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A Treason of Thorns
Laura E. Weymouth - 2019
One of the six great houses of England, Burleigh’s magic always kept the countryside well. And as a child, this magic kept Violet happy, draping her in flowers while she slept, fashioning secret hiding places for her, and lighting fires on the coldest nights to keep her warm.Everything shattered, though, when her father committed high treason trying to free Burleigh from the king’s oppressive control. He was killed, and Vi was forced into hiding.When she’s given a chance to go back, she discovers Burleigh has run wild with grief. Vines and briars are crumbling the walls. Magic that once enriched the surrounding countryside has turned dark and deadly, twisting lush blooms into thorns, poisoning livestock and destroying crops. Burleigh’s very soul is crying out in pain.Vi would do anything to help, and soon she finds herself walking the same deadly path as her father all those years before. Vi must decide how far she’s willing to go to save her house—before her house destroys everything she’s ever known.Content warnings are available via the author's website.
Maya's Magical Adventures
Malcolm McCoard - 2017
Like nothing you've read before! A fast moving, laugh-out-loud magical comedy and fantasy adventure that will keep your "heart thumping like a bongo drum strapped to the back of a runaway camel!". Join Maya a young Scottish girl and her know-it-all talking cat Mischief, her living wand Spell and dragon Blink on a series of magical adventures and mishaps as she discovers her magical powers and their hilarious pitfalls. Find out what lies behind the forbidden door. Solve a series of strange riddles and journey across Ayrshire and Arran landmarks in search of clues. How will each of her friends meet with their inevitable sticky end? Can she figure out who the mysterious shadow is and how to defeat it? Is Aunty Dot really that shallow and can Maya really trust her? Or is she destined to be lost in the strange nightmare of the mirror maze? There's only one way to find out, read it! Failure to do so may lead to feelings of disappointment, delusions of sanity and the loss of a potentially right good giggle! This a previously published edition of ASIN B06X9F4GQ7.
War Bunny (War Bunny Chronicles, #1)
Christopher St. John - 2021
She asks pointed questions of the warren elders, and gets exiled for it. Without a warren, she's enormously vulnerable, but she reaches out to others in desperate straits. Soon, she's locked in a ferocious battle for survival—and maybe even freedom.Part naturalistic adventure, part modern-day fable, War Bunny is a fast-paced story about friendship, honor, standing up for yourself, and coming of age.This is the first book in a series. Now available on Audible!--- Summerday, (War Bunny Chronicles, #2), will be published soon.
Watch Over Me
Nina LaCour - 2020
Maybe that’s why she said yes to the opportunity: living in this remote place, among the flowers and the fog and the crash of waves far below.But she hadn’t known about the ghosts.Newly graduated from high school, Mila has aged out of the foster care system. So when she’s offered a job and a place to stay at a farm on an isolated part of the Northern California Coast, she immediately accepts. Maybe she will finally find a new home, a real home. The farm is a refuge, but also haunted by the past traumas its young residents have come to escape. And Mila’s own terrible memories are starting to rise to the surface.Watch Over Me is another stunner from Printz Award-Winning author Nina LaCour, whose empathetic, lyrical prose is at the heart of this modern ghost story of resilience and rebirth.
Last Things
Jacqueline West - 2019
But is she out to hurt him? Or protect him?High school senior Anders Thorson is unusually gifted. His band, Last Things, is legendary in their northern Minnesota hometown. With guitar skills that would amaze even if he weren’t only eighteen, Anders is the focus of head-turning admiration. And Thea Malcom, a newcomer to the insular town, is one of his admirers. Thea seems to turn up everywhere Anders goes: gigs at the local coffeehouse, guitar lessons, even in the woods near Anders’s home. When strange things start happening to Anders—including the disappearance of his beloved cat, then his sort-of girlfriend, and, somehow, his musical talent—blame immediately falls on Thea. But is she trying to hurt him? Or save him? Can he trust a girl who doesn’t seem to know the difference between dreams and reality? And how much are they both willing to compromise to get what they want?
