kidnapped by strange creatures, he finds himself dragged into Department 19, the government’s most secret agency.
Fortunately for Jamie, Department 19 can provide the tools he needs to find his mother, and to kill the vampires who want him dead. But unfortunately for everyone, something much older is stirring, something even Department 19 can’t stand up against…(Goodreads)

First lines: Eight black-clad Operators made their way silently over the lip of the canyon, spacing themselves evenly out along the length of the ridge. They bristled with weaponry, although not the kind they were used to carrying; they wore no stakes on their belts, no ultraviolet grenades or beam guns, no T-Bones.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsShadows, Paula Weston (387 pages)It’s almost a year since Gaby Winters was in the car crash that killed her twin brother, Jude. Her body has healed in the sunshine of Pandanus Beach, but her grief is raw and constant. It doesn’t help that every night in her dreams she kills demons and other hell-spawn.
And then Rafa comes to town. Not only does he look exactly like the guy who’s been appearing in Gaby’s dreams—he claims a history with her brother that makes no sense. Gaby is forced to accept that what she thought she knew about herself and her life is only a shadow of the truth—and that the truth is more likely to be found in the shadows of her nightmares. Who is Rafa? Who are the Rephaim? And most importantly, who can she trust?(Goodreads)

First lines: I’m running along the boardwalk, wind and sand stinging my arms. It’s after work and I have the track to myself. A handful of surfers are battling the choppy waves, and the Williamsons are walking on the beach like they do every morning in their matching sports gear and orthopedic shoes. Their silver heads are bowed against the wind, but they’re still holding hands. It makes me feel emptier than usual.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsMy brother’s keeper, Tom and Tony Bradman (106 pages) Alfie signs up for the army aged just 15, carried away by patriotic fervour at the start of the Great War. But life in the trenches is very far from his dreams of glory. It’s hard, and cold, and it’s boring. Alfie is desperate to see some action. But when he volunteers for a raid on the German trenches, against the advice of his comrades, Alfie begins to understand what war means, and to see the value of the lives that are being thrown away on the Western Front every day…(Goodreads)

First lines: Alfie Barnes peered into the darkness shrouding no-man’s land and wished he were taller. Like the rest of the men in his section he was in position on the trench’s fire-step, but he could only just get his head up to the level of the sandbagged parapet.

New books

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsDead Silent, Sharon Jones (329 pages) When Poppy Sinclair and her boyfriend visit snowy Cambridge, she doesn’t expect to discover the body of a student – arms outstretched in the act of smearing bloody angel wings on the chapel’s floor. Suddenly, Poppy is faced with the possibility that the one closest to her heart might be the one committing the most malicious of crimes. Dodging porters and police, dreading what she might find, Poppy follows the clues left by a murderer bent on revenge… (Goodreads)

First lines: It had to be here. The soles of his shoes squeaked from marble to wood and he ran between the choir stalls, swinging the torch beam like a whip that could beat back the night. How could he have been so stupid as to lose the book? If he didn’t find it he was dead.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsDorothy must die, Danielle Page (452 pages) I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask to be some kind of hero.But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado—taking you with it—you have no choice but to go along, you know? Sure, I’ve read the books. I’ve seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little blue birds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can’t be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There’s still the yellow brick road, though—but even that’s crumbling.What happened?
Dorothy. They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.(Goodreads)

First lines: I first discovered I was trash three days before my ninth birthday – one year after my father lost his job and moved to Secaucus to live with a woman named Crystal and four years before my mother had the car accident, started talking pills, and began exclusively wearing bedroom slippers instead of normal shoes.

Book cover courtesy of syndeticsNoggin, John Corey Whaley (338 pages)Listen — Travis Coates was alive once and then he wasn’t. Now he’s alive again. Simple as that. The in between part is still a little fuzzy, but he can tell you that, at some point or another, his head got chopped off and shoved into a freezer in Denver, Colorado. Five years later, it was reattached to some other guy’s body, and well, here he is. Despite all logic, he’s still 16 and everything and everyone around him has changed. That includes his bedroom, his parents, his best friend, and his girlfriend. Or maybe she’s not his girlfriend anymore? That’s a bit fuzzy too. Looks like if the new Travis and the old Travis are ever going to find a way to exist together, then there are going to be a few more scars. Oh well, you only live twice.(Goodreads)

First lines: Listen – I was alive once and then I wasn’t. Simple as that. Now I’m alive again. The in-between part is still a luittle fuzzy, but I can tell you that, at some point or another, my head got chopped off and shoved into a freezer in Denver, Colorado.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsInsanity, Susan Vaught (368 pages) Never, Kentucky is not your average scenic small town. It is a crossways, a place where the dead and the living can find no peace. Not that Forest, an 18-year-old foster kid who works the graveyard shift at Lincoln Hospital, knew this when she applied for the job. Lincoln is a huge state mental institution, a good place for Forest to make some money to pay for college. But along with hundreds of very unstable patients, it also has underground tunnels, bell towers that ring unexpectedly, and a closet that holds more than just donated clothing….When the dead husband of one of Forest’s patients makes an appearance late one night, seemingly accompanied by an agent of the Devil, Forest loses all sense of reality and all sense of time. Terrified, she knows she has a part to play, and when she does so, she finds a heritage that she never expected.(Goodreads)

First lines: There was something wrong with the dog. I saw it when I left the store, nothing but a little thing. I would have stopped to give it some love, but I had to get back before Imogene started to worry. Don’t go out tonight, boy. Death’s walking on two legs.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsSorry you’re lost, Matt Blackstone (312 pages)When Denny “Donuts” Murphy’s mother dies, he becomes the world’s biggest class clown. But deep down, Donuts just wants a normal life—one where his mom is still alive and where his dad doesn’t sit in front of the TV all day. And so Donuts tries to get back into the groove by helping his best friend with their plan to get dates for the end-of-the-year school dance. When their scheme backfires, he learns that laughter is not the best medicine for all of his problems. Sometimes it’s just as important to be true to yourself.(Goodreads)

First lines: There’s a gum wrapped at my feet. Juicy Fruit. I wish I new who dropped it so I could tell him not to litter at my mom’s funeral. The room is musty and smells of lemon. My starchy shirt and stiff suit are drenched in sweat. The priest tells me it’s time. Not for telling people to pick up their gum wrappers, but time for the service.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsNever come back, David Bell (411 pages)Elizabeth Hampton is consumed by grief when her mother dies unexpectedly. Leslie Hampton cared for Elizabeth’s troubled brother Ronnie’s special needs, assuming Elizabeth would take him in when the time came. But Leslie’s sudden death propels Elizabeth into a world of danger and double lives that undoes everything she thought she knew….
When police discover that Leslie was strangled, they immediately suspect that one of Ronnie’s outbursts took a tragic turn. Elizabeth can’t believe that her brother is capable of murder, but who else could have had a motive to kill their quiet, retired mother? More questions arise when a stranger is named in Leslie’s will: a woman also named Elizabeth. As the family’s secrets unravel, a man from Leslie’s past who claims to have all the answers shows up, but those answers might put Elizabeth and those she loves the most in mortal danger.(Goodreads)

First lines: I saw people in uniform first- two cops, two paramedics. They were standing in the living room of my mom’s small house, their thumbs hooked into their belts, muttering to one another. Small talk and jokes. One of them, a cop about my age, laughed at something, then looked up and saw me in the doorway.
“Ma’am?” he said. A question. It meant: Do you have any business here?

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsAngel de la Luna and the 5th glorious mystery, M. Evelina Galang (331 pages) Angel has just lost her father, and her mother’s grief means she might as well be gone too. She’s got a sister and a grandmother to look out for, and a burgeoning consciousness of the unfairness in the world—in her family, her community, and her country. Set against the backdrop of the second Philippine People Power Revolution in 2001, the contemporary struggles of surviving Filipina “Comfort Women” of WWII, and a cold winter’s season in the city of Chicago is the story of a daughter coming of age, coming to forgiveness, and learning to move past the chaos of grief to survive.(Goodreads)

First lines: The day my Father, Ernesto de la Luna, disappeared he gave me one thousand pesos. “I’ll be home in three days,” Papang said, counting the money. “but just in case. Take care of your inay, Angel.” It’s been two weeks. My mother is out of her mind.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe Great American Dust Bowl, Don Brown, (80 pages)A speck of dust is a tiny thing. In fact, five of them could fit into the period at the end of this sentence. On a clear, warm Sunday, April 14, 1935, a wild wind whipped up millions upon millions of these specks of dust to form a duster—a savage storm—on America’s high southern plains. The sky turned black, sand-filled winds scoured the paint off houses and cars, trains derailed, and electricity coursed through the air. Sand and dirt fell like snow—people got lost in the gloom and suffocated . . . and that was just the beginning. Don Brown brings the Dirty Thirties to life with kinetic, highly saturated, and lively artwork in this graphic novel of one of America’s most catastrophic natural events: the Dust Bowl.(Goodreads)

First lines: A speck of dust is a tiny thing. Five of them could fit on the period at the end of this sentence. On a clear, warm Sunday, 1935, a wild wind whipped up billions upon billions of specks of dust to form a savage storn on Amerinca’s plains. Panicked birds and rabbits fled. The temperature plummeted fifty degrees. Electricity coursed through the air. frightened pople raced to the nearest shelter. But the story of the Black Sunday monster started much, much earlier…

