Book picks similar to
Origins and Overtures by Mary Borsellino
fiction
horror
science-fiction-fantasy
books-i-wrote-in
Meddling Kids
Edgar Cantero - 2017
The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in the Zoinx River Valley in Oregon) are all grown up and haven't seen each other since their fateful, final case in 1977. Andy, the tomboy, is twenty-five and on the run, wanted in at least two states. Kerri, one-time kid genius and budding biologist, is bartending in New York, working on a serious drinking problem. At least she's got Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the team. Nate, the horror nerd, has spent the last thirteen years in and out of mental health institutions, and currently resides in an asylum in Arhkam, Massachusetts. The only friend he still sees is Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star. The problem is, Peter's been dead for years.The time has come to uncover the source of their nightmares and return to where it all began in 1977. This time, it better not be a man in a mask. The real monsters are waiting.
Gideon the Ninth
Tamsyn Muir - 2019
She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service.Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.Of course, some things are better left dead.
Vampire Shift
Tim O'Rourke - 2011
Investigating a series of horrific murders, grave desecrations, and missing persons, Kiera uses her unique ability of seeing, and soon realizes her own life is in danger. When Kiera falls for police officer Luke Bishop, not only are her mind and heart opened to a terrifyingly new world, she comes to suspect that Luke might be involved in the killings. In a race against time to unearth the truth, Kiera must discover the identity of who - or what - is behind the gruesome deaths on her Vampire Shift. "Vampire Shift" is Book One of The Kiera Hudson Series One.
Nothing Ever Happens Here
Sarah Hagger-Holt - 2020
Nothing ever happens here. Until the spotlight hits my family."Izzy's family is under the spotlight when her dad comes out as Danielle, a trans woman. Izzy is terrified her family will be torn apart. Will she lose her dad? Will her parents break up? And what will people at school say? Izzy's always been shy, but now all eyes are on her. Can she face her fears, find her voice and stand up for what's right?
A Tyranny of Petticoats
Jessica SpotswoodSaundra Mitchell - 2016
Join fifteen of today’s most talented writers of young adult literature on a thrill ride through history with American girls charting their own course. They are monsters and mediums, bodyguards and barkeeps, screenwriters and schoolteachers, heiresses and hobos. They're making their own way in often-hostile lands, using every weapon in their arsenals, facing down murderers and marriage proposals. And they all have a story to tell.With stories by:J. Anderson CoatsAndrea CremerY. S. LeeKatherine LongshoreMarie LuKekla MagoonMarissa MeyerSaundra MitchellBeth RevisCaroline Tung RichmondLindsay SmithJessica SpotswoodRobin TalleyLeslye WaltonElizabeth Wein
Abbott
Saladin Ahmed - 2018
Crimes she knows to be the work of dark occult forces. Forces that took her husband from her. Forces she has sworn to destroy. Hugo Award-nominated novelist Saladin Ahmed (Star Wars: Canto Bight, Black Bolt) and artist Sami Kivelä (Beautiful Canvas) present one woman's search for the truth that destroyed her family amidst an exploration of the systemic societal constructs that haunt our country to this day.
The Other Side of Elsewhere
Brett McKay - 2018
He and his friends have the perfect summer planned before they start sixth grade, and his new job at the local mortuary promises enough pocket money for all the sodas they can drink. A dare from an older boy quickly ruins their plans. Everyone knows to stay away from the Crooked House, but after Ret and his friends take on the dare to spend the night in the abandoned house, they become caught up in the house’s dark history. Later, an outsider buys the house. When people start to disappear, Ret is determined to solve the mystery before it swallows the entire town. His obsession with the Crooked House and its strange new owner threatens to put him and his friends in danger more terrifying than anything they could have imagined.
This Poison Heart
Kalynn Bayron - 2021
Hopefully there, surrounded by plants and flowers, Bri will finally learn to control her gift. But their new home is sinister in ways they could never have imagined--it comes with a specific set of instructions, an old-school apothecary, and a walled garden filled with the deadliest botanicals in the world that can only be entered by those who share Bri's unique family lineage.When strangers begin to arrive on their doorstep, asking for tinctures and elixirs, Bri learns she has a surprising talent for creating them. One of the visitors is Marie, a mysterious young woman who Bri befriends, only to find that Marie is keeping dark secrets about the history of the estate and its surrounding community. There is more to Bri's sudden inheritance than she could have imagined, and she is determined to uncover it . . . until a nefarious group comes after her in search of a rare and dangerous immortality elixir. Up against a centuries-old curse and the deadliest plant on earth, Bri must harness her gift to protect herself and her family.From the bestselling author of Cinderella Is Dead comes another inspiring and deeply compelling story about a young woman with the power to conquer the dark forces descending around her.
