I’ll quote the cover copy, so you’ll see why I was interested in this ( Read more... )

Come for the apocalypse.
Stay for cupcakes.
Die for love.Solid, inventive, well-characterized YA science fiction. By “science fiction,” I mean “cool powers and alien invasion,” not “paper-thin dystopia in which the government’s main concern appears to be micro-managing the love triangles of teenagers ( Read more... )

A sleepy California town is enclosed in a mysterious barrier at the same instant that, pop! Everyone over the age of 14 vanishes. And some kids get psychic powers. (Actually, some got their powers several months before the pop - no word yet on why.) And animals mutate ( Read more... )

I have often had this book recommended to me as a small classic of YA sf in the subcategories of post-apocalyptic, psychic kids, and Australian. It was written in 1987, when there wasn't quite such a glut of psychic kid and post-apocalyptic YA as accumulated later on. But it was still unimpressive ( Read more... )

The author of this book collected a set of peculiar vintage found photographs, some altered to produce apparent wonders, some merely odd. I assume he created the splendid pen name of Ransom Riggs. He wrote an evocative first chapter built around a few of the photos, about a Holocaust survivor who tells fantastical stories to his grandson, which ( Read more... )

This novel was apparently self-published, then picked up by the illustrious Small Beer Press. Good pick. It’s not perfect, but it deserves much better than to languish in self-pubbed obscurity. I also applaud Small Beer for accurately representing the black protagonist on the cover ( Read more... )

This book was praised by several people whose taste I respect as one of the best of the year, and it’s about mutants (and disabled people, mentally ill people, and gender-nonconforming people) living in the sewers in a world that hates and fears them. It sounded right up my alley. It’s certainly ambitious, different, and thoughtful. But (you knew ( Read more... )

Sponsored by
( Read more... )

Anne Rice. I read Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and about three chapter of Queen of the Damned before getting bored, all, as I recall, while crashing at the house of someone who owned them and not much else other than The Godfather and a lot of early gay literature of the "angsty young man angsts" variety. (The book of The Godfather ( Read more... )

Telzey Amberdon is a genius teenage girl with a mysterious giant sometimes-invisible pet alien cat. In part one of this fix-up novel, she discovers that she’s a telepath and negotiates between humans and cat-aliens. In part two, she develops her psychic powers and tries to prevent a murder. Part one is great fun, though it doesn’t have quite the ( Read more... )