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe Grey Girl, Eleanor Hawken (262 pages) Poor Suzy thought she’d never get over the terrifying events from her time at St Marks, but she’s resolved to put all thoughts of ghosts and murders (and school…) behind her as she sets off to stay in her aunt’s country estate for the summer. Unfortunately, that quickly looks unlikely. Almost as soon as she arrives Suzy begins to feel watched, and she starts to see strange things. Things like a mysterious grey girl running towards the abandoned boathouse in the dead of the night. Is the girl real – or something altogether more sinister?
Helped by the rather hunky Nate (not that Suzy’s letting herself get distracted, of course) Suzy sets out to discover exactly what happened to this girl. She’s determined not to let another ghost get the better of her, but she might not have any choice in the matter…(Goodreads)

First lines: I saw a ghost today. A grey girl. She was standing at the window of the top-floor dormitory, looking down at the world below. I’ve never seen the girl before and today was the start of my forth year at Dudley Hall.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsWhere the rock splits the sky, Philip Webb (266 pages)The moon has been split, and the Visitors have Earth in their alien grip. But the captive planet? That’s not her problem. Megan just wants to track down her missing dad…The world stopped turning long before Megan was born. Ever since the Visitors split the moon and stilled the Earth, permanent sunset is all anyone has known. But now, riding her trusty steed Cisco, joined by her posse, Kelly and Luis, Megan is on the run from her Texas hometown, journeying across the vast, dystopic American West to hunt down her father. To find him, she must face the Zone, a notorious landscape where the laws of nature do not apply. The desert can play deadly tricks on the mind, and the quest will push Megan past her limits. But to solve the mystery of not just her missing father but of the paralyzed planet itself, she must survive it–and an alien showdown.(Goodreads)

First lines: Leaning against the doorpost of the smithy, I pretend it is a normal day. For the thousandth time in the last hour, I wonder whether I should say goodbye to Luis or just slip away. The boardwalk outside is as bright as the forge -it always is0under the light of a sun that sits on the horizon and refuses to set.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsSea of Shadows : Age of legends book 1 , Kelley Armstrong, (406 pages)n the Forest of the Dead, where the empire’s worst criminals are exiled, twin sisters Moria and Ashyn are charged with a dangerous task. For they are the Keeper and the Seeker, and each year they must quiet the enraged souls of the damned. Only this year, the souls will not be quieted. Ambushed and separated by an ancient evil, the sisters’ journey to find each other sends them far from the only home they’ve ever known. Accompanied by a stubborn imperial guard and a dashing condemned thief, the girls cross a once-empty wasteland, now filled with reawakened monsters of legend, as they travel to warn the emperor. But a terrible secret awaits them at court—one that will alter the balance of their world forever.(Goodreads)

First lines: After three days of tramping across endless lava fields, Ronan quickened his steps at the sight of the forest. He swore he could soft earth under his feet, hear birds in the treetops, even smell icy spring water. If one had to pick a place to die, he supposed he could do worse.

New books

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsSwagger, Carl Deuker (297 pages)When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as readers start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach. (Goodreads)

First lines: All this started about a year and a half ago. Back then I was a junior at Redwood High in Redwood City, a suburn twnty-five miles south of San Francisco. In those days, before Hartwell, before Levi, I took things as they came, without thinking a whole lot about them. Maybe that’s because most of the things that came my way were good.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsAnything to have you, Paige Harbison (303 pages)Natalie and Brooke have had each other’s backs forever. Natalie is the quiet one, college bound and happy to stay home and watch old movies. Brooke is the movie—the life of every party, the girl everyone wants to be.Then it happens—one crazy night that Natalie can’t remember and Brooke’s boyfriend, Aiden, can’t forget. Suddenly there’s a question mark in Natalie and Brooke’s friendship that tests everything they thought they knew about each other and has both girls discovering what true friendship really means.(Goodreads)

First lines: I heard her before I saw her. Music blasted from inside her car despite the fact that she was in a quiet neighborhood. I climbed in, and she turned down the volume.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe Osiris Curse, Paul Crilley (286 pages) When Nikola Tesla is murdered and blueprints for his super weapons are stolen, Tweed and Nightingale are drawn into a global cat and mouse chase with his killers. What’s more, it seems that the people who shot Nikola Tesla are the same people responsible for Octavia’s mother’s disappearance. As the two cases intertwine, Tweed and Nightingale’s investigations lead them to a murdered archeologist and a secret society called The Hermetic Order of Set. Fleeing the cult’s wrath, they go undercover on the luxury airship, The Albion, setting out on her maiden voyage to Tutankhamen’s View, a five star hotel built in the hollowed-out and refurbished Great Pyramid of Giza.In Egypt, the duo begin to unravel the terrible truth behind Tesla’s death, a secret so earth-shattering that if revealed it would mean rewriting the entire history of the world. But if the cult’s plans aren’t stopped, Britain may lose the future.(Goodreads)

First lines:Death stalks the streets of London. The winter wind, sensing its presence and feeling some distant, ancient kinship, soars above the frozen city, tossing snowflakes though the oil-black sky as it searches for its location.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsHalf Bad, Sally Green (394 pages)Half Bad by Sally Green is a breathtaking debut novel about one boy’s struggle for survival in a hidden society of witches.You can’t read, can’t write, but you heal fast, even for a witch. You get sick if you stay indoors after dark. You hate White Witches but love Annalise, who is one. You’ve been kept in a cage since you were fourteen. All you’ve got to do is escape and find Mercury, the Black Witch who eats boys. And do that before your seventeenth birthday.(Goodreads)

First lines: There’s these two kids, boys, sitting close together, squished by the arms of an old chair. You’re the one on the left. The other boy’s warm to lean close to, and he moves his gaze from the telly to you sort of in slow motion.
“You enjoying it?” he asks.

Backward glass, David Lomax (315 pages) Crack your head, knock you dead, then Prince Harming’s hunger’s fed. It’s 1977, and Kenny Maxwell is dreading the move away from his friends. But then, behind the walls of his family’s new falling-apart Victorian home, he finds something incredible–a mummified baby and a note: “Help me make it not happen, Kenny. Help me stop him.” Shortly afterwards, a beautiful girl named Luka shows up. She introduces Kenny to the backward glass, a mirror that allows them to travel through time. Meeting other “mirror kids” in the past and future is exciting, but there’s also danger. The urban legend of Prince Harming, who kidnaps and kills children, is true–and he’s hunting them. When Kenny gets stranded in the past, he must find the courage to answer a call for help, change the fate of a baby–and confront his own destiny.(Goodreads)

First lines: Here’s what you need to know: You’re my son and you’re something like negative twenty-two, because that’s how long it will be before you’re born. I have a story to tell you. Most of it happened right here in Scarborough, forty, fifty, even sixty years ago, but it happened to me. Last year. 1977. The year I turned fifteen.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsWhere the stars still shine, Trish Doller ( 336 pages)Stolen as a child from her large and loving family, and on the run with her mom for more than ten years, Callie has only the barest idea of what normal life might be like. She’s never had a home, never gone to school, and has gotten most of her meals from laundromat vending machines. Her dreams are haunted by memories she’d like to forget completely. But when Callie’s mom is finally arrested for kidnapping her, and Callie’s real dad whisks her back to what would have been her life, in a small town in Florida, Callie must find a way to leave the past behind. She must learn to be part of a family. And she must believe that love–even with someone who seems an improbable choice–is more than just a possibility.(Goodreads)

First lines: Yellow light slashes the darkness as Mom sneaks into the apartment again. The muffled creak of the floorboards beneath the shabby carpet gives her away, along with the stale-beer-and-cigarette smell that always follows her home from the Old Dutch.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsMermaid in Chelsea Creek, Michelle Tea (331 pages)Everyone in the broken-down town of Chelsea, Massachussetts, has a story too worn to repeat—from the girls who play the pass-out game just to feel like they’re somewhere else, to the packs of aimless teenage boys, to the old women from far away who left everything behind. But there’s one story they all still tell: the oldest and saddest but most hopeful story, the one about the girl who will be able to take their twisted world and straighten it out. The girl who will bring the magic.Could Sophie Swankowski be that girl? With her tangled hair and grubby clothes, her weird habits and her visions of a filthy, swearing mermaid who comes to her when she’s unconscious, Sophie could be the one to uncover the power flowing beneath Chelsea’s potholed streets and sludge-filled rivers, and the one to fight the evil that flows there, too. Sophie might discover her destiny, and maybe even in time to save them all.(Goodreads)

First lines: Chelsea was a city where people landed. People from other counrties, people running from wars and poverty, stealing away on boats that cut through the ocean into a whole new world, or on plabes, relief shaking their bodies and they rattled into the sky.

Boom cover courtesy of SyndeticsI lived on Butterfly Hill, Marjorie Agosin (454 pages)Celeste Marconi is a dreamer. She lives peacefully among friends and neighbors and family in the idyllic town of Valparaiso, Chile;until the time comes when even Celeste, with her head in the clouds, can’t deny the political unrest that is sweeping through the country. Warships are spotted in the harbor and schoolmates disappear from class without a word. Celeste doesn’t quite know what is happening, but one thing is clear: no one is safe, not anymore.The country has been taken over by a government that declares artists, protestors, and anyone who helps the needy to be considered subversive; and dangerous to Chile’s future. So Celeste’s parents, her educated, generous, kind parentsmust go into hiding before they, too, must disappear. To protect their daughter, they send her to America.As Celeste adapts to her new life in Maine, she never stops dreaming of Chile. But even after democracy is restored to her home country, questions remain: Will her parents reemerge from hiding? Will she ever be truly safe again? (Goodreads)

First lines: The blue cloud finally opens-just when the bell rings to let the Juana Ross School out for the weekend. I’d been wtaching the sky from the classroom windows all day, wondering just when the rain would pour down.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe mirk and midnight hour, Jane Nickerson (371 pages)A Southern girl. A wounded soldier. A chilling force deep in the forest. All collide at night’s darkest hour. Seventeen-year-old Violet Dancey has been left at home in Mississippi with a laudanum-addicted stepmother and love-crazed stepsister while her father fights in the war—a war that has already claimed her twin brother. When she comes across a severely injured Union soldier lying in an abandoned lodge deep in the woods, things begin to change. Thomas is the enemy—one of the men who might have killed her own brother—and yet she’s drawn to him. But Violet isn’t Thomas’s only visitor; someone has been tending to his wounds—keeping him alive—and it becomes chillingly clear that this care hasn’t been out of compassion. Against the dangers of war and ominous powers of voodoo, Violet must fight to protect her home and the people she loves.(Goodreads)

First lines: he was already dead. Maybe. He had been greviously wounded-he had expected to die anyway-but they did something to him that sucked out the rest of his feeble life and will, except for the tony spark of spul that hunkered mutely deep inside.

