The Bronte Sisters The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne

From Publisher's Weekly....

Reef (Jane Austen: A Life Revealed) offers a detail-rich look at the lives of the Brontë sisters, whose works shocked, entertained, and provoked the minds of their Victorian audiences. This chronological account is three biographies rolled into one, reflecting the sisters’ intertwined lives. In a matter-of-fact yet conversational style, Reef anchors their stories in the historical context of industrial 19th-century England. Names and dates are many, but the narrative also quotes from the Brontës’ poems and letters, as well as those of others (a friend of their brother, Branwell, who died an alcoholic, reflected, “That Rector of Haworth little knew how to bring up and bring out his clever family.... So the girls worked their own way to fame and death, the boy to death only!”). Archival b&w images punctuate the 10 chapters, several of which are devoted to plot summaries of the sisters’ novels. Like the characters in their books, the Brontës were ahead of their time in resisting the constraints placed on women of their era. A comprehensive introduction to the authors behind some of the most-studied novels in English literature. Ages 10–14. (Oct.)

Wonderful book that I thoroughly enjoyed....great for middle school, although what middle schooler has read any of these works?  

Jasper Jones

From Publisher's Weekly
2012 Printz Honor...

Australian author Silvey wears his influences (notably To Kill a Mockingbird) a little too obviously on his sleeve in a novel about crime, race, and growing up in a 1960s Australian mining town. Charlie, 13, is woken up on a hot summer night by teenage outcast Jasper, who wants to show him something secret. That secret turns out to be the dead body of Laura Wishart, Jasper's occasional paramour and the older sister of Charlie's own crush, Eliza. The boys, assuming that Jasper will be blamed, hide the body, and Laura's disappearance combines with the boys' guilt and lies to create an ongoing spiral of stress. The town of Corrigan is rife with racism, which is directed mainly at the half-aboriginal Jasper and Charlie's Vietnamese best friend, Jeffrey. The banter between Jeffrey and Charlie drives the novel's lighter scenes, but can distract, feeling more like Tarantinoesque pop culture asides than anything else. Still, when Silvey, making his U.S. debut, focuses on the town's ugly underbelly, as well as the troubles in Charlie's family, the novel is gripping enough to overcome its weaknesses. Ages 12–up. (Apr.)

Very good book....maybe a little mature for middle school......

Where Things Come Back

From Publisher's Weekly...
2012 Printz Award

In this darkly humorous debut, Whaley weaves two stories into a taut and well-constructed thriller. Acerbic 17-year-old aspiring writer Cullen Witter narrates the first, bemoaning the tedium of smalltown life ("Living in Lily, Arkansas, is sometimes like living in the land that time forgot"), until the Lazarus woodpecker, thought to be extinct, allegedly reappears, and his 15-year-old brother, Gabriel, goes missing. The alternating story line, told in an ominous third-person voice, begins with the story of Benton Sage—a failed teenage missionary, who leaves Ethiopia for the University of Atlanta—but it soon veers in unexpected directions as the action converges on the town of Lily. Vulnerability balances Cullen's arch sarcasm, and the maelstrom of media attention lavished on the woodpecker offers an element of the absurd, especially when juxtaposed against the mystery of Gabriel's disappearance. The portentous tone and flat affect of Whaley's writing is well-suited to the story's religious themes and symbolism (Gabriel, the Lazarus woodpecker, the apocryphal Book of Enoch), as Whaley gradually brings the story's many threads together in a disturbing, heartbreaking finale that retains a touch of hope. Ages 14–up. (May)

Good book with meaning deeper than I understood....

Lincoln's Grave Robbers

From Publisher's Weekly...

This meticulous and tremendously suspenseful account of the attempted heist of Abraham Lincoln’s body in 1876 reads like a smartly cast fictional crime thriller, with a skillful buildup of tension and sharp character portrayals. Sheinkin (Bomb) lays the groundwork for the plot by delving into the history of counterfeiting, a booming business during and after the Civil War (“By 1864, an astounding 50 percent of the paper money in circulation was fake”). James Kennally, leader of one of the largest counterfeiting rings in the Midwest, masterminded the plot to steal the late president’s body from the Lincoln Monument, outside Springfield, Ill. His intent was to ransom the purloined corpse, hitting up the government for a tidy sum of money and the freedom of his jailed, top-notch engraver. Perhaps the most dynamic player is Lewis Swegles, a shrewd career criminal who juggled double roles as Secret Service informer and alleged conspirator. Sheinkin’s study of Swegles’s thought process and machinations intensifies the drama of the final showdown between the would-be robbers and government officials. A sizzling tale of real-life historical intrigue. Ages 10–14. (Jan.)

Interesting!

Darkside

Kirkus Reviews

Contemporary gothic horror of the juiciest kind. In modern-day London, a perfumed woman with fluorescent hair abducts 13-year-old Ricky. The narrative then switches to Jonathan, an independent 14-year-old whose father suffers bouts of mental illness or "darkening." As the kidnappers pursue Jonathan, he pursues his father's obsession, a place called Darkside that " ‘tears pieces of your soul away.' " Fluorescent Marianne and her goons follow Jonathan to Darkside, where he finds a friend of his father's who happens to be a werewolf (" ‘wereman,' " corrects Carnegie after nearly eating Jonathan). Darkside, reached by damp pipe or abandoned tube station, is a grisly and fetid alternate London. Ghoulish figures in stovepipe hats throng the sidewalks, kicking and elbowing; screams puncture the night; murder is ubiquitous. Two separate people have put a price on Jonathan's head, one to place him in a death menagerie with Ricky. Becker switches threads rarely but with perfectly timed precision. Revenge upon those who escape immediate harm looms large for the next installment, as does Jonathan and Ricky's mysterious Darkside heritage. Grounded, yet delectably lurid. (Fantasy. 10-14)

I enjoyed this book...good for our library (horror and fantasy)...need to look into getting the rest of the series.

Takedown Twenty

From Amazon....

Powerhouse author Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels are “laugh-out-loud funny” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), “brilliantly evocative” (The Denver Post), and “making trouble and winning hearts” (USA Today).

Stephanie Plum has her sights set on catching a notorious mob boss. If she doesn’t take him down, he may take her out.

New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum knows better than to mess with family. But when powerful mobster Salvatore “Uncle Sunny” Sunucchi goes on the lam in Trenton, it’s up to Stephanie to find him. Uncle Sunny is charged with murder for running over a guy (twice), and nobody wants to turn him in—not his poker buddies, not his bimbo girlfriend, not his two right-hand men, Shorty and Moe. Even Trenton’s hottest cop, Joe Morelli, has skin in the game, because—just Stephanie’s luck—the godfather is his actual godfather. And while Morelli understands that the law is the law, his old-world grandmother, Bella, is doing everything she can to throw Stephanie off the trail. 

It’s not just Uncle Sunny giving Stephanie the run-around. Security specialist Ranger needs her help to solve the bizarre death of a top client’s mother, a woman who happened to play bingo with Stephanie’s Grandma Mazur. Before Stephanie knows it, she’s working side by side with Ranger and Grandma at the senior center, trying to catch a killer on the loose—and the bingo balls are not rolling in their favor.  

With bullet holes in her car, henchmen on her tail, and a giraffe named Kevin running wild in the streets of Trenton, Stephanie will have to up her game for the ultimate takedown.

Enough already!!  The past few books have all been exactly the same!  I still laugh, but they are predicable....Janet Evanovich needs to end the series!