Get lost in a series this winter!

The nights are long, the days are cold. Curl up this winter with a good series or trilogy that will take you into spring!

For science fiction lovers, try Dom Testa's series The Galahad Books.  The Earth is destroyed, and all that's left of humanity is one spaceship filled with teenagers.  Start with The Comet's Curse. There are 6 books in the series so far, more to come. 

Still in the sci-fi vein, Alex Scarrow's Time Riders series is an adventurous trip through time to"fix" broken history. Start with Time Riders. The library owns books 1 through 4.

One of my favorite series is the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. It's a dystopian future story along the lines of Hunger Games. Ness paints a wonderfully out of whack world filled with thrills and adventure.

Like zombies?  The Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy by Carrie Ryan would be a good pick. Dark and atmospheric, it's a real page turner. Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry, another zombie trilogy,  was a Nutmeg winner in 2013.  It's followed by Dust and Decay and Flesh and Bone. Not your usual zombie tale, this one has heart.

For fantasy lovers there are a lot to choose from. Rae Carson's Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy is rich in court intrigue and fantasy lands.

An oldie but goodie, pick up the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. There are almost too many books in this series to count!  You will get lost in this fantastic world, I guarantee.

There are series in realistic fiction to choose from as well, beyond the Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl series.  Jenny Han has a good trilogy that begins with The Summer I Turned Pretty and continues with It's Not Summer Without You and We'll Always Have Summer. It's a sweet love story that stretches over 3 summers. 

Don't forget Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries books. There are 17 books in this popular series!  Cabot also has another slightly twisted series going that starts with Airhead. So far there are 3 books in this continuing story with a little sci fi twist.

For lovers of adventure and political intrigue, try Charlie Higson's Young James Bond series. Start with Silverfin.  Along the same lines, but with some military action thrown in, is the Cherub series by Robert Muchamore. Mission 1 is The Recruit. 

Stay warm!

Books that have just arrived!

The sequel to Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children is here!  The Hollow City picks up where the first book left off.  The photos are just as bizarre as in the first book, so flip through and look at those first. 

Engines of the Broken World is a first novel.  It promises a strange twist on the usual post-apocalyptic dystopian world story. Merciful and Gospel Truth have stored their recently deceased mother under the kitchen table because it is too cold outside to bury her. Thus begins a story of horror, guilt, sorrow and fear that promises to be a real page-turner. 

Man Made Boy is Jon Skovron’s (Struts & Frets and Misfit) new novel for teens. Boy is the son of Frankenstein’s Monster and the Bride (who knew they could reproduce?) In this take on Mary Shelley’s classic Prometheus story, the family lives under Times Square in New York rather than in England.  Boy ends up running away with the granddaughters of Jekyll and Hyde and begins a journey towards understanding what it means to be both a man and a monster.  Silly concept, but I am a fan of Skovron, so I hold high hopes for this one.

Altered by Gennifer Albin is the sequel to Crewel, a 2013 YALSA top 10 book for teens. If you’ve read Crewel, you will want to pick up this one, a more typical dystopian story. 

Pick up Why We Took the Car by Wolfgang Herrndorf if you like irreverent humor.  Two of the least popular kids embark on a roadtrip across Germany after being dissed for the thousandth time by popular classmates. They meet wacky people, get into trouble, and get hopelessly lost a few times. 

All of these books are soon to be on the New YA Fiction shelf, waiting for you! 

Boarding School Books

After his extremely creepy books The Marbury Lens and its sequel Passenger, Andrew Smith hits a lighter note in Winger, at least through most of the book.  This book is heartbreaking and funny at the same time. Ryan Dean West (Ryan Dean is his first name. He doesn't like to talk about his middle name.) is a fourteen year old genius who is a junior in an expensive boarding school and the winger on the school's rugby team. He lives in the dorm set aside for trouble-makers and his roommate is the biggest meanest kid on the rugby team.  What did he do to get into trouble?  He hacked into someone's cell phone to make calls back home. Students at Pine Mountain Boarding School aren't allowed to have cell phones, so Ryan Dean had to be inventive if he wanted to contact his parents.  Anyway, in the first couple of months Ryan Dean (nicknamed Winger for his position on the rugby team) manages to piss off just about everyone he cares about, and a few that he just plain fears.  As he attempts to maneuver his way through junior year, he learns some valuable lessons about friendship, love and just getting along with others whether he likes them or not.  Ryan Dean is an artist, and the book is peppered with his sketches and cartoons which add to the whimsy. The ending comes out of left field and will break your heart. I highly recommend reading this stunning book. 

