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The wait was long; the wait was painful; but today the mystery was solved!  In Ghost in the Machine, Patrick Carman concludes his highly suspenseful, fast-paced, and tech-savvy thriller duo that started in last year’s Skeleton Creek.  When we left high school best friends Ryan and Sarah at the nail-biting end of Skeleton Creek, they were trapped in the defunct,  surface-mining gold dredge outside their tiny, isolated home town.  Forbidden to have contact with each other, yet bent on solving the sinister mysteries surrounding the dredge’s death-laden past, Ryan and Sarah snuck into the dredge late at night to find a secret room when they wereRead More →

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The four 12-year-olds who are enrolled in the summer program at the highly secretive, highly selective School of Fear have got some real issues:Madeline lives in abject terror of spiders and bugs; Theo is petrified by the thought of either himself or anyone in his family dying; Lulu’s claustrophobia overwhelms her and everyone around her; and sports star Garrison breaks out into an uncontrollable sweat at the thought of coming in contact with water.  Their parents, at wits end, all seek help from the School of Fear, reputed to be able to cure the most overwhelming, life debilitating fears in its students. Maddie, Theo, LuluRead More →

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Returning to Renaissance Italy, Avi‘s newest book for young readers, Murder at Midnight, is full of political intrigue, deception, and suspense.  Set before the events of  Midnight Magic(1999), there’s a sinister plot from someone within the royal court to overthrow the king, and Magnus the Magician has been targeted as the scapegoat for the crime.  After treasonous flyers, apparently magically produced, flood the streets of Pergamontio, Magnus is arrested and accused of conspiracy.  His well-meaning but naive new servant, 10-year old Fabrizio, sets out to save his master from death and assemble the clues to root out the real traitor before it’s too late. The fast-pacedRead More →

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“Vampires are meant to be glamorous and powerful, but I’m here to inform you that being a vampire is nothing like that. Not one bit. On the contrary, it’s like being stuck indoors with the flu watching daytime television, forever and ever.  If being a vampire were easy, there wouldn’t be a Reformed Vampire Support Group.  …God I’m sick of it.” And so we meet Nina; a fifty-one year old vampire who’s had a chip on her shoulder since she was infected at the age of 15.  Tired of a listless, sickly  life stuck in her mother’s house, Nina writes a vampire adventure series with aRead More →

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In one word: Delightful! Rescuing Seneca Crane is Susan Runholt’s second Kari + Lucas Mystery.  She again delivers a action-packed, clever, well-structured mystery.  Kari and Lucas are perceptive, interesting, self-sufficicient teenagers with whom girls will enjoy spending time solving mysteries and just hanging out. Kari and Lucas are on a trip to Scotland with Kari’s mom. She’s there to interview a piano-playing teen prodigy, Seneca Crane.  At first, Kari & Lucas think Seneca will be too talented to relate to, but soon after meeting her and her over-protective parents, they decide she needs to be rescued from her restrictive life.  What they don’t realize is that they’ll soonRead More →

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Rita Murphy’s latest novel, Bird, blends magical realism and mystery in telling the story of a girl easily carried away by the wind; a grim secretive widow; and an ominous house on a cliff. Miranda has no memory of where she came from – only that one day a huge gust of wind picked her up and brought her to Widow Barrows and Bourne Manor.  The Widow outfits Miranda with steel boots to keep her on the ground and forbids her leaving the house, but show her no other warmth or kindness. Bourne Manor is also a cold, grim place, full of foreboding, secrets and menace.Read More →

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In Timothy Mason’s first novel, The Last Synapsid, we visit Faith, Colorado. It’s a quiet town, but this spring, a mysterious creature is lurking on the mountain.  What is it, and what does it want? Only Rob and his best friend, Phoebe, are brave enough to investigate.  What they find is the Last Synapsid—a squat, drooly creature that looks like a dinosaur crossed with a wienerdog—that claims to need Rob and Phoebe’s help. Having wandered into a time snag from his own era, 30 million years before the dinosaurs, “Sid” is chasing a violent carnivore called a gorgonopsid. The Gorgon refuses to return to his properRead More →

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In Maze of Bones, The 39 Clues Book One, Amy and Dan Cahill are orphans whose world falls apart with the death of their beloved (and wealthy) grandmother, Grace. At the funeral, the lawyer calls together a select few of her many relatives into the mansion’s Great Hall and offers them each a choice: take a one-million-dollar inheritance and leave, or, instead of money, be given the first of 39 clues that “might lead you to the most important treasure in the world and make you powerful beyond belief . . . or it might kill you.” Amy and Dan take a clue, although they are mystified and confusedRead More →

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In G.P. Taylor’s Mariah Mundi: The Midas Box, Mariah Mundi has ended his time at the Colonial School without a family to go home to. His parents are missing, presumed dead, somewhere in the Sudan. So Mariah is sent to take up employment at the Prince Regent Hotel, a fabulous place filled with inventions and luxury.  Mariah is to be apprenticed to the Great Bizmillah, the magician at the hotel’s theatre. It doesn’t take long for Mariah and his new-found friend Sasha to discover some unwelcome secrets about the Prince Regent. Previous boys sent there from the Colonial School have all disappeared and to where,Read More →