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Of Monsters & Madness by Jessica Verday. Egmont USA. 2014.



The Plot: It's 1824 and Annabel Lee, 17, has moved to her father's death following her mother's death. The world of Philadelphia, and her role of daughter of a doctor, is very different from a childhood spent in Siam. She lacks the freedom she had there.

There are secrets in her father's house -- including her father's two assistants, handsome Allan and cruel Edgar. Including her father's scientific experiments.

And there are the gruesome murders....

The Good: I'll be honest: I read Of Monsters and Madness about a year ago, when it first came out, enjoyed it, but just didn't get around to writing anything up.

Then I saw the movie Crimson Peak (review tomorrow) and began to wonder about possible read-a-likes for teens who may go see the movie and want a taste of Gothic horror and romance. And I remembered Of Monsters and Madness.

The setting, early nineteenth century Philadelphia, is wonderfully shown; Annabel is a strong young woman who has been raised away from her father and his family. She wants to connect with them and please them, but her desire for independence and to pursue studying is at odds with their perceptions of what a proper young lady is. Plus, Edgar Allen Poe as a hot young man!

And plus there are references / homages to works by Poe as well as other writers. So this can lead to wanting to read more Poe, and Robert Louis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde.

Of Monsters and Madness was published by Egmont USA, which, sadly, no longer exists. So when I went to the author's website to write this post, I was very pleased to learn a few things: first, that it's available on Kindle; second, that for a limited time it is $1.99; and third, that Verday has included the sequel, Of Phantoms and Fury, in the Kindle edition so you are getting two books for one.






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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

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One of the things authors are frequently asked is if they’ve always wanted to be a writer. I feel a little guilty when I see people affirm that yes, as soon as they were able to hold a crayon, they were scribbling the toddler equivalent of Dostoyevsky. What I really wanted to be was either a nun or an NFL quarterback. For a host of reasons, those professions were sadly never in the cards for me, so my parents thought a lawyer would be the perfect career fit for me—it might have had something to do with my ability to argue my way out of being grounded. Yet that profession never resonated with me, and then several things happened within a couple years time.

I read the book Go Ask Alice about a troubled teen’s spiral through drug use and eventual (spoiler alert) death. I remember thinking that maybe she would have chosen a different path if she’d had some better help. I’d always been fascinated by why people make the choices they make and why they act in certain ways. When I got to high school and took an advanced psychology course, I was hooked. I went to college and majored in Psychology, followed by graduate school and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. One of my first jobs was as a therapist then manager of a locked adolescent girls’ unit, many of whom were committed there by youth corrections. I loved that job and knew that psychology was a perfect fit for me.

However, all that isn’t to say that I didn’t dabble in writing thought my life. My mom says I wrote my first picture book in Kindergarten and once hauled it out of storage to prove it. I began my first “novel” around age 9 on a cursive typewriter, yet instead of Dostoyevsky, it was Nancy Drew fan fiction. I started a school newspaper in elementary school and was “chief editor,” which primarily involved discussing whether pizza or chicken nuggets was the better lunch option. Then, aside from some angsty teenage poetry, I didn’t write much until a creative writing class in college. When my teacher asked if she could keep my short story and make copies to hand out to future classes, I was flattered but still never thought of writing as more than “fun.”

So I grew up became a psychologist and wrote hundreds of evaluations, reports, and papers over the years, but nothing creative. It wasn’t until I had children that the urge to write fiction hit, and hit hard. I found a critique group, joined SCBWI and had my first few picture books written within weeks. My group said my “voice” sounded older and suggested I try YA. I thought “sure, why not?” and wrote my first YA novel within a few months. It was so hard yet so much fun. I’m sure people don’t believe me when I say that writing a publishable novel was harder than getting my Ph.D. but it’s true. When my agent in New York called to say that Egmont bought my novel, along with an unwritten sequel (which is obviously written now since it releases in April), I had to pinch myself. I know I’ll never stop writing, and my psychology background helps inform the characterization and motivations in my novels. It’s been a great marriage of careers and I’ve made sure to tell my own children that just because something is “fun,” doesn’t mean you can’t make it a profession.

