A sneak peak at Paul Volponi's new book!

I am a HUGE Paul Volponi fan. His books capture's male readers and holds their interest. That is not an easy task. So whenever he has a book coming out I get excited. Mr. Volponi's latest book is called Crossing Lines and is a bit of a departure from his previous novels.

Summary:
What do you do when bullying goes too far?
Adonis is a jock. He’s on the football team and he’s
dating one of the prettiest girls in school. Alan is
the new kid. He wears lipstick and joins the Fashion
Club. Soon enough the football team is out to get
him. Adonis is glad to go along with his teammates
. . . until they come up with a dangerous plan to
humiliate Alan. Now Adonis must decide whether
he wants to be a guy who follows the herd or a man
who does what’s right.

Expect a review coming soon. This book is released in June 9, 2011.

I would like to thank Mr. Volponi for giving me an ARC.

Merry Christmas!

I'm going to be very politically incorrect and say Merry Christmas to all my readers! I hope the holiday is a great one and may you get many new blessings in the new year!

I think I can. I think I can....

I've been trying to read Sister's Red by Jackson Pearce but I can't get into it. Has anyone else read it? What are your thoughts? On Amazon there are 59 reviews and they all seem to be glowing. But this book just isn't clicking with me. I am almost to page 70. I guess I should plow through a few more chapters.

Flappers n' Mobsters!

I wasn't a big fan of the Luxe Series. In fact, I wanted to beat my head against a wall and throw the books into the trash. They were not historically accurate. The girls in the previous series were too busy bed hopping in my opinion. However, when I learned Ms. Godbersen was writing about the 1920s I had to buy the book. I had high hopes, but I wasn't sure if this book would live up to them.

It did. The issues I had with the previous series aren't in this new novel. The author gets it right. One of the characters engages in sex but she pays the price for it. Yes! Thank you! Finally! After all, this is historical fiction and not 2010. Morals and attitudes are different.

Cordelia Grey and Letty Larkspur are best friends in their small Ohio town. They have known each other for their entire lives. But both dream of something more. They decide to run away to New York City without telling their families.

Once in NYC their lives take very different turns. Cordelia and Letty have a fight which severs their friendship and both girls go their separate ways. Cordelia finds herself young, beautiful and rich. She is in the presence of bootleggers(prohibition is going on) and gangsters. Letty isn't as lucky with her fortune and becomes a cigarette girl selling trinkets in a speakeasy. But Letty dreams of becoming a singer, and one day she'll make it, if she can overcome her shyness.

The story alternates between the friends, although I would have to say the story focuses more on Cordelia. While the Luxe series was filled with backstabbing and gossiping there isn't much of that in this novel. It's a good story about young girls trying to find out who they are during 1929. Along the way they encounter death, love, hard times and new friends.

Teens who enjoyed the Luxe series should enjoy this novel as well. I'm interested to see where the author takes the characters. This is 1929...so does this mean we will see the Great Depression in future books? I hope so, but I'll have to wait and see.

Historical Fiction Friday

The Raven's Bride is an interesting adult novel that I think some teens will enjoy. It's about Edger Allen Poe and his 13 year old wife. Yeah, I said that right, thirteen.

Summary:

When eight-year-old Virginia "Sissy" Clemm meets her handsome cousin, Edgar Allan Poe, he seems the very image of the make-believe husband she conjures up in childhood games. He’s thirteen years her elder, but kind, soft-spoken, brooding, and handsome. Eddy floats in and out of her life as he fails his way through West Point and then the army. Each time he returns to Baltimore, their odd friendship grows, and her understanding of the moody, troubled writer deepens. As Sissy prepares for a career on the musical stage, her childhood crush turns to love. When she is 13, Eddy proposes marriage, swearing to care for her forever. Yet even child brides eventually grow up, and it's really Eddy who needs caring for, who leans on her. She gains his complete devotion, true -- yet also must endure his abrupt disappearances, strange moods, and the aftermath of alcoholic binges. Then, when she falls ill, Poe’s greatest fear – that he’ll once again lose a woman he loves – drives him both to near-madness, and to his greatest literary achievement.

This provocative novel explores the mysterious and confounding relationship between Poe and Sissy Clemm, his great love and constant companion. Lenore Hart, author of Becky, explores love, loss, the afterlife, and American literature's most haunted and demonized literary figure, by imagining the real, beating heart of the woman who loved and inspired him – and whose absence ultimately destroyed him.

I want it Wednesday

Wither is the first in the The Chemical Garden Trilogy and it sounds very interesting. It doesn't come out until March 22, 2011, but I thought I would share it with my readers.

