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Adaptation by Malinda Lo

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  • Publication Date: September 18th 2012
  • Genre: Science Ficton
  • Pages: 386 (hardcover)
  • Publisher: Little Brown For Young Readers

Synopsis: Across North America, flocks of birds hurl themselves into airplanes, causing at least a dozen to crash. Thousands of people die. Fearing terrorism, the United States government grounds all flights, and millions of travelers are stranded.
Among them are Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David, who are in Arizona when the disaster occurs. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway in the middle of the Nevada night, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won’t tell them what happened, where they are–or how they’ve been miraculously healed.
Things become even stranger when Reese returns home. San Francisco feels like a different place with police enforcing curfew, hazmat teams collecting dead birds, and a strange presence that seems to be following her. When Reese unexpectedly collides with the beautiful Amber Gray, her search for the truth is forced in an entirely new direction-and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret.

Sitting in a Phoenix airport, Reese Holloway’s biggest problem is the humiliation of losing a national debate competition and letting down her partner and crush, David Li. And then things start falling out the sky. …

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Audiobook Review: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

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“It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.” 

― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

  • Release Date: February 6th 2012
  • Publisher: Egmont Press
  • Genre: Historical Fiction
  • Hours: 10 hours 7 minutes

Synopsis: I have two weeks. You’ll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.
That’s what you do to enemy agents. It’s what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine — and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden interrogating me again.
He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I’m going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France — an Allied Invasion of Two.
We are a sensational team

Wow. Just Wow. Code Name Verity is one of those books that everyone raves about and you know what? They have good reason to. Code Name Verity is an amazing story and the audiobook version does this novel so much justice, I can’t recommend it enough. Between this and Out of The Easy, I just may have a new thing for historical YAs….

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Skylark by Meagan Spooner

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  • Release Date: August 1, 2012
  • Genre: Fantasy
  • Pages: 344
  • Publisher: Carolrhoda Labs (Lerner Publishing)

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Lark Ainsley has never seen the sky.
Her world ends at the edge of the vast domed barrier of energy enclosing all that’s left of humanity. For two hundred years the city has sustained this barrier by harvesting its children’s innate magical energy when they reach adolescence. When it’s Lark’s turn to be harvested, she finds herself trapped in a nightmarish web of experiments and learns she is something out of legend itself: a Renewable, able to regenerate her own power after it’s been stripped.

Steampunk, fantasy and dystopian collide to create the devastatingly unique setting of Skylark by debut author, Meagan Spooner.

In Lark Ainsley’s community everything is powered by the Resource, a type of magic that originates in all the citizens. At a young age, every citizen has their Resource harvested which strips them of any ability and then fully join society as adults.

Lark is getting older and at 15-years-old is frustrated that she has yet to get harvested. Just when she thinks it will never happen Lark discovers she is different.  In a very bad way. Lark finds herself on the run, escaping the only life and civilization she knows into a great and dangerous unknown….

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Audiobook Review : The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

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“Gansey, that’s all there is.”

– Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

 

  • Release Date : 9/18/2012
  • Genre : Urban Fantasy
  • Publisher : Scholastic
  • Length : 11 hours 18 minutes

Synopsis:  It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them-not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all-family money, good looks, devoted friends-but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys

Going in to The Raven Boys  I  heard a lot of good things from other bloggers and based on Kat’s review I had pretty high expectations, all of which were met. The Raven Boys reads like a modern-day fairytale. In the small town of Henrietta, Virginia three boys who attend the elite Aglionby Academy and a psychic’s daughter embark upon a clandestine quest into the mystical, occult and magic; lead by the enigmatic Richard Gansey III….

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Not Just A Rowling Thing : Six Authors Gone Undercover

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The book world (and the rest of the world) imploded when it was discovered that the debut mystery author Robert Galbrath, was none other than J.K. Rowling. I can understand why Rowling would want to publish a book under a pseudonym, so she could judged purely on the merit of her writing and not on her legacy.

But, Jo Rowling isn’t the first author to go undercover. Check out these other authors who have published books under the cover of a pen name.

Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler)

Author of the  beloved childhood series, A Series of Unfortunate Events,  Daniel Handler went undercover with the pen name Lemony Snicket, one of the characters in the book. In 2011 Handler wrote the Printz award honored YA novel Why We Broke Up as himself.

James Frey (aka Pittacus Lore)

In 2009 James Frey, the author who was famous for basically lying to Oprah, started a book packaging company for YA fiction. His goal was to create highly marketable fiction that would sell to Hollywood. Working with MFA student Jobie Hughes the two put together I Am Number Four under the name Pittacus Lore.

Paula Stokes ( aka Fiona Paul)

Fiona Paul’s Venom swept readers into the world of Renaissance Venice,  in 2014 Fiona Paul will be taking a break while Paula Stokes releases two contemporary novel from HarperTeen; Liars, Inc and The Art of Lainey.


Stephen King (aka Richard Bachman)

This is probably the closest incident to what happened with Jo Rowling. In the 1970’s  and 1980’s King published a few novels as Richard Bachman so as not to oversaturate the market of his brand. He even went as far as to use his literary agent’s insurance agent’s picture as the author photo. However when one bookseller figured it out, the sales of the books skyrocketed.


 Michelle Rowen (aka Morgan Rhodes)

Michelle Rowen is known for her supernatural romances for teens and adults. In 2012 she debuted the high fantasy, Falling Kingdoms, under the name Morgan Rhodes. Interesting fact–Rowen also published a futuristic thriller in 2008 under the name Michelle Maddox, but it will be republished  under her real name with Harlequin Teen.

Robyn Schneider ( aka Violet Haberdasher)

Having previously published YA fiction and non-fiction Schneider published her middle grade series, Knightley Academy, under the pen name Violet Haberdasher.

Lazy Days of Summer Spontaneous Giveaway Hop : Signed ARC of Fire With Fire by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian

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