Sisters Red, by Jackson Pearce (fiction) - werewolf-hunting sisters long for love

Remote town or crowded city,
more "missing" young women reported,
time to hunt down the werewolves.

The first in Pearce's Fairytale Retellings, Sisters Red  takes the Little Red Riding Hood tale several steps into the present-day with chilling effectiveness.

The Atlanta-based author keeps her Retellings series firmly rooted in today's South with Sweetly (Hansel and Gretel...and Fenris) and Fathomless (the Little Mermaid...and Fenris). Click the title links to go to my no-spoiler recommendations.

Which cover art do you prefer - the new paperback release with the hatchet or the original hardback and paperback art with the two girls' faces and those red wolfeyes?
**kmm

Book info: Sisters Red (Fairytale Retellings #1) / Jackson Pearce. LB Teen, 2010 hardback, 2011 paperback. [author's website] [publisher site] [book trailer]  

My Recommendation:  Girls are disappearing – time for Rosie and Scarlett to take up their hatchets, don their red cloaks, and hunt down the werewolves again. Perhaps the teen sisters can kill enough of these Fenris before their power becomes too strong…

Closer than twins, Scarlett and Rosie feel like they are one heart divided between two people and that they have a mission to protect people from the Fenris who slaughtered their grandmother, clawed out Scarlett’s right eye, left the March sisters selling off Oma’s things to stay afloat – hunting killer werewolves near and far leaves no time for a regular job. At least Silas is back from California, back to being their nearest neighbor out in the Georgia countryside, even if he didn’t take the traditional woodsman’s path like the rest of his family.

Attacks on young women during the Apple Time Festival reveal that outside clans of Fenris are converging on their area, and the sisters’ scan of the news tells them that Atlanta is getting hit hard. It’s Silas who suggests that they temporarily move to the city to deal with the werewolf outbreak, the three of them hunting together again to keep unwitting victims safe.

Now the trio has a whole new landscape to learn, trying to remain unseen as they stalk the leering men whose skin bursts forth into full fur when their prey has no more way to escape, the two girls donning mysterious red capes to entice the Fenris away from others and into the death trap of their hatchets and knives.

Silas insists that Rosie do something – just one thing – that’s not Fenris-related so she can keep her mind and soul together, so she tries an origami class. In the calm classroom, Rosie wonders if she’ll fight the Fenris forever, if she could have a future with Silas.

What is luring the other Fenris into territory not their own?

Can the three young people stop them?

Is there more to life than fighting away this darkness?

Told in alternating chapters by Rosie and Scarlett, Sisters Red brings an old fairytale into the here and now as the author’s home city is plagued by werewolves.  (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Tempestuous, by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes (fiction) - blizzard, robbery, clique wars, corndogs

Popular crowd versus geek teens,
Trapped together by a blizzard
With bad cellphone reception... and a robber!

It's Gossip Girl  and MacGyver woven into Shakespeare's play The Tempest as authors Kim Askew and Amy Helmes throw the Bard's heroine Miranda Prospero into a winter-whipped shopping mall with Ariel as her corndog-cooking sidekick.

Check your local library or independent bookstore for this first book in the Twisted Lit series from new publisher Merit Press.

Kind of crazy, lots of fun! What other Shakespeare remixes do you know of?
**kmm

Book info: Tempestuous (Twisted Lit #1) / Kim Askew and Amy Helmes. Merit Press, 2012. [Kim's website]  [Amy's website]   [publisher site]   [book trailer]  

My Recommendation: Trudging through the snow toward the mall, Miranda again laments the unfairness of her life. Forced to work at a corndog stand in the mall to pay back the finks who turned her tutoring-matchmaking service into a cheating scam, Daddy taking away her platinum charge cards, wearing this hideous uniform with the revolving-wienie hat… at least other teens working in the mall turn to her for advice in sticky situations.

Thank goodness perky co-worker Ariel also pulled this Saturday night shift at Hot Dog Kebob, so Miranda can throw her a surprise birthday party for her after closing. The petite home-schooled 17-year-old deserves the ice cream cake that Grady the security cop will pick up later. Maybe moody Caleb from the game store and gangly Chad from the sports store will come by, but no one has seen their pal Mike from collectibles tonight.

The news is forecasting blizzard conditions overnight so the food court supervisor leaves early; in fact, most customers are heading out, but the closing employees must stay to lock up. Too bad Miranda’s ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend didn’t go when they could – the mall doors are now completely blocked by snow! No one is getting home from here tonight and the mall cop has just discovered a burglary!

