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She fell for him in a nighttime world. But the time for dreaming is past—and the here-and-now can be just as fragile their love…

When Theia Alderson first encountered a mysterious, handsome boy in her dreams, she never imagined how finding Haden Black—and falling in love—could change her life. To save Haden, Theia sacrificed everything. And the dangerous bargain she made could have lasting repercussions.

Now Theia has returned to Serendipity Falls, and she finds herself struggling with the same deadly hungers that have tortured Haden. When students at their high school fall prey to a mysterious illness, Theia can’t help but wonder if Haden’s control is slipping—and how much longer she’ll have a grip on her own.

And still the nightmare realm of Under won’t let them go. Someone from Haden’s past is determined to destroy Theia from the inside out, starting with those closest to her, forcing Theia to choose between family and friends and a love that may have been doomed from the start…

Abandon Meg Cabot

Two years ago, Pierce died. She hit her head, fell into a pool, and was dead for over an hour before the doctors could bring her back. Since then though, things haven't been the same. The adults in her life think she's slightly mentally unbalanced, and after what happened at her last school, dangerous. But Pierce knows the truth-- there's evil in the world and she can see it. She has to stop it.

After her mother moves her back to her hometown on the Isla Huesos (Island of Bones-- very much based on Cabot's current home of Key West) Pierce starts to discover more and more clues about what happened, and why.

So... this is based on Persephone. Basic premise is Pierce meets John (Death Deity) in a graveyard when she's young. When she dies, she sees him again. He gives her a pretty necklace. Pierce can't accept she's dead, runs away, and ends up back in the world of the living. John keeps showing up to save her from bad guys trying to kill her. And now Pierce has moved right on the gateway of it all (so... like Sunnydale's Hellmouth, but it's the mouth of all dead stuff, good and bad.)

So this is Cabot doing something a bit darker than most of what she does. It's not too twisted or dark or depressing and if you like Cabot, you'll probably like this, but just be warned, it's not funny (and it's not trying to be).

BUT! TOTAL CLIFFHANGER ENDING! Gah! That's how the 2nd book in a trilogy is supposed to end!* Not the first!!!!

I like how this takes a well-known myth and doesn't retell it, but uses it to go in a completely different direction.

I like the world Cabot has built and can't wait to explore it more. I really want to see what's going on with the A-wingers and why Pierce's cousin hates them so much.

I also like Pierce a lot. She's nice and strong, but has believable weak moments, so she seems more real. The tension between her and John doesn't overtake the novel (in fact, there could have been more). I like that she's dealing with some serious other stuff besides boys and her problems aren't of her own invention. She's troubled, but not annoyingly neurotic.

Also, I love that Pierce and her friends who are obviously the good guys are all in the New Pathways program, which is for troubled youth. Yay for a book that paints troubled kids as real kids with yes, problems, but they aren't the bad guys, even if the rest of town sees them that way.

Overall, I really liked it and can't wait to read more.

*This is a rule I learned when Boba Fett carted off Han's carbonite encased body at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. It's not a rule I like, but it's one I have come to accept. Luckily for me, when

The Harpies are old women-bird creatures with such a vile odor one can’t help retching. Their screech can rupture ear drums and cause madness. If one is near Harpies for any length of time, it is possible to freeze out of fear. They work for Narciss, running the Diamond Mine in the Solimon Mountains. All over Dracwald, children of all ages go missing daily. If one looks in the mine, one might know where the kids are and why-which agrees with the original meaning “snatchers”. Continue reading →

Mikayla doesn’t want much: just to rock out to her favorite band, become the next Kwiki Stop video gaming champion, and keep her Q-tip habit under control. What she does want is the sight of the sudden inexplicable dark auras around everyone to stop. Problem is, those auras are demons and Mikayla is the last trait holder with the power to ban them. Which is a total buzz kill.

To make matters worse, the town folk of Sulphur Springs don’t look the same, and her classmates are a little dark in the eyes. There are murders, suicides, reckless skinny-dipping, gratuitous use of Q-tips, and newfound powers that Mikayla must learn to control.

Her past becomes present when a shape-shifter tells her what her true identity is, and how to keep the demons of Hell from nipping at her Converse. Through him she’ll discover who to trust, who to kiss, and how valuable her abilities are to the right beings. Because the evils of Hell aren’t staying down without a fight.

Or without her soul.

OPINION · Tweet

Read part 1 of this article.

By Louis René Beres

Today, Israel’s leadership, continuing to more or less disregard the nation’s special history, still acts in ways that are neither tragic nor heroic. Unwilling to accept the almost certain future of protracted war and terror, one deluded prime minister after another has sought to deny Israel’s special situation in the world. Hence, he or she has always been ready to embrace, unwittingly, then-currently-fashionable codifications of collective suicide.

