In his new novel, “Bird of a Thousand Stories,” which is billed as young adult, but which all adults will find charming, Kiyash Monsef continues the story he began in “Once There Was.” It’s the tale of Marjan, who comes from a long line of Persian healers of fantastical animals. Marjan didn’t realize her talents until her father died, and those who needed her services came for her.
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One might be tempted to look at the cover of “There’s Something About Mira” and think that Sonali Dev’s newest novel is a romcom. While there is plenty of romance in this very touching story that spans generations, states, continents, cultures, and social status, there are also quite a few situations that force readers to examine our own prejudices and misconceptions. Even in how we express ourselves, we often reveal our inner, often very unintentional microaggressions.
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Can you imagine the Loch Ness Monster a human-by-day and monster-by-night? And a male one at that? In “Under Loch and Key,” author Lana Ferguson stretches her imagination and our credulity with this delightful romp featuring not just one fantastical creature, but two.
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In “All the Other Me,” author Jody Holford captures that question that many of us have pondered: are there other universes in which we live different lives because we’ve made different decisions? What if I hadn’t done that, we might wonder. How would my life have been different? In this novel, we meet Isabelle Duprees, the main character. She is an extremely successful businesswoman, one of the top one-percenters. She receives accolades, invitations to galas, the best tables at restaurants. But as extremely successful and capable as she is in business and her professional life, her personal life is anything but successful.
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“The Mirror” is the second book in “The Lost Bride” trilogy, and considering that the first book in the series, “The Inheritance,” ended on a huge cliffhanger, there are sure to be many fans who couldn’t wait for this book to be released. And sure enough, it does begin just where the first book left off, after main character Sonya and her cousin Owen had stepped through a magic mirror, which in the story serves as a portal to other times in the Poole family history.
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In Sarah Beth Durst’s latest novel, “The Spellshop,” she clearly demonstrates her amazing ability to write across a variety of genres and for a variety of readers. She can write children’s middle grade fiction, young adult fantasy, or adult fantasy; and here she’s written a sweet, warm adult novel that has magic and quirky characters. It’s a love story, but not “just” a romance. When the main character, Kiela, flees the library where she has worked as a librarian for over a decade, immersed and literally living at the library, she travels to the distant island where she was born.
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“Mouse & His Dog” by Katherine Applegate and Gennifer Choldenko follows “Dogtown” in the adventures of dogs at a private dog shelter called, of course, Dogtown, as narrated by the mouse who lives there. This mouse loves the dogs in Dogtown, and he desperately tries to find them homes before they end up on “the list.” In this beautifully written, touching novel that is both an ode to the joy of loving dogs and a plea to rescue one, we meet several dogs who are typical of dogs we might really meet in a shelter.
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Sophie Jordan is not only a prolific writer; her creativity spans genres. In this new romantasy series, “A Fire in the Sky,” she returns to a fantasy world filled with dragons, witches, and other magical creatures. The world that she creates will enchant new readers and bring back fond memories for those who have read the Firelight series that inspired her to create this prologue which is, due to some steamy scenes, very adult in nature. In this new series, dragons have disappeared from the skies of this alternate world, killed by mankind. And after the dragons were all slain, or so people thought, the people killed the witches. But as we find out in this story, and to our delight, not all dragons nor all witches were murdered.
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This review will be short and sweet. “My Vampire vs Your Werewolf” by Paul Tobin is a middle grade chapter book about, no surprise here, vampires and werewolves. My grandson, an avid reader and lover of the horror genre, devoured this in one sitting. It’s a clever concept in which an organization called the Crafters Guild sends children out to find lonely monsters and get them in shape for fighting. Apparently monsters like to fight each other.
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Adam Gidwitz is a much loved children’s author whose fabulous tales have taken readers young and old from Grimm’s fairy tales (“A Tale Dark and Grimm“) to the Inquisition (“The Inquisitor’s Tale“) and now to WWII in “Max in the House of Spies: A Tale of World War II.” This historical fiction also contains Gidwitz’s trademark fantasy twist with two mythical creatures who accompany main character Max as he travels from Berlin to London as part of the Kindertransport, which took Jewish children from Germany to countries where they stayed in foster homes until the end of the war.
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Award-winning author Sarah Beth Durst’s new novel, “The Lies Among Us,” is a bit of a mystery at first. We are taken aback as we meet Hannah, the first person narrator, when she is inside her mother’s casket just before burial. That’s our first clue that Hannah isn’t a flesh-and-blood person. We quickly learn that Hannah’s mother has just died, leaving only Hannah’s sister Leah. And Leah can’t see or hear Hannah, so basically, Hannah is alone for the first time in her life.
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The first book in the Whimbrel House series was so wonderful and complete, it might have seemed impossible that author Charlie N. Holmberg could create a sequel as compelling and gripping and touching as that first novel. Well, now we have the third novel in this fantasy series, “Boy of Chaotic Making,” and this story is just as lovely, filled with the same characters we have come to admire for their strengths and their failings, and with a plot that definitely keeps us guessing.
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