New books

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsNamesake, Sue MacLeod (225 pages)It started with a history project. Mr. Gregor assigned a research paper on a figure from the Tudor era, and of course Jane Grey had to pick her namesake—Lady Jane Grey, the fifteen-year-old girl whose parents schemed to place her on the throne of England, then abandoned her to face the executioner. The project is engrossing from the start, but when Jane opens a mysterious prayer book and finds herself in the Tower of London in 1553, she ends up literally drawn into her namesake’s story. Soon, Jane is slipping into the past whenever the present becomes too unbearable, avoiding her mother’s demands, her best friend’s fickleness, her crush’s indifference. In the Tower she plays chess with the imprisoned Lady Jane, awed by her new friend’s strength and courage. And it is in the Tower, keeping vigil as the day of the execution draws near, that Jane learns that she, too, must have the courage to fight for her own happiness. (Goodreads)

First lines: She’s living in one of the houses we looked at from the hill. That’s where I see her in a dream sometimes-with a laptop, a phone, all the usual stuff. In another dream I see her at a part-time job. A coffee shop downtown. She’s pouring something for a customer when she glances up and sees her boyfriend. That’s why this dream’s the best.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsNo surrender soldier, Christine Kohler (198 pages)Growing up on Guam in 1972, fifteen-year-old Kiko is beset by worries: He’s never kissed a girl, and he thinks it’s possible he never will. The popular guys get all the attention, but the worst part is that Kiko has serious problems at home. His older brother is missing in Vietnam; his grandfather is losing it to dementia; he just learned that his mother was raped in World War II by a Japanese soldier. It all comes together when he discovers an old man, a Japanese soldier, hiding in the jungle behind his house. It’s not the same man who raped his mother, but, in his rage, Kiko cares only about protecting his family and avenging his mom – no matter what it takes. And so, a shy, peaceable boy begins to plan a murder. But how far will Kiko go to prove to himself that he’s a man ? (Goodreads)

First lines: Planes swarmed over Guam in droves. For a moment Lance Corporal Isamu Seto though he was home in Japan. He was washing his face in the Talofofo River when he heared the buzzing sounds. He looked up into the overcast sky and thought locusts were coming to destory the crops in his village of Saori. He blinked and shook his head. Aiee, angry locusts turn into bombers. Amerikans must be attacking.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsKiller of enemies, Joseph Bruchac (358 pages)Years ago, seventeen-year-old Apache hunter Lozen and her family lived in a world of haves and have-nots. There were the Ones-people so augmented with technology and genetic enhancements that they were barely human-and there was everyone else who served them. Then the Cloud came, and everything changed. Tech stopped working. The world plunged back into a new steam age. The Ones’ pets-genetically engineered monsters-turned on them and are now loose on the world.Lozen was not one of the lucky ones pre-C, but fate has given her a unique set of survival skills and magical abilities. She hunts monsters for the Ones who survived the apocalyptic events of the Cloud, which ensures the safety of her kidnapped family. But with every monster she takes down, Lozen’s powers grow, and she connects those powers to an ancient legend of her people. It soon becomes clear to Lozen that she is not just a hired gun. As the legendary Killer of Enemies was in the ancient days of the Apache people, Lozen is meant to be a more than a hunter. Lozen is meant to be a hero. (Goodreads)

First lines: I’m five miles away from the walls of my prison, up in the hight country abow the Sonoran Desert. This far, surprisingly, nothing has yet attempted to maim or devour me since I settled here half an hour agao. Despite he nearby prescence that I sense of those “little problems” that I deal with out here in the wiles, I have met nothing to worry about…yet.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsPanic, Lauren Oliver (408 pages)Panic began as so many things do in Carp, a dead-end town of 12,000 people in the middle of nowhere: because it was summer, and there was nothing else to do.Heather never thought she would compete in Panic, a legendary game played by graduating seniors, where the stakes are high and the payoff is even higher. She’d never thought of herself as fearless, the kind of person who would fight to stand out. But when she finds something, and someone, to fight for, she will discover that she is braver than she ever thought.Dodge has never been afraid of Panic. His secret will fuel him, and get him all the way through the game, he’s sure of it. But what he doesn’t know is that he’s not the only one with a secret. Everyone has something to play for.For Heather and Dodge, the game will bring new alliances, unexpected revelations, and the possibility of first love for each of them—and the knowledge that sometimes the very things we fear are those we need the most.(Goodreads)

First lines: The water was so cold it took Heather’s breath away as she fought past the kids crowding the beach and standing in the shallows, waving towels and homemade signs, cheering and calling up to the remaining jumpers. She took a deep breath and went under. The sound of voices, of shouting and laugher, was immeadiately muted. Only one voice stayed with her. I didn’t mean for it to happen.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsNo one else can have you, Kathleen Hale (380 pages)Small towns are nothing if not friendly. Friendship, Wisconsin (population: 689 , no, 688) is no different. Around here, everyone wears a smile. And no one ever locks their doors. Until, that is, high school sweetheart Ruth Fried is found murdered. Strung up like a scarecrow in the middle of a cornfield.Unfortunately, Friendship’s police are more adept at looking for lost pets than catching killers. So Ruth’s best friend, Kippy Bushman, armed with only her tenacious Midwestern spirit and Ruth’s secret diary (which Ruth’s mother had asked her to read in order to redact any, you know, sex parts), sets out to find the murderer. But in a quiet town like Friendship—where no one is a suspect—anyone could be the killer. (Goodreads)

First lines: A police officer comforts a woman on the shoulder of a rural highway. Behind them is a cornfield,. The corn is shoulde high, not yet ready to be harvested. The officer has on a Green Bay Packers hat, and the woman is wearing a sweatshirt decorated in teddy bear appliques. She is clutching a cellphone and crying hysterically. She and her husband own the cornfield. She’s just found something terrible in there.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsBoy on the edge, Fridrik Erlings ( 219 pages)Henry has a clubfoot and he is the target of relentless bullying. One day, in a violent fit of anger, Henry lashes out at the only family he has — his mother. Sent to live with other troubled boys at the Home of Lesser Brethren, an isolated farm perched in the craggy lava fields along the unforgiving Icelandic coast, Henry finds a precarious contentment among the cows. But it is the people, including the manic preacher who runs the home, who fuel Henry’s frustration and sometimes rage as he yearns for a life and a home. (Goodreads)

First lines: Once again, a book open in front of him, a sea of letters floating before his eyes, the sweat forming on his brow, the pain in his stomach like he’s being punched from the inside. And the whole class around him, holding their breath, waiting for him to read out loud, waiting for him to read out loud, waiting to burst out laughing.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsPawn, Aimee Carter (343 pages)For Kitty Doe, it seems like an easy choice. She can either spend her life as a III in misery, looked down upon by the higher ranks and forced to leave the people she loves, or she can become a VII and join the most powerful family in the country. If she says yes, Kitty will be Masked—surgically transformed into Lila Hart, the Prime Minister’s niece, who died under mysterious circumstances. As a member of the Hart family, she will be famous. She will be adored. And for the first time, she will matter. There’s only one catch. She must also stop the rebellion that Lila secretly fostered, the same one that got her killed …and one Kitty believes in. Faced with threats, conspiracies and a life that’s not her own, she must decide which path to choose—and learn how to become more than a pawn in a twisted game she’s only beginning to understand. (Goodreads)

First lines: Risking my life to steal an orange was a stupid thing to do, but today of all days, I didn’t care about the consequences. If I were lucky, the Shields would throw me to the ground and put a bullet in my brain. Sead at seventeen. It would be a relief.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsGilded, Christina Farley (339 pages) Sixteen-year-old Jae Hwa Lee is a Korean-American girl with a black belt, a deadly proclivity with steel-tipped arrows, and a chip on her shoulder the size of Korea itself. When her widowed dad uproots her to Seoul from her home in L.A., Jae thinks her biggest challenges will be fitting in to a new school and dealing with her dismissive Korean grandfather. Then she discovers that a Korean demi-god, Haemosu, has been stealing the soul of the oldest daughter of each generation in her family for centuries. And she’s next.But that’s not Jae’s only problem.
There’s also Marc. Irresistible and charming, Marc threatens to break the barriers around Jae’s heart. As the two grow closer, Jae must decide if she can trust him. But Marc has a secret of his own—one that could help Jae overturn the curse on her family for good. It turns out that Jae’s been wrong about a lot of things: her grandfather is her greatest ally, even the tough girl can fall in love, and Korea might just be the home she’s always been looking for. (Goodreads)

First lines: Stillness fills the empty stage as I press the horn bow to my body and notch and arrow. I pull back the string. The power of it courses through me, a sizzling dire in my veins. I squint just enough so the mark crystallises while everything around it blurs.

