Maureen Johnson. THE MADNESS UNDERNEATH

This is the sequel to THE NAME OF THE STAR, which I loved and reviewed here. MADNESS begins shortly after the near death events from the first book. Rory is recovering at her parent's house in Bristol. But she simply wants to get on with her life. She can't talk to anyone about the actual events that led up to the stabbing, since they involve the secret ghost-fighting society, in which she's a quasi-member.So she'd like to just go back to Wexford and continue school.

Rory finally convinces her parents that she's ready to go back to school, and she heads back to try to catch up on all that she's missed. but just as she's settling back in, she gets caught up in a murder that she swears was committed by a ghost. She gets Stephen, Callum and Boo involved and realizes that she may never be just a "normal" high school student anymore.

This one took a while to really get going. There was a point when I began to wonder if I wanted to finish it. It was really slow. It had the wonderful characters, sense of humor and quirkiness that I expect from Maureen Johnson. But there just wasn't a lot going on until about half-way through. Then some really interesting characters were introduced, along with some cool historical aspects that I enjoyed. But the last few chapters really stood out and the book finished up with a shocking ending. So, of course, I'm going to be excited when the next book comes out.

If you enjoyed the first book in this series, you'll want to read this one too. And if you've been living under a rock all these years and haven't read anything by Maureen Johnson, by all means get right on that! My favorite is SUITE SCARLETT. Check out the other books I've reviewed by her here. You will LOVE any of them. Her characters and memorable settings are fabulous!

In closing, the trailer:

Katie Williams. ABSENT

Paige died in physics class. The whole class was on the roof conducting an experiment that involved dropping eggs. Paige slipped, hit her head, and fell off the roof. But she's still hanging around the school, along with two other dead students, Brooke and Evan.

Paige and her classmates follow students around attend classes, and generally just spend their time wandering around school. It's interesting for Paige, at first, but then she begins to hear gossip about herself. Kelsey Pope, popular cheerleader, is saying that she committed suicide by jumping off the building.
Paige didn't jump! Paige is furious that people will remember her this way. Then she figures out a way to slip into living people and take over them inhabit. Maybe she can right this wrong and save her memory, after all.

On the surface, the book seems like just an every day ghost story. But with the interesting characters and beautiful writing, it's really much more. I enjoyed it and look forward to more from Katie Williams.

Check out her website where you can read the first chapter!

ABSENT is due out in May.

Jennifer Archer. THROUGH HER EYES

Tansy Piper is moving to another new town with her mother, a horror novelist - "the female version of Stephen King, minus the megabucks and movie deals." Tansy's mom must live in the setting of her novel, so they've moved a lot over the years. The tiny town of Cedar Canyon is quite an adjustment from San Francisco. But, their new house is old and has enough character to intrigue Tansy. Especially after hearing the rumors that it's haunted by a young teen who died there decades earlier.

Soon after moving in, Tansy breaks out her old 35mm camera to begin shooting her new surroundings. Things get weirder and weirder from there. She begins seeing people in her viewfinder who aren't really there. Scenes are shown in black and white, rather than color. Then when she finds a box of treasures hidden in her cellar, she's able to connect with the ghost she's heard the rumors about. She's drawn into his world little by little until she's almost fully immersed.

Will she be able to pull herself out before it's too late?

This was a fun ghost story set in a quaint little town full of interesting characters. I enjoyed it thoroughly. 

Check out the trailer below for a touch of atmosphere from the book:

Kendare Blake. ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD

Theseus Cassio Lowood is a killer. A ghost killer. It's the family business. His father also went after ghosts, before he was killed on the job when Cas was seven. He and his mother travel from town to town taking care of business.

The ghost known as Anna Dressed in Blood draws Cas to Thunder Bay, Ontario. Usually on a job, he's able to keep to himself, do his detective work locating the ghost, and then take it out with no trouble. But Thunder Bay brings several new issues for him. A guy named Thomas follows him around asserting himself into the the hunt. The prom queen-type, Carmel, is also overly interested in Cas. But the most important issue is Anna herself, who is a much more powerful ghost than Cas has ever come up against.

