Teens
Crocodile Tears (Alex Rider) by Anthony Horowitz
Fans of Anthony Horowitz' Alex Rider series have had a two-year wait for this installment of our young hero's escapades and they are not going to be disappointed. He's fourteen year old now and not only is he being targeted by a hitman, he's also being pursued by a journalist who wants to tell the nation all about the fact that MI6 are using one of his tender years to do their dirty work. The trouble is that he can't be positive that it was a sniper that caused the car he was in to skid off a Scottish road and land at the bottom of a Loch. And MI6 don't seem all that bothered about the journalist, unless, that is, Alex might be willing to find some simple information from a GM crop research centre, in which case they might be able to have a quiet word with the gentleman. Full review...
Tempted (House of Night) by P C and Kristin Cast
Last time we left Zoey, she'd just banished Kalona, an ancient fallen immortal, from the Tulsa House of Night, along with evil High Priestess Neferet. Stevie Rae's Red Fledglings were regaining their humanity, but Stark, second ever Red Vampire, was badly injured. Her official boyfriend was Erik, but she's re-Imprinted with Human, Heath, and Stark had pledged a Warrior's Oath to her. Full review...
Mysterious Messages - A History of Codes and Ciphers by Gary Blackwood
There's something utterly cool about codes and ciphers. It's not just the spies with their secret world, it's the mystery of an ostensibly random set of letters or pictures. It's being able to unravel them and see what they're hiding. It's a combination of geeky riddle solving (and geeks are cool, so there) and uncovering the unknown meanings. Gary Blackwood treats us to a history of codes and ciphers, looking at their creation, the stories behind them, and how to crack them. Full review...
Daughter of Fire and Ice by Marie-Louise Jensen
Welcome to Viking times. The land is ruled by a pitiless and greedy Chieftain, Bjorn Svanson, who always gets what he wants. And what he wants is Thora. She is a healer – very useful when you're going to set out on a voyage, and also very pretty. The Chieftain's destination is the land of fire and ice, also known as Iceland. Impatiently, the Chieftain kidnaps Thora, but what he doesn't know is that Thora has powers. Yes, a historical fantasy where the heroine has powers – didn't see that coming did you? She can read auras and at times, see the future. And what she sees is her new master's murder. Before you know it, he has been stabbed and Thora and a mysterious male slave are free. What is their destination still? The land of fire and ice. Impersonating Bjorn Svanson, the male slave commandeers his ships and they sail away to Iceland, where a precarious future awaits. Will Svanson's men follow them across the oceans for revenge? Can they live with what they have done? Will they ever get a chance to be together? Full review...
Betrayals: A Strange Angels Novel by Lili St Crow
To start, I have to cover the ground of the mythology of this series. Humans, vampires and werewolves all live in this world, and both species of 'the other' have people halfway turned. Vampires and werewolves aren't exactly the sort to mix with each other - one liking to spill blood, the others going into feeding frenzies every time they smell it. In a previous book, our heroine Dru, has realised her best friend can become semi-wolf in a shape-changing way, and she's tending to the vampire side of things. She's also discovered a very strong threat against her life. Full review...
Hunger by Michael Grant
The kids of Perdido Beach are still within the FAYZ, a barrier erected by Little Pete - no-one knows how - when the nuclear plant went into meltdown. An uneasy truce between Sam's tribe of Perdido Beach kids and Caine's Coates Academy kids is beginning to waver. The food is running out and the Darkness has its claws in all those it's encountered. Caine himself is reduced to delirium by the voice of the Darkness in his head and Lana the healer knows it's inevitable that she too will answer its call. Sam is struggling to keep any form of order. As more and more kids begin to develop special powers and the hunger bites deeper into everyone's bellies, it's inevitable that conflict will break out. And it does, in some very unpleasant ways. Full review...
Carpe Corpus (Morganville Vampires) by Rachel Caine
If you haven't already, meet Claire. She is beholden to Mr Bishop, the horrid evil vampire that is ruling the town of Morganville, even more so than the other human, and vampire, inhabitants are, now that he has taken over things from Claire's former ruler Amelie. She is caught in a struggle between the two warring vampire factions, especially over an unusual form of disease among the undead - Amelie's side definitely trying to cure it, Bishop somehow trying to provoke it and profit from it. Not only that, her boyfriend is imprisoned, along with his father, one of the world's least subtle vampire hunters. Can she have enough quality time with him? Can she and her captured-and-turned ex-housemate Michael survive the horrid things asked of them? And who is Ada? Full review...