In Washington, President Barack Obama is consciously shaping these particular codifications, not with any ill will, we may hope, but rather with all of the usual diplomatic substitutions of rhetoric for an authentic intellectual understanding. For this president, still sustained by an utterly cliched “wisdom,” peace in the Middle East is just another routine challenge for an assumed universal reasonableness and clever presidential speechwriting.

Human freedom is an ongoing theme in Judaism, but this sacred freedom can never countenance a “right” of collective disintegration. Individually and nationally, there is always a binding Jewish obligation to choose life. Faced with the “blessing and the curse,” both the solitary Jew, and the ingathered Jewish state, must always come down in favor of the former.

Today, Israel, after Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement,” Ehud Olmert’s “realignment,” Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes for “Palestinian demilitarization,” and U.S. President Barack Obama’s “New Middle East,” may await, at best, a tragic fate. At worst, resembling the stark and minimalist poetics of Samuel Beckett, Israel’s ultimate fate could be preposterous.

True tragedy contains calamity, but it must also reveal greatness in trying to overcome misfortune.

For the most part, Jews have always accepted the obligation to ward off disaster as best they can.

For the most part, Jews generally do understand that we humans have “free will.” Saadia Gaon included freedom of the will among the most central teachings of Judaism, and Maimonides affirmed that all human beings must stand alone in the world “to know what is good and what is evil, with none to prevent him from either doing good or evil.”

For Israel, free will must always be oriented toward life, to the blessing, not to the curse. Israel’s binding charge must always be to strive in the obligatory direction of individual and collective self-preservation, by using intelligence, and by exercising disciplined acts of national will. In those circumstances where such striving would still be consciously rejected, the outcome, however catastrophic, can never rise to the dignifying level of tragedy.

The ancient vision of authentically “High Tragedy” has its origins in Fifth Century BCE Athens. Here, there is always clarity on one overriding point: The victim is one whom “the gods kill for their sport, as wanton boys do flies.” This wantonness, this caprice, is precisely what makes tragedy unendurable.

With “disengagement,” with “realignment,” with “Palestinian demilitarization,” with both Oslo, and the Road Map, Israel’s corollary misfortunes remain largely self-inflicted. The continuing drama of a Middle East Peace Process is, at best, a surreal page torn from Ionesco, or even from Kafka. Here, there is nary a hint of tragedy; not even a satisfyingly cathartic element that might have been drawn from Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides. At worst, and this is the more plausible characterization, Israel’s unhappy fate has been ripped directly from the utterly demeaning pages of irony and farce.

Under former Prime

OPINION · Tweet

By Louis René Beres

Israel after Obama: a subject of tragedy, or mere object of pathos?

Israel, after President Barack Obama’s May 2011 speech on “Palestinian self-determination” and regional “democracy,” awaits a potentially tragic fate. Nonetheless, to the extent that Prime Minister Netanyahu should become complicit in the expected territorial dismemberments, this already doleful fate could quickly turn from genuine tragedy to pathos and abject farce.

“The executioner’s face,” sang Bob Dylan, “is always well-hidden.” In the particular case of Israel, however, the actual sources of existential danger have always been perfectly obvious. From 1948 until the present, virtually all of Israel’s prime ministers, facing periodic wars for survival, have routinely preferred assorted forms of denial, and asymmetrical forms of compromise. Instead of accepting the plainly exterminatory intent of both enemy states and terrorist organizations, these leaders have opted for incremental territorial surrenders.

Of course, this is not the whole story. During its very short contemporary life, Israel has certainly accomplished extraordinary feats in science, medicine, agriculture, education and industry. It’s military institutions, far exceeding all reasonable expectations, have fought, endlessly and heroically, to avoid any new spasms of post-Holocaust genocide.

Still, almost from the beginning, the indispensable Israeli fight has not been premised on what should have remained as an unequivocal central truth of the now-reconstituted Jewish commonwealth. Although unrecognized by Barack Obama, all of the disputed lands controlled by Israel do have proper Israeli legal title. It follows that any diplomatic negotiations resting upon alternative philosophic or jurisprudential premises must necessarily be misconceived.

Had Israel, from the start, fixedly sustained its own birthright narrative of Jewish sovereignty, without submitting to periodic and enervating forfeitures of both land and dignity, its future, although problematic, would at least have been tragic. But by choosing instead to fight in ways that ultimately transformed its stunning victories on the battlefield to abject surrenders at the conference table, this future may ultimately be written as more demeaning genre.