Image courtesy of SyndeticsWho I’m not, Ted Satunton (186 pages) Danny has survived everything life has thrown at him: being abandoned at birth, multiple abusive foster homes, life as a con man in training. But when his latest “protector” dies suddenly, Danny has to think fast or he’ll be back in foster care again. He decides to assume the identity of a boy who disappeared three years before. If nothing else, he figures it will buy him a little time. Much to his astonishment, his new “family” accepts him as their own–despite the fact that he looks nothing like their missing relative. But one old cop has his suspicions about Danny–and he’s not about to declare the case close(Goodreads)

First lines: It’s easier to tell you who I’m not. I’m not Kerry Ludwig or Sean Callahan. I’m not David Alvierez or Peter McLeod or Frank Rolfe. I’ve kind of wished I was David Alvierez. I don’t look Latino or anything, but it sounds exotic. Anyway, I’ve been all those guys, but none of them was me.

New Non-fiction

Book cover courtesy of SyneticsThe Nazi hunters: how a team of spies and survivors captured the world’s most notorious Nazi, Neil Bascomb, (215 pages)A thrilling spy mission, a moving Holocaust story, and a first-class work of narrative nonfiction. In 1945, at the end of World War II, Adolf Eichmann, the head of operations for the Nazis’ Final Solution, walked into the mountains of Germany and vanished from view. Sixteen years later, an elite team of spies captured him at a bus stop in Argentina and smuggled him to Israel, resulting in one of the century’s most important trials — one that cemented the Holocaust in the public imagination. (Goodreads)

First lines: A remote stretch of unlit road on a windy night. Two cars appear out of the darkness. One of them, a Chevrolet, slows to a halt. and its headlights blink off. The Buick drives some distance farther, then turns onto Garibaldi Street, where it too stops and its lights turn off.

New books – Realistic fiction

Book cover coutresy of SyndeticsMy Basmati Bat Mitzvah , (236 pages ) Paula J. Freedman During the fall leading up to her bat mitzvah, Tara (Hindi for “star”) Feinstein has a lot more than her Torah portion on her mind. Between Hebrew school and study sessions with the rabbi, there doesn’t seem to be enough time to hang out with her best friend Ben-o–who might also be her boyfriend–and her other best friend, Rebecca, who’s getting a little too cozy with that snotty Sheila Rosenberg. Not to mention working on her robotics project with the class clown Ryan Berger, or figuring out what to do with a priceless heirloom sari that she accidentally ruined. Amid all this drama, Tara considers how to balance her Indian and Jewish identities and what it means to have a bat mitzvah while questioning her faith.

First lines: “When Ben-O came over on Saturday for movie night, my Dad answered the door in grey silk pajama bottoms and his Math Teachers play by the numbers T-shirt, an unlit pipe clenched between his teeth. “Ben-o, old chap!” He cried heartily, “How are you, dear boy?”

Book cover couresty ofSyndeticsPromise me Something, Sara Kocek, (311 pages) As if starting high school weren’t bad enough, Reyna Fey has to do so at a new school without her best friends. Reyna’s plan is to keep her head down, help her father recover from the car accident that almost took his life, and maybe even make some friends. And then Olive Barton notices her. Olive is not exactly the kind of new friend Reyna has in mind. The boys make fun of her, the girls want to fight her, and Olive seems to welcome the challenge. There’s something about Olive that Reyna can’t help but like. But when Reyna learns Olive’s secret, she must decide whether it’s better to be good friends with an outcast or fake friends with the popular kids…before she loses Olive forever.

First lines: The night Olive Barton vanished into the woods at Talmadge Hill, I got my first kiss. I was wearing sticky drugstore lip gloss that smelled like a Creamsicle. Sugar-drunk off cherry coke and peppermint patties, I had no idea that a mile away in the frigid dark, the night was opening its mouth to swallow a girl.

Book cover courtesy of SyneticsFreakboy , Kristin Elizabeth Clark (427 pages)From the outside, Brendan Chase seems to have it pretty easy. He’s a star wrestler, a video game aficionado, and a loving boyfriend to his seemingly perfect match, Vanessa. But on the inside, Brendan struggles to understand why his body feels so wrong—why he sometimes fantasizes having long hair, soft skin, and gentle curves. Is there even a name for guys like him? Guys who sometimes want to be girls? Or is Brendan just a freak?

First lines:  A pronoun is a ghost  of who you really are short sharp harsj, whispering its presence, taunting your soul. In you ogf you but not all you. Struggling my own He She Him Her I You. Scared that for scrambled-pronoun Me, We might never exist.

Book cover courtesy of Syndetics
BayGirl
, Heather Smith (275 pages)Growing up in a picturesque Newfoundland fishing village “should” be idyllic for sixteen-year-old Kit Ryan, but living with an alcoholic father makes Kit’s day-to-day life unpredictable and almost intolerable. When the 1992 cod moratorium forces her father out of a job, the tension between Kit and her father grows. Forced to leave their rural community, the family moves to the city, where they live with Uncle Iggy, a widower with problems of his own. Immediately pegged as a “baygirl,” Kit struggles to fit in, but longstanding trust issues threaten to hold her back when a boy named Elliot expresses an interest in her.

First Lines: As soon as I opened the door, I could smell it. I looked at my watch. It was only three twenty in the afternoon. But time of day never made any differnce to him. He had a whiskey with his bacon and eggs once. he drank it our of a coffee mug, as if that made it ok.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsLove in Revolution B.R Collins (263 pages) Esteya is fifteen. As war rumbles closer, Esteya’s brother – an important figure in the Revolutionary Communist Party – is able to protect their family from the worst of the privations of war. Then Esteya meets an extraordinary girl, Skizi, an outcast, shunned by all. But Esteya and Skizi are drawn to each other. Slowly and wonderfully love blossoms … And then Esteya’s family are betrayed and forcibly taken away. Skizi disappears. Esteya is left deserted, heartbroken and in terrible danger. But she must find a way to escape – and to find Skizi.

First lines: When I was small, ther was a house at the end of the town that had falled down We weren’t allowed to play there, of course, but we did sometimes. We’d play furious, clumsy games of pello against one intact wall, and when we were tired out we’d collpase in the shade with tepid bottles of cheery juice that stained our teeth pink. We’d argue about the bumps and curves in the wall and the angle of of our shots as if we were professionals.

Image cover courtesy of SyndeticsIf I ever get out of here Eric Gansworth (350 pages) Lewis “Shoe” Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he’s not used to is white people being nice to him — people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, especially the Beatles, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family’s poverty from George. He also has to deal with the vicious Evan Reininger, who makes Lewis the special target of his wrath. But when everyone else is on Evan’s side, how can he be defeated? And if George finds out the truth about Lewis’s home — will he still be his friend?

First lines:  “Cut it off,” I yelled. “Shut up or my Dad will hear you,” Carson Mastick said. “He’s not that drunk yet, and I’m gonna have a hard enough time explaining fow you come down looking like a different kid that the one that went upstairs.”

Book Cover courtesy of SyndeticsCy in chains David L. Dudley (320 pages) Cy Williams, thirteen, has always known that he and the other black folks on Strong’s plantation have to obey white men, no question. Sure, he’s free, as black people have been since his grandfather’s day, but in rural Georgia, that means they’re free to be whipped, abused, even killed. Almost four years later, Cy yearns for that freedom, such as it was. Now he’s a chain gang laborer, forced to do backbreaking work, penned in and shackled like an animal, brutalized, beaten, and humiliated by the boss of the camp and his hired overseers. For Cy and the boys he’s chained to, there’s no way out, no way back.And then hope begins to grow in him, along with strength and courage he didn’t know he had. Cy is sure that a chance at freedom is worth any risk, any sacrifice. This powerful, moving story opens a window on a painful chapter in the history of race relations.

First lines: There was no way to escape the shuting and the noises of animal terror bursting from Teufel’s stall. The crack of the whip against the stallion;s side, the horse’s madded whinnying of rage and fear, the curses from John Strong’s moth. Cy put an arm around Travis, who pushed closer to him. Travis had his hands over his ears, like that would do any good. I tried to tell you we shouldn’t of sneaked down here, Cy thought, feeling the younger boy trembling. But you had to have your way, and the see the mess we in?

Book Cover courtesy of SyndeticsYou don’t even know  Sue Lawson (332 pages)Alex Hudson is a good guy. He plays water polo. He has a part-time job. He’s doing okay at school.Then the thing that anchors Alex is ripped away and his life seems pointless. How can he make anyone else understand how he feels, when he doesn’t even know?

First lines: A low keening noise ices my skin and fills the room. I slip out the door, down the corridow and into the faded afternoon.  As I stumble past the man in a wheelchair sucking on a cigarette and the two guys in green scrubs laughing, I grind to a halt. Srounf me people bustle to the tram stop, weave between ars to cross the road and send text messages as rhey walk back the way I’vee come. My life has shatted into a thousand shards of glass, but nothing out here has changed.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe war within these walls  Aline Sax and Caryl Strzelecki (171 pages)It’s World War II, and Misha’s family, like the rest of the Jews living in Warsaw, has been moved by the Nazis into a single crowded ghetto. Conditions are appalling: every day more people die from disease, starvation, and deportations. Misha does his best to help his family survive, even crawling through the sewers to smuggle food. When conditions worsen, Misha joins a handful of other Jews who decide to make a final, desperate stand against the Nazis.Heavily illustrated with sober blue-and-white drawings, this powerful novel dramatically captures the brutal reality of a tragic historical event.

