Sometimes you read a book and you say, “That’s my book.” It seems like the author wrote it just for you, that everything in it was created for your amusement and suspense and pleasure. It is intimate and wonderful and you want to tell everyone you know about it and keep it all to yourself at the same time. I know many of you have felt that way about this book, and this one and this one. And that is how I feel about Diviners by the diabolically funny and utterly fabulous Libba Bray. This is SO my book. It is full of everything awesome and scary and merry and sweet. It is set in the Roaring Twenties in a swanky, swaggering New York City and features a collection of complex, confused teens with mysterious powers, who, one by one, realize that their destiny is to fight an ancient evil that is rising up in their very midst. (My favorite started out as unapologetic party girl Evie, but oh, you are gonna have such a crush on dance hall Theta and moody poet Memphis as well) There is both a haunted house AND a haunted museum. There’s a serial killer who steals body parts and a terrifying religious cult baying for blood. There are speakeasys and rent parties. It is about both big things like Manifest Destiny and little things like sparkly headbands. You get a front row seat to the Harlem Renaissance and a balcony chair to the Ziegfeld Follies. And the frights aren’t just lame-o gross-outs, but deep psychological chills that get under your skin (although there are some pretty good gross-outs, and someone does lose their skin). There’s a diversity of character that without message or pretense, makes you understand that America is and always has been a melting pot and that characters of color or of various sexual orientation can be an intregal part of a story without their background being THE story. There is romance (but not too much), gore (but not too much), loads of suspense and even a Model-T car chase. All things I adore (who knew I loved Model-T car chases but it turns out that I DO). All things I can’t believe are in the same epic voluminous book that despite being over 500 pages is as tight as a proverbial drum. And the only reason that I’m not in deep mourning at having finished it and at never being able to read it again for the first time is that it is just the FIRST BOOK IN A NEW SERIES. THERE WILL BE MORE. And I’m already a hot mess of anticipation for book 2. An exquisitely written, sumptuous affair of a novel that you will want to pull up around your ears and roll around in like a flapper’s mink stole. I can’t wait for you to discover that this is YOUR BOOK TOO when it comes to a library, bookstore or e-reader near you September 2012. While you drum your fingers wishing away the summer, check out this hilarious video of LB acting out the first scene of The Diviners with action figures. (Yes, I know. You thought you couldn’t love her more and now YOU DO.)
The Diviners by Libba Bray
05.15
Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers
05.06
In 1485 Brittany, seventeen-year-old Ismae is rescued from an arranged marriage to a brutish pig farmer by a hedge witch who recognizes Ismae for who she is: a daughter of Mortain, god of Death. She is bundled off to the convent of St. Mortain, where is she trained by killer nuns to become a first rate assassin who specializes in poisons. She swears utter obedience to the convent and it’s hard core Mother Superior in exchange for a new life free from the demands of men. Once her education is complete, her first assignment is to pose as the mistress of a high-ranking advisor named Duval in the court of Brittany’s young duchess Anne, whose rule is being challenged by many powerful enemies. The convent is closely aligned to the duchess; her fate may well become theirs. So Ismae’s job is two-fold: to report to the Mother Superior everything she observes at court that may threaten the duchess, but also to spy on Duval, who the Mother suspects may be a traitor. This is all fine by Ismae, who’s been chomping at the bit to get out into the field and murder some deserving villain. But before long she is caught up in complicated court politics and suddenly things don’t seem quite so black and white. She finds herself questioning the Mother Superior’s directions and forming dangerous opinions of her own. But worst of all? She thinks she might be falling for the very man she has been assigned to spy on. When the dreaded order to murder someone close to her comes by crow from the convent, Ismae has a terrible choice to make: maintain her allegiance to the organization that saved her life, or throw away the only security she has ever known to follow her treacherous heart. This epic supernatural hist. fic. went on a touch too long for me as an adult reader, but I suspect the voluminous length will be no problem for you teen folk, who seem to never want a good book to end. And make no mistake, this is a very good book, full of backstabbing politics, duplicitous double crosses and back-room-deals gone bad. I liked it best when Ismae was efficiently going about her killing business. The assassination scenes are so riveting and suspenseful, you’ll find yourself guiltily paging ahead to the next murder. I found the poison bits especially intriguing, and was fascinated when Ismae was cataloging her toxic library of potions and filing away how each poison worked and what awful symptoms the victim could expect to suffer. And tucked between the swoony romance and stone cold killings, there’s also meaty themes about gender and class in the Middle Ages, and the very limited ways women were allowed to function in society. Even the royal duchess Anne who Ismae is fighting to protect has no real authority but is just a pawn being pulled back and forth between groups of powerful men who don’t care about her but only want what she represents. If historical fiction has been your poison in the past, then I highly recommend this terrific tome as the antidote.