The Dead of Winter
Chris Priestley - 2010
One that would be unbelievable if it weren't true! Michael's parents are dead and he imagines that he will stay with the kindly lawyer, executor of his parents' will ...Until he is invited to spend Christmas with his guardian in a large and desolate country house. His arrival on the first night suggests something is not quite right when he sees a woman out in the frozen mists, standing alone in the marshes. But little can prepare him for the solitude of the house itself as he is kept from his guardian and finds himself spending the Christmas holiday wandering the silent corridors of the house seeking distraction. But lonely doesn't mean alone, as Michael soon realises that the house and its grounds harbour many secrets, dead and alive, and Michael is set the task of unravelling some of the darkest secrets of all. This is a nail-biting story of hauntings and terror by the master of the genre, Chris Priestley
The Merciless
Danielle Vega - 2014
No one outside of these dank basement walls knows she’s here. No one can hear her scream. Sofia Flores knows she shouldn’t have gotten involved. When she befriended Riley, Grace, and Alexis on her first day at school, she admired them, with their perfect hair and their good-girl ways. They said they wanted to save Brooklyn. They wanted to help her. Sofia didn’t realize they believed Brooklyn was possessed. Now, Riley and the girls are performing an exorcism on Brooklyn—but their idea of an exorcism is closer to torture than salvation. All Sofia wants is to get out of this house. But there is no way out. Sofia can’t go against the other girls . . . unless she wants to be next. . . . In this chilling debut, Danielle Vega delivers blood-curdling suspense and terror on every page. By the shockingly twisted end, readers will be faced with the most haunting question of all: Is there evil in all of us?
Indian Summer
C. James Brown - 2019
He’s also out of his element. He’s just an ex-cop from a small New Hampshire town turned private eye, who finds himself looking for a murderer among America’s modern-day aristocracy in Greenwich, Westchester, and the Upper East Side. Earl doesn’t much like these people, their lifestyles, or their attitudes, and they don’t like Earl. Along the way, they’ll underestimate him, mock him, seduce him, and even try to kill him.
Boone Shepard
Gabriel Bergmoser - 2016
You might have heard the rumours—whispers of an evil plot involving time travel, dangerous experiments, a secret fortress, a terrible book, famous authors and, regrettably, murder. You might also have heard of heroes who were caught up in this plot, fighting to do the right thing. That sounds a lot more impressive than it actually was. My name is Boone Shepard. I’m here to set the record straight.”Boone is taking a break from writing for The Chronicle newspaper to hunt down and destroy every last copy of a very rare, very dangerous book. But then his editor calls to demand he investigate a missing persons case deep in the Scottish Highlands—in the company of his rival, photographer Promethia Peters—and he is forced to abandon his personal goals and get back to work. Restless and begrudging, Boone is unprepared when this hunt leads him back to the one story that won’t stop chasing him—his own. Boone Shepard is the first in a series of young adult novels following the adventures of an Australian expat, errant journalist and accidental hero.
Above the Ether
Eric BarnesEric Barnes - 2019
John Mandel's Station Eleven and Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood.In this prequel to Eric Barnes's acclaimed cli-fi novel The City Where We Once Lived, six sets of characters move through a landscape and a country just beginning to show the signs of cataclysmic change.A father and his young children fleeing a tsunami after a massive earthquake in the Gulf. A woman and her husband punishing themselves without relent for the loss of both their sons to addiction, while wildfires slowly burn closer to their family home. A brilliant investor, assessing opportunity in the risk to crops, homes, cities, industries, and infrastructure, working in the silent comfort of her office sixty floors up in the scorching air. A doctor and his wife stuck in a refugee camp for immigrants somewhere in a southern desert. Two young men working the rides for a roadside carnival, one escaping a brutal past, the other a racist present. The manager of a chain of nondescript fast-food restaurants in a city ravaged by the relentless wind.While every night the news alternates images of tsunami destruction with the baseball scores, the characters converge on a city where the forces of change have already broken—a city half abandoned, with one part left to be scavenged as the levee system protecting it slowly fails—until, in their vehicles on the highway that runs through it, they witness the approach of what looks to be just one more violent storm.