Suddenly shoppers and workers try to find the best places to stay for the night, praying that the power stays on and that the robber stays away. Miranda accidentally gets handcuffed to Caleb, someone stalls the elevator with a panicked teen inside, and boredom threatens to become chaos if something exciting doesn’t happen soon. Finding another teen knocked out cold by the robber wasn’t in the plan!

How long are the rival factions of teens going to be trapped in the mall?

Will Caleb’s impromptu concert keep things from getting crazy?

Can Grady trap the robber before someone else gets hurt?

How can Miranda get out of these handcuffs and get to the bathroom?

A modern retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, this first book in the Twisted Lit series has more wild and crazy twists than Miranda ever dreamed of, with quotes from the play as chapter headings to add to the fun. (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Also Known As, by Robin Benway (fiction)

Diagram of safe's location in apartment? Check.
Plan for entry into said apartment? Check.
Keeping emotional distance from unwitting accomplice? Uh-oh.

Imagine being a 17-year-old lifelong spy! A natural-born safecracker, helping her secret agent parents keep the world safe from evil, Maggie discovers that falling in love on her first solo case could put their whole organization in danger.

Head for your local library or independent bookstore today to jump right into the action with Maggie, wild-child Roux, and handsome Jesse against the bad guys.

Any spycraft skills in your educational future?
**kmm

Book info: Also Known As / Robin Benway. Walker Books, 2013.  [author's website] [publisher site]

My Recommendation: Maggie is bored by the usual assignments, but having to go to high school for the first time? This could be the teenage spy’s toughest job yet!

She and her parents work undercover for the Collective, stopping human trafficking and stifling illegal weapons sales through their unique talents for language decoding, computer hacking, and safe-cracking – Maggie’s special gift. A dozen passports with a dozen names and too many moves during her lifetime to count… at least Angelo, the world’s best forger and friend, is always by the family’s side, discreetly, of course.

When they received the call to keep a New York City magazine publisher from running a story about the Collective (with names, aliases, and lots of photos), it falls to the 17-year-old to get the goods through his teenage son Jesse at the posh private high school. And she has to wear a uniform?!

These privileged teens have known one another forever, so being the new kid means being an outsider - almost as much an outsider as Roux, who alienated the whole school last year with her bad behavior. Of course, it’s Roux who takes Maggie under her wing, convinces her to ditch school once in a while, and manages to get them into Jesse’s penthouse during a party.

When the thumbdrive that Maggie liberates from Mr. Oliver’s home office safe doesn’t contain the article notes after all, she has to get closer to Jesse to figure out where the volatile materials could be.

She didn’t count on falling for Jesse himself, or Jesse falling for her, or Roux spilling the beans about their first date, or possibly being pulled off the case and losing them both forever!

How long can she keep Jesse in the dark about why she met him?

Can she find the article documents before it’s too late?

Will her first kiss be her only kiss?

Racing through the streets of Manhattan, avoiding the evil eye in the school halls, trying to imagine how her life will be when this assignment ends – Maggie finds action and adventure and a little romance in this debut novel. (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Fellowship For Alien Detection, by Kevin Emerson (fiction) - strange memories, time rewind,

Voices in his head.
Time losses that catch her eye.
It really is aliens this time!

It's easy to identify with Dodger's sense of never fitting in or with Haley's alternating affection and annoyance with her family, but entire towns experiencing 16 minutes of missing time? People vanished from each place? Radio transmissions from a town not shown on any map?

Somehow, this is not the summer vacation that Dodger or Haley envisioned... and the extraterrestrials are trying to make them disappearance statistics, too!

Published in late February 2013, Kevin Emerson's The Fellowship for Alien Detection  is a bit more light-hearted than his Atlanteans series (see my review of The Lost Code  here), but the perils for Dodger and Haley are very real.

Any "missing time experiences" in your life?
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Book info: Fellowship for Alien Detection / Kevin Emerson. Walden Pond Press, 2013.  [author's website] [publisher site]

My Recommendation:  Awarded money for a short summer trip to investigate their theories of aliens on Earth, two young teens find more adventure than they anticipated and more danger than they could have imagined during their search for missing people and a vanished town.

Haley follows obscure news online that might lead to a reporting breakthrough; that’s how she uncovered “missing time episodes” experienced by people in several towns and knows each place has missing persons now. She’s going to interview folks in those missing-time towns - if she can just get Dad to stick to the travel plan instead of trying to see every oddball attraction on their route west from Connecticut.

