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Fiction | Page 33 | LitPick Book Reviews
Fiction
Super Max and the Mystery of Thornwood's Revenge
Super Max and the Mystery of Thornwood's Revenge
Susan Vaught
“An excellent addition to middle grade shelves, with a differently-abled main character that readers will root for.” —School Library Journal “Vaught makes Max the brash, bold star of the book, exchanging stereotypes and sympathy cards for a well-drawn character whose disability is part of who she is but not her complete identity; hopefully Max will roll ahead as the advance guard of a literary cadre.” —BCCB Parents’ Choice Recommended It’s going to take more than a knack for electronics and a supercharged wheelchair for twelve-year-old Max to investigate a haunted mansion in Edgar Award–winning author Susan Vaught’s latest middle grade mystery.Max has always been a whiz with electronics (just take a look at her turbo-charged wheelchair). But when a hacker starts a slanderous Facebook page for her grandpa, Max isn’t sure she has the skills to take him down. The messages grow increasingly sinister, and Max fears that this is more than just a bad joke. Here’s the thing: Max has grown up in the shadow of Thornwood Manor, an abandoned mansion that is rumored to be haunted by its original owner, Hargrove Thornwood. It is said that his ghost may be biding his time until he can exact revenge on the town of Blue Creek. Why? Well, it’s complicated. To call him a jerk would be an understatement. When the hacking escalates, suddenly it looks to Max like this could really be Thornwood’s Revenge. If it is, these messages are just the beginning—and the town could be in danger.

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The Player King
The Player King
Avi
“Swiftly moving and utterly engrossing.” —Shelf Awareness Parents’ Choice Recommended From Newbery Award–winning author Avi comes the gripping and amazingly true tale of a boy plucked from the gutter to become the King of England.England, 1486. King Henry VII has recently snatched the English Crown and now sits on the throne, while young Prince Edward, who has a truer claim, has apparently disappeared. Meanwhile, a penniless kitchen boy named Lambert Simnel is slaving away at a tavern in Oxford—until a mysterious friar, Brother Simonds, buys Lambert from the tavern keeper and whisks him away in the dead of night. But this is nothing compared to the secret that the friar reveals: You, Lambert, are actually Prince Edward, the true King of England! With the aid of the deceitful Earl of Lincoln, Brother Simonds sets out to teach the boy how to become the rightful English king. Lambert has everything to gain and nothing to lose, or so he thinks. Yet in this dangerous battle for the throne, Lambert is not prepared for what’s to come—or for what it really means to play at being a king.

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The Glass Town Game
The Glass Town Game
Rebecca Green, Catherynne M. Valente
A Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner “Dazzling.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Charlotte and Emily Brontë enter a fantasy world that they invented in order to rescue their siblings in this “lovely, fanciful” (Booklist, starred review) novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.Inside a small Yorkshire parsonage, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë have invented a game called Glass Town, where their toy soldiers fight Napoleon and no one dies. This make-believe land helps the four escape from a harsh reality: Charlotte and Emily are being sent away to a dangerous boarding school. But then something incredible happens: a train whisks them all away to a real Glass Town, and the children trade the moors for a wonderland all their own. This is their Glass Town…almost. Their Napoleon never rode into battle on a fire-breathing porcelain rooster. And the soldiers can die; wars are fought over a potion that raises the dead, a potion Anne would very much like to bring back to England. But returning is out of the question—Charlotte will never go back to that horrible school. Together the Brontë siblings must battle their own imaginations in this magical celebration of authorship, creativity, and classic literature from award-winning author Catherynne M. Valente.

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Under the Bottle Bridge
Under the Bottle Bridge
Jessica Lawson
In the tradition of Rooftoppers and Three Times Lucky, critically acclaimed author Jessica Lawson returns with her fourth whimsical, lyrical, and heartfelt middle grade novel about a girl who’s desperately trying to keep her life together, when everything seems to be falling apart.In the weeks leading up to Gilbreth, New York’s annual AutumnFest, twelve-year-old woodcraft legacy Minna Treat is struggling with looming deadlines, an uncle trying to hide Very Bad News, and a secret personal quest. When she discovers mysterious bottle messages under one of the village’s 300-year-old bridges, she can’t help but wonder who’s leaving them, what they mean, and, most importantly…could the messages be for her? Along with best friend Crash and a mystery-loving newcomer full of suspicious theories, Minna is determined to discover whether the bottles are miraculously leading her toward long-lost answers she’s been looking for, or drawing her into a disaster of historic proportions.

