The Body Finder is the first novel written by Kimberly Derting. Violet Ambrose is a body finder — not because she wants to be, but because she sees colors, hears echoes, and tastes things that no one else does. These are indications that she is near the body of someone or something that has been murdered or near a person who has killed something or someone. The killer may be a murderer, but also may simply be a hunter, a military veteran, or a police officer like her Uncle Stephen, chief of their small city’s force. Violet’s parents, her Uncle and Aunt, and Jay, her best friend since age 6, are the only ones who know about this “gift” and are very supportive. Violet found her first human body when she was eight while she and her father were exploring the woods behind their home. As Violet and Jay begin their junior year of high school, Violet is overcome with what she considers an irrational case of love for Jay who has greatly matured during the summer. She strives to keep her feelings limited to the “best friend” kind and not let Jay know. While celebrating back to school with the annual bash at the lake house of friend Gabrielle’s grandmother, Violet is drawn to the body of a young girl in the edge of the lake. The town begins to be worried about their daughters who are no longer allowed out alone even though this girl was from a neighboring town. When another girl goes missing from just down the street, and then another is missing from a teen party Violet was attending, everyone realizes there is a serial killer. Violet decides she must find this killer herself using her gift. She forces Jay to be her complicit partner in this search as she deliberately places herself in danger. Read and find out what happens – with the killer, with the relationship of Violet and Jay, and with other friends and relatives. This novel will truly keep your attention.
The Fortune of Carmen Navarro, by Jen Bryant
Banished, by Sophie Littlefield
Awakened, by P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast, A House of Night novel
Matched, by Ally Conde
Trickster’s Girl, by Hilari Bell, The Raven Duet, Book 1
The Last Full Measure, by Ann Rinaldi, set during the Battle of Gettysburg
Tiger’s Curse, by Colleen Houck, The Tiger Saga #1
Unearthly, by Cynthia Hand
Wanted and Heartless, by Sara Shepard, Pretty Little Liars novels
Vampire Crush, by A. M. Robinson
Outcast (Book Four) and Oath Breaker (Book Five), by Michelle Paver, Chronicles of Ancient Darkness
Fall for Anything, by Courtney Summers
Badd, by Tim Tharp
The Big Crunch, by Pete Hautman
Crave, by Laura J. Burns & Melinda Metz. Shay has a strange, incurable blood disorder. Her doctor / stepfather performs a new treatment on her that he things will change everything. And it does…
Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters, by Natalie Standiford. The three Sullivan sisters have secrets. On Christmas Day their rich grandmother tells everyone that she will soon die but has cut everyone out of her will so they will all be penniless. If someone admits the crime (which she does not tell them what it is), then she will reinstate them in her will.
Stolen Children, by Peg Kehret. Amy is a trained babysitter, but she’s no match for thugs trying to kidnap her charge. Amy ends up being kidnapped along with the baby girl, because the kidnappers were expecting the nanny who was in on the plot to be there.
Crazy, by Han Nolan, is the story of a 17 year old boy trying to become invisible following his mother’s desk and his father’s diminishing mental health.
Dark Secrets #1, by Elizabeth Chandler, contains Legacy of Lies and Don’t Tell. Dark Secrets #2 contains No Time to Die and The Deep End of Fear. These stories deal with young women who want to investigate a loss or death that happened several years before.
Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld, is a historical novel about a girl who disguises herself as a boy to get into the British Air Service on the eve of the outbreak of World War I.
Dragonfly, by Julia Golding, fantasy thriller in which Princess Taoshira is appalled to be ordered to marry Prince Ramil of Gerfal. He’s not too happy either.
By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead, by Julie Anne Peters, Daelyn Rice is determined to get past her botched suicide attempts and succeed.
The Melancholy of Haruhi, by Nagaru Tanigawa, first English edition of an award winning Japanese author. Teen Haruhi is starting high school; she has the power to destroy the universe if she’s not happy, but she doesn’t know that.
The Roar¸ by Emma Clayton. Mika lives in future London, behind The Wall, safe from the Animal Plague Beyond. He decides to risk many things to search for his twin sister and the truth.
Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Matchstick girls in the world of anorexia
City of Fire, by Laurence Yep
The Reformed Vampire Support Group, by Catherine Jinks
Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, Ethan wants to leave the small southern town of Gatlin until a beautiful girl with a secret (make that a secret power) moves to town.
Strange Angels, Lili St. Crow, zombies are after Dru Anderson, Night Hunter, Knife Thrower, Heart Breaker
I Am A Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President, by Josh Lieb
Watersmeet, by Ellen Jensen Abbott, 14 year old Absina has been an outcast in her village where her mother is the healer and her father is unknown
The Darkest Power trilogy by Kelley Armstrong is now complete: The Summoning, The Awakening, and The Reckoning in this order. The stories center around Chloe Saunders whose supernatural powers suddenly appear on her 15th birthday making her think she is losing her mind. She is whisked away by her doctor aunt Lauren to a “rehabilitation” center for troubled teens. There she meets others who are either mentally ill or have supernormal powers of their own. They are led to believe that it is just their imaginations causing these weird happenings to them. If they cannot be convinced and “rehabilitated” they seem to disappear in a rather permanent fashion. Chloe meets Derek (who is some type of super-strong changeling) and Simon (his brother who has very weak sorcerer powers), Tori (a very jealous little witch who can throw a mean fireball), and Rachelle and Liz (who disappear). Chloe learns that her power is that she is a necromancer – she can raise the dead and make them do her will. The mysterious Edison group seems to want to control them or kill them. Who are the members of the Edison group? Is Tori’s mother a member? What about Derek and Simon’s missing father and his good friend Andrew? Who can help them? Who wants to hurt them? Can they even trust each other? These are entertaining stories with a lot of action. The Reckoning seems to leave room for additional tales with the same characters.
— Anniesse
Purple Heart, by Patricia McCormick, is an excellent novel for both young people and adults. Set in present day Iraq, the story is from the point of view of Private Matt Duffy who graduated high school and entered the Army. Duffy finds himself in a hospital in the Green Zone of Baghdad with memory problems of how he came to be there. He wants very much to return to his squad, but there seems to have been an “incident” for which he must be interrogated and he has suffered TBI (Traumatic Brain Damage) which has somewhat scrambled his thought processes. He is allowed a phone call home to let them know he is ok and then another phone call home to let them know he is going back into the field. Military terms which we often hear in newscasts such as RPG, IED, and CamelBak are explained in the context of the story. The characters from commanding officers to the “social worker /psychological evaluator” woman to the Catholic priest chaplain to his best buddy Justin to tough girl / jock of their squad Charlene are well drawn and believable in a few words. Even his sister Lizzie who answers the phone both times he calls and his girlfriend Charlotte are believable although they are mentioned only briefly from time to time. This short book would be excellent reading for those considering entering the military or ROTC or National Guard as well as family and friends of those who are active military. The book is written in memoriam to Army Sergeant Sherwood Baker, Army Specialist Joshua Justice Henry, Marine Lance Corporal Patrick B. Kenny, Army First Lieutenant Neil Anthony Santoriello, and Marine Lance Corporal William Brett Wightman whose families were able to share their stories of their sons and brothers with her. She has also spoken with returning veterans and current military to gain accuracy. The book is not preachy, not saccharine, uses very little gutter language and allows the reader to feel worry and pride in varying degrees depending on the individual reader. I spent less than two hours reading the whole book, but I thought about and I think even dreamed about it for many more hours.
— Anniesse
Feburary 2010
Ashes, by Kathryn Lasky (13 year old girl in 1932 Berlin)
Hate List, by Jennifer Brown (the girl friend of a HS shooter feels guilt and sadness)
Gone, by Lisa McMann Book 3 in the Wake trilogy. (Wake and Fade)
Num8ers [Numbers], by Rachel Ward, a girl can see the date of each person’s death following the death of her own mother.
Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, by Jordan Sonnenblick, a boy who is a drummer in a jazz band, has a crush on a girl, and is annoyed by his younger, cooler brother must deal with changes when his brother becomes ill
Eleventh Grade Burns, by Heather Brewer, continues The Chronicles of Vladimir Todd
One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia, set in the tumultuous summer of 1968 when Black Panthers really started organizing
Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, by Alison Goodman, 12 year Eon is really 16 year old Eona
These new books for the YA section just came today (so I haven’t read any of them yet), but if you are fans of the author, you might want to give them a try:
Woods Runner, by Gary Paulsen, a thirteen year old Pennsylvania boy in the Revolutionary War
Shadowland, by Alyson Noel, #3 in the Immortals series
Flightsend, by Linda Newbery
Hunted, by P. C. Cast + Kristin Cast, newest in the House of Night series
They Never Came Back, by Caroline Cooney
Happenstance Found, by P. W. Catanese, Book One in the new series The Books of Umber. “Twelve-year-old Happenstance awakens in a cave with no memory of who he is. Soon, a mysterious trio arrives, Lord Umber, the shy archer, Sophie and Oates. Hap and his new acquaintances narrowly escape the cavernous underworld and make their way to the dazzling port city of Kurahaven, where Lord Umber is revered as an adventurer, royal advisor, and chronicler of all things monstrous and magical.”
– Anniesse
Blue Bloods by Melissa De La Cruz
Published December 15, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: Reviews
For those of you who just can’t get enough of vampires and are ready to go past the 11-15 age group of reading, try the Blue Bloods novels by Melissa De La Cruz. These books are found in the adult fiction section of the library. I just finished reading the fourth installment in the series (without having read 1 – 3) The Van Alen Legacy. The Blue Bloods are in a struggles with the Silver Bloods to survive. The Blue Bloods are not your “typical” vampires. They do not have to stay out of the daylight or sunlight. They do not have to drink the blood of humans. The patriarch of the Blue Bloods has died (or was he murdered) and has passed his legacy on to his granddaughter Schuyler who only knew him in the last few months of his life. Schuyler has forsaken her love for Jack, another Blue Blood who is to be bonded to his “sister” Mimi, and finds her love with Oliver, her human familiar or guide. Schuyler and Oliver are on the run all over the world because she is being sought as the murderer of her grandfather. Her best friend Bliss has been kept drugged for almost a year by her politician father. Bliss thinks she needs to help Schuyler or Schuyler needs to help her, but she cannot think for the permanent fog in her mind. It probably would have been easier to tell the good guys and the bad guys apart if I had read the first three in the series, but this was still an amusing tale for an evening’s reading.
Batman’s arch nemesis the Hush was first introduced as Tommy Elliot in November of 2002. At the time, readers of the book only knew him as a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne. It wasn’t until September 2003 that the character evolved into the bandaged, nefarious individual that we know today. Despite being a fairly new character, he has become quite important to the Batman universe.
In Batman: Heart of Hush, which collects Detective Comics #846-#850, Elliot is inspired to make another attempt on Batman’s life after hearing the Black Glove planed to do the same. He, as those that follow Batman know, is well-versed in the ins and outs of Bruce Wayne’s life and those he cares about; he also knows that Wayne moonlights as Batman. Immediately, Hush attempts to use the folks Wayne/Batman cares about most (Catwoman, Robin, Nightwing) to ensnare him in a trap he can’t get out of.
This is an excellent graphic novel that leads directly into the infamous Batman: R.I.P. storyline. If you managed to miss Detective Comics #846-#850, you may pick up Batman: Heart of Hush at the Muhlenberg County Public Libraries.
Marvel Comics’ Jeff Sutter interviews author Orson Scott Card on the latest edition of the Marvel Podcast. The comic company has an adaptation of Card’s classic Ender’s Game in the works which will release in October. It’s a pretty insightful listen that you can download through either iTunes or the Marvel Website.
If you’re a science fiction fan then I highly recommend the entire Ender series. Card’s written several books involving these characters that will appeal to both the young and old. The first book is a cross between Starship Troopers and Harry Potter.
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