When Cas gets to know Anna, things get even more complicated. He becomes sympathetic towards her plight. But he's supposed to kill her. Uh-oh.

I loved this book! It's a ghost story with some witty hard-boiled mystery novel sprinkled in. I was taken in immediately by witty Cas. And the supporting characters are just as wonderful. Thomas isn't merely the goofy friend type. He's becomes a fun, smart and strong friend. The relationship between Cas and Anna is unique, but it works well and I rooted for the two of them.

Kendare Blake is a new author and we're thrilled to be hosting her at our Montgomery County Book Festival in February.

Check out the trailer

Maureen Johnson. THE NAME OF THE STAR

I love, love, love Maureen Johnson's books, so I didn't need any convincing to read this one. Although, at first, I somehow thought it was historical fiction, because of the cover. And that felt odd, coming from MJ. So, anyway, it's not historical fiction at all. It's a murder mystery and sooo much more! (although it does have history in it.)

Aurora, or Rory as she likes to be called, is from New Orleans. Her parents are professors, so she gets to go to England with them for a year. Her parents go to Bristol, while Rory gets to go spend the year at a proper British boarding school called Wexford.

Rory is doing her best to fit in and learn British terminology and important stuff like how the United Kingdom and Britain are not the same thing. Also that the English will play hockey in any weather. (not ice hockey - field hockey). However, rather than fitting in, Rory ends up standing out when she is a witness in a murder investigation.

All of London is on the edge when a string of murders replicate Jack the Ripper murders from over a century ago. Police think Rory is the only witness to the murders, so they get close to her and learn all they can about why this man is interested in her.

I don't want to give too much away, because the story has so many delicious discoveries. But I will say that this book has all of the wit, humor and sheer awesomeness that all of MJ's books have. If you've read her, you don't need my convincing to read this one. If you haven't read any of her books, then this is a fabulous one to start with. My reviews of some of her other books are here.

This is the beginning of a series called SHADES OF LONDON. I will be reading the next one as soon as I can get my hands on it! Check out Maureen Johnson's website here.

Check out the trailer here:

Suzanne Weyn. DISTANT WAVES: A NOVEL OF THE TITANIC

I was really struck by the beauty of this cover. So I jumped right in without reading the book jacket or anything. I was blown away. It's a magical book!

It begins in 1898 in New York City. After witnessing their mom, Maude Taylor, contact the dead in a seance, the five Taylor sisters encounter an earthquake in the middle of New York City. Actually, what feels like an earthquake turns out to be a science experiment gone awry by the renowned scientist Nikola Tesla. The girls and their mother meet Tesla when he runs outside to save them from the "earthquake." They follow him upstairs to watch him crush his invention to stop the rumble of the city. After an interesting conversation with Tesla, the chance encounter becomes a turning point for their family. Since her husband died a year before, Maude had been struggling to make ends meet, so she decides to move her family to upstate New York to a town known for spiritualists and mediums called Spirit Vale. After a series of fortunate events, she's able to set up shop there to make a living.

Most of the novel occurs before the sailing of the Titanic. This is what makes it such an amazing novel. All of the events that lead up to it are what make the story so compelling. Even after seeing the blockbuster Titanic movie and reading several books about it, I was still entranced by this completely fresh telling of the events. The various historical characters intermingling with the fictional family made it a fascinating read.

The author did a stellar job of  weaving together so many cool aspects of this time period. There was a spiritual movement where many people took psychics and mediums seriously, while other were continually trying to prove them to be fakes. Some of the fascinating people we encounter are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, John Jacob Astor, Benjamin Guggenheim, WT Stead and the aforementioned Nikola Tesla. The climax of the sinking of the Titanic made for an incredible amount of suspense.

I also loved the Author's Note chapter at the end that explained what was real and what was fiction in the book. I'm usually compelled to do a bunch of research at the conclusion of a historical fiction book, but this was way better, and saved me a lot of Googling at midnight after finishing the book!
I loved this book immensely and now want to read the author's other books.

