Suite Scarlett, by Maureen Johnson

Scarlett Martin’s family lives in the Jazz-age historic hotel they run in New York City, complete with vintage furnishings and a bootlegger’s laundry drop. Like all of her siblings, Scarlett becomes responsible for a suite on her 15th birthday.

Family finances being what they are—scraping rock bottom—the last of the staff have been let go and everyone has to pull together for the future of the Hopewell, even if catering to hotel guests isn’t every Martin sibling’s dream for the future. Older brother Spencer, for instance, wants to be an actor, and spends his off hours practicing pratfalls and performing off-off-off Broadway: ok, it’s Shakespeare in a parking garage.

Scarlett’s first guest in the Empire Suite is Mrs. Amberson, a wealthy, eccentric older woman with a flair for drama (framing Scarlett for shoplifting and then talking their way out of an arrest is her idea of a good time). She hires Scarlett to aid in writing her memoirs, but the memoir-writing soon takes a back seat to time spent eavesdropping, lurking, and otherwise meddling in the Martin family life. Between catering to her personal diva, covering for her rehearsing brother, and finding time to spend with her own actor boyfriend, Scarlett’s looking at a summer of hard work for no paycheck, but at least it’s going to be interesting.

This first book of a projected series has a picturesque setting and the feel of an old-time screwball comedy. Let’s put on a show! In a hotel! The sibling alliances and the undercurrents of all the family relationships are nicely done, especially Scarlett’s close rapport with Spencer, whose talent for physical comedy literally steals the show.

Check the WRL catalog for Suite Scarlett

Paper Towns, by John Green

“Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.”

When Margo Roth Spiegelman shows up at your window in the middle of the night, you go with her, even if her plans for the evening involve thirteen pounds of dead catfish. Margo Roth Spiegelman is just that cool. She is the Chuck Norris of high school girls.

Quentin, known to his friends as Q, has known Margo his whole life (as nine-year-olds, they discovered a body in the park together), but it’s been a long time since they’ve really connected. Suddenly he’s invited to help her carry out an epic, elevenfold plan of revenge against her ex and the ex’s new girlfriend. Then they break into SeaWorld. Surely this is the beginning of a whole new phase of their friendship? Maybe more?

Not so fast, Q. He’s the only one who shows up at school the next day. Margo vanishes, and Q, a guy with a bad case of putting his girl on a pedestal, is left to figure out why. The answer kind of depends on the answer to another, more psychological question: who is Margo, beneath the surface, and is she really anything like the captivating legend that he believes in?

Hmm. Enigmatic girl vanishes under questionable circumstances, leaving her male admirer behind to puzzle over her disappearance—the setup sounds a lot like Gregory Galloway’s As Simple as Snow, but John Green’s take is much funnier. All of Green’s novels are funny and thoughtful by turns; I like them best for the esoteric facts you pick up from his geek characters. This one also has (sub)urban exploration, spelunking in abandoned mini-malls, obsessive consulting and editing of Wikipedia “Omnictionary” entries, a death-defying road trip, and brilliant use of an obscure mapmaker’s term: the paper town.

It’s not your traditional whodunit, but it recently won the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery.

Check the WRL catalog for Paper Towns

Or check the WRL catalog for the audiobook

Territory, by Emma Bull

I visited Tombstone, Arizona on my last trip out west, and I will never forget the sun-baked desolation of Boot Hill, with its rows of lonesome graves, or the zombie barkeepers in the saloon, or the giant spiders. OK, so the town was decorated for Halloween, which not only made our visit extra-surreal, but may explain why I fell into Emma Bull’s fantasy western like it really might have happened this way: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a whole bunch of black magic in the old west.

Territory retells the weeks leading up to the O.K. Corral shootout, as seen by original characters who are newcomers and outsiders. Jesse Fox is a horse breaker on his way to Mexico when he gets sidetracked in Tombstone, where he not-so-coincidentally runs into Chow Lung, Chinese physician and the one man alive who knows what Fox is running from. I have a bit of a crush on Jesse Fox: a good man with a horse, sober, honest, speaks Chinese, plays poker to lose, can light candles with his mind. Mildred Benjamin, widowed Easterner with literary aspirations, also has a bit of a crush on Jesse Fox, even though there’s trouble wherever he goes. The first night she meets him, she find herself abetting a jailbreak.

