This book hurt my heart in the best of ways. It tackles very difficult issues that teenagers face every day—depression, broken families, social pressures, and even suicide.
Despite that, it was not bleak; it was hopeful. It lifted my heart and made me grateful I spent the day with these fictional characters so that maybe, just maybe, I can help real people in my life.
Journal entry: Heading to school. I know what everyone will say. There goes the girl who tried to kill herself.
Addison is no stranger to feeling stressed, insecure, and sad. Her therapist recommended she keep a journal to help her understand those feelings better, which she really needs today. It’s her first day back to school, several weeks after she survived her suicide attempt. She knows there are rumors about why she did it: A lousy home life? Bullying? Heartbreak? None of them are true, but it doesn’t matter because Addison still feels…
The natural world has been my solace and passion for my entire life. I also suffer from an insatiable curiosity as to how it came to be. While I am fascinated by natural history, my deficient math and analytical skills precluded a career in science, and so I turned to environmental history to explore how humans and nature have interacted over time.
Tim Egan is a great storyteller, and this book is a captivating account of the 1910 forest fires in the Pacific Northwest. I know of these places and have seen the burned trees that are still standing. I love how the book keeps returning to Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot.
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men - college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps - to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic…
Nine Stories Told Completely in Dialogue is a unique collection of narratives, each unfolding entirely through conversations between its characters. The book opens with "God on a Budget," a tale of a man's surreal nighttime visitation that offers a blend of the mundane and the mystical. In "Doctor in the…
I’ve been a full-time writer since 1994 and have so far published twenty-seven books, three of them with gay themes: My Father’s Scar, a gay coming-of-age novel and two about LGBTQ+ issues: Top 250 LGTBQ Books for Teens and The Heart Has Its Reasons, a history of queer literature. I’ve been interested in this literature since I was a gay teen myself, because there were no YA books with queer characters then. I missed seeing my face in the pages of a good book and so I promised myself that when I became an adult. I would make sure there was an ample assortment for today’s queer kids. And, guess what? I’ve kept my promise!
Weary of people asking him what his plans for the future are, eighteen-year-old Dutch teen Tycho decides to travel from his Holland home to America to work at a camp for international kids. Along the way, he meets Oliver, who’s from Norway, and is also going to work at the camp. The two quickly become fast friends and then something more. When their love relationship is discovered, they’re expelled from the camp, and the two fly back to Norway where Tycho will stay with Oliver while the boy’s mother is gone. No, there are no wild parties, just a lovely examination of an emerging relationship that is challenged by Oliver’s keeping a closely guarded secret. If this sounds dull, trust me, it isn’t! Find out why I’m so crazy about this book by reading it. Tell them Michael sent you...
Tycho Zeling is drifting through his life. Everything in it - school, friends, girls, plans for the future - just kind of ... happens. Like a movie he presses play on, but doesn't direct.
So Tycho decides to break away from everything. He flies to America to spend his summer as a counselor at a summer camp, for international kids. It is there that Oliver walks in, another counselor, from Norway.
And it is there that Tycho feels his life stop, and begin again, finally, as his. The Days of Bluegrass Love was originally published in the Netherlands in 1999.…
I’ve been passionate about the natural world since I was a child. This passion took me to many remote corners of the globe, and I always returned with a desire to share what I observed. As a science writer and journalist, I’ve been fortunate to tell multidisciplinary stories from the tops of the Andes to the reefs of Papua New Guinea and many places in between. As a writer, I know the importance of reading, and I’m constantly seeking out books by journalists and authors obsessed with topics that are often obscure but always fascinating—topics that have led them on journeys of exploration they share through their books.
I love a book that reads like a novel but is outrageously well-researched and transports me to another time. I love vivid characters who provide me with new lenses to better understand better historical events I thought I already understood.
This fast-paced nonfiction book about the 1916 New Jersey shark attacks that gripped the nation and inspired Jaws kept me on the edge of my seat. It also provides a look at the shark science of the day and the perceptions that informed it. It's definitely a beach read!
Combining rich historical detail and a harrowing, pulse-pounding narrative, Close to Shore brilliantly re-creates the summer of 1916, when a rogue Great White shark attacked swimmers along the New Jersey shore, triggering mass hysteria and launching the most extensive shark hunt in history.
