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It starts with a Ouija board. Maria and Lily, roommates and girlfriends at the prestigious Acheron Academy, buy the board for fun, but after it moving on it’s own, strange shadows on the walls, and a fallen chandelier, their lives begin to change…for the worse. Billed as a story of revenge, Robin Talley’s As I Descended is a riveting retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth for a modern audience. At Acheron, Delilah Dufrey is the queen. She’s ranked first in the Senior class, captain of the soccer team, and she’s the “unanimously elected homecoming queen” (33). She’s also the first in line for the Cawdor Kingsley FoundationRead More →

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What if poets, musicians, painters, and actors—who have art and talent in their blood—could use their craft to weave magic, much like the magic that scientists work with chemical reactions, cymatics, and other means to make the impossible suddenly appear possible?  This is only one of the questions that Destiny Soria explores in her debut book, Iron Cast.  Her plot and its conflicts make readers think more deeply to wonder why society is so eager to marginalize those who are different.  Although differences in socioeconomic circumstances, language, ethnicity, age, race, place, religion, exceptionality, gender, and health have potential to cause division, the world might be aRead More →

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In this rational, scientific age, can people still take the leaps of faith necessary to believe in miracles?  This is the question explored by James Patterson in his mystery-thriller Cradle and All in a fashion similar to that pursued by Dan Brown in books like The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.  During a second coming of the dreaded disease polio, thought eradicated by Dr. Salk’s and the Sabin vaccine, people—mostly children—are dying or surviving with deformed limbs and crippled spines.  This unusual pandemic seems connected to the lives of two girls.  Kathleen Beavier, a seventeen-year-old with a model’s beauty and a Catholic girl’s innocence,Read More →

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Of all the revelations that her afterlife brings, perhaps the most startling for Molly Bellamy is the discovery that being dead doesn’t mean being done with life.  Murdered by a trusted friend when she was sixteen and in love, Molly finds herself, not in heaven, but trapped in a valley of nonexistence beside a lake—like being in a snow globe but without glass walls.  She shares this virtually unchanging place devoid of sensations with others like her who have also died young and in a violent, sudden, and painfully brutal way. All of the ghosts beside the lake occasionally travel back into the real worldRead More →

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Neal Bascomb, author of The Nazi Hunters, is back again with Sabotage: The Mission to Destroy Hitler’s Atomic Bomb. This gripping non-fiction novel is complete with science, mystery, and suspense as it follows the true tale of Hitler’s plan to engage in total destruction. The novel begins in 1940, when Germany attacked Norway. Bascomb gives the reader a background and scientific knowledge about nuclear fission and surprisingly, the importance of water. Readers will learn how complicated and specific the recipe was to create this bomb and the tactic mission involved.  Ironically, scientists were not planning on creating this destruction, yet their discovery of it helpedRead More →

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Kelsey has always been taught to view the world as dangerous. Her mother was the victim of a brutal kidnapping seventeen years ago. When she was finally able to escape, she vowed to stay indoors and raise her daughter, who she was now pregnant with. Since her mother’s kidnappers were never caught, Kelsey learned from a young age to protect her identity and to always be cautious when she left the house. To protect them, Kelsey’s mother built their home into a protected fortress complete with iron bars, video security, and bulletproof glass windows. To enter the home, Kelsey must enter a secret code. AllRead More →

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Adriana Mather’s How to Hang a Witch is about a girl who moves to Salem, Massachusetts from New York City with her stepmother and dad. One of their reasons for moving was because they wanted to make sure that her dad continued to get the care that he needed in order to stay healthy until he wakes up from his coma. When Samantha Mather moves to Salem, she realized because she is a descendant of Cotton Mather that her transition to Salem would not be that easy. After some research about her ancestors and the ancestors of the citizens she recognized some events that correlatedRead More →

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The Crown’s Game is a story about a woman named Vika, who has to decide between honor or love. She has a duty to her country to win the Crown’s Game, but she also wants to experience love and life. Vika encounters Pasha and Nikolai, who will have a great impact on the decision that will affect the rest of her life. Vika will soon know the meaning of love through the encounters that she has with Nikolai and Pasha as the games continues. The Crown’s Game reveals that magic can be found in all forms of the characters whether is performed or felt. AsRead More →

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What will you do for fame or goal fulfillment?  Presenting such a question may cause readers to reflect on the formula for success: hard work plus “discipline, control, and steely determination” (3).  But ambition can derail common sense, and we are all buffeted by the whims of circumstances that can cause us to react in unforeseen ways. Alyson Noël explores this “how far will you go” question in Unrivaled: A Beautiful Idols Novel released in May.  The main player in this novel isn’t an adolescent but an adult named Ira Redman, the überconnected night club czar of Los Angeles, California, and the sperm donor/father ofRead More →