Tombstone Tea by Joanne Dahme
Having recently moved to a new school, in a new town, Jessie is struggling to make friends and fit in. She is afraid to show these new people who she really is - in her old school she often found she had 'blank' moments, when she could hear voices and 'see' people who weren't really there. In desperation to become part of a 'group' she accepts the dare of a group of girls to spend the night in the Cemetery and collect some gravestone rubbings to prove she was there. Once there she bumps into Paul, the handsome caretaker, and finds herself in the middle of a strange evening when, Paul claims, local actors get together to rehearse for something called the 'Tombstone Tea', a play in which they portray those buried in the graveyard...there's something strange though about these actors and Jessie soon finds herself caught up in a chilling drama. Full review...
Paradise Red (Perfect Fire Trilogy) by K M Grant
We are back in the south of France for the third and final time. In one corner, the 'French', with King Louis and his henchmen rampaging through, warring in the name of peace. In another corner, the local people, struggling in the harsh environment and none too pleased to see their corner of the world the location for religious wars, with the Cathar heretics also present. The lines are drawn, in a realistically convoluted way, and this book will see one of our heroes cross one such line, just as other people make their own momentous decisions. It will take all the narrative skills of the land itself to get the story across to us. Full review...
The Dresskeeper by Mary Naylus
Things are pretty grim for Picky. She is thirteen years old, being bullied at school, and has to spend her weekends helping her single, working mum to take care of her little brother and her senile grandmother. One evening, at her Gran's house, she goes up into the attic and tries on an old dress that she finds inside an old chest. The dress turns out to be magic, and she suddenly finds herself back in 17th Century London, struggling with a strange man who is calling her 'Amelia' and is trying to kill her. Picky ends up embroiled in Amelia's 17th century life as she tries to find out the truth of who is attempting to murder her, at the same time as trying to avoid arousing suspicion with her strange behaviour whenever she returns to the present day. Full review...
The Monstrumologist: The Terror Beneath by Rick Yancey
In late 19th century America, young Will Henry has been the apprentice of the stern, forbidding Dr Warthrop since the death of his parents, who were also employed by the doctor. The twelve year old boy has seen many things in his service to the monstrumologist - a specialist in monsters - but nothing can prepare him for the fateful day when an elderly grave robber brings the doctor the twin corpses of a young girl and the headless creature with fangs in his chest who had tried to feast on her. Full review...
The Spook's Stories: Witches by Joseph Delaney
'Warning: Not to be read after dark,' are the only words on the back of The Spook's Stories, and on the inside flap, 'The Times' warns us that this book is 'seriously scary'...
The whole thing kicks-off relatively tamely, though, with a story about a young Spook (a sort of monster-hunter) who falls in love with a witch and is forced to bear the consequences when the witch's sister comes to stay and exhibits a taste for the neighbor-children. Full review...
Wake by Lisa McMann
Janie is seventeen and studying hard for college. She's also working lots of hours at a local nursing home to earn money for college as it's unlikely her alcoholic mother is going to provide much in the way of resources. College is Janie's only chance at a life better than the one she's lived so far and so you can't blame her for being so single-minded in the pursuit of her goal. Only one thing stands in her way... Full review...
The Spell Book of Listen Taylor by Jaclyn Moriarty
Listen Taylor's father has just moved in with his girlfriend and they are adopted into the Zing family, with all of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night for dinner and then disappear into the garden shed to work on the 'Zing Family Secret'. Marbie Zing is terrified of doing something wrong and losing Nathaniel and Listen. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned with her home life, and her daughter's year two teacher is coming to terms with a break up. The stories of these people come together to create a tale of life, love, and ultimately, what being part of a family means. Full review...
The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy) by Jon Berkeley
I shall start with a word of advice. When you're being hounded by a circus master, and a magician, for the soul of a tiger that's contained in a tiger's egg that's contained in the brain of your teddy bear, and your best friend - a fallen angel - is trying her best to make sure the other angels do not turn on you in a big way - then you're probably living the third book in a fantasy trilogy. Still - never mind, the angel's efforts will involve you entering a dream world of flight and cloud cities, the chase after your enemies will take you across the world to desert oases and back, and friends new and old will be on board to help. Full review...
Fallen by Lauren Kate
A 17 year old girl at a new school meets a mysterious and impossibly good-looking boy, who she's immediately drawn to. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude to her, until he saves her life, and the two of them end up drawn together. This isn't Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, but it certainly has striking similarities. Full review...
