Saturday, October 11, 2014

New to the TBR Pile (5)



From the library:
Resurrection Bay
by Neal Shusterman

Bones. They know the call of the ice.

Anika knows the call of the ice, too. Living in an isolated port town in Alaska with her father and younger brother, Anika is practically steps away from the Harding Icefield, and Exit Glacier has always been her favorite place.But after a couple tragically dies there, Exit Glacier seems to come alive and begins moving toward the town with unnatural speed. Anika feels deep in her bones that the ice wants something...

After the glacier finally stops in the town's cemetery, Anika and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Rav, face a sinister truth: The soul of the glacier is looking for bodies to inhabit... and where better to find them than the graveyard?

This fast-paced, eerie short story is a deft blend of suspense and horror that will leave readers breathless... and chilled to the bone.

Up
by Jim LaMarche

Daniel was tired of being little. Mouse! They'd been calling him that since he was born. He hadn't used to mind it, even liked it once, but not anymore. He poked at some crackers on the table. "Someday I'll be so strong," he mumbled. "Someday..." And then it happened. Something so strange, Daniel wasn't sure he could believe his eyes. One little cracker trembled for a second, then lifted up off the table. Not much. Not even an inch. Then, just as suddenly, it dropped right back down. Daniel blinked. Had that really happened? How? Had he done it?

Up is the story of an ordinary boy with an extraordinary talent, a talent no one knows about but him. Can Mouse really lift things off the ground? Or is it enough that he believes he can? Once again Jim LaMarche has mixed the magical with the everyday to create a book that stretches our imaginations and our dreams.

Freebie from Amazon.ca:
Dying to Forget (The Station #1)
by Trish Marie Dawson

Piper Willow dies the summer after her high school graduation but she doesn’t make it to Heaven or Hell…instead she finds herself in a spiritual terminal called the Station. She’s given only two choices: Return to Earth as the subconscious for a person in need of some outside assistance, or move on and spend an eternity lost in her own sorrow and pain.

Does Piper have what it takes to save a life - to be the nagging voice inside someone else’s head - or will she fail and end up lost and tormented in limbo... forever?

Mark of the Mage (Scribes of Medeisia #1)
by R. K. Ryals

Books never die, but they can be forbidden.

Medeisia is a country in turmoil ruled by a blood thirsty king who has outlawed the use of magic and anything pertaining to knowledge. Magery and scribery are forbidden. All who practice are marked with a tattoo branded onto their wrists, their futures precarious.

Sixteen year-old Drastona Consta-Mayria lives secluded, spending her spare time in the Archives of her father's manor surrounded by scribes. She wants nothing more than to become one of them, but when the scribes are royally disbanded, she is thrust into a harsh world where the marked must survive or die.

Maybe: A Little Zen for Little Ones
by Sanjay Nambiar

Based on an ancient and beloved Zen fable, this picture book tells the story of a wise girl who experiences a series of events that at first seem lucky—or unlucky—but then turn out to be quite the opposite. A bike disappears, but then she gets a new one; she hurts herself, but then enjoys a nice day at home. For each incident, what happened may have been based on luck—or perhaps the girl simply does not get caught up in the emotion of the moment, understanding she can never know what an event might lead to. The beautiful themes and messages of this unique story are made accessible and relevant here to today’s children.

Bought from Amazon.ca:
Crank (Crank #1)
by Ellen Hopkins

In Crank, Ellen Hopkins chronicles the turbulent and often disturbing relationship between Kristina, a character based on her own daughter, and the "monster," the highly addictive drug crystal meth, or "crank." Kristina is introduced to the drug while visiting her largely absent and ne'er-do-well father. While under the influence of the monster, Kristina discovers her sexy alter-ego, Bree: "there is no perfect daughter, / no gifted high school junior, / no Kristina Georgia Snow. / There is only Bree." Bree will do all the things good girl Kristina won't, including attracting the attention of dangerous boys who can provide her with a steady flow of crank.

The Dark Is Rising (The Dark Is Rising #2)
by Susan Cooper

"When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back, Three from the circle, three from the track; Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone; Five will return, and one go alone." Will Stanton turns 11 and learns from Merriman Lyon, the Lady, and Circle of Old Ones, that he must find six Sign symbols and battle the Black Rider, blizzard and flood.

Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

Stained
by Cheryl Rainfield

An intensely powerful account of a teen, bullied for her port-wine stain, who must summon her personal strength to survive abduction and horrific abuse at the hands of a deranged killer.

Sixteen-year-old Sarah Meadows longs for "normal." Born with a port wine stain covering half her face, all her life she's been plagued by stares, giggles, bullying, and disgust. But when she's abducted on the way home from school, Sarah is forced to uncover the courage she never knew she had, become a hero rather than a victim, and learn to look beyond her face to find the beauty and strength she has inside. It's that--or succumb to a killer.

Time and Again (Time #1)
by Jack Finney

Science fiction, mystery, a passionate love story, and a detailed history of Old New York blend together in Jack Finney's spellbinding story of a young man enlisted in a secret Government experiment. Transported from the mid-twentieth century to New York City in the year 1882, Si Morley walks the fashionable "Ladies' Mile" of Broadway, is enchanted by the jingling sleigh bells in Central Park, and solves a 20th-century mystery by discovering its 19th-century roots. Falling in love with a beautiful young woman, he ultimately finds himself forced to choose between his lives in the present and the past.

A story that will remain in the listener's memory, Time and Again is a remarkable blending of the troubled present and a nostalgic past, made vivid and extraordinarily moving by the images of a time that was... and perhaps still is.


What's new to your TBR pile this week?  Let me know in the comments!

2 comments:

  1. I started the Dark is Rising books, but it didn't hold my interest. Dying to Forget could be good, or just strange. I'm hoping to read a couple of arcs, first up the last one in the Angelbound Trilogy.

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    1. Yeah, I'm not sure if The Dark is Rising will hold my interest or not, but that series has been around for a while and I was kind of curious. Strangely, The Dark is Rising is not the first book in the series... though it looks like it may be able to stand on its own.

      Time and Again has me intrigued. I'm sort of half reading a time-travel novel at the moment, and it's just not doing it for me. I think maybe it's because it's YA and the dialogue is really juvenile. Maybe I'll do better with a time-travel novel that's aimed at adults.

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