Don’t worry, the Tombstone you remember from the history books (or the movies) is here too: all the Earps, Clantons, and McLaurys, plus a scene-stealing Doc Holliday as a sort of unwitting sorcerer’s apprentice. Magic is a powerful but hidden presence, threaded through the landscape like silver through the mines, with Tombstone as a vortex for power-hungry men who can twist its natural forces to supernatural ends.

Territory is more character study than shoot ‘em up. I loved it for its moody atmosphere, compelling characters, and screenplay-ready dialogue. The strong characterization and subtle deployment of magic make it a good fantasy choice for readers who don’t usually read fantasy, and a western for folks who don’t read westerns. It’s intended to stand alone, but if the story doesn’t end where you’d expect, you’ll be encouraged to know that Bull is at work on a sequel.

Check the WRL catalog for Territory

The Pluto Files, by Neil deGrasse Tyson

For the record, I always thought Pluto was a jumped-up snowball with delusions of grandeur.

It’s been three years since the International Astronomical Union voted on a definition of the word “planet” that excluded Pluto. There was a disturbance in the force, as if 300 million Americans suddenly realized their elementary school teachers were wrong, and were suddenly silenced. Now that the dust has settled, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gives us an entertaining post-mortem of the controversy, from his unique perspective as an inadvertent figurehead of the anti-Pluto forces.

Tyson’s day job is director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York’s American Museum of Natural History. Years before the IAU got involved, museum planners decided to present the solar system not by the usual roll call of planets starting with Mercury, but by grouping planets that shared certain properties. Four rocky terrestrial inner planets. Four gas giants with rings. Pluto? Didn’t make the cut. One year after the eight-planet display opened, the New York Times broke the story that the Hayden Planetarium had “demoted” Pluto. Scooping the Times by nearly a year was Mr. Will Galmont, age seven, whose painstakingly printed letter to Tyson included a helpful sketch to remind him what Pluto looks like.

For those who were captivated by the IAU debate or those who are still wondering what it was all about, this is a lively, quick read about America’s favorite underdog ex-planet: its uniquely American discovery, its eccentricities, its place in pop culture and classical mythology, how it got to be a planet in the first place, and why astronomers changed their minds later. Pluto’s partisans will enjoy the testimonials on the planet’s behalf from astrophysicists, songwriters, legislators, political cartoonists, and, best of all, the third-graders (“Please write back, but not in cursive”). Tyson has a gift for presenting science to non-scientists with enthusiasm and a great sense of humor.

Check the WRL catalog for The Pluto Files

Or check the WRL catalog for the audiobook

Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld

With thanks to my BookExpo-attending colleague, who returned with an advance reader copy, here’s a sneak peek at a young adult book to be released in October 2009.

This alternate World War I adventure kicks off with a middle-of-the-night escapade in an AT-AT walker a two-legged stalking tank, followed by aerial acrobatics aboard a living hydrogen balloon. If you enjoyed the mid-air hoverboard chases that are half the fun of Westerfeld’s Uglies series, this first installment in a trilogy should be an easy sell.

The point-of-view alternates between teenagers on opposite sides of the impending war. Fifteen-year-old Alek is a disinherited Hapsburg princeling who might yet prove himself heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Deryn Sharp, also 15, has just disguised herself as a boy to take the entrance exams for the British Air Service, which, for reasons that will be explained in the next paragraph, is largely composed of jellyfish hydrogen-breathing living airships.

Scientists in this version of England have taken Darwin’s theory of evolution and run with it, creating genetically-engineered animal hybrids like lupine tigeresques for industrial and military use. The Leviathan of the title is both a warship and a floating ecosystem—a whale-based zeppelin powered by bacteria and armed with strafing hawks and fléchette bats, the completely, disgustingly organic Gatling guns of the skies. Germany and Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, reject meddling with DNA in favor of good old-fashioned mechanical engineering, although their fleet of multilegged armored vehicles has its own stalking and clanking charm.

As usual, Westerfeld delivers a fast-moving story in which the characters are constantly imperiled. The fun, novel setting plays to Westerfeld’s strengths: his powers of invention and a fantastic ear for slang. So far this is a Great War scenario with a very light touch, suited for the “ages 12 and up” the publishers suggest. Give this to the kids who’ve enjoyed Oppel’s Airborn, or to grownups who’d appreciate something akin to Naomi Novik’s dragon air force with a younger cast and crew.

