For as long as Magdalena could remember the words had always been there, although she didn’t used to think of them as words. At first she didn’t think of them as anything, they were just extensions of a person’s skin… What would it be like to know the most important facts of any person’s life just by looking at them? Not because of any psychic ability per se, but ... Read More...
The World Without Us
Tess Müller hasn’t spoken in six months. Her mother, Evangeline, pushes a pram around all the time. Her younger sister draws trees and more trees. In most places they would stand out, but in the Australian town of Bidgalong strange is a relative concept. For decades the hills near the town were home to a cultish commune known as The Hive with its alpha male leader ... Read More...
The Mime Order
I don’t read a lot of young adult science fiction but when Samantha Shannon’s first book The Bone Season came out I was intrigued enough that I was curious about the next chapter in the life of her protagonist, Paige Mahoney. Shannon returns Paige to London after she escapes from Sheol I, a penal colony, in The Mime Order. As what is known as an Unnatural (a human with ... Read More...
The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters
The Swineys are seven Irish sisters of unknown paternity growing up in a falling-down shack in a small town in Ireland in the late 1800s. They have no electricity, no indoor toilets, and so little food that a piece of bread may suffice for the day. What they do have is hair of extraordinary length in hues from white blond to deepest black. They also have a range of singing ... Read More...
Flying Shoes: A Novel
In spite of the rest of the world’s perception, small southern towns knew how to tolerate difference. There was always an old queer or old lesbian couple, or a Boo Radley in town. You just had to not be from away, and stay within in the unspoken boundaries, and you would have grown up knowing what those were. Mary Byrd Thornton is the beleaguered, snarky protagonist in Lisa ... Read More...
The Bone Season
The last time I read a YA book, I was a young adult. OK, not true, I read Hunger Games, but who didn’t? I saw The Bone Season at Book Expo America and thought I’d give it a try, partly because it sounded interesting and partly because it was the first in a seven part series which means, if I like it, I’m assured of future reading (running out of books is a very real book-aholic ... Read More...