I can't recommend this book enough! It's fascinating and and the characters are wonderful!

Click here for the author's site.
Check out this cool book trailer:

Kate Klise & M. Sarah Klise. DYING TO MEET YOU: 43 OLD CEMETERY ROAD BOOK 1

A famous author of ghost stories named Ignatius Grumply moves into a house for the summer to help him focus on writing. He hasn't published anything in 20 years. He moves in to find that there is an 11-year-old boy living there. In his haste to get the lease signed, he didn't read the fine print. Apparently, he's been roped into taking care of the boy and his cat.

To make matters worse, the boy, Seymour, claims there is another occupant living with them, Olive C. Spense, the ghost of the original owner of 43 Old Cemetery Road.

You might assume that an author of GHOST stories would understand and believe Seymour, but you would be wrong. Ignatius thinks the boy is crazy. Plus, he cannot focus on his writing with all the door slamming and piano playing that goes on.

Will Ignatius Grumply be able to make nice and finish his book or will he be forced out - like all the previous occupants before him?

This is a witty, adorable book. The constant word play had me giggling from page one. The quirky characters kept me intrigued to the very last page. I also enjoyed how the whole story is told in letters. It would be a great way to teach children how to properly format letters. Each character has his or her style and signature to tell them all apart.

The second book in the series has already been published. It's going on my "to read" list!

For more on these authors go here.

Elizabeth Cody Kimmel. SUDDENLY SUPERNATURAL: SCHOOL SPIRIT

Kat’s mother is a medium. She’s okay with it, but has never brought home friends to show her off or anything. In fact, she’s never brought anyone home before. She lets people in town think that her mom is just a little strange like a new age hippie, but not the truth about what she really does. People visit the house a lot and her mom helps them communicate with their loved ones who have passed on.
Bringing friends home hadn’t been a huge issue before anyway, since Kat doesn’t have any close friends. Then a new girl shows up at school. Her name is Jac and her constant companion is her cello, which makes her just as strange as Kat. They begin eating lunch together and gradually they become friends. Kat hides her mother’s occupation as long as she can. But then when Kat begins to see dead people too, things start happening that cause her secret to be harder and harder to keep.
This is an easy story to get into. Kat’s endearing and engaging right from the start. Her friend Jac is a lot of fun and adds a lot to the novel. It's a great combination of mystery and supernatural.
This is the first in the series SUDDENLY SUPERNATURAL
Check out the author's site here. She's written a lot of great stuff! I was really intrigued by this book from the Little House series about Mary Ingalls. She wrote this book in 2008 about what it might have been like for Mary when she attended the Iowa College for the blind:

Katie Alender. BAD GIRLS DON'T DIE

Do you like ghost stories? Haunted Houses? Who doesn’t! I had forgotten how much I love them myself!
When I picked up BAD GIRLS DON’T DIE I had avoided spoilers – not even reading the book jacket. It started out as a pretty normal YA book. So I got a delicious surprise when the book turned supernatural.
Alexis has a normal dysfunctional teenage life. She has pink hair. Her parents aren’t around much. She hangs around with a group called the doom squad, although she isn’t really close to any of them. So she spends most of her free time on her photography hobby and developing the pictures in her dark room, the old fashioned-way.
She has a thirteen-year-old younger sister, Kasey, who was just annoying at the beginning of the book, but then begins to change into something that Alexis doesn’t recognize. Kasey begins to behave in an old-fashioned way in her movements and with her phrases like “mother” and “oughtn’t.” She loses chunks of time and her eyes even change colors.
Furthermore, when odd events start happening in the house like unplugged electronic devices turning themselves on and doors slamming, Alexis starts to believe there is another presence in the house. She has to turn to someone for help. The only logical person turns out to be a cheerleader who happens to be her enemy. Can things get any worse for Alexis?
I loved the suspense! I stayed up super late to finish it, because I could not put it down!
Bottom line ~ This is a fantastic debut novel by Katie Alender!
To find out more about the book and the author click here.
My description is nothing compared to this cool book trailer – check it out:

Mary Downing Hahn. DEEP AND DARK AND DANGEROUS

(Since I'm an elementary librarian now, I'll be focusing on more younger audience books. I'll still review YA -you'll just see more children's reviews here than you did before.) Now, on to the review...