The Girl in the Park by Mariah Fredericks
04.25
Rain has no problem hanging at the back of the crowd in her posh Manhattan private school. Though she has had extensive speech therapy to overcome the cleft palate she was born with, she’s still insecure about her “mushmouthed and nasal” sounding voice. But when her former best friend and notorious party girl Wendy is found strangled to death in Central Park, Rain finds herself coming forward to defend the needy girl who hid her pain behind her boisterous personality. She wants justice for Wendy, who the newspapers have reduced to the dead girl, “The girl in Central Park.” So Rain forces herself to leave the audience and step into the spotlight. She starts questioning people about Wendy’s death: namely bad boy Nico Phelps, who Wendy stalked on Facebook, and his cold, classy girlfriend Sasha Meloni. She must also deal with the police’s questions about her own lapsed relationship with her ex-bestie, and confront a nosy reporter who seems bent on trashing Wendy’s already damaged reputation. As she circles closer and closer to the terrible truth about what really happened in the park that night, Rain discovers that in speaking up for someone else, she has finally found her true voice. But will she solve the case only to endanger herself? Partially inspired by the Central Park Preppy Murder, this unusual crime mystery with an unlikely and admirable sleuth at its center is a tight thriller that stands out from the rest of the pink-dust-jacketed pack.
The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman
04.15
Mousy Nora can’t believe her luck when super cute Chris and his equally shiny girlfriend Adriane adopt her into their exclusive circle at Chapman prep. Even though she sometimes feels like a third wheel, it’s worth it to be able to call Chris her best friend. Then after graduation, Chris scores a cool after school job for them at his nearby college: using their mad Latin skillz to help a crabby old professor translate a coded book known as the Voynich Manuscript that supposedly holds the secrets to the universe if they can decipher it’s “incomprehensible symbols…broken only by elaborate illustrations of flowers and animals and astronomical phenomena that apparently have no counterpart in the real world.” Chris and Chris’s roommate Max work on The Book while Nora tries her hand at translating the accompanying letters of Elizabeth Weston, whose stepfather was an alchemist who claimed to have broken the code. As the long nights of translating commence, Nora finds herself falling for quiet, shy Max, whose geeky love of Latin and history matches her own, and soon the two are as lip locked as Chris and Adriane. But when Nora takes one of Elizabeth’s letters from the professor’s office without permission, she accidentally sets into motion a chain of events that ends in the horrific murder of one of her closest friends, and the ultimate betrayal of another. Nora has unwittingly unlocked a dark door to the past that now opened, will not be closed until someone–maybe even herself–has paid in blood. If you are a fan of The Da Vinci Code
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
04.05
When Cheryl Strayed was twenty-six, she found herself essentially orphaned, divorced and struggling with a potential heroin addiction. Mourning the recent death of her mother, she decided that the best cure for her crippling depression was to hike the 1,100-mile Pacific Crest Trail, a professional level mountain hiking trail that starts at the Mexican border, winds through the entire state of California and ends near Mount Hood in Oregon. Cheryl was not an experienced hiker, but through the kindness of strangers and her own iron will, she slowly and painfully became one, one blackened and lost toenail at a time. Her boots were too small, her pack too big and her knowledge of hiking limited to The Pacific Crest Trail guides, volumes 1 & 2. She quickly tired of her dehydrated meals and purified water, and began obsessively dreaming of the Snapple lemonade bottles that she could rarely afford on her limited budget stocked at each trail stop: “…there was both yellow and pink. They were like diamonds or pornography. I could look, but I couldn’t touch.” Besides Snapple emergencies, there were also bears, rattlesnakes, dangerous snowy passages and a few lecherous male hikers. But Cheryl powered through, the thought of her tough, cool, loving mom always spurring her on: “Where was my mother? I wondered. I’d carried her so long, staggering beneath her weight. On the other side of the river, I let myself think. And something inside me released.” Both humorous and incredibly touching, this soulful journey of self-discovery may be one of the best coming of age stories I have ever read. Strayed’s writing is luminous and accessible–whether you’re twenty-six, sixteen or sixty, you will be able to relate to some aspect of her inspiring account. I became so immersed in Cheryl’s story that I couldn’t stop talking about it to anyone who would listen—and neither will you when you get your hands on this terrific memoir from your nearest library, bookstore or e-reader.