In real life, as well as in literature and poetry, the tragic hero is always an object of veneration, not a pitiable creature of humiliation. From Aristotle to Shakespeare to Camus, tragedy always reveals the very best in human understanding and purposeful action. Aware that whole nations, like the individual human beings who comprise them, are never forever, the truly tragic hero nevertheless does everything possible to simply stay alive.

For Israel, and also for every other imperiled nation on earth, the only alternative to tragic heroism is humiliating pathos. By their incessant unwillingness to decline any semblance of a Palestinian state as intolerable (because acceptance of “Palestine” in any form would be ruthlessly carved out of the living body of Israel), Israel’s leaders have created a genuinely schizophrenic Jewish reality in the “new” Middle East. This is a Jewish state that is, simultaneously, unimaginably successful and incomparably vulnerable. Not surprisingly, over time, the result will be an increasingly palpable national sense of madness.

Perhaps, more than any other region on earth, the Jihadi Middle East and North Africa is “governed” by unreason. Oddly, this very reasonable observation is reinforced rather than contradicted by the prevailing patterns of “democratic re

Jael Thompson has never really fit in. She’s changed schools too many times to count. The only family she’s ever known is her father, a bitter ex-priest who never lets her date and insists she attend the strictest Catholic school in Seattle. And her mother—well, she was a five thousand year old demon. That doesn’t exactly help.

But on her sixteenth birthday, her father gives her a present that brings about some unexpected changes. Some of the changes, like strange and wonderful powers and the cute skater boy with a knack for science, are awesome. But others, like the homicidal demon seeking revenge on her family? Not so much.

Steeped in mythology, this is an epic tale of a heroine who balances old world with new, science with magic, and the terrifying depths of the underworld with the ordinary halls of high school.

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: April 15, 2011

Fans of Mythology and the Goddess Girls series will once again be thrilled to know that we have the next installment to giveaway. One lucky reader will be the winner of Athena the Wise signed by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams, plus a colorful Goddess Girls bracelet made by the authors. Giveaway begins April 15, 2011, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends May 13, 2011, at 11:59 P.M. PST.

Reading Level: Ages 8-12

Paperback: 240 pages

Book overview: Athena isn’t the only new kid at Mount Olympus Academy. When a mortal named Heracles transfers in, she knows what he’s going through. She started at MOA just a few months ago! Not only does Heracles need help fitting in, he also has to complete twelve “labors” or he’ll be kicked out of the academy. When her dad, Principal Zeus, asks her to secretly watch out for the new boy, Athena winds ups capturing mythical beasts and shoveling poop. It will take all of her famed wisdom to sort out her own problems and help Heracles succeed!

Authors Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams put a modern spin on classic myths with the Goddess Girls series (ages 8-12, Aladdin). Follow the ins and outs of divine social life at Mount Olympus Academy, where the most privileged godboys and goddessgirls in the Greek pantheon hone their mythical skills.

“…a clever take on Greek deities…” ~ Booklist

“…an enchanting mythological world with middle-school woes compounded by life as a deity…” ~ School Library Journal

About the Authors: Joan Holub is the author and/or illustrator of over 130 books for young readers and Suzanne Williams has written over 40 books for young readers. Visit Joan at www.joanholub.com and Suzanne at www.suzanne-williams.com

How to enter:

• Leave a comment in the comments field below

• An extra entry will be given for each time you twitter about the giveaway and/or blog about it. You will need to paste the link in a separate comment to make this entry valid. Click here to follow us on Twitter.

• Maximum entries: Three (3)

Giveaway Rules:

• Shipping Guidelines: This book giveaway is open to participants with a United States address.

• Giveaway begins April 15, 2011, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends May 13, 2011, at 11:59 P.M. PST, when all entries must be received. No purchase necessary. See official rules for details. View our privacy policy.

Sponsored by Joan Holub.

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Artemis the Brave (Goddess Girls) Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams

Artemis has never understood her boy-crazy friends (especially Aphrodite) but when she meets Orion, a new exchange student at school, watch out! Suddenly she's ditching her friends and even forgetting archery practice with Apollo just to follow Orion around. The problem is, Orion's an egotistical jerk. Artemis is sick of having to defend him to her friends, and her friends are sick of having to listen to her go on and on about how great he is. But... even when Artemis realizes that Orion does stuff wrong, she can't help like him.

While this is the longest of the Goddess Girl series so far, it ties in the least with actual mythology. In this version, Orion (last name, Starr) is a mortal actor who does things like spray his body with something called "God Bod" to make him shimmer like his immortal classmates. He's not a hunter by any means, nor does he do anything heroic. The closest we come is that the fact he has a dog named Sirius. In another odd mythological quirk, the school play is the story of Eros and Psyche. With Aphrodite playing Psyche. While there is much mention of the "vengeful goddess" who causes all the harm, it never states that the goddess is supposed to be Aphrodite herself, because well, that wouldn't make sense in the context of the Mount Olympus Academy world. Also, let's just mention this-- BOY CRAZY ARTEMIS. What? Artemis?