While going through a box of books, Ali finds an old torn picture of her and her aunt and a small snippet of another girl at Gull Cottage, the lake house the family owns. On the back of the picture is the name of her mom, her aunt and another name where the picture is torn beginning with a T. Ali asks her mom about it, but her mom clams up and refuses to talk about it. When her aunt comes to visit, she also refuses to divulge any information about this “T” person. She claims they didn’t hang out with anyone at Gull Cottage – just each other.
After 30 years of avoiding Gull Cottage, Ali’s aunt, Dulcie, decides to spend the summer there painting. She asks Ali her to join her so she can babysit her niece, Emma. Everything is set for a nice relaxing summer at the lake. But you see the cover, right? A mysterious girl who calls herself Sissy keeps showing up to play with Ali and Emma. But she’s mean and starts to become a bad influence on Emma. Also, bit by bit, Ali begins unraveling the mystery of the “T” person in the photo. It definitely doesn’t end up being a nice and relaxing summer at the lake.
I loved this ghost~mystery. It’s chilling, suspenseful and creepy. It kept me up late at night - I couldn't stop reading. It’s great for kids as young as 4th grade through middle school who liked to be scared.

I was happy to see that the author has written many books, check her out here.

Neil Gaiman. THE GRAVEYARD BOOK

Sometimes the Newbery award book perplexes me or makes me wonder why it was chosen. Not this one. THE GRAVEYARD BOOK is truly deserving of all the honors it is receiving.
Nobody Owens was named by his parents. Not so unusual. Except Nobody’s parents are ghosts. Nobody, or Bod as his friends call him, wandered into the graveyard as a baby after his family was murdered. The inhabitants of the graveyard had a feeling he was in danger and adopted him. Mr. & Mrs. Owens became his parents, while someone named Silas became his guardian. Bod grows up in the graveyard, learning from ghosts teachers and playing with ghost children. Except for the ghouls, witches, dreamwalking and trickery, Bod has a perfectly normal childhood. But one day Bod learns that the man who killed his family is still after him. He will never truly be free to live his life with that man after him. So, he must make some difficult choices.
This book is filled with adventure, intriguing characters, spookiness and dread. It is the quintessential children’s book that will be adored by all ages. I love the way Gaiman writes. There is something about the way he describes things. Whereas normally I’ll get annoyed at an overly descriptive scene to the point where I begin skipping over stuff, here I relished every phrase, every well-chosen word. For example:

“The knife had a handle of polished black bone, and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately.” and…

“The street door was still open, just a little, where the knife and the man who held it had slipped in, and wisps of nighttime mist slithered and twined into the house through the open door.”

I mean, really, don’t you have distinct pictures in your head after reading these excerpts? Don’t you want to read them again? That’s just the beginning. When we’re introduced to the different characters from such wide-ranging time periods, we get to enjoy an array of dialects and quirky people.
I thoroughly enjoyed this Newbery and really want to read more by Gaiman.

But this book trailer does a much better job of creating the mood of the book. Check it out. It has the illustrations from the book (which are stunning, by the way) created by Dave McKean.
Press play & be patient, it takes a moment to start.

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean from booksamillion.com on Vimeo.

More on the book and video of the author reading the book click here.