What I Did For Love, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

This is the light beach read I was looking for!

Georgie York, sweetheart of Hollywood for her portrayal of spunky Scooter in a long ago ended TV sitcom called “Skip and Scooter” – is in the middle of an ugly and very public divorce from her hunky actor husband.   She just can’t keep that “nothing ever gets me down” facade up and is desperate to move out of the harsh paparazzi light.

Her co-star of the series, Bram Stockwell, is Hollywood’s bad boy – a drug-addicted, self centered, jerk.  Georgie can’t stand him, especially after their series ended because he was more interested in having a good time than putting in some effort for the job.  Oh yeah, and she used to have a huge crush on Bram and he totally ignored her.

Georgie and Bram end up in Vegas at the same time, and instead of just one night of cutting loose, they discover in the morning that they apparently got married (neither claims any memory of the ceremony — but there’s the license in Bram’s pocket).  Instead of brushing this off as a moment of irrationality and having even more bad press, Georgie convinces Bram to stay married to her for six months to give them both time to rework their image in the tabloids.

The fake relationship holds up in the face of a hostile housekeeper, a disapproving father, and a harried agent.  It lasts through numerous photo ops, a dinner party that ends with all the guests being quarantined for the weekend, and a pitch for a script which has the potential to change the direction of both Georgie and Bram’s career.

But when Georgie realizes Bram isn’t as hard-hearted as he’s trying to appear, she gets scared that she’s fallen in love with him and leaves.  Bram realizes he cares for Georgie, too, but not until after he’s tried some stupid tricks to get her to come back to the comfortable fake life they had.

The story ends up with all the main characters in a HEA (that’s Happily Ever After for those not familiar with the romance jargon) — and you can smile, get up from your lounge chair by the pool and head back to reality.

Check the WRL catalog for What I Did For Love

Just Breathe, by Susan Wiggs

The cover of Susan Wiggs’ book screamed “beach read” to me so I had to grab it when the weather started warming. But Just Breathe is more of a “woman at a turning point in her life” story than what I would call a light beach read – but it is very satisfying and I’m glad I picked it up.

Sarah Moon is a cartoonist living in Chicago with her husband, Jack. Her comic strip (called “Just Breathe”) reflects her own life – including the fertilization treatments she’s going through so they can have a baby. When Sarah makes an unexpected stop at her husband’s latest work site, she finds her husband in the arms of another woman. As Sarah struggles to understand what happened to their marriage, she realizes she hasn’t been happy in a long time. She decides to go back home to the small town she grew up in.

While finding a lawyer, finding a place to live, finding friends – and finding out that last fertility treatment worked (twins!) – Sarah realizes that the place she was so desperate to leave wasn’t so bad after all. And it doesn’t hurt that Will Bonner, the All-American high school jock she used to make fun of, is attracted to her.

Sarah and Will’s relationship is complicated by her pregnancy, his teenage daughter, and an arson investigation. But even though it’s messy, they both end up willing to take a chance on love.

Check the WRL catalog for Just Breathe

If you like Just Breathe, you might also try Cathy Lamb’s The Last Time I Was Me, Deborah Smith’s The Crossroads Café, or Barbara Samuel’s Lady Luck’s Map of Vegas.

Mean Streets, by Jim Butcher; Simon R. Green; Kat Richardson; Thomas E. Sniegoski

I picked this one up because I’m a fan of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden — but now I think I’m a fan of John, Harper, and Remy.

Each approximately 80-page story in this collection stands solidly on its own as a mystery with paranormal twists.  But I found it tantalizing that  small details about the characters’ previous adventures were seamlessly dropped into these new stories.  As soon as I came back to the library I checked out books by the other three authors.

In “The Warrior,” Jim Butcher has Chicago’s only professional wizard Harry Dresden watching out for his buddy, Michael Carpenter, who has retired from being a Knight of the Cross following the injuries he sustained in Small Favor, book 10 of the Dresden Files series.  Harry isn’t sure why someone is taking pictures of Michael and sending them to him, but he fears for Michael and his family’s safety. When it looks like someone is after Michael’s sword, Amoracchius, Harry begins to look for connections within the church community.