Summary:
What if you knew exactly when you would die?

Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb—males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out.

When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape—to find her twin brother and go home.

But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant Rhine is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limited time she has left.

Creepy

The cover of this book creeps me out and that's what I think will grab reader's attention. This book is historical fiction, which is a hard sell in my library. However the cover and creepy descriptions may win students over.

Tabby is brought to a mansion to be a maid to a young boy(moody temperamental young boy). The place doesn't feel right. There is no church, no one cares for her young charge and soon Tabby sees dead people. There are ghosts everywhere and it turns out these ghosts are previous maids. Being a maid herself, Tabby isn't thrilled with the idea of joining the dead. So it is up to her to protect Himself(what the boy is called) and herself.

The story is well written with good details, but the story isn't wordy. It is a gothic tale, but that shouldn't turn off younger readers. The creepy atmosphere that Ms. Dunkle is able to create will suck readers in. This is a perfect story for Halloween.

I haven't read books written by the Bronte's and I enjoyed this novel. This is a stand alone book. The author does tie in Tabby with the Bronte sisters at the end, which might peak some interest in a few readers. However, this book is for younger readers around middle school age.

At the beginning of each chapter there is a creepy drawing which adds to the overall gothic feel of the book.

Historical Fiction Friday

Eh, OK. I was a day early on I want it Wednesday and now I'm a day late for Historical Fiction Friday. Figures? Right.

I learned that Michelle Moran's novel Madame Tussaud is coming out earlier than anticipated, which suits me just fine. I'm a huge Ms. Moran fan so I'm looking forward to this book. I'll miss her tales of Egypt, but I love her writing style so I'll snag this one.

This one hits the stores in February 15, 2011.

I want it Wednesday

I'm not a huge music girl, but I know some of my patrons are. There doesn't seem to be a lot of YA novels that have music in them. I'm not sure why. Anyway, I came across this one.

Summary:
Allie, a sixteen-year-old who is obsessed with LPs, works at the used record store on Telegraph Ave. and deals with crushes--her own and her mother's--her increasingly popular blog and zine, and generally grows up over the course of one summer in her hometown of Berkeley, California.

Upcoming December Releases

Tis the season to ask Santa for some cool gifts. Check out some of the new titles that are arriving in stores just in time for Christmas.

• Fixing Delilah by Sarah Ockler
• Anna and the French kiss by Stephaine Perkin
• You against me by Jenny Downham
• Edges by Lena Roy
• The lying game by Sarah Shepard
• Rosebush by Michele Jaffe
• Tutored by Alison Whittenberg
• Vixen by Jillian Larkin
• All you get is me by Yvonne Prinz
• Fall for anything by Courtney Summers
• Loser Queen by Jodi Lynn Anderson
• Silver frost by Kailin Gow
• Falling in love with English boys by Melissa Jansen
• Fallen Angel by Heather Terrell
• Once in a full moon by Ellen Schreiber
• Tennie by Christopher Grant

Historical Fiction Friday

For this Friday I came across something that I am dying to get my hands. on. When I was a kid I remember watching a movie about the Triangle Factory Fire on TV. I was memorized. So, any books I can find on it will be snatched up.

Here is a summary:
It's 1910, and thirteen-year-old Raisa has just traveled alone from a small Polish shtetl all the way to New York City. It's overwhelming, awe-inspiring, and even dangerous, especially when she discovers that her sister has disappeared and she must now fend for herself. She finds work in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory sewing bodices on the popular shirtwaists. Raisa makes friends and even--dare she admit it?--falls in love. But then 1911 dawns, and one March day a spark ignites in the factory. One of the city's most harrowing tragedies unfolds, and Raisa's life is forever changed. . . .

One hundred years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, this moving young adult novel gives life to the tragedy and hope of this transformative event in American history.

Yay me!

Score! I have been asked to moderate a panel at the Historical Novel Society's Conference in San Diego this June. I'm stoked, but nervous too. The panel will be about Adult Vs Young Adult fiction. Looking forward to this unique opportunity.

I want it Wednesday

I hope everyone had a good turkey day.

For this Wednesday I have an interesting book. Check out the summary:

If someone hurts your sister and you’re any kind of man, you seek revenge, right?

If your brother’s accused of a terrible crime but says he didn’t do it, you defend him, don’t you?

When Mikey’s sister claims a boy assaulted her, his world begins to fall apart.

When Ellie’s brother is charged with the offence, her world begins to unravel.

When Mikey and Ellie meet, two worlds collide.