Kristi Helvig is a Ph.D. clinical psychologist turned sci-fi/fantasy author. Her first novel, BURN OUT (Egmont USA), which Kirkus Reviews called “a scorching series opener not to be missed,” follows 17-year-old Tora Reynolds, one of Earth’s last survivors, when our sun burns out early. In the sequel, STRANGE SKIES, released 4/28/2015, Tora makes it to a new planet only to discover a whole new host of problems—and the same people who still want her dead. Order Kristi’s books through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your favorite local retailer. Kristi muses about Star Trek, space monkeys, and other assorted topics on her blog and Twitter . You can also find her on Facebook. Kristi resides in sunny Colorado with her hubby, two kiddos, and behaviorally-challenged dogs.

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Lug, Dawn of the Ice Age

. . . . .(How One Small Boy Saved Our Big, Dumb Species)
Written by David Zeltser
Illustrations by Jan Gerardi
Egmont USA          2014
978-1-60684-513-4
190 pages       Age 8 to 12
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“In Lug’s Stone Age clan, a caveboy becomes a caveman by catching a jungle llama and riding it against the rival Boar Rider clan in the Big Game. The thing is, Lug has a forbidden, secret art cave and would rather paint than smash skulls. Because Lug is different, his clan’s Big Man is out to get him, he’s got a pair of bullies on his case—oh, and the Ice Age is coming. When Lug is banished from the clan for failing to catch jungle llama, he’s forced to team up with Stony, a silent Neanderthal with a very expressive unibrow, and Echo (a Boar Rider girl!). In a world experiencing some serious global cooling, these misfits must protect their feuding clans from the impending freeze and a particularly unpleasant pride of migrating saber-toothed tigers.” [book jacket]
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About the Story
The clan has broken into two factions, the Macrauchenia Riders and the Boar Riders. Each clan believes the other are uncivilized—without laws, few table manners, and possibly cannibals—yet each clan is living exactly like the other clan lives. The two only get together for the Big Game, called Headstone, where, using stones, they bash in opponents’ heads. To become cavemen, caveboys must catch an animal to ride in the Big Game.

Lug, a smaller caveboy, is the outsider, the one the bullies and their cohorts pick on. He has no interest in Headstone. Lug simply wants to draw, something not understood by others. He fails to catch a llama and is banished to the woods, along with Stone, who also failed. The hot and humid weather is getting colder, something Lug notices but others brush off. The Ice Age is on its way and no one will listen, except Crazy Crag—banished years ago—and Hamela (aka Echo), a Boar Rider girl. To make matters worse, a pride of hungry saber-toothed tigers is migrating south and heading for the clans—and a meal of cave-people-steak. The cave kids try to save their people with the help of Woolly, a baby woolly mammoth, lost from its family, who can communicate with Echo. Living alone in the woods, Crazy Crag has figured out a few things. Can Lug learn Crazy Crag’s secret in time to save the clans people, or will they become extinct?

Review

LUG: Dawn of the Ice Age has all the elements of a book: fast-paced action, suspense, and good characters the reader can relate to and enjoy. Written for middle grade kids, younger advanced readers will also enjoy LUG’s charm. I like the cover and the illustrations, which are black-and-white cave-like drawings, slanted enough to often be funny. The story itself has kid-funny action and characters. Reading it will make you laugh and sometimes groan at the word play, (Headstone; Smilus, the ruthless head saber-tooth tiger; Bonehead, the Big Man’s son).

I love the curly-haired Echo, who is an activist and a vegetarian, possibly the world’s first. I also loved the coming of the Ice Age’s parallel to today’s climate crisis. LUG might make kids more aware of their own climate changing. Lug agrees, writing in a pre-story note,

“. . . You see, the world began to get colder—much colder. And my clan initially reacted by doing this:

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“That’s right, a whole lot of NOTHING . . . I hope this story will inspire you to pay attention to the big changes happening to your world. If you are extinct, sorry.”

There are no prehistoric dinosaurs, but the animals you will find have interesting qualities, including finding a way to talk to humans. More than anything, I like LUG because it is a good story. If cave kids could read, they would have enjoyed LUG. 

