Devices and Desires, by K.J. Parker

“‘The quickest way to a man’s heart,’ said the instructor, ‘is proverbially through his stomach. But if you want to get into his brain, I recommend the eye-socket.’”
The defection of a high-ranking military engineer sets off a Renaissance-level arms race in this dark, detailed fantasy, the first book of the Engineer trilogy.
Ziani Vaatzes makes weapons. [...]

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The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney by Suzanne Harper

Sparrow Delaney is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. By all accounts, she should be a very powerful psychic. Her mother, her grandmother, and her sisters Oriole, Dove, Wren, Raven, Lark, and Linnet can all communicate with the dead, and they are baffled by her apparent lack of psychic ability. In [...]

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A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

Helen is a ghost. She has been for 130 years. All she can remember from her previous life is her name, age, and the fact that she is female. She survives through an attachment to hosts–living people to whom she clings. She has had five hosts, none of whom knew [...]

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The Garden of Eve by K. L. Going

When Evie’s mother passes away, she and her father move from Michigan to New York, and take over an old orchard that no one can coax to grow. It stands dead, blackened and withered, and is thought by locals to be cursed. It has been that way since the disappearance of another young girl [...]

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Everlost by Neal Shusterman

Most everyone, at some point in his or her life, ponders the question of what happens after death. Everlost provides an interesting answer, in the form of a world that exists between life and death. As the story begins, Allie and Nick wake up dead. Nine months have passed since the car [...]

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The Alchemyst, by Michael Scott

I stumbled across this great Young Adult fantasy book and could not put it down. Scott, like Rick Riordan of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, takes ancient myth and folklore and puts it smack in the middle of contemporary America with an exciting and humorous result.
This story starts with 15-year-old twins Josh [...]

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Book of a Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale

Talk about bad timing. Fifteen-year-old Dashti has barely survived a rough life on the steppes of pseudo-Mongolia, but by a combination of luck, perseverance, and skill, she’s landed a plum job as a lady’s maid in the palace of Titor’s Garden. Minutes after she meets her new mistress, Lady Saren, she learns they’re about to [...]

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Black Ships, by Jo Graham

The story of Troy, with all its sequels and prequels and spinoffs, is my favorite soap opera, from the songs of Homer to that dreadful movie with Brad Pitt. So I was glad to see this debut historical novel, which retells the story of the Aeneid from a woman’s point of view and with just [...]

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Little Bitty Mousie by Jim Aylesworth, illustrated by Michael Hague

 
“Writing children’s books,” says Jim Aylesworth “is my way of being the teacher beyond the walls of my classroom for children that I may never know.” He demonstrates this in his picture book Little Bitty Mousie, published in 2007. He tells the story of a realistic looking mouse in a polka-dotted purple dress creeping into [...]

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The Sound of Colors: A Journey of the Imagination by Jimmy Liao

“A year ago
I began to notice
that my sight was slipping away.
I sat at home alone
and felt the darkness settle around me.
But today I walked outside
into the thin gray rain
and made my way to the subway.
I have a journey to go on.
There are some things
I need to find.”
 
With those words, a blind girl descends into the [...]

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