First lines: It was September 1939 when the Germans invaded our country. A month later, they marched into Warsaw and took up residence as if they’d never leave. The war seemed to be over.  But after the dust of the bombings has settled, a very different war began… A war against some of us.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThe Extra Kathryn Lasky (307 pages)One ordinary afternoon, fifeen-year-old Lilo and her family are suddenly picked up by Hitler’s police and imprisoned as part of the “Gypsy plague.” Just when it seems certain that they will be headed to a labor camp, Lilo is chosen by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to work as a film extra. Life on the film set is a bizarre alternate reality. The surroundings are glamorous, but Lilo and the other extras are barely fed, closely guarded, and kept in a locked barn when not on the movie set. And the beautiful, charming Riefenstahl is always present, answering the slightest provocation with malice, flaunting the power to assign prisoners to life or death. Lilo takes matters into her own hands, effecting an escape and running for her life. In this chilling but ultimately uplifting novel, Kathryn Lasky imagines the lives of the Gypsies who worked as extras for the real Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, giving readers a story of survival unlike any other.

First Lines: “Disappeared?What are you talking about? People don’t disappear. She went some place.” “So where do you think Mila went? Why wasn’t she in school? Today of all days, recitation day. She had been practicing forever. She was sure to get the prize.” “Maye she’s sick.” ” Mila sick? Never- she’s as healthy as a horse. And if if she is. she would have dragged herself to school. No- something’s fishy.”

New Mysteries

Book Cover courtesy of SyndeticsBlythewood, Carol Goodman (489 pages) At seventeen, Avaline Hall has already buried her mother, survived a horrific factory fire, and escaped from an insane asylum. Now she’s on her way to Blythewood Academy, the elite boarding school in New York’s mist-shrouded Hudson Valley that her mother attended—and was expelled from. Though she’s afraid her high society classmates won’t accept a factory girl in their midst, Ava is desperate to unravel her family’s murky past, discover the identity of the father she’s never known, and perhaps finally understand her mother’s abrupt suicide. She’s also on the hunt for the identity of the mysterious boy who rescued her from the fire. And she suspects the answers she seeks lie at Blythewood. But nothing could have prepared her for the dark secret of what Blythewood is, and what its students are being trained to do. Haunted by dreams of a winged boy and pursued by visions of a sinister man who breathes smoke, Ava isn’t sure if she’s losing her mind or getting closer to the truth. And the more rigorously Ava digs into the past, the more dangerous her present becomes. (Goodreads)

First lines: I heard the bells that morning as I was entering Washington Square. I stopped just past the arch and looked south to see if the sound might be a streetcar but I didn’t see one. Then I looked north, through the arch and up fifth avenue, listening for the bells Og Grace Church playing the quarter hour-but it wasn’t the tune they played. And if the bells weren’t from Grace Church or a streetcar, that meant they were my bells, the ones I heard inside my head, the ones I’d been hearing for the last six months whenever something bad was going to happen.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsDeadly: a Pretty little liars novel, Sara Shepherd (305 pages) Deadly, the fourteenth volume in Sara Shepard’s YA Pretty Little Liars series, delivers more juicy scandals, dark secrets, and shocking plot twists. This #1 New York Times bestselling series is also a hit ABC Family original TV show.High school seniors Aria, Emily, Hanna, and Spencer have all done horrible things—things that would put them behind bars if anyone ever found out. And their stalker “A” knows everything.So far A has kept their secrets, using them to torture the girls. But now A’s changed the game. Suddenly the girls are hauled in for questioning, and all their worlds begin to unravel. If A’s plan succeeds, Rosewood’s pretty little liars will be locked away for good. . . .(Goodreads)

First lines: Remember when you learned about omnipotence in English class? It’s when a narrator is all-knowing and and can see and hear everything. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right? Sort of like being the Wizard of Oz. Imagine what you could do if you were all-knowing.

Book Cover courtesy of SyndeticsHaunted, William Hussey (332 pages) Milton Lake is a seemingly ordinary town, where tales of hauntings and strange goings on ripple beneath the surface. When a mysterious boy comes to town and moves into a large, derelict house, all alone, his arrival changes everything. Shrouded in secrecy, he senses a kindred spirit in Emma Rhodes, and reveals to her a shocking truth. Someone in Milton Lake is using the fabled Ghost Machine to call the spirits of the dead back to our world. Now it is up to these two lost souls to find out who is operating the strange invention before it is too late …For call by call, the dead will be unleashed. (Goodreads)

First lines: “You gotta bring them back the head, Henry, or won’t count. Good luck.” Henry Torve sidestepped through a gap in the rusted vars, his teeth clenching at the clatter-clang of the gate. Ever since he’d heard the stories about this place, most of them told by his cousin Emma, he had dreamed of this moment: his leg reaching through the gate, his foot touching down upon the cursed earth, and then…he shivered. Henry wouldn’t let go of the bars, not yet, the others might notice how his hands shook.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsFull ride, Margaret Peterson Haddix (343 pages) Becca thought her life was over when her father was sent to prison for embezzlement. It didn’t help when he used her as his excuse: “How else is a guy like me supposed to send his daughter to college?” She and her mother fled their town and their notoriety, started over, and vowed never to let anyone know about their past.Now a senior in high school, Becca has spent the last four years hiding in anonymity. But when it’s time to apply to colleges and for financial aid, her mother gives her a rude awakening: If she applies, her past may be revealed to the worldBut Becca has already applied for a full-ride scholarship. And as she begins to probe deeper into the secrets of her past, she discovers that she and her mother might be in danger of more than simple discovery – by revealing the truth about their past, she might be putting their very lives in jeopardy. (Goodreads)

First lines: My mother and I ran away after the trial. We’d gone back to the house and it felt completely wrong:too big, too empty, too booby-trapped with memories. I used to sit there by the front window when I was a little kid, waiting for Dady to come from work…He won’t be coming home now.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsThis song will save your life, Leila Sales (274 pages) Making friends has never been Elise Dembowski’s strong suit. All throughout her life, she’s been the butt of every joke and the outsider in every conversation. When a final attempt at popularity fails, Elise nearly gives up. Then she stumbles upon a warehouse party where she meets Vicky, a girl in a band who accepts her; Char, a cute, yet mysterious disc jockey; Pippa, a carefree spirit from England; and most importantly, a love for DJing. (Goodreads)

First lines: You think it’s so easy to chane yourself. You think it’s so easy, but it’s not. What do you think it takes to reinvent yourself as an all-new person, a person who makes sense, who belongs? Do you change your clothes, your hair, your face? Go on, then. Do it.

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsBrotherhood of Shades, Dawn Finch (265 pages)From the chaos of Dissolution rises a secret order, a Brotherhood formed to protect the world of the living from the world of the dead.Adam, a teenage boy living on the streets of London, knows nothing of the fantastic and precarious world that exists just beyond his reality – until he dies, cold and alone, aged 14. After years of rejection, Adam discovers he is important, and the Brotherhood needs him. His recruitment to their Order will take him on an adventure that spans the worlds of both the living and the dead, as he and a living girl (14-year-old Edie Freedom) battle to solve a prophetic riddle and save the world. (Goodreads)

First lines: The small dark room was filled with the stench of bodies, a harsh, acidic smell of unwashed flesh and decay that clung to all those who passed through. A bare flame guttered and spat on its fatt candle as two men, clothes in black robes with a white cord binding their waist, leaned over the two ragged bundles on the floor.
“The Mother is dead?”

Book cover courtesy of SyndeticsMarie Antoinette, Serial Killer Katie Alender (292 pages)Colette Iselin is excited to go to Paris on a class trip. She’ll get to soak up the beauty and culture, and maybe even learn something about her family’s French roots.But a series of gruesome murders are taking place across the city, putting everyone on edge. And as she tours museums and palaces, Colette keeps seeing a strange vision: a pale woman in a ball gown and powdered wig, who looks suspiciously like Marie Antoinette.Colette knows her popular, status-obsessed friends won’t believe her, so she seeks out the help of a charming French boy. Together, they uncover a shocking secret involving a dark, hidden history. When Colette realizes she herself may hold the key to the mystery, her own life is suddenly in danger . . .

First lines: In her apartment high above the streets of Paris, Gabrielle Roux stood in front of the bathroom mirror, still wearing her daringly short purple dress and sky-high platform heels. The light glanced off her golden hair and she brished it and thought back to the glittering party from which she had just come.

New Books

August, Bernard Beckett (204 pages, New Zealand author) – Tristan and Grace are in a car wreck, waiting for rescue (if it happens!). As they wait, as one does, they review their very different lives and philosophies. “A compelling novel about will, freedom and what it means to live” (cover).

First sentence: For a moment the balance was uncertain.

Scorpia Rising, Anthony Horowitz (402 pages) – the final mission, the cover declares! No! Alex must put Scorpia out of business, once and for all, but is this the mission to end all missions, and to end Alex? We hope not!

First sentence: The man in the black cashmere coat climbed down the steps of his private, six-seater Learjet 40 and stood for a moment, his breath frosting in the chill morning air.

Where She Went, Gayle Forman (260 pages) – the follow up to the über popular If I Stay. Three years after Mia ended it with Adam they’re back together for one night in New York City, a chance to put things to rest (or to respark something?).

First sentence: Every morning I wake up and I tell myself this: it’s just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through.

Plague, Michael Grant (526 pages) – the fourth in the Gone series. Quelle horreur, this one sounds ghastly. There is a plague threatening Perdido Beach (one that is described in graphic detail on the back cover! Guts! Being eaten away from the inside out!), and there’s still the grim reality of what happens to you at fifteen.

First sentence: He stood poised on the edge of a sheet of glass.

Invincible, Sherrilyn Kenyon (420 pages) – The second on the Chronicles of Nick series. Poor Nick is once again challenged by the presence of all manner of horrific supernatural creatures, affecting his life in so many ways, from the inconvenient (his principal thinks he’s gone to the bad, making school a problematic place) to the downright deadly; he must figure out how to raise the dead or he might find himself counted as one of them.

