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Dead of Night
Jonathan Maberry, author of popular YA novels Rot & Ruin and Dust & Decay (both Simon & Schuster, 2010 & 2011 respectively), is out with a new adult zombie novel this week. Maberry...
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Across Many Mountains: A Tibetan Family’s Epic Journey from Oppression to...
Yangzom Brauen tells the story of three generations of women in her family, beginning with her grandmother’s young adulthood spent as a Buddhist nun in Tibet. The family fled Tibet in 1960 to escape...
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The Sisters
The Sisters falls securely in the category of women’s fiction. When I first saw the cover and read the description, I doubted that it would have teen appeal. Still, it was vacation, I had time, I gave...
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The Starboard Sea
I have to admit that I spent much of the first half of Amber Dermont’s debut novel wondering if I was really going to review it for this blog. Was it wishful thinking? Did I just WANT it to have teen...
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Joe Golem and the Drowning City: An Illustrated Novel
Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola first collaborated several years ago on Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire (Spectra, 2007). Now they are back with a second novel...
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The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It
Ricki Lewis, a geneticist and journalist, offers an absorbing narrative of the history of and recent advances in gene therapy. She’s written textbooks on the topic, as well as hundreds of articles, and...
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Weekly Reviews: Crime
In this week’s reviews, we delve into three takes on the everlasting American obsession with crime and criminals. We start with Rob Deborde’s Portlandtown, which injects its paranormal underpinnings...
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Weekly Reviews: Francesca Lia Block and Ursula K. Le Guin
Today we feature new books by two authors well-known among teen readers. With Francesca Lia Block’s return to adult fiction we have, as Jamie says in her review, a perfect example of the New Adult...
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Weekly Reviews: Portraying the Famous (and Infamous)
Today we review three novels with famous people as their subjects. The first is Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald. Teens continue to be fascinated by the Jazz Age and they read the novels of F. Scott...
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Weekly Reviews: Graffiti
I fully admit that this may seem strange to many readers of this blog, but one of my favorite things to do after reading a historical novel is to read up about the facts of the history the novelist...
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Weekly Reviews: Boarding Schools & Sports
Today we review two notable debut novels featuring teen protagonists who are talented at the sports they love — riding and rowing. There are a surprising number of similarities between these books....
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Tattoos, a Funeral Home, and a Cat Named Bob
Three new memoirs make the most of teen-friendly subject matter. First, a celebrity memoir by Don Ed Hardy, the man who helped bring tattoo art into the mainstream. Hardy knew from the age of 10, when...
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The Different Shades of Horror
I am writing this on the Sunday evening of a weekend during which the movie “Insidious: Chapter 2″ made $41 million dollars at the box office. Tomorrow evening “Sleepy Hollow” premieres on Fox and CBS...
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Women’s Fiction
Am I going out on a limb to suggest that teens read what readers’ advisory librarians refer to as “women’s fiction”? I don’t think so. Whether it’s Danielle Steele, Joshilyn Jackson, Alice Hoffman, or...
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Nonfiction Roundup
Our first review today is an account of the happenings at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during the five days after Hurricane Katrina. I will let you read the review for the details, but keep in mind...
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Spell It Out
My 5-year-old daughter has been teaching herself to write. She knows all the sounds of the letters, and some of the two-letter sounds, and she just writes phonetically. It’s pretty great, and I am...
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The Recent Past
Three novels set in the recent past all center on adolescents betrayed or abandoned by the adults in their lives. Jamie Ford‘s debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, was a hugely...
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A Trio of Thrillers
Three great suspenseful reads today. Joyce Maynard bases her latest on a true crime spree that took place in the 1970s, the “Trailside Killings”. Her young teen narrator and her even younger sister...
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Meet the Costa First Novel Award winner
The Costa Book Award winners were announced earlier this week. We were thrilled when a review of the winner for First Novel arrived from Diane Colson on the very same day! The Costa Book Awards “honour...
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Harrowing Memoirs
Today we look at two memoirs of harrowing childhoods. Today’s teens are too young to remember the media onslaught brought on by Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapping and rescue. But they will be by turns...
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