The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi
03.25
Mahalia and Mouse are “war maggots,” children orphaned by the violent and ever changing civil war that has ravaged the bleak futuristic landscape of the United States eastern coast, and caused the Chinese peacekeepers to cut their losses and flee. They find temporary safety and shelter with Doctor Mahfouz, a kind physician who works hard helping their small village of civilian survivors stay alive. But when the United Patriot Front, a ragged gang of young men and child soldiers, invade Banyan Town while on the hunt for an escaped genetically engineered canine soldier named Tool (one of my all-time favorite characters), Mahalia and Mouse are dragged back into the danger and chaos of the civil war that destroyed their families and took Mahalia’s hand. In this dark companion novel to the Printz award- winning Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi paints a terrifying picture of a future that looks frighteningly similar to recent conflicts involving child soldiers in countries like Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. Though Bacigalupi’s precise, crisp prose and masterful plotting was as excellent as expected, I had a very hard time finishing this book because Mahalia and Mouse’s situation is so grim, the violence they endure is so pervasive, and any hope they find is brutally snatched away. But I know my reaction is no doubt what the author intended. Because if the readers of this book, and others that chronicle the real lives of child soldiers, are inspired to take action as a result of what they have read, then maybe someday the global epidemic of war and violence against children will end. A piercing, powerful book that will sear itself on your heart and soul.
Supergirl Mixtapes by Meagan Brothers
03.15
Maria was born in New York City, but she hasn’t been back since her parents split and she ended up living with her dad in Georgia. Her family has always warned her that her mom Victoria, a free spirited artist living in Greenwich Village, is not exactly parent material. But now that she’s practically an adult, Maria is ready to find out for herself, and convinces her grandmother and dad to let her live with her mom and go to school in NYC for her junior year. Armed with the Supergirl Mixtapes of bad ass female singers that her best friend Dory made for her, Maria feels prepared to take on the creativity and chaos of New York and her downtown artist mom. Except that from the minute she sets foot in the Big Apple, Maria is beset with problems. First of all, she hates her new school, where mean girls quickly label her a Southern hick. Then there’s the issue of her mother’s live-in boyfriend Travis, who’s hot, rides a motorcycle, and is only six years older than Maria. Finally there’s unreliable Victoria herself, who is constantly racing off to rock shows with her friends and acts and dresses like she’s still sixteen years old. What makes matters worse is when Maria finds a baggie of suspicious white powder in her mom’s bathroom. Who do the drugs belong to? Maria begins to wonder if she can trust her mom to tell her the truth. Will Maria end up back in Georgia listening to her dad say, “I told you so” after all? Or will she find it in herself to conquer the city that never sleeps while forcing her mom to act like a grown-up? This heartfelt novel is a bit of a love note to a New York of not-so-long-ago, one where you could still catch a show at CBGBs, or look up and figure out where you were by your proximity to the World Trade Towers. Meagan Brothers does a lovely job of capturing that moment in time by referencing bands and artists from both the 90′s and New York’s historically rich downtown music scene. The music of Nirvana
Chopsticks: a novel by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral
03.05
Seventeen-year-old Gloria Fleming is a beautiful young piano prodigy who’s still mourning the death of her mother when she was ten and chafes under her widowed father’s strict rules. Frank Mendoza is the impetuous young artist who moves in next door and sweeps Gloria off her feet with his sensuous drawings, paintings of flowers and romantic mix discs. When Gloria’s father forces her to go on a European concert tour, the two are devastated, and Gloria rebels the only one she knows how–by turning each classic composition into a version of Chopsticks. Gloria and Frank correspond throughout the disastarous tour with IM and postcards, while Gloria’s performances continue to deteriorate. Finally Gloria’s frustrated father is forced to bring her home, and the star crossed pair can’t wait to be reunited. But Gloria’s homecoming isn’t at all what she imagined. Teetering on the edge of madness, Gloria must finally face the fact she hasn’t been entirely truthful to herself about the role Frank has played in her life and his fate in her uncertain future. A romantic mystery told entirely in objects, photos, IM’s and handwritten notes, CHOPSTICKS will remind readers of a certain generation (that would be X) of an awesome little book called Griffin & Sabine
Sea Hearts (Australia) or The Brides of Rollrock Island (UK, US) by Margo Lanagan
02.29
