Delightfully blending mystery, fantasy, and adventure, Mark Steensland’s Behind the Bookcase is chock full of everything there is to love about scary stories. From a creepy “haunted” house, to hidden passages that lead to a sinister shadow world populated by creatures straight from nightmares, to a race against time to save our world from being [...]
It was, I’m sure, pure coincidence that the two books I recently read had main characters named Jane whose death seemed all but inevitable. Loosely connected by the thread of “Janes in constant danger”, Helen Keeble’s campy, funny debut Fang Girl and Graham McNamee’s spooky Beyond took me from the dark nights in a British suburb to [...]
Reminiscent in tone to his Magic Shop Books, Bruce Coville‘s latest, Always October, is an imaginative chase through a land of nightmares. Sixth grade friends, Jake Doolittle and “Weird Lily” Carker, take turns telling the story of their discovery of, journey through, and daring escape from, a parallel universe, Always October, that is filled with [...]
17 year old Jack’s summer job, as a “nanny” for an 8 and 12 year old brother and sister, seems like it would be a cake walk. He’ll be making really good money and all he has to do is hang out with a couple of kids for a couple months. The major downside is [...]
Acclaimed British novelist Catherine Fisher (Incarceron - The Times’ Children’s Book of the Year) is back this Fall with a new subtly woven, spooky Faust-inspired, fantasy, Darkwater. In the early twentieth century in a windswept British village on the sea, 16 year old Sarah Trevelyan would give anything to regain the power, prestige, and wealth her [...]
Christopher Krovatin’s recent book Gravediggers: Mountain of Bones is designed for readers who don’t mind horror or creepy concepts like zombies. Following a plotline similar to that found in R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series, this book features three middle-schooler’s perspectives: Ian, a hard-headed athlete who thinks muscle will help him outrun any danger; Kendra, a sharp-minded library [...]
What would you sacrifice for power? For love? Would you give of yourself – your blood, your energy, your soul – for someone else if you loved them enough? To harness the power of the land, a sacrifice is required. A drop of blood onto the earth brings abundance and growth. A drop of blood [...]
Chris Westwood’s Graveyard Shift combines the best elements from stories like Men in Black, GhostBusters, Harry Potter, and more into an action-packed fantasy adventure that will get your blood pumping. It’s a quick, delightfully scary read full of magic and a couple of likeable middle school students embarking on an adventure of a lifetime. One [...]
In Sangu Mandanna‘s The Lost Girl, Eva is a fifteen year old girl living in London who has a life completely different than anyone she knows. She is an echo; a creation made by a group of individuals called the Weavers. She was created to prepare if her ‘other’, Amarra, were to die. Eva would [...]
Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard holds true to the title. Eleanor Fitt is the young protagonist living in 1800′s Philadelphia dealing with the usual problems of a young woman including fitting into a corset, being married off by her mother, and escaping zombies?! That’s right! When Elijah (Eleanor’s brother) does not get off [...]
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