23 interwoven stories and poems are edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner in Welcome To Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands.  Carefully crafted, skillfully interwoven, and richly textured, the collection flushes out the dark and the magical, the secrets and the mysteries, of the border between the Faerie Realm and The World.  Truebloods (High and Low-born Elves), Halfies (mixed race elves & humans), and mortals, as well as many other magical creatures live in, search for, and get lost in Bordertown.  It’s a city that’s been lost to The World for 13 years (only 13 days to those in Bordertown) where neitherRead More →

Getting shipped off to spend the summer with a grandmother you’ve never met, who lives out in the middle-of-nowhere Washington State, while all of your friends have basketball camp, pool parties, and days of uninterrupted hanging out ahead of them is a pretty cruddy turn of events.  To make it worse, what if your grandmother is the town kook and runs a space-themed “intergallactic” bed and breakfast that is crawling with weird guests and is the joke of the town?  For middle-schooler Scrub, it’s his worst nightmare.  And he has the whole summer ahead of him before he can go back home to Florida. Grandma needs help atRead More →

You Are Not Here Book description:  Annaleah and Brian shared something special – Annaleah is sure of it. When they were together, they didn’t need anyone else. It didn’t matter that their relationship was secret. All that mattered was what they had with each other.  And then, out of nowhere, Brian dies. And while everyone else has their role in the grieving process, Annaleah finds herself living outside of it, unacknowledged and lonely.  Reader Review:   You Are Not Hereby Samantha Schutz was a great read it captured my interest within the very first few pages. It made me look at how to deal with theRead More →

Set in 1881 in New Pacifica (a fictional territory of the US, much like the Pacific Northwest), James Nelson’s On the Volcano is a coming of age story, laced with romance, loss, and adventure. Katie was born in a small cabin on the rim of a powerful volcano, far from the turmoil and dangers of the pioneer world. She’s only ever known her beloved father and two other adults, Lorraine – a travelling healer who stays with them from time to time, and Old Dan- a nomad who drops in every decade or so to visit.  Approaching 16, Katie wonders about the world off theRead More →