On Rollrock island, all the mams look alike—tall and slender, with big dark eyes and long dark hair. They sing strange songs and they line their windowsills with shells and sea grass. Their anxious husbands and sons do everything they can to distract them from the melancholy that rises up within them whenever they stand at the edge of the sea, but they can never fully erase the pain that fills their women’s deep dark eyes as they gaze longingly out at the waves. Even as a little girl, Misskaella was never really accepted by the rest of the Rollrock folk with her odd features and power to see behind reality’s thin veil. So when she discovers her ability to convert the seals that gather on Rollrock’s shore into beautiful women, she quickly utilizes it to bring the village men to their knees. Bewitched by the seal maids, the fishermen are powerless to resist their passive charms, and under their enchantment, the men eventually abandon or drive away all the strong-willed, decisive “land” women from the tiny island community. Only mad Misskeella is left, knitting the mams seaweed blankets and perversely enjoying the wretched society she has created where no one who truly understands the sacrifice the mams are making for their families is happy. But one boy can bear the sadness no longer. And his actions cause another quiet revolution on Rollrock that will alter the island yet again in ways that not even the witch Misskaella can control.
Master fantasy author Margo Lanagan takes the legend of the selkie and uses it to adroitly illuminate the darkest corners of the human heart. Rich themes of loyalty, acceptance, betrayal and revenge emerge from her exquisite prose that is itself a dazzling wonder. Each section is voiced by a different player in this tragedy, and uncovers another layer in a story that is less a romance and more about mother love. The sons of Rollrock broke my heart. When you are born with one foot on land and one in the sea, how do you decide your destiny? Which parent do you stand by when to help one will destroy the other? Once the boys know the secret sorrow of their mams’ cast-off seal skins, they can’t unknow it, and it kills them: “They were not costumes; they were peeled-off parts of our mothers; without them, how could our mams be themselves, their real selves, their under-sea selves, the selves they were born into? They walked about on land with no protection, from the cold or from our dads falling in love with them, or from us boys needing them morning and night.” Like Misskaella’s magic, Lanagan’s elegant prose is transformative–I promise you will be a different person after having experienced it. When I look back at her body of work, the consistency of her genius is stunning, and each title that comes out is my new favorite. Sea Hearts is no exception. Put this sublimely sad tome on your must-read list NOW. Coming to a library, bookstore or e-reader near you September 2012. (But if you simply can’t wait, this book has already been published in Australia and the UK.)
Starters by Lissa Price
02.20
“It had been a long time since I’d been happy. A long time since life was just lip gloss and music and silly girlfriends. A long time since my biggest concerns were whether there would be a test or if I’d forgotten my homework. I was aiming for more like safe, free and alive.” Since the Spore Wars killed her parents and all the other healthiest members of the population, leaving only teens (Starters) and elderly people with extended life spans (Enders) to form an uneasy alliance, Callie is trying to keep herself and her little brother Tyler alive. The new world is hostile to Starters without family. They fight each other for food, live illegally in abandoned buildings, and are thrown into forced work camps if they are unlucky enough to run into Marshals on the street. Without an Ender sponsor, most Starters die of starvation or disease. The only way Starters can escape this wretched existence is to loan themselves to Prime Destinations, a shady technology company that allows wealthy Enders to “rent” the nubile young bodies of Starters. After being forced out of her squat and losing the few possessions she has left, Callie decides she has no choice but to rent her body in order to make enough money to get her and Tyler off the streets. Though she’s assured that her body will be unharmed and there is no S-E-X allowed during her rental, Callie is still worried about the chip that must be implanted in her head in order for the procedure to take place. Callie goes to sleep as planned, and all seems to be well. But when she wakes up on the sticky floor of a dance club several days before her rental is supposed to end, it is clear something has gone terribly wrong. What has happened to her renter? And why is suddenly able to hear voices in her head? This dystopian thriller is a page turner of the highest level that once you start, you won’t be able to put down. The premise feels frighteningly real, and debut author author Lissa Price keeps you guessing at the end of every cliffhanging chapter. You won’t be able to help looking down at your own bod and wondering what it would feel like if someone else was driving!