“The Difference a Day Makes” by Simon Green has PI John Taylor and his sidekick Dead Boy helping a woman discover what happened to her memory of a single day.  Liza Barclay is looking for her husband, Frank, but all she remembers is following him to a London underground station, then ending up in the Nightside, a place Taylor describes as “where all the secret people come, in search of forbidden knowledge and all the pleasures people aren’t supposed to want, but still do.”  Taylor has a  special talent for finding missing things, so locating Frank isn’t a challenge.  But finding Frank and her memories don’t bring Liza any comfort.

“The Third Death of the Little Clay Dog” by Kat Richardson takes Harper Blaine, a woman who can see and communicate with ghosts, to Mexico during the Day of the Dead festivities.  Harper’s not crazy about being in Mexico during a time when the dead will be so active, but she learns it’s the living she shouldn’t trust.  This is one story that ends with a healthy serving of justice.

The last novella is “Noah’s Orphans” by Thomas E. Sniegoski.  The main character is Remy Chandler (aka the angel Remiel in human form).  Remy is asked by the leader of a host of angels called the Grigori to investigate Noah’s death.  Yes, Noah, as in the ark-builder.  Remy doesn’t trust the Grigori and does some checking into the story they fed him.  He uncovers the existence of what Noah referred to as his “orphans” — those who were left behind in the great flood — and their connection to the Grigori.

Check the WRL catalog for Mean Streets

If you want more of Harry Dresden, start with Storm Front

If you want more of John Taylor, start with Something from the Nightside

If you want more of Harper Blaine, start with Greywalker

If you want more of Remy Chandler, start with Dancing on the Head of a Pin

Pendragon: The Merchant of Death, by D.J. MacHale

Bobby Pendragon is a typical 14-year-old boy.  Well, sort-of.   On the night of the big semi-final basketball game, right after he gets kissed by the coolest girl he knows, his Uncle Press shows up and tells Bobby he needs to come with him — he needs his help.  Uncle Press looks so serious that Bobby goes with him without getting answers to his question — WHY?

The answer to that question sets the stage for MacHale’s Pendragon series.

Bobby finds out he and his uncle are Travelers — part of an elite group of people who have the ability to travel between different times and places (called territories) by hidden flumes.  The Travelers’ main job seems to be to keep the bad guy, Saint Dane, from destroying worlds and creating chaos.  But in keeping order, the Travelers have to be careful not to alter history by wearing clothes or using technology that wouldn’t be native to the territory they visit.

Bobby’s adventure in The Merchant of Death takes place in the territory of Denduron.  Bobby thinks his job is to help the slave-like Milago tribe gain their independence from the wealthy Bedoowans.  Or is that playing directly into Saint Dane’s evil plans?

The book bounces between Denduron and our Earth — where Bobby’s friends are trying to find out what happened ever since he disappeared on the night of the big game.

“This book is full of adventure,” says my favorite 11-year-old boy.  “Anyone who likes fast action will like this book.”

Check the WRL catalog for Pendragon, Book 1: The Merchant of Death

Body Check, by Deirdre Martin

I was recently flipping channels on the TV and ran across the Stanley Cup hockey games – which reminded me of this fun, contemporary romance featuring hockey players.

Janna MacNeil is a publicist working her way to the top of the profession when she’s selected to do PR for the Stanley Cup Champions, the NY Blades hockey team.  The men got some bad publicity when they brought the Stanley Cup with them on a bar-hopping spree after last year’s victory.  The new owners want to promote a family friendly image – and Janna needs the support of team captain Ty Gallagher to make that happen.  Ty isn’t inclined to help out a “corporate” that doesn’t seem to care about the little guys.  But even as he gives her the cold shoulder, Ty finds himself attracted to the energetic blue-eyed publicist.

The romance – and her job — isn’t without challenges. When Janna’s best friend goes out with one of the wilder hockey players and claims he assaulted her. Janna has to figure out how to handle the team’s publicity without dragging her friend’s reputation through the mud. And as the finals for the Stanley Cup start up again, Ty thinks he’s not playing his best game because he’s involved with Janna – so he breaks it off with her – only to realize he’s made a big mistake.

Check the WRL catalog for Body Check.

If you liked this one and would like to read more romances featuring hockey players, check out other titles by Deirdre Martin or try Rachel Gibson’s See Jane Score or True Love and Other Disasters.