King Lear by Gareth Hinds
Hound me out of town in a most appropriate manner, but I do not like King Lear. For me, even as a trained actor, the language is too dense and rich, the set-up too archly unfeasible to create the great tragedy it's thought to be. To my mind the acclaim and esteem in which it's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blustering. Full review...
Ice by Sarah Beth Durst
Cassie lives on an Arctic research station in Alaska. She loves the ice and the wilderness of her remote home and she'd definitely prefer to spend her time on tracking polar bears and fending off frostbite rather than on mixing with her peers and enjoying college and home comforts back in Fairbanks. However, things aren't all rosy. Cassie's mother died when she was just a baby and she can't help feeling a huge hole in her heart. Her scientist father is remote and unloving and her grandmother left the station after an argument with him when Cassie was still very young. Full review...
Tommy Storm and the Galactic Knights by A J Healy
Meet Tommy Storm. He's one of five teenagers snapped up from around the universe to be a gang of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destruction. Not just the planet, or the solar system, or even the galaxy, but EVERYTHING. Nobody seems to know what's going to cause this destruction, or when, but he and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the day. So it's a pity that they start this book strung up by a nasty loony who's about to kill them. Full review...
The Battle of the Sun by Jeanette Winterson
London 1601. Elizabeth I is getting on in years. Her capital city is a busy, bustling place. Boats fill the river and people fill the streets. Jack is happy because it's his birthday and his present is his heart's desire: an excitable black puppy named Max, who's a licking and a running and a leaping and a jumping and a tummy in the air and a tail wagging and a barking, racing, braking, spinning energy dog of delight. Full review...
The Popularity Rules by Abby McDonald
This book is labelled as Abby McDonald's first adult novel, but a brief browse at the juvenile title, cover and formatted content bowls it straight down the teen read alley. The Americanised language, music scene setting and media heroine are aspirational stuff when you're stuck in the pre-scene years. So, despite its label, I've given it four and a half stars based on its appeal as a girlie book. That said, I'm well over eighteen, read the story avidly, and enjoyed the irony. So well done, Abby McDonald, for an entertaining story, cleverly told. Full review...
Furnace: Death Sentence by Alexander Gordon Smith
Meet Alex Sawyer. Framed for a murder he certainly didn't do, the lad is given life (of a kind) in the Furnace, a literal hellhole of a private prison, buried a mile under England. It's a vicious existence, with tribal gangs among the inmates, and worse on the staff - the warden is helped by his malevolent blacksuits, nasty medical aides called wheezers, and there are mutated, feral creatures of all kinds collectively called rats. After two previous books of failed break-outs, Alex is under the knife of the warden, who has a new tactic. He does not want to break Alex - he aims to remake him, with medicine, surgery and Clockwork Orange-style brainwashing, as one of his own. Full review...
Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth by Chris Priestley
Young Robert is put on a train back to school by his stepmother. It's the first journey he's made on his own. It turns out to be more of a challenge than he could ever have imagined. The train stalls at the mouth of a tunnel and while the other passengers sleep through the wait, a mysterious woman in white tells him a series of stories - stories with a difference. Full review...
Tales of Death and Dementia by Edgar Allan Poe and Gris Grimly
Wow! What a wonderful combination: Edgar Allan Poe, master of the gothic horror short story, and Gris Grimly, outstanding illustrator, known for his work with Neil Gaiman. Poe's Tales of Death and Dementia are shown off at their very best in this edition. Full review...
The Hollow by Jessica Verday
When Abbey's best friend, Kristen, disappears and is assumed dead, Abbey feels as though she has no-one left to talk to. Refusing to believe that Kristen is really gone, while struggling to come to terms with life on her own, Abbey meets the mysterious Caspian, a young man who appears to be the perfect gentleman, showering her with hand-crafted gifts and words of wisdom within weeks of meeting her. But beneath those piercing green eyes and soft-spoken manner, Caspian has secrets of his own. Hoping to uncover those, and determined to find out what really happened to her best friend, Abbey begins to question her sanity, as the truth proves more frightening than she thought. Full review...
The Youngest Templar: Trail of Fate by Michael P. Spradlin
After his ship is lost in a storm as he is returning to England, Tristan is washed up on some foreign shore, completely lost and with no sign of his companions. When he wakes, he's surrounded by four men and two women, all pointing swords at him. As soon as they talk, he realises he's in France. He explains his situation to Celia, one of the young women, and though cautious of him at first – believing he might possibly be a spy, she ignores his pleas for directions to the nearest port and offers (almost insists) to take him with them. Full review...