Hanukkah is in full swing, and Christmas is right around the corner. Thinking about getting a book for that teen or kid in your life? Or for the adult YA reader in your life (you are welcome in this no-judgement zone; we love YA too!). Don’t forget to include Tu Books in those plans! Here are a few examples of people you’re looking to find a gift for.
For the reader looking for comedy (sometimes light, sometimes a little morbid):
For the teen looking for something with an edge:
For the middle-grade reader or young teen looking for a “clean” read:
For fans of folklore and fairy tales:
For fans of science fiction, especially technology and space-related:
For fans of Twilight:
For fans of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Chicago:
Got any other kinds of readers in your life that need a Tu Book recommendation? Ask away in the comments!
Originally published at Stacy Whitman's Grimoire. You can comment here or there.
Nook readers, you can now find almost all of our books there. Tankborn and Wolf Mark are up now, and Galaxy Games: The Challengers will be up soon. Also, for those of you on iPads or other Apple devices, all three books are up (I linked Galaxy Games: The Challengers before).
Here are your links!
Nook
iTunes/iBooks
Originally published at Stacy Whitman's Grimoire. Please leave any comments there.
Galaxy Games gets cross town treatment
Let’s take a look at all the things happening online for the launch of Tu’s first three books. First of all, see what our publisher Jason Low would do if we had a million dollars to promote our first three books. Too bad we’re not millionaires!
The Challengers
First up, The Challengers, book 1 of the Galaxy Games series. To celebrate, author Greg Fishbone is currently on a month-long blog tour that includes a game that readers can play along, finding puzzle pieces to fit together and win prizes. To find out more on how to play the game, go to http://galaxygam.es/tour/ and find out what puzzle piece they’re on. Note that there’s also a giveaway—poke around on the site to find more ways to enter!
You can also follow Greg on Twitter, like the Galaxy Games series on Facebook, or like Greg on Facebook for more news as it happens.
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about Galaxy Games:
Complemented by Beavers’s comic book style artwork, Fishbone’s narrative is ripe with kid-friendly humor—i.e., Earth’s radio and TV transmissions are picked up by the toilets on the Mrendarian ship—and many of the plot twists could be straight from the ‘what if’ imaginings of a fourth-grade classroom. Though Fishbone clearly sets up the next book, he gives Tyler enough of a victory to leave readers satisfied. —Publishers Weekly
Wolf Mark
Joseph Bruchac, author of Wolf Mark, recently shared a video on YouTube talking about why he wrote the book, his inspiration, and other thoughts on this exciting suspense-filled paranormal thriller. Check it out!
Here’s what Publishers Weekly and Kirkus have to say about Wolf Mark, too:
Bruchac (Dragon Castle) delivers a fun twist on werewolf stories mixed with some mad science and espionage. . . . Bruchac adeptly incorporates characters of various heritages: Luke is Native American; his best friend/crush, Meena, is Pakistani; and the Sunglass Mafia a group of students who are more than they seem are from eastern Russia. Luke also possesses a hefty amount of cultural and political awareness to go with his combat and espionage expertise, which serve him well. . . . [T]he action and Luke’s narration carry the book nicely. —Publishers Weekly
A loner teen finds himself caught up in a paranormal paramilitary threat but he has both untapped personal resources and some unlikely allies to help him out. Ever since his mother died, his father-a sometime Special Ops-type agent who happens to be of Native American descent-has been worse than useless. Lucas just concentrates on doing well in school and mooning over the beautiful daughter of one of the Pakistani scientists working at the new Romanian-owned top-secret facility in town. He goes out of his way to avoid the Sunglass Mafia, a bunch of unusually pale Russian students. But when his father is kidnapped and gives him a coded message by
Tu’s books are now also available on Google Books! These seem to be optimized for iPads/tablets.
Originally published at Stacy Whitman's Grimoire. Please leave any comments there.
For those of you who prefer your books in e-book form: we have some exciting news for Kindle people. Nook and iPad people, your day is coming soon in e-pub form. I’ll let you know as soon as I know!
Here are the Kindle versions!
Read them right away! And then let me know what you think. 
Originally published at Stacy Whitman's Grimoire. Please leave any comments there.
We’ve been getting some really great reviews in for Tu’s fall books, so I figured I’d start by sharing a few that have come in recently for Tankborn by Karen Sandler. I’m just quoting a few parts of each review, so follow the links to the blogs below for the whole reviews! (And this isn’t even all of them—the post was getting too long. Thanks so much to everyone who has read it so far, and of course I look forward to reading more reviews as others get a chance to read it.)
Science fiction is definitely experiencing a renaissance. . . . Sandler deftly weaves strands of race, privilege, politics, greed, and romance into a fascinating culture. The young protagonists are very real and exhibit great strength of character.
—Diana Tixier Herald of Genrefluent
Oh, my goodness, is that a person of color on the cover of a YA novel? It is! And she’s beautiful, and Sandler is awesome for writing about women of color in a genre that is inundated with stories about white teenagers, their special powers and their absent parents. And that cover is beautiful by itself with all that green and blue.
<snip>
Kayla’s assignment is in a large trueborn house, where, as soon as she arrives, she’s called a jik twice. But here’s where the real story starts.
Here, Kayla is brought face-to-face with Devak, the trueborn boy who saved her brother earlier in the book. She’s there to care for his great-grandfather, but Zul Manel has other things in store for her. The best part of this book is watching Devak go from idly racist to enlightened. Sometimes it’s hard for us to understand intense racism and hate, but I can see how Devak’s insulated trueborn upbringing could make him blind to the GENs’ plight. ”It’s for their own good”, “they like the way things are”, “resetting and realigning a GEN is in their best interest” are all common tropes that Devak has has drilled into his head since he was a child. It’s like some sort of benevolent slavery, with “benevolent” having a very flexible definition. Seeing Kayla changes him, and when he meets Mishalla, he doesn’t even blink.
Mishalla is vital to the story as well, though she’s not nearly as interesting as Kayla. Mishalla is in a creche, taking care of ostensibly orphaned lowborn children. She’s frightened and easily cowed for the most part, but that just comes with being a GEN. I think the plot needed Mishalla to stay where she was for the story to be furthered, but Mishalla really is important. She overhears vital information and puts her life on the line to save children who, in a few years, would look right through her or call her a jik. That’s courage.
This book is bittersweet. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but it made me a little sad at the end. I wish this one was a series! Look for it next month!
—Tina at Nose in a Book, Head in a Blog
It is rare that I come across a book that I would love to teach. I’m not headed out to be a teacher, or to make lesson plans of any sort, but there have been a few times that I’ve come across a book so perfectly written that it is made to be in a classroom. A book that has lessons that need to be taught with a plot that can capture the heart of a high school student set against reading. Tankborn is on
Look what I just saw, right at eye level, at the Union Square B&N!
It’s a bit early still—these are September releases—but it still makes me giddy to see them!
Now it’s your turn! Go look for them! Go buy them! (And if your preferred bookseller doesn’t yet have them or Galaxy Games: The Challengers on sale yet, let them know you’re highly anticipating them and ask them to be sure to order them in.)
Originally published at Stacy Whitman's Grimoire. Please leave any comments there.
