A Q&A with Andrea Cremer Q: Where did you get the idea for Nightshade? A: Nightshade is Calla's story and she was the inspiration for the book. I tend to write from characters and Calla was floating around in my head for a week or two before I started putting her story onto the page. I knew she was a girl who was also a wolf. I knew she was strong, but also in serious trouble. I couldn't figure out how someone so powerful could be in that sort of a fix. That's where Nightshade's world emerged it was all about building a history and society that explained Calla's predicament. Q: Nightshade takes place in such a vivid, well-developed fantasy world. What sort of research went into the development of the world and the mythology of the series? A: Like I said earlier, Calla started it all. The world of Nightshade came as I tried to figure out how someone like Calla, a girl who I knew was incredibly powerful, could be afraid and angry. What was controlling her? Why would she be fighting against her own destiny? I realized that she was facing off with something even more powerful than herself. That’s where my background as a historian came in. I teach early modern history (1500-1800)--a period of immense, violent change in human societies. This is the time of witch hunts, religious warfare, colonization, the Inquistion; all types of cataclysmic social transformation that turned the lives across the globe upside down. The more I thought about Calla I thought about the ways in which wolf warriors and witches could have intertwined lives. The mythology in Nightshade is a blend of history and lore plus new twists I imagined along the way. Q: Your narrator, Calla Tor, is a very take-charge female character—in fact, she’s the alpha of her wolf pack. What are the unique benefits and challenges of her position? Are you hoping that teenage girls will see Calla as a role model? A: Calla is a natural leader and fierce warrior. She loves taking charge and she’s intensely loyal to her packmates, but her role as alpha comes with restrictions set by her masters. Calla’s sense of duty comes into conflict with her independent spirit--she wants to make her own choices rather than just follow orders. I hope that girls, and boys, will see the way Calla’s journey is about finding her true self, questioning a society that limits her strengths, and fighting for what she loves even when that goes against the rules of her world. Q: Why did you decide to set Nightshade in Colorado? What does the setting bring to the story? A: Calla’s masters, the Keepers, are powerful witches who live in luxury, but also seclusion. I wanted a setting that evoked that type of exclusive, almost unreachable landscape where a world of privilege is bordered by the wildness of forests and mountains. Vail, Colorado offered the best mixture of those qualities. Q: What do you like best about writing for teens? A: I love writing YA because it’s full of characters who are testing the limits of their world and figuring out who they really are. Coming of age and self-discovery are incredible moments that reveal so much about human nature and offers the chance to explore pivotal questions and ideas we all struggle with. I also think YA fiction is fearless about expanding the realm of the possible. It’s a boundless, thrilling place to be a writer. Q: Will there be more books featuring Calla, or set in the Nightshade world? A: Yes! Nightshade is a trilogy. Wolfsbane (Nightshade #2) will be published in July 2011 and Bloodrose (Nightshade #3) in spring 2012. After that I’m writing a prequel about the origins of the Witches War, which will be on bookstore shelves in fall 2012. Beyond that--who knows! I’m always coming up with new ideas, so this is just the beginning. Q: What is one thing you would like people to take away from their experience of reading Nightshade? A: I hope that readers will be as invested in the struggles, hopes, and fears of Calla and her pack as I am. The most important thing to me is that the world of Nightshade and the lives of its characters draw readers in so that we’re all going through the series together--cheering, laughing, crying, fighting--that it becomes more than a good story, that we feel like we’re traveling with Calla and her pack on their journey to unravel the tangled mystery of Nightshade’s world.

Luke's life has never been "normal." How could it be, with his mother holding séances and his half-crazy stepfather working as Bridgewater's mortician? But living in a funeral home never bothered Luke. That is, until the night of his mom's accident. Sounds of screaming now shatter Luke's dreams. And his stepfather is acting even stranger. When bodies in the funeral home start delivering messages to Luke, he is certain that he's going nuts. As he tries to solve his mother's death, Luke discovers a secret more horrifying than any nightmare.

Lena has lived her whole life near the beach – walking for miles up and down the shore and breathing the salty air, swimming in the cold water, and watching the surfers rule the waves – the problem is, she’s spent her whole life just watching. As her sixteenth birthday approaches, Lena vows she will no longer watch from the sand: she will learn to surf. But her father – a former surfer himself – refuses to allow her to take lessons. After a near drowning in his past, he can’t bear to let Lena take up the risky sport.   Yet something lures Lena to the water … an ancient, powerful magic. One morning Lena catches sight of this magic: a beautiful woman – with a silvery tail. Nothing will keep Lena from seeking the mermaid, not even the dangerous waves at Magic Crescent Cove. And soon … what she sees in the mermaid’s mirror will change her life …

THE FIRST AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF ROALD DAHL, STORYTELLER IS A MASTERFUL, WITTY AND INCISIVE LOOK AT ONE OF THE GREATEST AUTHORS AND ECCENTRIC CHARACTERS OF THE MODERN AGE. In his lifetime Roald Dahl pushed children’s literature into uncharted territory, and today his popularity around the globe continues to grow, with millions of his books sold every year. But the man behind the mesmerizing stories has remained largely an enigma. A single-minded adventurer and an eternal child who gave us the iconic Willy Wonka and Matilda Wormwood, Dahl was better known during his lifetime for his blunt opinions on taboo subjects—he was called an anti-Semite, a racist and a misogynist—than for his creative genius. His wild imagination, dark humor and linguistic elegance were less than fully appreciated by critics and readers alike until after his death. Granted unprecedented access to the Dahl estate’s extraordinary archives—personal correspondence, journals and interviews with family members and famous friends—Donald Sturrock draws on a wealth of previously unpublished materials that informed Dahl’s writing and his life. It was a life filled with incident, drama and adventure: from his harrowing experiences as an RAF fighter pilot and his work in wartime intelligence, to his many romances and turbulent marriage to the actress Patricia Neal, to the mental anguish caused by the death of his young daughter Olivia. Tracing a brilliant yet tempestuous ascent toward notoriety, Sturrock sheds new light on Dahl’s need for controversy, his abrasive manner and his fascination for the gruesome and the macabre. A remarkable biography of one of the world’s most exceptional writers, Storyteller is an intimate portrait of an intensely private man hindered by physical pain and haunted by family tragedy, and a timely reexamination of Dahl’s long and complex literary career.