Graves' Anatomy
Jace Anderson - 2020
Too bad they believe in her.Luna Graves is a tattoo artist who specializes in dark and foreboding designs. The creatures are a product of her imagination…or are they? When her estranged father dies, Luna must re-evaluate everything she thinks she knows about the world. It’s her destiny, she learns, to be a doctor to monsters.Caught between the demands of her human life and her new calling, Luna must learn about a secret world that hides in plain sight. With an ancient evil returning whose goal is to release the Black Death, Luna is the front line of defense for both non-humanity and humanity alike. Will she be able to cure the disease before it destroys Los Angeles and then the world?
Eat Your Heart Out
Kelly deVos - 2021
And when they arrive at Camp Featherlite at the start of the worst blizzard in the history of Flagstaff, Arizona, it's clear that something isn't right.Vee barely has a chance to meet the other members of her pod, all who seem as unhappy to be at Featherlite as she does, when a camper goes missing down by the lake. Then she spots something horrifying outside in the snow. Something...that isn't human. Plus, the camp's supposed "miracle cure" for obesity just seems fishy, and Vee and her fellow campers know they don't need to be cured. Of anything.Even worse, it's not long before Camp Featherlite's luxurious bungalows are totally overrun with zombies. What starts out as a mission to unravel the camp's secrets turns into a desperate fight for survival--and not all of the Featherlite campers will make it out alive.
Boy on Hold
J.D. Spero - 2019
The traditional night of pranks takes a disturbing turn when a violent crime rocks a small Adirondack town. Even more so when the only witness is a seven-year-old boy. Hen Trout, who had hoped to catch a pet hedgehog that night, instead sees his beloved Miss Sally become a victim.Single mom Marcella Trout is blindsided when Tyler, her seventeen-year-old, is arrested for the very crime Hen witnessed. Now Tyler's eerie mood swings seem dark and frightening and rooted in a family history Marcella has desperately tried to bury. As the criminal investigation churns on, the tenuous fabric of the Trout family begins to unravel...and even Hen begins to question the truth."JD Spero's Boy on Hold provides an especially poignant, compelling, and beautifully written update on the tale of the troubled child who witnesses a shocking event. Hen Trout and his off-kilter fascination with the world will steal your heart. Equally unforgettable are his stoic mother and all-too-teenaged brother, whose concern for Hen, even as they push through their own daily struggles, is equally moving. This family, under extreme duress, demonstrates how wisdom, kindness, and concern for one another can overcome even the greatest challenges. An utterly impressive novel that reveals incredible promise from this gifted writer." - David Corbett, award-winning author of The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday
Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower
Christian McKay Heidicker - 2018
They survive thanks to Phoebe’s dad—an invisible titan, whose giant eyes warn them where the next monster attack will take place.All Phoebe wants is to stop running from motel to motel and start living a monster-free life in New York or Paris. But when her mom mysteriously vanishes, Phoebe is left to fend for herself in small-town Pennybrooke.That's when Phoebe starts to transform…Christian McKay Heidicker, author of Cure for the Common Universe, returns with a book unlike any other, challenging perceived notions of beauty, identity, and what it means to be a monster.
Echoes and Empires
Morgan Rhodes - 2022
So when she’s caught up in a robbery gone wrong at the Queen’s Gala and infected by a dangerous piece of magic—one that allows her to step into the memories of an infamously evil warlock—she finds herself living her worst nightmare. Joss needs the magic removed before it corrupts her soul and kills her. But in Ironport, the cost of doing magic is death, and seeking help might mean scheduling her own execution. There’s nobody she can trust.Nobody, that is, except wanted criminal Jericho Nox, who offers her a deal: his help extracting the magic in exchange for the magic itself. And though she’s not thrilled to be working with a thief, especially one as infuriating (and infuriatingly handsome) as Jericho, Joss is desperate enough to accept. But Jericho is nothing like Joss expects. The closer she grows with Jericho and the more she sees of the world outside her pampered life in the city, the more Joss begins to question the beliefs she’s always taken for granted—beliefs about right and wrong, about power and magic, and even about herself.In an empire built on lies, the truth may be her greatest weapon.