Tonya Hurley. GHOSTGIRL

What a very cool book. Part of the appeal is the packaging, not to take away from the writing – which is witty and funny. The book is black & pink with a coffin on the front. When you open the first page, it has an illustration of ghostgirl. Then between each chapter is another clever illustration with quotations. Really, you have to see it to appreciate it.
The story is quirky and yet realistic too, in its own creepy way. Charlotte was determined that this would be her year. She would finally become popular. In a moment of serendipity, she is assigned to be lab partner to her major crush Damon Dylan. At the end of class, after agreeing to help tutor Damen and therefore make him fall in love with her in the process, Charlotte chokes on a gummy bear and dies. Just when her life was turning around, Charlotte dies. She’s not happy at all at this turn of events.
After getting orientated to her new way of life at DeadEd, an alternative school for dead kids, she’s determined to find a way to spend more time in her old life. Then she realizes that one girl can actually see her. She uses this as a way to intermingle with her old life. She refuses to accept her status as no longer living. This angers the other non-living and they set out to stop her.
This is a funny, satirical and heartwarming story. Publisher’s Weekly called it Beetlejuice meets Heathers. I agree with that description. The characters are unique and fun and the dialogue is sharp! I really enjoyed it and was pleased to see the sequel is due out in July. It’s on my list!

The author is intriguing. She's been a screenwriter for film and TV. If you’d like to read more about her, click here for her website.

Here’s the cover for the sequel due out in July.

Lauren Myracle. BLISS

Wow! What a great departure from what Lauren Myracle typically writes (well except for RHYMES WITH WITCHES - I knew that name Lurlene was familiar!).But for the most part I think people associate Myracle's name with her wonderful tween books (Eleven, Twelve etc.) or the TTYL series.
This is quite different from those. It's creepy, chilling, and has the coolest opening line. "Grandmother won't tolerate occultism..." OK, but tell me what grandmother would! That cracked me up. But it was a great way to set you up for the time period of this novel, which is 1969, because she's actually referring to Bewitched - the TV show.
The main character Bliss has been dropped off at her grandmother's house because her hippie parents have had some trouble carting around a teenager in the midst of protesting the war and fleeing to Canada. So, Bliss has been deposited at her grandmother's house for a safer, cleaner environment. Her grandmother enrolls her in a private prep school called Crestview. It's an old school, and Bliss finds out the scary way that a girl killed herself in one of the creepy old buildings. She hears her voice calling to her. The voice implores her to come to her and tells her she is the key. The key to what? Bliss wonders. Bliss tries her best to ignore the creepiness of the new school by forming a few friendships and going about her life. But one girl will not let her and tries to involve Bliss in some really creepy activities.
This book is a delicious blend of late 60's prim, prep school and creepy, bloody ghost story. Plus, who would've predicted that both Andy Griffith and Charles Manson would ever be in the same book! You'll have to read it to find out what I mean. Really, I can't say much more without giving away the juicy parts.
Definitely a fun, entertaining, yet slightly disturbing book worth your time!

Check out Lauren's website here and her blog here

THE SCHWA WAS HERE, FADE TO BLACK, GHOST STORY

Neal Shusterman. THE SCHWA WAS HERE

This book got so much positive press that I had been wanting to read it for ages. Finally, I got the chance. Anthony, known as "Antsy," gets to know a fellow student named Calvin Schwa. They call him the Schwa. The Schwa is the kind of kid who no one really notices. He seems to appear and disappear before your very eyes. Antsy figures a way to make money off of the Schwa's unusual talent…until they get caught. Their punishment is unusual, but better than getting arrested. I enjoyed this extremely intriguing and fun novel. I literally couldn't put it down and had to finish it in one sitting. It's certainly not your everyday novel. Give it a shot; you'll be pleasantly surprised!



Alex Flinn. FADE TO BLACK

Clinton Cole is accused of something that he swears he didn't really do, but somehow people think he's the type of person to have done it. He has actually harassed the new student in the past, so why couldn’t he have attacked him? A witness places him at the scene…
This is another great one by Alex Flinn. She really has a way of getting into people's heads. You connect with each character, so that you feel like you not only know them, but see their side of the story. This novel brings up some some thoughtful issues that make you wonder what you would do in this type of situation.

Julian Thompson. GHOST STORY

This was a fun, quirky little story about a girl whose only friend turns out to be a ghost! Anna has moved to a small New England town where her parents have bought an old inn. One day a ghost named Roxy shows up in Anna's bathroom. They become friends, since they seem to have a lot in common. Roxy used to work in the inn when she was alive. Roxy has to complete a task before she can move on. This task ends up involving coming to Anna's rescue. This is a lighthearted story that is not at all deep, but enjoyable just the same.