Fiction
Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich Stories
Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant
“Chockful of gear-driven automatons, looming dirigibles, and wildly implausible time machines . . . should please steampunks of all ages.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)Imagine an alternate universe where tinkerers and dreamers craft and re-craft a world of automatons, clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that never were. Visionaries Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant have taken a genre already rich, strange, and inventive and challenged fourteen masters of speculative fiction, including two graphic storytellers, to embrace its established themes and refashion them in surprising ways and settings. The result is an anthology that defies its genre even as it defines it.
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The Obsidian Blade
Pete Hautman
Kicking off a riveting sci-fi trilogy, National Book Award winner Pete Hautman plunges us into a world where time is a tool — and the question is, who will control it?The first time his father disappeared, Tucker Feye had just turned thirteen. The Reverend Feye simply climbed on the roof to fix a shingle, let out a scream, and vanished — only to walk up the driveway an hour later, looking older and worn, with a strange girl named Lahlia in tow. In the months that followed, Tucker watched his father grow distant and his once loving mother slide into madness. But then both of his parents disappear. Now in the care of his wild Uncle Kosh, Tucker begins to suspect that the disks of shimmering air he keeps seeing — one right on top of the roof — hold the answer to restoring his family. And when he dares to step into one, he’s launched on a time-twisting journey— from a small Midwestern town to a futuristic hospital run by digitally augmented healers, from the death of an ancient prophet to a forest at the end of time. Inevitably, Tucker’s actions alter the past and future, changing his world forever.
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A Long, Long Sleep
Anna Sheehan
It should have been a short suspended-animation sleep. But this time Rose wakes up to find her past is long gone— and her future full of peril.Rosalinda Fitzroy has been asleep for sixty-two years when she is woken by a kiss. Locked away in the chemically induced slumber of a stasis tube in a forgotten subbasement, sixteen-year-old Rose slept straight through the Dark Times that killed millions and utterly changed the world she knew. Now, her parents and her first love are long gone, and Rose— hailed upon her awakening as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire— is thrust alone into a future in which she is viewed as either a freak or a threat. Desperate to put the past behind her and adapt to her new world, Rose finds herself drawn to the boy who kissed her awake, hoping that he can help her to start fresh. But when a deadly danger jeopardizes her fragile new existence, Rose must face the ghosts of her past with open eyes— or be left without any future at all.
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Life: An Exploded Diagram
Mal Peet
"Peet’s subtle, literary play with narrative voice, style, and chronology make this a satisfyingly sophisticated teen novel." —The Horn Book (starred review)Carnegie Medalist Mal Peet ignites an epic tale of young love against the dramatic backdrop of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. This brilliant coming-of-age novel is a gripping family portrait that interweaves the stories of three generations and the terrifying crises that define them. With its urgent sense of history, sweeping emotion, and winning young narrator, Mal Peet’s latest is an unforgettable, timely exploration of life during wartime and the perennial question: Can love survive a lifetime?
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Garden Princess
Kristin Kladstrup
Dig in to this middle-grade fantasy featuring a horticulturally minded princess, a beautiful but evil witch, and a magpie with a shameful secret.Princess Adela is not a typical princess. She’s neither particularly beautiful nor particularly graceful, and she’d rather spend her days digging new plots for her garden than listening to teatime gossip. But when her friend Garth is invited to a garden party hosted by Lady Hortensia — whose beauty is said to be rivaled only by the loveliness of her gardens — Adela can’t resist coming along, even if it means stuffing herself into a too-tight dress and donning impractical shoes. But the moment Adela sets eyes on Hortensia’s garden, she knows something is amiss. Every single flower is in bloom — in the middle of October! Not only that, there is a talking magpie flitting about the garden and stealing the guests’ jewels. Is it possible that Hortensia is a witch and the magpie an enchanted prince? And what of the flowers themselves? Will Adela get to the root of the mystery and nip trouble in the bud before it’s too late?
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Feral Nights
Fans of the Tantalize quartet will thrill to see werepossum Clyde and other favorite secondary characters — plus all-new ones — take to the fore in book one of an all-new series.When sexy, free-spirited werecat Yoshi tracks his sister, Ruby, to Austin, he discovers that she is not only MIA, but also the key suspect in a murder investigation. Meanwhile, werepossum Clyde and human Aimee have set out to do a little detective work of their own, sworn to avenge the brutal killing of werearmadillo pal Travis. When all three seekers are snared in an underground kidnapping ring, they end up on a remote island inhabited by an unusual (even by shifter standards) species and its cult of worshippers. Their hosts harbor a grim secret: staging high-profile safaris for wealthy patrons with evil pedigrees, which means that at least one newcomer to the island is about to be hunted. As both wereprey and werepredator fight to stay alive, it’s up to mild-mannered Clyde — a perennial sidekick — to summon the hero within. Can he surprise even himself?