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Breaker Boy
Breaker Boy
Joan Hiatt Harlow
It’s 1911 in Pennsylvania coal country, and Corey must work at the mines to help support his family in this exciting historical novel.Corey is just eleven years old, but his family needs him to chip in. He’s dropped out of school and works as a breaker boy picking out coal impurities from bins in the coalmines of Pennsylvania. But after skating accident nearly kills Corey, he begins having panic attacks and nightmares. Corey turns to Mrs. Chudzik, a strange and mysterious local recluse, for help. She’s a trained doctor and Corey’s overwhelming fear of tight spaces means he is jeopardizing his family’s future. When there is a disaster at the mine, trapping his father and other miners, Corey knows it’s time to face his fear. He and Mrs. Chudzik’s hound, Hovi, must find the trapped miners and bring help. But how can he when the thought of being in the dark and enclosed space might be more than Corey can handle?

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This Mortal Coil
This Mortal Coil
Emily Suvada
In this gripping debut novel, seventeen-year-old Cat must use her gene-hacking skills to decode her late father’s message concealing a vaccine to a horrifying plague.Catarina Agatta is a hacker. She can cripple mainframes and crash through firewalls, but that’s not what makes her special. In Cat’s world, people are implanted with technology to recode their DNA, allowing them to change their bodies in any way they want. And Cat happens to be a gene-hacking genius. That’s no surprise, since Cat’s father is Dr. Lachlan Agatta, a legendary geneticist who may be the last hope for defeating a plague that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. But during the outbreak, Lachlan was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called Cartaxus, leaving Cat to survive the last two years on her own. When a Cartaxus soldier, Cole, arrives with news that her father has been killed, Cat’s instincts tell her it’s just another Cartaxus lie. But Cole also brings a message: before Lachlan died, he managed to create a vaccine, and Cole needs Cat’s help to release it and save the human race. Now Cat must decide who she can trust: The soldier with secrets of his own? The father who made her promise to hide from Cartaxus at all costs? In a world where nature itself can be rewritten, how much can she even trust herself?

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No More Maybes (No More Maybes Books Book 1)
No More Maybes
Top Choice
Can you believe in someone who can’t believe in himself? Maybe…Maybe I just wanted to get through Year 12, coaching, and soccer with no distractions. Maybe life had other plans.Maybe I shouldn’t be drawn to Cole; the new guy who gets into fights and smokes. Maybe I should want to date Jaime; the nice, steady guy who’s always been there.Maybe you can’t help who you fall for, whether they’re good for you or not. Maybe it shouldn’t matter as long as you’re happy.Maybe each new bruise on Cole’s face is a reason to walk away. Maybe there’s more to the secrets he hides and that’s a reason to be there for him.Maybe a lifetime of pain can’t be washed away by anyone else but you. Maybe finally proving that someone else isn’t going to walk away is enough.Or, maybe it’s time I got out of my own head and stopped wondering. Maybe it’s time I just live by my own rules and find out the answers to all those maybes.It’s time for no more maybes.A sweet YA romance about first love and learning to understand different experiences, this is Cole’s story from Aurora’s point of view.The companion novel, Gray’s Blade, is from Cole’s point of view; much like the characters themselves, Cole’s version is darker, dirtier, and rougher. Read through to the end of No More Maybes for a sneak peek at chapter one of Cole’s side. Please be aware that this story is set in Australia and therefore uses Australian English spelling and syntax.