Lug returns for more prehistoric climate-change adventures this Fall (2015) in LUG: Blast from the North (working title). LUG: Dawn of the Ice Age is David Zeltser’s debut children’s series.  (20% of proceeds go to organizations that help children and families in need.)

LUG: DAWN OF THE ICE AGE (HOW ONE SMALL BOY SAVED OUR BIG DUMB SPECIES). Text copyright © 2014 by David Zeltser. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Jan Gerardi. Published in 2014 by Egmont USA, New York, NY.
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Purchase LUG: Dawn of the Ice Age at Amazon—iTunes—Book Depository—Egmont USA.

Learn more about LUG: Dawn of the Ice Age HERE.
Meet the author, David Zeltser, at his website:  http://www.davidzeltser.com/
Meet the illustrator, Jan Gerardi, short bio:  http://bit.ly/19Z1Vh3
Find more Middle Grade Books at the Egmont USA website:  http://egmontusa.com/

Curriculum Guide can be found HERE.
Activity Guide can be found HERE.

Copyright © 2015 by Sue Morris/Kid Lit Reviews

Filed under: 5stars, Books for Boys, Debut Author, Fast Friday Read, Favorites, Library Donated Books, Middle Grade Tagged: cavemen, children's books, David Zeltser, Egmont USA, humor, Jan Gerardi, LUG: Dawn of the Ice Age, prehistoric era

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It’s a bittersweet time for me as an author. As STRANGE SKIES, my sequel to BURN OUT, is getting ready to launch into the world on April 28th, my publisher Egmont USA is closing its doors. I learned so much from the awesome team there, especially my fabulous editors Greg Ferguson and Alison Weiss. I feel quite lucky that my release date was moved up so that my book will still be published, and am excited to share it with my readers. There are other Egmont authors in my same situation and we’ve banded together to support each other as our books release. We are the last ones—the last authors published by Egmont USA, a publisher that gave many of us our start. The awesome Sarah Cross started a Tumblr site dedicated to Egmont’s last list, and I wrote the introduction over there, so come check out Egmont’s entire Spring ’15 list over at Egmont’s Last List.

I will also be giving away an ARC of STRANGE SKIES to one lucky newsletter subscriber in the next two weeks, so make sure to sign up on the sidebar. Finally, YA author, Aimee Henley, tagged me to write a Top 7 post, so that will be up later this week!

 

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Amity by Micol Ostow. Egmont USA. Reviewed from ARC; publication date August 2014. My Teaser from April.

The Plot: Two families, years apart, move into the same house.

A house called Amity. A house in the middle of nowhere. A house with secrets, dark and deadly.

The Good: Amity is about a haunted house; a house that is both haunted and that haunts its unfortunate inhabitants. It is told by two seventeen year olds, Connor and Gwen. Both have just moved into a new house. It is the same house, ten years apart. And both see what those around them cannot, or will not: that there is something terribly wrong with the house. Something supernaturally wrong.

As I said in the teaser, this scared the hell out of me. The title, Amity, refers to another story about a haunted house, The Amityville Horror. I read that original book at age thirteen, believing every word. Specific details have changed: the location of the house. The time period. The families. You don't have to read that book to "get" this one. That one book lead to several movies, several versions of the story, but all about a haunted house.

"Here is a house of ruin and rage, of death and deliverance, seated atop countless nameless unspoken souls." Connor's story is the earlier story, when he and his siblings move into the empty house. Connor's family is one that looks so pretty on the outside (mom, dad, twins, little boy), much like the house they move into: "Probably from the outside it looked like we were doing better than we really were. That was Dad's thing -- make sure we looked like we were doing better, doing well." What scared me about Connor's story was not so much his realizations that something was wrong with his house, but that he welcomed that darkness -- that Connor came to Amity with something already missing from his soul.

The present-day Gwen has a different set of problems than Connor, but part of those problems means that when she begins to see that something is wrong at Amity, people don't believe her. For Connor, the reader wonders how far he'll go; for Gwen, it's wondering whether she'll be able to stop history from repeating itself. And if she can, what will the cost be?

