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In Peadar O’Guilin’s first full length novel, The Inferior, “survival of the fittest” is taken to an entirely new meaning and readers should be prepared  for a gripping story about characters who must do whatever it takes to survive.  The story focuses on a young man, Stopmouth, and his tribe of humans who know of no other life than the daily battle to survive. To live, they must hunt rival species, or negotiate live flesh-trade with non-human species to maintain a precarious peace. And for Stopmouth, considered slowwitted because of his stutter, the future looks especially bleak. Their cruel world is not all as it seems however, and on theRead More →

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Set in the Mississippi bayou in the summer and fall of 1963, A Thousand Never Evers tells the story of 12 year-old Addie Ann Pickett.  After graduating from Acorn Elementary School, Addie Ann looks forward to a summer of swinging in her yard, jumping double Dutch, working in the kitchen at Old Man Adam’s house,  teaching her cat, Flapjack, new tricks, and to starting 7th grade at West Thunder Creek Junior High School.  Two unexpected events change the course of her summer, and ultimately, the life she has always known: the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers and the death of her employer, Old Man Adams. AsRead More →

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“Popularity is a state of mind. Feel nerdy. Think uncool thoughts. It also helps to use the word vaginal a lot.” Sugar Magnolia Dempsey, the daughter of free spirit “hippie” parents is moving once again, this time from her home in Portland to Austin, Texas. Broken hearted, she leaves behind friends and a boyfriend, “Maggie” vows that this time she will go out of her way to become the most unpopular student at Lakewood High School.  Arriving in Austin, she launches Operation Avoid Friends (OAF) deciding  that she is not going to fit in and will do anything to prevent people from liking her. FromRead More →

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Darkhenge by Catherine Fisher, opens on the hills above Avebury, England, famous for its prehistoric stone henges.  Rob, a talented teenage artist, sees his family disintegrating as his younger sister lies in a coma. Looking for an outlet to escape the grief and guilt he feels, he takes a job with a local archaeological dig where a new and mysterious henge has been discovered. Having spent his life surrounded by the mythology of stone circles, Rob initially pays little attention to the bizarre events that surround the dig until he realizes that this new revelation and the mystifying people attracted to it are somehow related to his sister. The novel plays outRead More →

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Madapple, the debut novel by Christina Meldrum, is a spellbinding exploration of the correlations among nature, religion, mythology and the human condition.  Meldrum weaves a complex story, full of mystery, about a sixteen-year-old girl, Aslaug. Raised in an isolated and restrictive environment by her eccentric Danish mother, Aslaug learns languages, botany, mythology and science, but very little about the outside world. When her mother dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances, Aslaug leaves home in search of her absent father, but instead finds her estranged aunt and cousins, who run a Pentecostal church in a nearby town. As dark family secrets are revealed, including the mystery of Aslaug’s birth, the tension inRead More →

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If I Die In Juarez, Arizona author Stella Pope Duarte’s most recent novel is a compelling fictionalization of the grotesque and inhumane murders of young women in Juarez, Mexico.  The interwoven stories of three young women caught up in the gritty, desperately poor, and corrupt world of Juarez evoke feelings of helplessness, anger, and ultimately resignation in the reader.  I was captivated by the story because it felt so real. Forced out of the house by her alcoholic mother, 13-year-old Evita takes to the streets and struggles to survive, falling into prostitution and drug trafficking. Petra, Evita’s beautiful 19-year-old cousin, moves with her family from a mountainous region of MexicoRead More →

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Perfect You by Elizabeth Scott is the story of Kate, and how her life is falling apart. Her father quit his job to buy and operate a Perfect You vitamin booth. Kate is forced to work at this both after school, causing severe irreversible damage. Add the fact that her best friends is no longer speaking to her, and Kate has absolutely nothing positive going on in her life. Enter Will. Amazing, so out-of-her-league Will. Kate cannot stop thinking about him, and when he starts paying more attention to her, she thinks it is to good to be true. But the more he tries toRead More →

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Ninth Grade Slays by Heather Brewer is an excellent follow up to her first novel, Eighth Grade Bites. Vladimir Tod is a vampire, but he’s also half human, the first of his kind. He lives on blood bags his aunt brings home from the hospital. He doesn’t feed off the source, humans. Vlad has just come out of an extremely eventful eighth grade year. Apparently, there is an entire community of vampires outside his little town of Bathory. But as for his start of high school, strange things are about to happen. Not only does Vlad have to deal with bullies and talking to theRead More →

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In Special Topics in Calamity Physics, author Marisha Pessl spins an intriguing tale filled with mystery, teenage angst and dark humor. With a unique style of writing, narration peppered with references, similar to a research paper, Pessl’s novel takes on the unique world of Blue van Meer, an eccentric, introspective teenager whose life is interrupted by the death of a woman named Hannah Schneider. As the book unfolds, Blue jumps back in time and narrates the past year, which is filled with an array of interesting characters and mysterious circumstances that lead to a surprise twist at the end. Pessl’s novel is captivating, and whileRead More →