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The Breathless
The Breathless
Tara Goedjen
For fans of the dark family secrets of We Were Liars and the page-turning suspense of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, The Breathless is a haunting tale of deeply buried secrets, forbidden love, and how far some will go to bring back what’s long dead.      No one knows what really happened on the beach where Roxanne Cole’s body was found, but her boyfriend, Cage, took off that night and hasn’t been seen since. Until now. One year—almost to the day—from Ro’s death, when he knocks on the door of Blue Gate Manor and asks where she is.   Cage has no memory of the past twelve months. According to him, Ro was alive only the day before. Ro’s sister Mae wouldn’t believe him, except that something’s not right. Nothing’s been right in the house since Ro died.    And then Mae finds the little green book. The one hidden in Ro’s room. It’s filled with secrets—dangerous secrets—about her family, and about Ro. And if what it says is true, then maybe, just maybe, Ro isn’t lost forever.   And maybe there are secrets so dark, they should never see the light of day.“[The Breathless] is full of secrets, dark magic, and satisfying twists and turns.”—Booklist“Bringing together horror, romance, and tragedy in one creepy old house,…[The Breathless] will leave readers heartbroken and haunted.”—The Bulletin“An absorbing and romantic Gothic mystery that will haunt you long after the final page.”—Kara Thomas, author of The Darkest Corners and Little Monsters   “Evocative and mysterious; The Breathless is rich with layered secrets and intertwined stories of love and loss.”—Sarah Tomp, author of My Best Everything.   “The Breathless is part magic-tinged mystery, part Southern Gothic, and part romance that chills and thrills you all at once. I couldn't put it down!”—Tara Hudson, author of the Hereafter trilogy   “This sultry Southern tale is drenched in atmosphere! A world of secrets, mysterious family heirlooms, and forbidden love. Get ready to be bewitched by a story where not only does the past live on . . . the dead do, too!”—Adriana Mather, New York Times bestselling author of How to Hang a Witch

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The Dollmaker of Krakow
The Dollmaker of Krakow
R. M. Romero
In the vein of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Number the Stars, this fusion of fairy tales, folklore, and World War II history eloquently illustrates the power of love and the inherent will to survive even in the darkest of times. In the land of dolls, there is magic.In the land of humans, there is war.Everywhere there is pain.But together there is hope. Karolina is a living doll whose king and queen have been overthrown. But when a strange wind spirits her away from the Land of the Dolls, she finds herself in Kraków, Poland, in the company of the Dollmaker, a man with an unusual power and a marked past. The Dollmaker has learned to keep to himself, but Karolina’s courageous and compassionate manner lead him to smile and to even befriend a violin-playing father and his daughter—that is, once the Dollmaker gets over the shock of realizing a doll is speaking to him. But their newfound happiness is dashed when Nazi soldiers descend upon Poland. Karolina and the Dollmaker quickly realize that their Jewish friends are in grave danger, and they are determined to help save them, no matter what the risks.

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Ben Franklin's in My Bathroom! (History Pals)
Ben Franklin's In My Bathroom
Mark Fearing, Candace Fleming
History meets hijinks in this first title in a hilarious new middle grade series for fans of Timmy Failure and The Terrible Two, when Ben Franklin accidentally time travels to a 10-year-old's home in 21st century America!   Nolan is a typical kid living in a typical 21st century American town. Ben Franklin is, well, Ben Franklin—Founding Father, inventor of the lightning rod and bifocals, and more. When, through a bizarre set of circumstances, Nolan and his little sister, Olive, find Ben in their house, chaos isn't far behind.   From introducing him to the toaster to taking him to the public library (another Ben invention) to preventing a nosy neighbor from blowing Ben's cover, Nolan does his best to be Ben's tour guide to the new world he helped form.   With tons of funny illustrations throughout—plus graphic novel-style sections interspersed—readers will love adventuring alongside this awesome threesome. “What a smart, funny, action-adventure! This is bursting with great heart, fascinating history, and Ben Franklin’s stinky feet. I want more, more, more of this series.” —Jon Scieszka, author of the Frank Einstein series“This book is absolutely electric—inventive, funny, and fascinating! Ben Franklin himself would approve!” —Lincoln Peirce, author of the New York Times bestselling Big Nate series    “This story is hilarious and heartfelt. Ben Franklin is the kind of friend any kid would like hanging out with—farts and all!” —Jeffrey Brown, author of the Lucy & Andy Neanderthal series

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