Marvin Johnson and his fraternal twin Tyler are about to graduate from Sojourner Truth High School in Sterling Point, Alabama. With a dad unjustly imprisoned for the past nine years (with ten more to go) and a mom working hard to barely… Read More ›
Crime
The Lying Woods
Owen Foster is from the small town of Lake Cane in Louisiana, where his father has done exceedingly well in the fracking business. Because of this, Owen attends a hoity-toity private school several hours away. It took him a little… Read More ›
The Guggenheim Mystery
This book is the second in a pair featuring Ted Spark, an almost-13-year-old on the autism spectrum. As in the preceding book, THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY, he joins with his sister Kat and cousin Salim in a suspenseful plot featuring… Read More ›
Watch You Burn
When seven-year-old Jenny Breland goes on her very first sleepover at a friend’s house, a catastrophic fire in the middle of the night destroys the house and everyone but her in it. Though the fire is declared of unknown origin,… Read More ›
The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein
“To Be Weak Is Miserable” is the chapter heading that begins and totally summarizes this remarkable, fantastically-imagined literary-revisionist version of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN. Supposedly born to nobility but cast adrift when her mother dies and her father is imprisoned,… Read More ›
Fresh Ink
This book is an anthology of twelve stories by assorted YA authors. (I say stories, but to me they read more like vignettes.) The collection is designed to bring together diverse characters underrepresented in mainstream YA literature. We’ve got your… Read More ›
Squirm
Billy Audubon Dickens doesn’t go out of his way to make friends at school because he knows he won’t be staying long. His mom has a fixation on bald eagles and insists on living wherever she can monitor a pair…. Read More ›
Ten After Closing
High school senior Scott just thinks he has problems. At home his unemployed, depressed, alcoholic dad is becoming increasingly abusive towards him, his mother and his younger sister Evie. Even though he has several outstanding college offers for the fall,… Read More ›
#MurderTrending
The ex-reality-star-turned President of the U.S. has outsourced a segment of capital punishment in the federal criminal justice system to a mysterious producer named The Postman, who has repurposed the old Alcatraz prison site into a physical setting for his… Read More ›
Like Never and Always
Sixteen-year-old Olivia (Liv) and seventeen-year-old Morgan are best friends driving home in a convertible late at night with their boyfriends, brothers Nathan and Clay. Neither of the girls is wearing a seat belt (since they’re only driving five miles after… Read More ›
Before You Buy YA 