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Fat Angie
e.E. Charlton-Trujillo
Winner of a 2014 Stonewall Book Award Her sister was captured in Iraq, she’s the resident laughingstock at school, and her therapist tells her to count instead of eat. Can a daring new girl in her life really change anything?Angie is broken — by her can’t-be-bothered mother, by her high-school tormenters, and by being the only one who thinks her varsity-athlete-turned-war-hero sister is still alive. Hiding under a mountain of junk food hasn’t kept the pain (or the shouts of “crazy mad cow!”) away. Having failed to kill herself — in front of a gym full of kids — she’s back at high school just trying to make it through each day. That is, until the arrival of KC Romance, the kind of girl who doesn’t exist in Dryfalls, Ohio. A girl who is one hundred and ninety-nine percent wow! A girl who never sees her as Fat Angie, and who knows too well that the package doesn’t always match what’s inside. With an offbeat sensibility, mean girls to rival a horror classic, and characters both outrageous and touching, this darkly comic anti-romantic romance will appeal to anyone who likes entertaining and meaningful fiction.
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Butterfly
Sonya Hartnett
In masterful prose, the author of SURRENDER tells a quiet but powerful tale about the shifting bonds and psychological perils of adolescence. (Ages 14 and up)Plum Coyle is on the edge of adolescence. Her fourteenth birthday is approaching, when her old life and her old body will fall away, and she will become graceful, powerful, and at ease. The strength of the objects she stores in a briefcase under her bed —a crystal lamb, a yoyo, an antique watch, a coin —will make sure of it. Over the next couple of weeks, Plum’s life will change. Her beautiful neighbor Maureen will begin to show Plum how she might fly. The older brothers she adores will court catastrophe in worlds that she barely knows exist. And her friends, her worst enemies, will tease and test, smelling weakness. They will try to lead her on and take her down. BUTTERFLY is a gripping, disquieting, beautifully observed coming-of-age novel by an acclaimed author at the top of her form.
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All We Know of Love
Nora Raleigh Baskin
A boldly original tale about a girl who journeys through love and loss to find her mother — and discovers that everyone has a story to tell, including herself."I used to think that a person would not know who I was, not really know me, until they heard about my mother."Four years, four months, and fifteen days ago, Natalie Gordon's mother walked out mid-sentence, before she finished what she was going to say. Now Natalie is traveling twenty-four hours on a bus to Florida to find her mother, to find herself, to find out something about love. Along the way, Natalie struggles to understand her relationship with Adam, a boy she pines for with near-obsession, and to her surprise, she meets people with stories like her own, stories about giving love and getting lost in the desire to be wanted. Acclaimed middle-grade novelist Nora Raleigh Baskin makes her young adult debut with a deeply resonant novel about secrets held and secrets shared, about having the courage to uncover all we know — and don’t know — of love.
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The Loyal Servant and the Faithful Donkey (Carol's Parables)
Carol Teasdale
The Loyal Servant and the Faithful Donkey is a short story for both adults and children. It's loosely based on the ‘Parable of the Tenants’ in Matthew 21:33-41 and Mark 12:1-10. The story touches on our array of human nature, from its most beautiful and loving, to its ugliest and most foul. The tenant's are a family who are rescued out of impending poverty by a kindly farmer and given a second chance, but they forget the grace he had afforded them. Instead they become embroiled in their own bitterness, envy and greed. The consequences are dire for the farmer’s servants, son and eventually the family too.The story focuses on the donkey who dutifully pulls the cart that takes the servants to the vineyard. Before leaving for distant lands, the farmer and his new tenants had made an agreement that the rent would be paid with a share of the harvest. However, when the time comes, the donkey returns to the farmer again and again with injured servants and an empty cart. This eventually leads to a misunderstanding and the donkey being brutally beaten by a crowd, instigated by one of the servant’s wives. The story takes some unexpected twists and turns as the woman learns a powerful lesson of forgiveness, and true friendship triumphs over evil. I hope that you enjoy this story and will be inspired to read the Parable.
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