The radio station that unpredictably plays in Dodger’s head is from Juliette, Arizona (which is not on any maps) and from a different day and year than now. He’s always felt different, unsettled – and it’s gotten worse as the radio broadcasts started this year. His dad looks at him like Dodger is a disappointment – the trip from Seattle to Roswell, New Mexico is going to be mighty long if Dad has as little to say to him as usual.

Debit cards from the Foundation in hand, the two families depart from opposite coasts on their fellowship journeys. But soon Haley’s investigations are noticed by United Consolidated Amalgamations which owns old mines near every missing-time town, and Dodger becomes a transmitting loudspeaker for the Juliette radio station during the gathering at Bend.

The two fellowship winners aren’t the only folks who have made the connection between UCA mines and missing-time or who have heard KJPR from Juliette, but they’re the only ones who are tracking down the clues step by step – the falling star dream in missing-time towns, the significance of the 16-minute time loss, the radio transmissions from one April day years ago. And the extraterrestrials are tracking down them and their families!

If Juliette is a real place, why isn’t it on the map?

Why does that same day play over and over on KJPR?

Can Dodger and Haley join forces before it’s too late?

This summer before starting high school may be the start of something big…or the end of Earth as we know it!  (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Bruised, by Sarah Skilton (fiction) - trained to defend, frozen when it counts most

She's a black belt.
She's practiced and sparred and competed.
She freezes when true danger strikes.

The journey to black belt in Tae Kwon Do or any martial art is long and rigorous, but under controlled conditions with traditions and rules to follow.

Imogen mentally punishes herself for not springing into action when the gunman attacks - can she fight through survivor's guilt to become a young woman of action and purpose again?

Just published this week, Bruised  follows Imo as she tries to rebuild her life to include Ricky's love and fill the void left by Shelley's departure for dance school and her own absence from Grandmaster Huan's dojang.

How would you react when a situation bursts into violence?
**kmm

Book info: Bruised / Sarah Skilton. Amulet Books, 2013. [author's website] [publisher site]

My Recommendation: As the youngest female to earn a black belt at the dojang, Imogen was sure she could handle any attack. But the gunman at the diner proved her wrong, undid her whole life’s work as a defender of the helpless. How can she get past the blood-drenched scene when her mind has built a wall around the robbery gone wrong?

Tae Kwon Do is what she does, what she is, but she just froze at the diner, didn’t stop the robber before he pistol-whipped the cashier. She can remember hiding under a table, can remember the teen guy crouching under the next table, his new white shoes that became gory red and were taken as evidence, just like her bloodstained jeans. Gretchen called 911 from the bathroom, was smart enough to stay put – but Imogen should have been able to stop the situation before the guy was shot when he wouldn’t surrender.

She just can’t process what went wrong there. Can’t talk to former best friend Shelley who decided to hook up with her big brother at Imogen’s own birthday party, can’t pay attention in school, except during counseling sessions with Ricky, the guy from the diner whose shoes became bloody evidence. Her heart seems to be a lump in her chest now.

Being teased leads to a fight at school, to being asked by Grandmaster Huan not to return to the dojang until she can regain her emotional balance by truly living the ‘child rules’ at the foundation of Tae Kwon Do – respecting her parents (including her dad who let his diabetes put him in a wheelchair) and doing all her homework without being asked.

Who is Imogen without her time revolving around learning and teaching at the dojang?

How can Ricky like her or respect her when she failed to stop a death?

Why can’t she remember what happened between crouching under the table and being blood-soaked in the police car?

A compelling story of expectations versus reality, Imogen’s heart and psyche are so Bruised that moving on with life will take more courage than any Tae Kwon Do belt test she ever tried.

(One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Dark Unwinding, by Sharon Cameron (fiction) - invention, espionage, affection

Clever clockwork devices,
A hidden town,
A special man with a child's heart,
A spy and traitor plotting destruction...

Is it any wonder that Mr. Babcock used Uncle Tully's money to rescue working families from the poorhouses and create a unique village to fill all the estate's needs? Or that agents from enemy countries would try to steal Uncle Tully's work to use against England? Or that Katharine might finally find love?

