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August, 1896: 17 year old Willie is a liar and a thief.  She’s fleeing to Indian Territory, using a stolen name and teacher’s certificate, to take a position as English teacher at the Cherokee Female Seminary.  Willie assumes she’ll be teaching backwards Indian children and hopes that the chances of being discovered and sent back to her family farm are slim.  But she’s not prepared for what awaits her in Oklahoma: the Seminary boarding school educates both the daughters of the Cherokee Elite, and the poor tribal girls there on scholarship, many of whom are more educated that Willie is; the Headmistress is stern and extremelyRead More →

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16 year old London Lane has a secret: every night since she was 6 years old, when she goes to sleep, her memory of her past disappears. Instead, she awakens with “memories” of her future life, remembering people, places, and events that have not yet occurred.  London can’t remember the day before today, or any day of 16 years of life.  Her mom and her best friend Jaime are the only people who know her secret and they use a system of nightly note reminders, cell phone alarms, and old-fashioned partnering to help London navigate her daily high-school life.  It’s a somewhat maddening, precarious existence,Read More →

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Making its US debut in May 2011, German YA best-seller Ruby Red  is a perfect mix of mystery, supernatural fanasy and romantic adventure.  Gwen is a typical 16 year old girl living with her mom, siblings and her extended family in a posh London neighborhood.  She’s a spunky, skeptical teen who’s managed to live a fairly normal life despite the time-travelling gene that runs in the women of her family (although Gwen isn’t without some supernatural abilities of her own – she can see and converse with ghosts).  This generation’s carrier is her haughty cousin Charlotte, whose been through years of secret training to prepare herRead More →

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Alexis Warren is back.  Now, she and her parents have moved from their haunted Victorian-era house to a non-descript suburb and are trying to rebuild their lives after Kasey, Alexis’ younger sister, was possessed by a murderous ghost and tried to kill them all in Katie Alender’s debut novel Bad Girls Don’t Die.  Alexis has a boyfriend now, is settled into a comfortable group at school, and is ready for life to get back to a controlled, predictable normal.  But then Kasey is released from the psychiatric hospital and comes home, and of course, soon all Hell breaks loose. This time, Kasey and her friendsRead More →

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Sam Smith and Emily Bell come from two different worlds:  17 year old Sam has spent his life drifting from state to state with his paranoid schizophrenic father, Clarence, and his autistic, asthmatic younger brother, Riddle.  They live outside the system, squatting in abandoned homes, preying on the gullible, and clearing out quick whenever the voices Clarence’s head tell him to run, or worse, the law comes looking.  Pretty, shy Emily lives in a comfortable suburban home with her caring and well-meaning parents, her somewhat annoying little brother, and the family dog.  But both Sam and Emily long for a deep connection to another personRead More →

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Sometimes when I am picking out the next book I want to read, I go solely on the cover art. I don’t read the jacket flap or the blurb on the back or even the little summary on the back of the title page. I let the cover draw me in and then allow myself to be totally surprised (or not) by the story that unfolds with the book. Debut author Dawn Metcalf’s Luminous  was one of these books for me – I was completely seduced by the cover (I was feeling really girly that day, OK?) and it lead me to expect either aRead More →

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It all started with a fever. No, a cherry cola and a water tower. No, maybe it started before that with a freak disease, Star Wars, and an absent dad; but it leads to the his dad walking to New York, the 6:00 news, making out with a girl, and losing his best friend.  15 year old Nick Gardner isn’t ready for all of the changes that are about to happen to his life.   But in the midst of all this upheaval and seemingly out of nowhere, quirky, smart and beautiful Jaycee Amato comes into Nick’s life.  Jaycee propels Nick to accept his best friend, the Scoot’s, dyingRead More →

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Adam Ziegler is in his element up in the catwalks:  bringing the magic of light into the theatre below; creating the illusions of color and shadow, helping to transport the audience into the world of the play; he wants to run the spot, not be in it.   Adam’s still lost after the tragic death of his father two years ago and even though darkness brings up terrible anxiety for him, being a Techie in the theatre department at his high school gives him a safe, secure place to try to survive.  But a few days before the opening of the spring show, nothing about the productions isRead More →

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Jennifer Brown is making a name for herself with striking, poignant novels about hard-to-face topics.  Her latest novel, following her fantastic debut Hate List, is Bitter End, which explores with wide-open eyes and complete candor, the emotional roller coaster of a young woman in love with an abusive boyfriend. High school senior Alex is haunted by the tragic accident that killed her mother when she was a young girl; the fact that her father will never talk about the circumstances that lead her mom out onto the road to Colorado so many years ago, and the isolation she feels in her family at being the only one whoRead More →