In July 1916 a lone Great White left its usual deep-ocean habitat and headed in the direction of the New Jersey shoreline. There, near the towns of Beach Haven and Spring Lake--and, incredibly, a farming community eleven miles inland--the most ferocious and unpredictable of predators began a deadly rampage: the first shark attacks on swimmers in U.S.…
I’m an author of genre-bent stories and grew up with a love of dark tales. In particular, I was a fan of things that layered stories and linked their themes together, even if you didn’t necessarily notice initially. For example, the Alienfranchise is a story of human survival, but also of corporate conspiracy. When I come across books that mix stories or add interesting structural elements, it instantly draws me in, so I set out to create exactly that with my release Ailuros. But I’m not alone in experimenting like that, so I hope you find some fun, scary releases you may not have known about in my list.
Described as a faux documentary in the style of The Blair Witch Project, this one is an interesting take on the horror genre. Interviews, descriptions of crime-related exhibits, and written testimonies all come together to make the book feel both investigative and more than a little fractured. It’s an uncomfortable combination that helps create a nice sense of fear for readers.
In the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project comes the campfire story of a missing girl, a vengeful ghost, and the girl who is determined to find her sister--at all costs.
Once a year, a road appears in the forest. And at the end of it, the ghost of Lucy Gallows beckons. Lucy's game isn't for the faint of heart. If you win, you escape with your life. But if you lose....
Sara's sister disappeared one year ago--and only Sara knows where she is. Becca went to find the ghost of Lucy Gallows and is trapped on the road…
For my Book of Extraordinary Tragedies, I drew heavily upon my own life as a former musician who now lives with hearing loss, and how that loss informs my relationships with my family. The book is set on the south side of Chicago in the neighborhood where I grew up and where I continue to return to to visit family and it’s that part of the city that’s almost never documented in fiction or film that drew my attention. I wanted to write a novel that felt like a musical composition, detailing the contradictions of a family struggling against the past and present.
This award-winning novel follows Oscar, a young Dominican-American man from New Jersey struggling with his present as a self-confessed “ghetto-nerd” and the legacy of his family’s past. The book is a dazzling example of how complicated our relationship to our family can be. I read and reread passages trying to decode Diaz’s choice in language and how he created such a compelling cast of characters. Told in vary perspectives and points of view and leaping gloriously back and forth in time, the book brazenly displays how the past is never truly past when it comes to matters of family.
A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, Oscar's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J. R. R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. With dazzling energy and insight Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous lives of Oscar; his runaway sister Lola; their beautiful mother Belicia; and in the family's uproarious journey from the Dominican Republic to the US and back.
'The Best Novel of the 21st Century to Date' - BBC Culture.
In Heroes with Chutzpah, readers will meet 101 Jewish changemakers from the recent past and present, who challenged the status quo in the arts, sciences, social justice, sports, and politics. Each one-page biography is accompanied by an original digital portrait. This children’s book about Jewish heroes is inspiring and…
I write stories and poetry intended to influence positive change in our world. Since marrying Kent 25 years ago and then growing to know and love his parents, something stirred in me to learn more and to write Of White Ashes. In our research, we relied on over 50 primary Hiroshima sources, visited the family home in Hiroshima, saw the bomb shelter my father-in-law dug into the side of a hillside, visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the few buildings that still stand, and walked where my father-in-law walked. Researching and writing Of White Ashes changed me—forever. My article, "How the History of Nuclear Violence Shapes Our Present", was published in CrimeReads.
On the Horizon is unique, as it brings Lois Lowry’s personal experiences to the page.
Lowry was born in Honolulu, where the U.S./Japan war began during WWII with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and was eleven years old when she moved to Tokyo where her father was stationed during the Occupation.
On the Horizon conveys great meaning over the course of its 72 pages, is creatively illustrated, and is appropriate for young and older readers alike. It delivers substance in verse—about those who died or whose lives were forever changed at Pearl Harbor and in Hiroshima. Names of the deceased and ordinary items—tricycles, paper cranes, and dolls—tell extraordinary stories of hate, shame, guilt, fear, loss, grief, and hope.
