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Emily Taylor shares her vivid imagination for magical worlds in her recent young adult novel, The Otherwhere Post. Taylor tells the tale of Maeve Abenthy who has lived for the past seven years with the knowledge that she has a murderer’s blood running through her veins.  Believing her father unleashed the Aldervine in Inverly, separating families and causing the deaths of many innocent people, Maeve feels cursed, so she hides behind aliases. Despite his abhorrent legacy, Maeve, a lover of the written word, has always found fascination in her father’s work with scriptomancy, “the art of enchanting any piece of existing handwriting” (8). When sheRead More →

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A Izenson lives in a world where transgender youth are an unwelcome anomaly. Although assigned female at birth, fourteen-year-old A is nonbinary. Because his parents think he is gender confused, they force him to attend Save our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD) meetings, where a type of conversion therapy takes place through counseling for “temporary emotional issues.”  A’s parents not only want their daughter back, they want to see legislation passed to prevent estrogen or testosterone treatments that might support youth who wish to transition during puberty and to put an end to “this transgender craze.” At SOSAD, he meets Yarrow, an agender teen who doesn’tRead More →

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Readers of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, or the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries will likely find These Deadly Prophecies by Andrea Tang a thrilling “who dun it.”  Under the influence of Tang’s pen, readers will revel in the plot twists as they follow the various leads. The story begins with seventeen-year-old Tabatha Zeng who works for Sorcerer Julian Solomon. Although Tabatha knows that sorcery is a liar’s game and the product of want, that knowledge doesn’t change her passion for predicting fortunes and fates. “Telling the future required clearing your mind of wants, of desires. [A sorcerer’s] job isn’t to change the future—merely toRead More →

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Erica Waters explores intriguing questions in her psychological thriller, The Restless Dark: What is the lure of unknowable darkness? What draws some of us to such topics as horror and true crime? To explore this idea, she creates a trio of young women: Lucy Wilson, Carolina Cassels, and Maggie Rey. All three characters attend a Killer Quest event set in Cloudkiss Canyon, an oppressive and terrifying locale in North Georgia where the fog can disorient a person and where legends swirl: Is this a place where people come to dispose of unwanted shame or “to toss ill-gotten goods, murder weapons, bodies, and anything else theyRead More →

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Marigold (Mari) Anderson-Green is anxiety prone, and because of a drug overdose and a recent stay at Strawberry Pines Rehabilitation Center, her mother, Raquel, accepts a Grow Where You’re Planted (GWYP) Residency in a new midwestern city. The GWYP provides a free house for three years, and Mari feels guilty about the circumstances that have made money tight, so she doesn’t complain too much about this search for a “fresh start.” However, Mari will now be a resident of Cedarville during her junior year, and she has no marijuana supplier to provide the weed that helps her take the edge off her anxiety and makeRead More →

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Readers of The Champions by Kara Thomas will enter the world of high school, where dance team and football team drama runs high. In this world, the Sunnybrook Tigers are legendary, but their legacy of winning is tainted by a shady past, and in some circles, Sunnybrook is known as the Town of Death. But the town’s identity is tied to the Tigers, so a lot of people have a vested interest in protecting the town’s reputation. Therefore, when senior Hadley Daugherty dares to write an article about “The Other Champions,” the dance team athletes that include Team Captain Alix Maroney, she is ridiculed. ButRead More →

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The writing life is one focus for Francisco X. Stork in his recent novel One Last Chance to Live. It tells the story of Nico Kardos who wishes to be a great writer. However, Stork’s book is also a murder mystery that explores the purpose of life. Seventeen-year-old Nico is finishing his senior year at Stonebridge Charter School in Hunts Point, New York, and his writing teacher Mr. Cortazar has assigned the class the task of writing 500 words per day in their journals. The practice is intended to teach self-knowledge, which “will make you a better person and a better writer” (18), according toRead More →

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Eloise Parrish is the picture of sunshine and optimism while her sister Oli is “shadows and hesitation, with a hard shell” (3). The duo are avid birders, and their favorite place is the Braided Woods in Connecticut.  Because their parents died when the girls were quite young, they live with their grandmother Ida Gibson who is faced with the challenge of Alzheimer’s. The pair jokingly call themselves The Sisters With Too Much Responsibility. In September, Oli will be a junior, and Eloise would have been one year behind, but she shockingly is found dead in a shallow grave in the Braided Woods. Although the caseRead More →

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Ruby Hale, who avoids confrontation and spiders, hopes to be a travel influencer. Given that interest, she films, edits, and posts content to her YouTube Show, Ruby’s Hidden Gems. Seeing the feats other cultures have achieved and the architecture that they’ve built all speak to Ruby’s soul. So, when her French class schedules a trip to France, Ruby is beyond excited. She wants to soak in as much of the world as she can in order to earn her way to exploring more of it. Once Ruby reaches Paris, her adrenaline junkie friend Valerie Moreau encounters a young man named Julien who offers a tourRead More →