While the mythology is thin in this one (and, with the school play, strained, and with Artemis chasing boys, laughable) it's still a good addition to the series, and it's a series I've been enjoying quite a bit. It's light and fun, showing good friendships with light romance. It's a good one for early middle grade and I'm very much looking forward to April's release of Athena the Wise and August's release of Aphrodite the Diva.

Book Provided by... my local library

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Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Breaking the Spine to highlight upcoming releases we're anxiously awaiting! Coming October 4, 2011! Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs Grace just moved to San Francisco and is excited to start over at a new school. The change is full of fresh possibilities, but it’s also a tiny bit scary. It gets scarier when a minotaur walks in the door. And even more

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren. Review: The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter Coming April 19, 2011! Every girl who has taken the test has died. Now it's Kate's turn. It's always been just Kate and her mom--and now her mother is dying. Her last wish? To move back to her childhood home. So Kate's going to start at a new school with no friends, no other family and the

Goddess Girls Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams

A lot of my comments on this series hold for each book, so I thought I'd review them together instead of separately so you don't have to read the same thoughts over and over again.

The basic premise is that many of the Greek gods and goddesses attend Mount Olympus Academy, where they learn the things they need to know to become gods and goddesses. There are a few regular humans as well (Pandora) and non-immortal characters (Medusa, centaurs). Everyone's a student except Zeus, because he's the loud, good-natured, and slightly bumbling principal. If you know your Greek mythology, there's a lot of it represented here, but it's rather watered down to make the books more age appropriate* (I'll get into specifics in a bit).

Overall it's a light and fun series. While I'm not sure on the need to refer to everyone as godboys or goddessgirls (it gets a little annoying) there's something about this series that I really enjoy. Also, as a fast adult reader, they're the perfect length to read (and finish!) in the bath.

Athena the Brain

In the first book, Athena gets a letter from Zeus claiming he's her father and that she needs to transfer to Mount Olympus Academy immediately. Through her newcomer eyes, we get a good sense of the social structures and how the Academy functions. She immediately makes an enemy, but Medusa hates everyone so... eh. She also quickly becomes best friends with Persephone, Aphrodite, and Artemis.

Athena's mother is a fly, who still lives in Zeus's brain. They are still rather in love and talk to Athena a lot, giving her the family she always wished for. (See what I mean about watered down?)

This book also features the Trojan War, which is a class project in Hero-ology.

Persephone the Phony

As we learned in the first book, Persephone's mother, Demeter, is very over-protective-- Persephone's the only Academy student who has to live at home! Here we also learn how much Persephone hides of herself-- Demeter's always told her to "go along to get along" so she always agrees with her friends' thoughts and plans, even when deep down,

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: August 22, 2010

Congratulations to Deb K! She is the very lucky goddess that has been selected by the random sequence generator at random.org to win a a set of the first three books in the Goddess Girls series.

Deb K said: This looks like a great series of books for girls~I would love to win for my granddaughter.

Special Mentions:

Annmarie W. said: This looks like such a wonderful series, where girls can learn about themselves & others. It’s nice to have the inspiration of goddesses, and see that human qualities transcend the ages and that we all have human feelings & emotions!

Grutmorg said: My great-niece is a very wise and brainy Athena. Her grandfather – my brother – suggested the name to his daughter who thought it was perfect for this bright-eyed first grandchild. He has tried somewhat unsuccessfully to interest her in Greek and Roman myths. These look like books that Athena and her grandpa can share and enjoy.

For those of you who were not so lucky, you can still add these books to your collection:

Goddess Girls #1: Athena the Brain

Finding out she’s a goddess and being sent to Mount Olympus brings Athena new friends, a weird dad, and the meanest girl in mythology—Medusa!

Goddess Girls #2: Persephone the Phony

Hiding her feelings works fine for Persephone until she meets a guy she can be herself with—Hades, the bad-boy of the Underworld.

“The authors intertwine an enchanting mythological world with middle-school woes compounded by life as a deity or blessed mortal. The books should be popular with fans of girly, light fantasy.”
~ School Library Journal 4/1/2010

Goddess Girls #3: Aphrodite the Beauty

Sure Aphrodite is beautiful, but being the goddessgirl of love is not always easy. Though others think she’s an expert on boy-girl relationships, they’re often just as confusing to her as to anyone else. And she certainly never thought she’d find herself jealous of one of her best friends!