An Earl’s daughter, Lady Ela Dalvi doesn’t fall from grace; she is shoved by her former best friend, Poppy Landers who concocts a tale that sullies Ela’s reputation. Vowing to get revenge, Ela invents a new personality and becomes Miss Lyra Whitley, an enigmatic heiress who plans to infiltrate the glittering ballrooms of London, 1817. After all, “money has a way of opening the tightest, most elite circles” (10), and the recipe for high society female accomplishment in the United Kingdom during the late Regency era and later were fortune, connections, beauty, and virtue. On this defiant journey across class boundaries, Lyra’s disguise seeks position,Read More →

I love a good, spine-tingling mystery.  Smart detectives, heart-pumping tension, dark and spooky locales, they’re all it takes for me to get lost for hours.  And I especially love it when the plot is so well constructed  it weaves in and out on itself, and is chock full of false clues, hidden gems, and tiny, realistic details that sparkle and pop like a faulty flashlight on a pitch-black night.  So imagine my thrill as I was drawn into The Screaming Staircase, the first book in New York Times best-selling author of the Bartimaeus series Jonathan Stroud‘s, new series Lockwood & Co. For the past fifty years,Read More →

Although Lauren Morrill’s debut novel, Meant to Be, tells the story of Julia Lichtenstein, a junior at Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts, it also tells the turbulent tale of teen relationship building, the random chaos of life and love. Julia, who doesn’t know the word fun because it wasn’t on the SATs, is a stickler for history and geography and rules.  Because of her reputation, she has earned nicknames like Book Licker, Professor, and Little Miss Guidebook.  When she signs up for the class’ spring break field trip toLondon, she hopes to immerse herself in the rich culture and history of the place, butRead More →