Another "boarding school book" that I am currently reading is Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg. Rafe moves from his high school in Colorado where he is known as the "gay kid" and completely accepted to a school in New England where he knows no one and attempts to redefine himself by "acting straight", however you do that.  He wants to be known for something other than being gay.  It's a different take on LGBT books, and so far I am enjoying it very much.

Strange and different books!

Let’s do bizarre stories this week, shall we?  I’ve read a few of them lately.  Two that are very similar in style are Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (the sequel is coming out in January!)  and Asylum by Madeleine Roux. Both are partially told in old photos that enhance the eerieness. The ones in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children are all real, collected by the author over several years. The story involves a mysterious children's home on an isolated island which provided shelter for, what young Jacob believes, refugees from Hilter's Germany in the 1940's including his grandfather Abe. When Abe dies, he leaves a strange letter and message for Jacob to find the bird behind the loop, and so begins Jacob's journey to discover the secrets behind the Home for Peculiar Children. 

Some of the photographs in Asylum were taken in old asylums from the 40’s and 50’s, but some are fake. The plot of the story is clever, but not fully developed and not as well written as Riggs' book. Both stories resound in bizarreness, but by far the better told story is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.  Pick up both books if only to flip through and look at the photographs.

The Loop by Shandy Lawson uses the age old sci fi device of time, or temporal, loops in which a person relives a period in his or her life over and over again, like in the movie Groundhog Day.  In this story there are 4 people caught in this particular loop that always ends up with teenagers Ben and Maggie being murdered. It’s a fast paced thriller, a fun and quick read as Ben and Maggie begin to remember more and more of what’s going to happen. The feeling of déjà vu is enhanced by certain writing devices which you will recognize when you get to them.  

William Shakespeare meets George Lucas in William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope.  This one’s just a silly fun take on the Star Wars empire told in the language of Shakespeare’s plays, complete with soliloquies.The story is pretty much identical to the original Star Wars film, with the one exception that R2D2 is an intelligent, thinking droid. His language when speaking to other characters remains beeps and bleeps, but in asides he reveals himself to be a wise old philosopher, along the lines of Obi Wan Kenobi. The couplets sometimes fall flat and don’t work, but all in all this is worth the couple of hours spent reading and enjoying if you are at all a fan of either Shakespeare or Star Wars. Very different! 

Short stories

Short Stories in review

 First up:  The Curiosities This one's a collection of paranormal and horror stories by various authors. Lots in there by Maggie Steifvater of Linger series fame.  Vampires, magic, and other strange beings abound. Curl up with this one for an afternoon of wonder.

 

     If you are a fan of murder mysteries and mayhem try Dave Lubar's collection Extremities. Predators, mistaken identity, revenge, this one has it all. Best first line: from the story Blood Magic.  "My downfall was a candy bar."  A trip to the local quickstop for a snack turns into a nightmare as the 14 year old protagonist gets caught up in an armed robbery.

 

Tongue-in-cheek humor abounds in Zombies vs. Unicorns, a collection of stories each demonstrating the superior qualities of zombies and unicorns. Zombies are not always evil, and unicorns often are! Are you on Team Zombie, or Team Unicorn? Authors include Holly Black, Garth Nix, Justine Larbalestier and Meg Cabot.

Romance lovers, look no more! Pick up Let It Snow. Three stories by well-loved teen fiction authors, John Green, Lauren Myracle and Maureen Johnson, intertwine around the Christmas holiday and are sure to warm your heart. They involve various high school couples and the trials they face during the winter holiday.

ENJOY YOUR WINTER BREAK!