I love how the stories went back and forth between Connor and Gwen. I loved the various references to the original story. I loved how isolated and strange Amity was, further isolating Connor and Gwen's families. And I loved as both madness and haunting settled into both timeframes, those times began to merge.



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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

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Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse Literary Agency sold Author Kat Yeh’s debut book THE TRUTH ABOUT TWINKIE PIE, pitched in the vein of SHUG and THREE TIMES LUCKY, about a girl who moves to a new town and tries to leave her past and her name behind, only to learn life-changing secrets about her family, to Alvina Ling at Little, Brown Children’s, at auction, in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2014.

Congraulations! Yay! Kudos!  

Kat and Sarah!

Egmont USA has hired literary agent Andrea Cascardi from the Transatlantic Literary Agency for the new combined role of managing director and publisher, effective immediately. Prior to joining TLA, she was associate publishing director at Random House Children’s for the Knopf and Crown imprints. Current publisher Elizabeth Law is leaving after five years with the company.

Fiona Kenshole has joined Transatlantic Literary Agency, where she will represent children’s authors and illustrators. Previously she was vp, development acquisition at animation studio Laika and before then, publishing director for OUP Children’s.

At Harper, Maya Ziv has been promoted to editor. She is looking for literary fiction with commercial appeal with a focus on women’s fiction; dark suspense (with a possible speculative twist); YA crossover; and narrative nonfiction, including memoir.

Film development and publishing veteran Ruth Pomerance will join Hyperion on January 28 as a senior editor, focusing on the acquisition and development of new stories and author talent that will translate across the Disney/ABC Television Group businesses. Most recently she was executive producer for the adaptation of Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes and a consultant to entertainment firms. Pomerance has worked for producers including Scott Rudin, Arnold Kopelson, Fred Zollo, and John Davis, for whom she acquired and developed literary properties for film and TV, and has worked at The Rockwell Group, USA Films, Artists Management Group, and the William Morris Agency. She is known for coming across the unpublished manuscript of John Grisham’s The Firm in 1990 and helping him land a publishing deal with Doubleday and a film deal at Paramount.

At becker&mayer!, Kjersti Egerdahl has been promoted to senior editor/editorial manager for adult and children’s books.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

Filed under: Editor & Agent Info, Kudos, News, Publishing Industry Tagged: Agent Sarah Davies, Andrea Cascardi, Egmont USA, Fiona Kenshole, Greenhouse Literary, Kat Yeh, Mayra Ziv

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In just a few days, Dangerous Neighbors, my Centennial Philadelphia novel, will be released by Egmont USA as a paperback, with a bound-in teacher's guide.  A few weeks after that, in mid-February, Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, an 1871 Philadelphia novel that features Dangerous Neighbors' own best-loved boy, William, will be released by New City Community Press/Temple University Press.

Dr. Radway's introduces, among many other Philadelphia places, Eastern State Penitentiary.  In this scene (below) William and his best friend, Career, are making their way toward the old prison, which was known back then as Cherry Hill.  They're going to keep William's father company, in the only way they know how.

The image above was taken two years ago, when I was in the midst of my research for this book.

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For much of last year I worked on a book that took me deep inside the world of 1871 Philadelphia—the clank of Baldwin machines, the boats on the Schuylkill, the innards of Eastern State Penitentiary, the rattle of a newsroom, the world of William, first introduced in Dangerous Neighbors.

I wrote a book.  My husband made drawings.  And then I stood back and thought.  What next?

Today I am having a preliminary meeting about this book of mine, this character I love, this Philadelphia to which I will always be true.  I don't know what will happen, but I do know this:  Sometimes we have to step away to know what it is we should be stepping toward.

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and I like the look of this page.  Thank you, Elizabeth Law, for sending the copy my way.

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I've never been to Brazil, but I have longed to go.  For the time being, You Are My Only is going in my stead, thanks to the good work of Amy Rennert and the Jenny Meyer Literary Agency, Inc.  Brazilian-Portuguese rights to the book have been sold to Novo Conceito.