First sentence: They say when you’re about to die, you see your entire life flash before your eyes.

The Running Dream, Wendelin Van Draanen (332 pages) – Puts one’s own annoying, minor running injuries into perspective. Jessica is a runner, until she’s involved in a terrible accident and loses a leg. A story of coming to terms with a significant loss, reestablishing your identity and your place, and overcoming odds.

First sentence: My life is over.

All You Get is Me, Yvonne Prinz (279 pages) – Roar’s father goes all green on her, installing  them on an organic farm, where she must spend the summer adjusting  from her city sensibilities, coping with falling in love, the fact that her mother is gone, and with the fallout from her father’s crusade against the bad working conditions of Mexican farm workers.

First sentence: My mom always promised me she would keep me safe, and then she disappeared.

As Easy as Falling off the Face of the Earth, Lynne Rae Perkins (352 pages) – Ry’s train strands him in the middle of seriously nowhere and he’s got to get to somewhere, a journey that is peppered by a series of scrapes, mishaps and “comedic calamities” (catalogue).

First sentences: Wait a minute. Was the – had the train just moved?

The Floating Islands, Rachel Neumeier (388 pages) – “The adventures of two teenaged cousins who live in a place called The Floating Islands, one of whom is studying to become a mage and the other one of the legendary island flyers” (library catalogue).

First sentence: Trei was fourteen the first time he saw the Floating Islands.

The Education of Hailey Kendrick, Eileen Cook (256 pages) – Hailey is the perfect girl who never does anything wrong, until one night, together with a secret accomplice, she does something quite wrong and gets into a rather lot of trouble, which her secret accomplice escapes. Now her friends don’t want to know her, her teachers don’t trust her, everything’s a mess, and she’s keeping quiet about the identity of said secret accomplice. Is it worth it?

First sentence: There was a matter of life and death to deal with, and instead we were wasting our time discussing Mandy Gallaway’s crotch.

More New Books

Rose Sees Red, Cecil Castellucci (197 pages) – It is 1982 in New York and Rose is a ballet dancer who attends the High School of Performing Arts. Yrena is Rose’s neighbour, a visiting Russian dancer who, due to the Cold War between USSR and the United States, is all but a prisoner in her apartment. One night Yrena, intent on experiencing New York life, escapes through Rose’s apartment window, and the two hit the town for a wild night of adventure.

First sentence: I was black inside so I took everything black.

The Children of the Lost, David Whitley (357 pages) – the second book in the Agora trilogy that began with The Midnight Charter. Mark and Lily are exiled from the city of Agora, and find refuge in a small nearby village. Lily is happy, but Mark longs to return to Agora to take revenge and find answers.

First sentence: Gradually, Lily became aware that she was being watched.

Kick, Walter Dean Myers and Ross Workman (197 pages) – Ross Workman wrote to Walter Dean Myers saying he was a fan of his books and Walter Dean Myers replied saying let’s write a book together, so they did. True story. Kick is about a troubled boy who’s an excellent football (soccer) player, on his way to the state cup final, until he ends up in jail. Can he and his mentor, a policeman called Sergeant Brown, turn his life around?

First sentence: Bill Kelly and I had been friends since we played high school basketball together.

I Was Jane Austen’s Best Friend, Cora Harrison (342 pages) – Jenny Cooper is Jane’s cousin, and goes to live with the Austens, which is an education in the world of balls, beautiful dresses, turns about the room, gossip, and other such things. When she (Jenny) falls in love, Jane is there to help her out.

First sentence: It’s a terrible thing to write: Jane looks like she could die – but it’s even worse to have the thought jumping into your mind every few minutes.

Pathfinder, Orson Scott Card (657 pages) – Rigg is able to see into people’s paths, a secret he shares only with his father. When his father dies, Rigg learns that he’s been keeping a whole lot of other secrets, about Rigg and his family. Rigg has other powers…

First sentence: Rigg and Father usually set the traps together, because it was Rigg who had the knack of seeing the paths that the animals they wanted were still using.

Firespell, Chloe Neill (278 pages) – Lily is a new girl at an exclusive academy and she doesn’t fit in and has no friends apart from her roommate Scout. When she discovers that Scout has magical powers and protects the city from supernatural monsters, Lily is keen to help, but can she, if she has no powers of her own?

First sentence: They were gathered around a conference table in a high-rise, eight men and women, no one under the age of sixty-five, all of them wealthy beyond measure.

The Body at the Tower, Y S Lee (344 pages) – the second book in the Agency Victorian detective series (the first is A Spy in the House). Mary Quinn, under cover, investigates the mysterious scandals surrounding the building of the Houses of Parliament, but there are distractions (suspicious workmates, past secrets, and the return of James Easton).

First sentence: A sobbing man huddles on a narrow ledge, clawing at his eyes to shield them from the horror far below.

The Doomsday Box, Herbie Brennan (328 pages) – a Shadow Project book. Time travel is possible, trouble is someone (secret codename Cobra) has used it to transport the black plague into the 21st Century. The supernatural teen spies of the Shadow Project must avert disaster, while also averting their own disaster, on the run from the KGB in Moscow in the 1960s.

First sentence: Opal fastened the strap around her ankle and stood up to admire her new shoes.

Zora and Me, Victoria Bond and T R Simon (170 pages) – based on events in the life of author Zora Neale Hurston. When a young man’s body is found on train tracks in a small Florida town Zora thinks she knows who did it, so she and her friends set out to prove her theory and search for the truth. Narrated by Zora’s best friend Carrie, hence the title.

First sentence: It’s funny how you can be in a story but not realise until the end that you were in one.

The False Princess, Eilis O’Neal (319 pages) – Nalia believes herself to be princess of Thorvaldor, but discovers she’s actually a stand in. She’s cast out, called Sinda, and sent to live with her unwelcoming aunt in a village where she (Sinda) learns she has magic, which is Sinda’s ticket out, albeit a dangerous ticket. This one is called “A dazzling first novel” and “an engrossing fantasy full of mystery, action, and romance”, which sounds great.

First sentence: The day they came to tell me, I was in one of the gardens with Kiernan, trying to decipher a three-hundred-year-old map of the palace grounds.

Fallout, Ellen Hopkins (663 pages) – the companion to Crank and Glass. About Kristina’s three oldest children, who must climb out from under their mother’s meth addiction and the hold it has over the family. Novel in verse form.

First sentence: That life was good / before she / met / the monster, / but those page flips / went down before / our collective / cognition.

Accomplice, Eireann  Corrigan (259 pages) – Two friends stage a kidnapping as a joke and in order to gain notoreity. Of course this is going to be a very bad idea indeed.

First sentence: The picture they usually use is one from the Activities spread of the yearbook.

Pride, Robin Wasserman (231 pages) – one in the Seven Deadly Sins series, and we have the complete set.

Pop Series for 2011

Reserve some now!

Entice, Carrie Jones (January 2011) – Zara has been kissed by pixie king Astley (cue Rick Astley music video*), plus Nick’s dead but there’s a chance she can save him, if Astley’s willing to help.

Grey Wolves, Robert Muchamore (Henderson’s Boys, February 2011) – the grey wolves are German U-boats that caused massive problems for the British navy in the North Atlantic. What is needed is teen spies to saboutage them in the way that only teen spies can. Like Battleship, but with espionage.

Angel, James Patterson (Maximum Ride, February 2011) – Max and Fang’s flocks must combine to defeat a doomsday cult threatening to kill all humans, but will Max be distracted by the idea that Dylan is Mr Right (as the scientists suggest)? If the title is anything to go by, Angel might be important.

Darkest Mercy, Melissa Marr (March 2011) – [mild spoiler alert] will Irial really die? Surely not. Read and find out if Melissa Marr is game enough to kill of her coolest character.

City of Fallen Angels, Cassandra Clare (April 2011) – Clary and Jace are back, and not a moment too soon, Clary and Jace fans say. This will be the fourth in the Mortal Instruments series from the prolific keyboard of Ms Clare.

Invincible, Sherrilyn Kenyon, (Chronicles of Nick, April 2011) – Nick Gautier’s life continues to become more complex and dangerous in paranormal New Orleans.

Also: for Robin McKinley fans, there’s Pegasus

* Sorry, but you really can’t beat a good Rick Astley video. The teen blog likes Rick Astley videos, as does the WCL teen facebook page.

Some New Books

There’s a fair bit of ghosty historical stuff in this batch, plus some spies and intrigue.

This Full House, Virginia Euwer Wolff (476 pages) – a novel in verse form, and the final book in the Make Lemonade trilogy (which is a great name for a trilogy). In which LaVaughn is in her senior year at high school, with the glimmer of hope of college at the end, but events during the year challenge what she thinks she knows about life and love.

First sentence: I could not have known.

Magic Under Glass, Jaclyn Dolamore (225 pages) – the cover says this is a story for fans of Libba Bray and Charlotte Bronte. Nimira works as a show girl in a music hall. When Hollin Parry, wealthy sorcerer, hires her to perform for him on his estate she thinks life is looking up, but then there are rumours of ghosts and madwomen, and her performing partner, an automaton that plays the piano, seems too real to be mechanical…

First sentence: The audience didn’t understand a word we sang.

The Shadow Project, Herbie Brennan (352 pages) – Danny accidentally attempts to rob the headquarters of The Shadow Project, which uses teen spies to astrally (is that a word?) project on missions around the world. He’s captured and then identified as gifted and soon finds himself caught up in a world of danger and supernatural intrigue.

First sentence: Danny would never have noticed the door that night if it hadn’t opened a crack.