The author promises us a sequel in fall 2013, so visit Stranwyne Keep yourself soon - and watch out for Aunt Alice's sharp tongue!
 **kmm

Book info: The Dark Unwinding / Sharon Cameron. Scholastic Press, 2012.  [author's website] [publisher site]

My Recommendation: It seems that Uncle is squandering away the family fortune, so it falls to Katharine to quietly visit the old man and gather enough evidence to have him declared insane. As “the poor relative”, the young lady has no choice but to make the long carriage journey to Stranwyne Keep, and a mysteriously strange place she finds it indeed.

A drowsy housekeeper, a mute young boy, a belligerent apprentice named Lane – that’s the entire staff for this huge English manor house? Mrs. Jeffries recognizes Katharine as Mr. Simon’s orphan daughter and avers that cousin Robert’s scheming mother must have sent her here to uproot Mr. Tully.

Where is all the money going if Uncle doesn’t throw lavish parties or buy fine horses? In his workshop across the moors, childlike genius Uncle Tully creates precise inventions in miniature with Lane’s assistance and keeps an unvarying personal timetable. Automatons, clockwork creations, part science, part magic, all Uncle Tully.

The family solicitor enlightens Katharine about how this estate is run – and how an entire village supports Uncle Tully’s projects as the estate supports its hundreds of workers rescued from London’s poorhouses! No wonder there is less money in the accounts than before… yet Mr. Babcock assures her that these projects will rebuild the fortune soon.

Katharine becomes convinced that some of her uncle’s entertaining inventions are very practical (others quite dangerous and alarming) as her fondness for this very special person grows, so she decides to support him in defiance of her aunt’s wishes, endangering her own chances of a safer financial future.

But all is not well in this idyllic setting, as strange noises taunt Katharine in the manor, Lane warns her about upsetting her uncle, a visiting student of mechanics begins to court her, people disappear from one location and reappear far away, and the villagers turn against her in defense of their dear Mr. Tully.

Who can she trust now - Lane? Mr. Babcock? Her maid and friend from the village?

What’s causing those eerie noises and her new nightmares?

Is someone really planning to steal inventions from Uncle Tully’s workshop?

A mystery and a Victorian family drama rolled into one, this Dark Unwinding twists and turns as Uncle Tully’s inventions tick-tock along, and a villain seeks to use them for nefarious purposes. (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Cats of Tanglewood Forest, by Charles De Lint (fiction) - saved and condemned, quest to make things right again

The forest cats did what they could.
Is it so wrong to wish death away?
Lillian so wants to be a human girl again, but the consequences...

Trying to follow the instructions of Old Mother Possum, meeting up with the Bear People, Lillian only wants to make things right, even if she cannot undo everything that the cats' magic set in motion.

An excerpt posted by Tor here gives you the flavor of Lillian's story in this lyrical tale, much expanded from De Lint's 2003 "Circle of Cats" 44-page novella also featuring illustrations by Vess.
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This most-magical book is being released tomorrow (March 5, 2013), so ask for it at your local library or independent bookstore.

Indeed, is is so wrong to wish death away?
**kmm

Book info: The Cats of Tanglewood Forest / Charles De Lint; illustrated by Charles Vess. Little Brown, 2013.  [author's website]   [publisher site]  [illustrator's website]

My Recommendation: It was the cats who decided to save Lillian. She just wanted to say hello to the fairies, but here she lies, dying of snakebite. Changed by their magic from a dying girl into a live kitten, Lillian can’t comfort her aunt or the neighbors who search the old woods. She must find out how to turn back into herself… and then how to make right the consequences of her choice.

These forest cats know that their magic might anger the Father of All Cats, that great black puma who stalks these ancient woods, who prowls in dark dreams. But they just couldn’t let the girl die, not after she’s been so generous with milk for them and respectful of the Apple Tree Man.

Lillian-kitten sets out to find Old Mother Possum, who might help her turn back into girl-Lillian. Accompanied by T.H. Fox (his mother named him Truthful and Handsome), she makes the long journey, despite his warnings that the part-witch-part-someone may not choose a solution that’s easy or simple.

Oh, turning back one death puts it onto another! Now Lillian has a bigger problem to solve and consults the wise woman at the Kickaha reservation nearby. Aunt Nancy sees only one path and not an easy one, as this problem is so big that Lillian must ask a difficult favor of the fearsome Bear People, no matter what the personal cost.

Does young Lillian have the courage to walk alone into the Bears’ den?

Why do the cats of the forest keep watching her?

Is love enough to turn away death?

Originally a very short picture book, The Cats of Tanglewood Forest brings even more depth to Lillian’s journey as she searches for a way to make things right again in her world, despite the danger to herself. (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.