The Alchemist's Touch
Garrett Robinson - 2016
But his father forbade him to use his magic, and kept him from attending the Academy where he could learn to use it. Just before his seventeenth birthday, Ebon’s aunt intervenes on his behalf and enrolls him in the Academy. Now at last he has the chance to use the magic he has so desperately yearned to control—yet the learning comes hard, for he has wasted more than half his life squandering his gift. To make matters worse, the darkness of his family name plagues him. The other students are terrified. Teachers regard him with suspicion. And before long, his family begins to draw him into their schemes that span all the nine kingdoms of Underrealm. A dark plot is brewing upon the High King’s Seat, and slowly Ebon finds himself being drawn into it. If he is to learn to become an alchemist—indeed, if he is to survive at all—he must cast off his family’s black legacy, and become the wizard he was always meant to be. The Academy Journals is a new series set in the world of Underrealm, and a companion series to the Nightblade Epic, hailed as one of the best new sword and sorcery series in years. Your journey begins here.
JOIN TENS OF THOUSANDS OF READERS ON AN EPIC ADVENTURE.
When We Were Magic
Sarah Gailey - 2020
Being in love with your best friend is harder. Alexis has always been able to rely on two things: her best friends, and the magic powers they all share. Their secret is what brought them together, and their love for each other is unshakeable—even when that love is complicated. Complicated by problems like jealousy, or insecurity, or lust. Or love. That unshakeable, complicated love is one of the only things that doesn't change on prom night. When accidental magic goes sideways and a boy winds up dead, Alexis and her friends come together to try to right a terrible wrong. Their first attempt fails—and their second attempt fails even harder. Left with the remains of their failed spells and more consequences than anyone could have predicted, each of them must find a way to live with their part of the story.
13 Bullets
David Wellington - 2007
But the evidence proves otherwise.When a state trooper named Caxton calls the FBI looking for help in the middle of the night, it is Arkeley who gets the assignment - who else? He's been expecting such a call to come eventually. Sure, it has been years since any signs of an attack, but Arkeley knows what most people don't: there is one left. In an abandoned asylum she is rotting, plotting, and biding her time in a way that only the undead can.Caxton is out of her league on this case and more than a little afraid, but the fed made it plain that there is only one way out. But the worst thing is the feeling that the vampires want more than just her blood. They want her for a reason, one she can't guess; a reason her sphinxlike partner knows but won't say; a reason she has to find out - or die trying.Now there are only 13 bullets between Caxton and Arkeley and the vampires. There are only 13 bullets between us, the living, and them, the damned.
The Upstairs House
Julia Fine - 2021
Physically exhausted and mentally drained, she’s also wracked with guilt over her unfinished dissertation—a thesis on mid-century children’s literature.Enter a new upstairs neighbor: the ghost of quixotic children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown—author of the beloved classic Goodnight Moon—whose existence no one else will acknowledge. It seems Margaret has unfinished business with her former lover, the once-famous socialite and actress Michael Strange, and is determined to draw Megan into the fray. As Michael joins the haunting, Megan finds herself caught in the wake of a supernatural power struggle—and until she can find a way to quiet these spirits, she and her newborn daughter are in terrible danger.Using Megan’s postpartum haunting as a powerful metaphor for a woman’s fraught relationship with her body and mind, Julia Fine once again delivers an imaginative and “barely restrained, careful musing on female desire, loneliness, and hereditary inheritances” (Washington Post).
The Immortal Circus: Act One
A.R. Kahler - 2012
But like most things under the big top, nothing is what it seems. With a past she can't quite remember, Vivienne finds that running away forever might not be as appealing as it once sounded—especially not when she realizes the devilishly attractive ringleader, Mab, is the Faerie Queen of legend—and that she and the rest of the troupe are locked in an age-old rivalry between the otherworldly Courts. Aided by her friends Kingston—a feisty stage magician whose magic is quickly stealing her heart—and his smart-ass assistant, Melody, Vivienne finds herself racing against the clock to discover the culprit behind a series of deaths that should be impossible. However, the answer she seeks might reveal more about her own bloody past—and future—than she bargained for. The show's just beginning. Step right up...
The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried
Shaun David Hutchinson - 2019
His parents own a funeral home, and death is literally the family business. He’s just not used to them talking back. Until Dino’s ex-best friend July dies suddenly—and then comes back to life. Except not exactly. Somehow July is not quite alive, and not quite dead.As Dino and July attempt to figure out what’s happening, they must also confront why and how their friendship ended so badly, and what they have left to understand about themselves, each other, and all those grand mysteries of life.
A Dowry of Blood
S.T. Gibson - 2021
Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.