Voices of Dragons, Carrie Vaughn (309 pages) – While rock climbing on the border between the modern and ancient worlds Kay Wyatt falls and is saved by the dragon Artegal, and a friendship develops between them. But human/dragon relations are strained and war is brewing: can their friendship stop the inevitable?

First sentence: Her parents were going to kill her for this.

Woods Runner, Gary Paulsen (164 pages) – Samuel knows how to take care of himself in the wilderness, and when his parents are captured by the British during the American Revolution, Samuel takes off in pursuit, all the way to New York City.

First sentence: He was not sure exactly when he became a child of the forest.

Ruined, Paula Morris (309 pages) – Rebecca moves to an exclusive academy in New Orleans where she is snobbed by her classmates (except for the lovely Anton (but why?)), but then she meets Lisette, who’s keen to be her friend. Trouble is, she’s also a ghost on a mission. Hurricane Katrina also stars.

First sentence: Torrential rain was pouring the afternoon Rebecca Brown arrived in New Orleans.

All Unquiet Things, Anna Jarzab (337 pages) – Audrey and Neily try to find out who killed Carly (friend and ex-girlfriend respectively): it’s got something to do with Brighton Day School’s dark underbelly.

First sentence: It was the end of summer, when the hills were bone dry and brown; the sun beating down and shimmering up off the pavement was enough to give you heatstroke.

The Long Way Home, Andrew Klavan (345 pages) – action and thrills a-plenty. Charlie West wakes up one day to find that terrorists want to kill him, the police want to arrest him (they say he’s killed his friend), and he must return home to find some answers and, hopefully, dig himself out of this big mess. The back cover says, winningly, that this is “like a teenage version of 24“.

First sentence: The man with the knife was a stranger.

Heist Society, Ally Carter (287 pages) – another punny title from the Gallagher Girls creator. Kat has been trying to leave her family business (being one of jewel heists and scams), but when a noted mobster’s art collection is stolen and her father ends up being suspect number 1 Kat must find who is really responsible, and keep one step ahead of Interpol and the mob.

First sentence: No one knew for certain when the trouble started at the Colgan School.

Plus we’ve also got:

Fade Out (Morganville Vampires), Rachel Caine

Falling Hook, Line and Sinker (An Electra Brown book), Helen Bailey

The Den of Shadows Quartet, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (this is In the Forests of the Night, Demon in My View, Shattered Mirror and Midnight Predator in one volume).

New Books

Crocodile Tears, Anthony Horowitz (385 pages) – Alex is recruited for a seemingly simple mission – download some data from a computer in a plant engineering lab while on a school mission – but of course in the world of espionage things are never simple. We’re thinking that a normal school life just isn’t going to happen for poor old Alex.

First sentence: Ravi Chandra was going to be a rich man.

Claim to Fame, Margaret Peterson Haddix (256 pages) – Lindsay is a former child star who suffered a breakdown at age 11, partly because she can hear everything anyone says about her around the world. That’d be tough. Now she is 16, and trying to learn how to cope with her talent in a new, isolated place, when a group of teenagers “rescue” (kidnap) her and force her to confront her situation.

First sentence: I was supposed to be doing my algebra homework that night.

Chasing Brooklyn, Lisa Schroeder (412 pages) – a novel in verse. Nico and Brooklyn are haunted by the ghosts of their dead brother/boyfriend and Brooklyn’s best friend Gabe, but neither can admit it to the other.

First sentence: I lost my boyfriend, Lucca.

Same Difference, Siobhan Vivian (287 pages) – “Emily’s life reeks of the ordinary: she lives in suburban New Jersey in a posh gated community and hangs out at Starbucks with her friends in a town where most of the buildings are old, and if they’re not, they’re eventually made to look that way. When Emily heads to Philadelphia for a summer art institute—complete with an eclectic cast of funky classmates and one dreamy teaching assistant—she faces the classic teen dilemma of whether to choose the familiar over the new and exciting, while figuring out who she really is: Emily from Cherry Grove or Emily the aspiring artist?” (Amazon.com)

First sentence: When I was a kid, I drew clouds that looked like bodies of cartoon sheep.

By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead, Julie Anne Peters (200 pages) – A story about “how bullying can push young people to the very edge.” (Book Cover)

First sentence: The white boy, the skinny, tall boy with shocking white hair, sneaks behind the stone bench and leans against the tree trunk.

Eyes Like Stars, Lisa Mantchev (Theatre Illuminata, Act I: 356 pages) – This looks interesting and mighty hard to explain! So I shall quote Suzanne Collins (out from underneath the barcode): “All the world’s truly a stage in Lisa Mantchev’s innovative tale, Eyes Like Stars. Magical stagecraft, unmanageable fairies, and a humourous cast of classical characters form the backdrop for this imaginative coming-of-age.”

First sentence: The fairies flew suspended on wires despite their tendency to get tangled together.

Jonas, Eden Maguire (Beautiful Dead Book 1, 271 pages) – Jonas, Arizona, Summer and Phoenix have all mysteriously died at Ellerton High in one year. This is the story of Jonas’ death, the unanswered questions, and Darina, who has visions of Phoenix, her dead boyfriend, and the others. What are the visions, and who are the beautiful dead?

First sentence: The first thing I heard was a door banging in the wind.

Freefall, Ariela Anhalt (247 pages) – Something bad happened on the cliff one night and the police want to know. Hayden may be up for murder, and his friend Luke is the only witness. Luke must come to terms with what happened and what that means for his friendship.

First sentence: Luke Prescott stood at the top of the cliff, his toes curled over the edge and pointing downward.

The Miles Between, Mary E Pearson (265 pages) – Destiny and three of her friends hit the road in a story that “explores the absurdities of life, friendship, and fate – and also the moments of grace and wonder.” (Book cover)

First sentence: I was seven the first time I was sent away.

Bleeding Violet, Dia Reeves (454 pages) – Hanna, who suffers from bipolar disorder, moves to the town of Portero in Texas, where she meets up with Wyatt, a member of a demon-hunting organisation. Meanwhile, an ancient evil threatens the town…

First sentence: The truck driver let me off on Lamartine, on the odd side of the street.

Some new books

The Pillow Book of Lotus Lowenstein, Libby Schmais (275 pages) – Lotus says on the back cover, “This year, I will become an existentialist, go to France and fall in love (hopefully in Paris) with a dashing Frenchman named Jean something. We will both be existentialists, believe in nothingness, and wander around Paris in trench coats and berets.” Needless to say, Lotus loves all things French and sets up a French culture club at her school, which consists of her, her friend Joni and the handsome Sean. Things possibly go a bit awry on a trip to Montreal. Told in diary form and possibly (I say possibly) will be liked by Georgia Nicholson fans.

First sentence: As you may have guessed, my name is Lotus Lowenstein and this is my diary.

Secret Army, Robert Muchamore (Henderson’s Boys, 363 pages) – This also has what appears to be a large extract from the last CHERUB book Shadow Wave (yet to be published). In Secret Army, it is January 1941 and Charles Henderson is back in Britain, “but will the military establishment allow him to enact a plan to train teenagers as spies?” (says the website) This looks to be the beginning of the CHERUB campus – you can see how it all began!

First sentence (of chapter one): “Stand by yer beds!” Evan Williams shouted.

Beautiful Creatures, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (563 pages) – a veritable doorstop of a book at nearly 600 pages, Beautiful Creatures already features in our monthly Most Wanted list. We are currently reading it to see if it is Twilight-y. Ethan Wate has been having strange recurring dreams about an unknown beautiful girl. On the first day back at school there are rumblings about a new girl in town (nobody is ever new in the town of Gatlin), and Ethan’s life takes an unexpected and unsettling turn when dream and reality mingle. That’s the start, at any rate. A gothic southern supernatural romance.

First sentence: There were only two kinds of people in our town.

Loot, Grace Cavendish (The Lady Grace Mysteries, 201 pages) – a favourite YA series. When the crown of St Edward goes missing, Lady Grace must find out what has happened to it without anyone knowing that a) it’s gone missing and b) she’s trying to find it. Elizabeth I will not be amused if she is “publicly humiliated” (as the back cover puts it).

First sentence: Here I am, squashed into a corner of my bedchamber, far from the fire, while Mary Shelton and Lady Sarah Bartelmy fuss about new gowns that the Maids have been gifted.

Gone, Lisa McMann (214 pages) – the cover says that this the final book in the Wake trilogy, but trilogies have a habit of being tricksy and growing a fourth leg. Still, we must take it at its word: those of you who have read and enjoyed Wake and Fade must read this (let us know if it is indeed the end)! Janie must (she thinks) disappear in order to give Cabel a fighting chance at a normal life, but then a mysterious stranger arrives on the scene and Janie’s future is not what it once seemed, in fact it appears to be a whole lot worse. Tense.

First sentence: It’s like she can’t breathe anymore, no matter what she does.

Geek Magnet, Kieran Scott (308 pages) – KJ is a geek magnet, but would like to be a superstud-basketball-star-Cameron magnet (and isn’t). Tama Gold, most popular of the popular girls, kindly thinks she has the solution to KJ’s problem, but is KJ ready for such a radical turn of events? A theatrical story: “a novel in five acts”.

First sentence: Okay, so I was dizzy with power.

The Walls Have Eyes, Clare B Dunkle (225 pages) – the sequel to The Sky Inside. Martin’s family are the targets of a totalitarian government, and Martin must rescue his parents (having saved his sister Cassie), but things are treacherous, agents are following him, and Cassie looks like she’s in danger again…

First sentence(s): “She melted down? Completely?”

Viola in Reel Life, Adriana Trigiani (282 pages) – Viola is a New Yorker at boarding school in the middle of nowhere in Indiana. Needless to say she very much doesn’t like it to begin with, but just maybe it grows on her a little bit.

