Reviews
Becoming: The Balance Bringer (The Balance Bringer Chronicles #1)
Ana's world is falling apart. What she thought were dreams start entering her waking life. Eerie shadows hunt her. Her dream guy becomes reality. And strange new abilities begin developing. Ana is becoming something other. She is determined to find answers, but where to turn? Her mom and best friend are keeping secrets. Her older sister is dead and exists only in her dreams. And her younger sister thinks they are goddesses.
How about Never, is Never Good For You?
Memoir in cartoons by the longtime cartoon editor of The New Yorker
People tell Bob Mankoff that as the cartoon editor of The New Yorker he has the best job in the world. Never one to beat around the bush, he explains to us, in the opening of this singular, delightfully eccentric book, that because he is also a cartoonist at the magazine he actually has two of the best jobs in the world. With the help of myriad images and his funniest, most beloved cartoons, he traces his love of the craft all the way back to his childhood, when he started doing funny drawings at the age of eight. After meeting his mother, we follow his unlikely stints as a high-school basketball star, draft dodger, and sociology grad student. Though Mankoff abandoned the study of psychology in the seventies to become a cartoonist, he recently realized that the field he abandoned could help him better understand the field he was in, and here he takes up the psychology of cartooning, analyzing why some cartoons make us laugh and others don't. He allows us into the hallowed halls of The New Yorker to show us the soup-to-nuts process of cartoon creation, giving us a detailed look not only at his own work, but that of the other talented cartoonists who keep us laughing week after week. For dessert, he reveals the secrets to winning the magazine's caption contest. Throughout How About Never--Is Never Good for You?, we see his commitment to the motto "Anything worth saying is worth saying funny."
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, the secret to eternal life. Mostly in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore.
Clay Jannon tells how serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has sent him from Web Drone to night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay realizes just how curious this store is.
A few customers come in repeatedly without buying anything. Instead they “check out” obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. All runs according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes.
I Text Dead People
You can't block the dead! The first novel in the Dead Serious series, in which a middle school girl bridges the gap between the living and the dead with her phone.
Annabel Craven hopes she’ll fit in—maybe even be popular—at the Academy. She’s worried she’ll stay friendless and phoneless (it’s true). But when she finds a mysterious phone in the woods near the cemetery, one of her problems is solved . . . and another one is just beginning.
Someone won’t stop texting her. And that someone seems . . . dead. How is Annabel supposed to make friends when her phone keeps blowing up with messages from the afterlife? And what will happen if she doesn’t text back?
Emerge (The Awakening #1)
Allie Carmichael has always believed life is simple.
You're born. You live. You die.
She has no cause to believe those rules don't apply to her.
All her life, Allie has suffered in silence as those around her shrink from her touch, too intimidated to take the time to get to know her. It's left her feeling like a pariah for fifteen years.
When an unexpected move to Kelleys Island brings Aidan McBrien crashing into her life, Allie is thrown by his reaction. He isn't affected by her touch. He doesn't stutter or make a quick exit. He smiles and welcomes her into his circle of friends.
For the first time ever, Allie knows what true friendship means. Finally, she has a real shot at normal--until "normal" crashes and burns when she wakes in agony on her sixteenth birthday. Aidan calls it her Awakening, a rite of passage he and their friends have all faced. Allie struggles in ignorance through the experience, uncertain of what is real and what isn't. When she emerges, she is different. She has always been different, but even among her extraordinary friends, she and Aidan are special.
The Westing Game
A bizarre chain of events begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of Samuel W. Westing's will. And though no one knows why the eccentric, game-loving millionaire has chosen a virtual stranger—and a possible murderer—to inherit his vast fortune, one thing's for sure: Sam Westing may be dead ... but that won't stop him from playing one last game!
Overwhelm
Meet the three teenagers responsible for sinking Atlantis:
KALIOPE is an empath, a water person who feels other people’s emotions as if they are her own. All she wants is to grow up and escape her cruel mother.
DANICA is Kaliope's guardian and secret lover. She will protect Kali, no matter the cost to herself or anyone else.
CHIARAN is the reckless prince of the fire people. His deepest wish is to be seen as something other than a monster.
When Chiaran arrives in Atlantis, he's the first fire person to set foot on the island in a hundred years. Kaliope naturally considers him an enemy and attacks him. But the battle reveals that the two have more in common than anyone could have guessed. Anyone, that is, except the living crystals who feed elemental energy to Atlantis.
Forget Tomorrow (Forget Tomorrow Series #1)
Imagine a world where your destiny has already been decided…by your future self.
It’s Callie’s seventeenth birthday and, like everyone else, she’s eagerly awaiting her vision―a memory sent back in time to sculpt each citizen into the person they’re meant to be. A world-class swimmer. A renowned scientist.
Or in Callie’s case, a criminal.
In her vision, she sees herself murdering her gifted younger sister. Before she can process what it means, Callie is arrested and placed in Limbo―a prison for those destined to break the law. With the help of her childhood crush, Logan, a boy she hasn’t spoken to in five years, she escapes the hellish prison.
Dragon’s Milk (Dragon Chronicles #1)
"You must go to the dragon. You must leave tonight."
Before she even hears the words, Kaeldra already knows what she must do. She must search out the mother dragon whose draclings have just hatched and somehow get some of her precious milk. It's the only way to save her foster-sister's life. Kaeldra would rather not go. It's much too terrifying, much too dangerous. But Kaeldra knows that she's the only one who can do it. For she is the only one who can actually communicate with dragons.
But little does Kaeldra know what she's getting into. She's about to begin a journey that will entwine her fate with that of three little draclings and one would-be dragonslayer. A journey that will become a struggle for life.
Year of the Griffin (Derkholm #2)
It is eight years after the tours from off-world have stopped. High Chancellor Querida has retired, leaving Wizard Corkoran in charge of the Wizards' University. Although Wizard Corkoran's obsession is to be the first man on the moon, and most of his time is devoted to this project, he decides he will teach the new first years himself in hopes of currying the favor of the new students' families—for surely they must all come from wealth, important families—and obtaining money for the University (which it so desperately needs). But Wizard Corkoran is dismayed to discover that one of those students—indeed, one he had such high hopes for, Wizard Derk's own daughter Elda—is a huge golden griffin, and that none of the others has any money at all.