From two-time Newbery medalist and living legend Lois Lowry comes a moving account of the lives lost in two of WWII's most infamous events: Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. With evocative black-and-white illustrations by SCBWI Golden Kite Award winner Kenard Pak. Lois Lowry looks back at history through a personal lens as she draws from her own memories as a child in Hawaii and Japan, as well as from historical research, in this stunning work in verse for young readers. On the Horizon tells the story of people whose lives were lost or forever altered by the twin tragedies of Pearl…
Why do I have expertise in end-of-the-world scenarios? Well, I am a person living in the 2020s who reads too much. But more than that, I’ve had an interest in space exploration and history for as long as I can remember. While those two might seem like completely unrelated fields, it gives me a wider view of our world in the sense of where we are and where we are going. Civilization is not always a straight line upward. And when it dips down… well interesting things happen. Saturnius Mons specifically blends my love of Roman history with my interest in humanity’s future.
Here’s the premise: One bank rules the world and has decided to get rid of some deadbeats. A young woman trying to keep her sick mother alive is given a list of debtors, a gun, and a choice. She can kill everyone on the list or she can die herself.
My favorite part of this book is the mood Dawson sets as the main character interacts with a world that is desperately pretending that everything is okay. I could actually feel the young woman’s anxiety and desperation in my stomach.
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In order to save her mother, a teen is forced to become an indentured assassin in this sizzling “movie ready” (Kirkus Reviews) dystopian thriller.
No one reads the fine print.
The good news is that the USA is finally out of debt. The bad news is that it was bought out by Valor National Bank, and debtors are the new big game, thanks to a tricky little clause hidden deep in the fine print of a credit card application. Now, after a swift and silent takeover that leaves 9-1-1 calls going through to Valor voicemail, they’re unleashing a wave of…
Having written in the genre of psychological/crime thriller fiction for some years, I am always drawn to original voices, particularly those who are prepared to go that extra mile to produce something fresh or a concept that hasn’t been touched on before. With this kind of writing, it is quite easy to get pigeonholed, and the author has to be as meticulously authentic as they possibly can. Thinking and then using the absurd in writing is probably the best endorsement for any book; the stranger, the better. In this modern, media-fueled world, you always have to go to different places and ignite new ideas and narratives.
This book is an unusual, magical story about differences and how we often react to those who don’t conform to the norms in society.
The plot is tremendously intertwined with suspense, the type that unexpectedly creeps up on you and surprises you every time. You are instantly hooked from start to finish.
Unputdownable. I was totally immersed from the first page. It's an unforgettable book. If you believe in non-conformity, then this book is for you.
Soon to be an original film on Disney+ streaming service!
Before ELEANOR AND PARK, there was STARGIRL. The seminal life-affirming YA novel celebrating first love and self-acceptance - now in a beautiful new edition for the next generation of readers.
She's as magical as the desert sky. As mysterious as her own name. Nobody knows who she is or where she's from. But everyone loves her for being different. And she captures Leo's heart with just one smile.
STARGIRL is a classic of our time that celebrates being true to ourselves and the thrill of first love. A life-changing read…
An Heir of Realms tells the tale of two young heroines—a dragon rider and a portal jumper—who fight dragon-like parasites to save their realms from extinction.
Rhoswen is training as a Realm Rider to work with dragons and burn away the Narxon swarming into her realm. Rhoswen’s dream is to…
I am a Catholic wife and mother and desire to share my Catholic Faith. Growing up in the 1970's and 80's, I enjoyed reading books by Beverly Cleary. As I grew, my tastes for books grew to include true stories of the lives of saints and Catholic history, including the apparitions in Fatima. I also enjoyed reading fictional stories about time travel. Then it came to me. Why not write about a girl who, after coping with loss, finds solace after traveling back to the place and time where the apparitions took place? Bingo. Janie's Prayer was born. In my writing, I hope to inspire others and help spread the Catholic Faith.
So captivating! I couldn't put it down! This book is about a 16-year-old Catholic girl named Katelyn who discovers a bead from her grandmother's rosary one year after the devastating plane crash that took the life of her grandmother. The beads of her grandmother's rosary had been specially carved with the initials of family members–and this was her bead!
In time, Katelyn discovers that other beads have been found–and lives have been saved! Katelyn's mission has begun. I was deeply engaged in the book and eager for the mystery to be solved. It's so refreshing to find Catholic-based stories like this one.
On the anniversary of the plane crash that took the life of her beloved grandmother and threw her own mother into a deep depression, 16-year-old Katelyn Marie Roberts discovers a single bead from her grandmother's rosary--a rosary lost in the crash. A chance encounter with a stranger, who tells Katelyn that a similar bead saved her friend's life, launches Katelyn and her family on a mysterious journey filled with glimmers of hope, mystical events and unexplained graces.