First sentence: You would not want to be me.

Waiting for You, Susane Colasanti (322 pages) – a love triangle story that’s very happy being a love triangle story. Marisa likes Derek (I think), but he has a girlfriend. She doesn’t particularly like Nash, but Nash likes Marisa. Plus there are other complicating factors in Marisa’s life, from family to friends, to school… Might be a good one for fans of Elizabeth Scott, Sarah Dessen and Deb Caletti.

First sentence: The best thing about summer camp is the last day.

The Girl with the Mermaid Hair, Delia Ephron (312 pages) – Sukie is obsessed with the way she looks, so when her mother gives her a beautiful antique full length mirror this seems like the perfect gift, but the mirror possibly reveals more about Sukie than just her appearance.

First sentence: Sukie kept track of herself in all reflective surfaces: shiny pots, the windowed doors to classrooms, shop windows, car chrome, knives, spoons.

Funny How Things Change, Melissa Wyatt (196 pages) – “Remy, a talented, seventeen-year-old auto mechanic, questions his decision to join his girlfriend when she starts college in Pennsylvania after a visiting artist helps him to realize what his family’s home in a dying West Virginia mountain town means to him.” (catalogue summing it up well) This story has good reviews: “Good writing drives stellar characterization of this strong but introspective protagonist struggling with his own version of the universal questions of who he is and what matters most” (School Library Journal via amazon.com). I’d like a review like that one day.

First sentence: On his arm – just above his left hand – were three black letters.

Dreams of the Dead, Thomas Randall (The Waking, 276 pages) – Kara moves to Japan and to a new school where she makes friends with Sakura, whose sister was murdered on school grounds… and the killer was never found. Things get pretty bad: Kara has strange nightmares, then more bodies appear… is this Sakura’s murdered sister exacting revenge? Or Sakura? Or some other sinister thing? The book also has a “sneak peak” at the sequel.

First sentence: Akane Murakami died for a boy she did not love.

There are more books (yet more), so back soon.

New Books to be on the look out for

What do the next few months look like in YA literature? We’ll let you know when they arrive, but you can reserve some of them right now if they grab your fancy.

Witch & Wizard, James Patterson (December). A futuristic dystopian story about Wisty and her brother Whit, who are imprisoned seemingly without reason and then discover they have strange abilities and powers.

Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld (October). A steampunk effort from Scott Westerfeld, where World War I is fought with strange machines and futuristic biotechnology.

Once Was Lost, Sara Zarr (October). Sara Zarr’s previous novels, Story of a Girl and Sweethearts, are thoughtful, realistic insights into life. In Once Was Lost, she examines tragedy and the effect it has on hope.

Going Bovine, Libba Bray (September/October). This couldn’t really be more different from the Gemma Doyle books. Sixteen year old Cameron is in hospital with Mad Cow disease. Visited by Dulcie, a punky angel, he’s given hope when she tells him it’s possible to find a cure. So he sets out on a road trip to find it, with a little help from a gamer dwarf and a gnome. I’m not making this up. You can even watch Libba Bray being interviewed about it, dressed up as a cow.

 

Some others that we will be ordering soon:

Splendor, a Luxe novel, Anna Godbersen (November). Luxe fans: this is the fourth and final book. Dangerous secrets, difficult decisions and unexpected happinesses (but for how long?) all feature in a dramatic showdown.

Crocodile Tears (Alex Rider), Anthony Horowitz (November). Alex gets caught up in an epic plot that could destroy an entire East African country. Heavy.

The Looking Glass Wars, Archenemy, Frank Beddor (October/November). The conclusion to the Looking Glass Wars trilogy. Everyone in Wonderland is creatively depleted, including Queen Alyss who must join forces with the evil Redd to keep things from turning worse than pear shaped (as the caterpillar oracles predict). But is this a good idea?

This Week in New Books

This week there’s lad lit, chick lit (complete with pink covers), some history lessons, thrillers, studies in complex psychology and rites of passage, spy books, serious stuff, frivolous stuff, books written in traditional prose, books that throw things like emails and lists in too.

North of Beautiful, by Justina Chen Headley (373 pages) – I was going to summarise this in my own words, but the last paragraph on the dust jacket seems to be just the ticket: a novel “about a fractured family, falling in love, travel, and the meaning of true beauty.” Fans of Sarah Dessen and Elizabeth Scott have a read and tell us what you think.

First sentence: Not to brag or anything, but if you saw me from behind, you’d probably think I was perfect.

A Certain Strain of Peculiar, by Gigi Amateau (261 pages) – Mary Harold, a 13 year old psychological mess retreats to her family home in Alabama where hard work, her Grandma Ayma, and friendship help her recover her sense of self and things like that.

First sentence: What happens in my mind sometimes is complicated.

Just Another Hero, by Sharon M Draper (280 pages) – the conclusion to the story begun in The Battle of Jericho and November Blues. The alarm goes off in school and everyone assumes it’s just a prank, but it’s not. Certainly not.

First sentence: “Grab his arms!”

Swim the Fly, by Don Calame (345 pages) – you thought right: this is a novel where swimming is involved. It’s a humorous coming-of-age novel which wonders if it’s harder to swim the 100 metres butterfly or impress a really hot girl. Doing the one well might cause the other to happen, and hopefully it’s not a case of neither.

First sentence: “Movies don’t count,” Cooper says.

Boy Minus Girl, by Richard Uhlig (246 pages) – Les seems to be the harmless, shy, geek type in whose life girls just don’t feature (see title), but then Uncle Ray arrives, who is quite the opposite and therefore either potentially a really good role model or a really bad influence.

First sentence: “Seduction Tip Number 1.”

City of Ghosts, by Bali Rai (385 pages) – a story based on events during the 1919 Amritsar massacre.

First sentence: Udham Singh watched the chairman of the meeting, Lord Zetland, gathering up his notes as another member of the panel answered a question.

If the Witness Lied, by Caroline B. Cooney (213 pages) – something terrible happened to Jack’s family three years ago and now his aunt has decided that the only way to heal and move on is to have some sort of healing and moving on fest – on camera. The press are dead keen, too (Jack’s not), and the re-hashing leads Jack and sisters to ask probing questions about what really happened.

First sentence: The good thing about Friday is – it’s not Thursday.

Killing God, by Kevin Brooks (233 pages) – from the author of Black Rabbit Summer. The blurb says: “Dawn Bundy is fifteen. She doesn’t fit in and she couldn’t care less. Dawn has other things on her mind. Her dad disappeared two years ago and it’s all God’s fault. When Dawn’s dad found God, it was the worst time ever. He thought he’d found the answer to everything. But that wasn’t the end of it.”

First sentence: This is a story about me, that’s all.

Girls to Total Goddesses, by Sue Limb (314 pages) – Zoe and Chloe have seven days to glamourise themselves. Will they do it? Will dastardly things foil their fabulous plans?

First sentence: “Right,” said Chloe.

The Agency: A Spy in the House, by Y S Lee (341 pages) – it’s Victorian London and Mary Quinn is a seventeen year old spy working for The Agency. The first book in a promised detective trilogy.

First sentence: She should have been listening to the judge.

Tales of the Madman Underground, by John Barnes (531 pages) – an epic tome. Karl Shoemaker is in his senior year at high school in 1973. Subtitled “An Historical Romance 1973”, I’m thinking this is one of those stories about completely normal boys that make for good reading and a laugh (see a bit further up too).

First sentence: I had developed this theory all summer: if I could be perfectly, ideally, totally normal for the f irst day of my senior year, which was today, then I could do it for the first week, which was only Wednesday through Friday.

Touch, by Francine Prose (262 pages) – something happened to Maisie at the back of the bus, and she becomes embroiled in the out-of-control aftermath; lies, rumours, stories that don’t match, the press… when your story is so heavily scrutinised working out what’s true and what’s not becomes increasingly difficult.

First sentence: “Are the boys who assaulted you present in the courtroom?”

It’s Yr Life, by Tempany Deckert and Tristan Bancks (280 pages) – Sim and Milla are opposites (poor/rich, male/female etc) and they have to email each other for a school assignment: the story unfolds from there. A story told in emails (like some others mentioned here).

First sentence: 10th Grade English Assignment: Communication.

The One, by Ed Decter (316 pages) – the first Chloe Gamble novel, because (the book says) there’s always more Chloe. Chloe is a big city girl in small town Texas, dreaming of becoming famous. Again a novel in manuscript excerpts, emails and not-to-do lists etc.

First sentence: When the police came to see me about the “incident” I told them a lot of things about Chloe Gamble, but I didn’t tell them about this manuscript.

Summer Sun & Stuff According to Alex, by Kathryn Lamb (172 pages) – the third pink cover this week. Alex’s boyfriend Mark is going to Italy with some other girl’s family and Alex and her friends are determined that she will get him back, but things never pan out in expected ways.

First sentence: I am HOME ALONE!!!!!

Ghostgirl: Homecoming, by Tonya Hurley (285 pages) – sequel to Ghostgirl, and also with a very cool cover and fancy silver-gilded page edges. After graduating Dead Ed Charlotte is a little dismayed to discover she now has to complete an internship at a hotline for teens.

First sentence: Dying of boredom wasn’t an option.

Plus some others:

Diary of a Snob: Poor Little Rich Girl, by Grace Dent (247 pages)

The Battle of Jericho, by Sharon R Draper (337 pages)

November Blues, by Sharon R Draper (383 pages)

Reserve CHERUB #11 Now

We’ve put an order in for Brigands MC, the eleventh CHERUB book, so if you’re keen to read it reserve it now!

For clues about what happens have a look at the CHERUB website, or if you’re very short on time this blog post.

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