You Are My Only also, as many of you know, went into a third U.S. printing this week.  For that enormous bit of good fortune, I have the world of generous bloggers and independent booksellers (and of course Darcy Jacobs, of Family Circle) to thank. Thanks today especially to Serena Agusto-Cox, who placed You Are My Only on the D.C. Literature Examiner gift book buying guide.  Check out the entire list for some spectacular recommendations from a very fine reader.

I thank you all.  From the bottom of my heart, I do.

Many thanks, too, to Elizabeth Law of Egmont USA, for being the bearer of good news.

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A few weeks ago, Alison Weiss of Egmont USA wrote with an idea.  Why not conduct a live chat with readers?  Why not, indeed, find a time when both Kristina McBride (The Tension of Opposites) and I could sit down for an hour for a moderated conversation conducted within the Cover It Live forum?

The question was asked.  An idea was born.  An evening was chosen.

Please join Kristina, Alison, and me for a conversation about what happens when you choose to build a story within the frame of a kidnapping.  Did real-world headlines precipitate the story?  Are we obliged, as storytellers, to work the sensationalistic angles?  How much room can we make for language and heart and hope in a story that has such darkness at its start?

I'm really looking forward to the conversation, and I am very hopeful that you will find the time to join us.  The facts and link below:

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Human.4 Mike A. Lancaster. 2011. Egmont USA. 240 pages.

When Danny Birnie told us that he had hypnotized his sister we all though he was mad. Or lying. Or both.

Our narrator, Kyle Straker, is living in a strange, strange world where he and three others have suddenly become irrelevant. It started when he volunteered at a local talent show to be hypnotized. It wasn't that he wanted to volunteer, just that in a moment of weakness he had pity on Danny while he was doing his act. His former girlfriend, Lilly, also happened to volunteer just about the same time he did. Two adults, Mrs. O'Donnell and Mr. Peterson, also volunteered. All were hypnotized. All woke up in this strange, strange new reality.

This book is part science fiction, part horror, and part mystery. It was a quick read! I liked it. I wouldn't say I loved it. But for a quick premise-driven read, it was a good choice.

© 2011 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

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After playing a much-needed bit of hooky at the Jersey shore yesterday (not that Jersey Shore, believe me), I came home, woke early, and wrote the final pages of Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, the Dangerous Neighbors prequel.  I rarely write with a book's closing pages in mind.  This time, always, I knew where I was headed.  I've printed the whole thing out now and will take it to a quiet place to read.  But since I have reworked all thirty-three chapters (save the last one) at least a dozen times each, I think I'm in a pretty good place.

This, of course, is William's story—that boy who rescues animal for a living and, in 1876, in the pages of Dangerous Neighbors, befriends Katherine during one terrifying day at the Centennial.  The year this time in 1871, and a primary scene takes place in the room above.

I have loved every single second of researching and writing this story.  I cannot wait to share it with the world.

In the meantime, I've got corporate work to do and, thanks to the number of schools that seem to be assigning my Juarez novel, The Heart Is Not a Size, to their students, I'm about to put together a teacher's guide for that book.  It is extraordinary—and extremely reassuring—that books do find their way in this world, even if we're not entirely sure how to help them get there.

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"You okay up there?" Arlen calls to me.

"Just fine," I call back. The sun has come up like a squint on the horizon. Most everything we travel by is pink. The glass in the shops. The windshields on cars. The glint flecks in the sidewalks and on the streets.  I haven't seen a cop drive by. I've seen no posters on the trees.  No one and nothing but me and Arlen searching for Baby. We take a ninety-degree angle hard and wobble our way back to a glide. My elbows hurt more than my fingers.

"How about you? You okay?" I call over my shoulder.

"Time is of the essence," Arlen says.

— You Are My Only (Laura Geringer Books/Egmont USA), forthcoming October 25, 2011

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I first met Susan in Orlando, FL, last November, on this very (photographed) day.  We were scheduled to speak on an ALAN panel—Susan about her wildly brilliant They Called Themselves the K.K.K, me about the Centennial era that had inspired Dangerous Neighbors (Egmont USA).  My PDF presentation had not, I discovered minutes before I was to take the stage, been imported to the proper conference techno places, and, in the crazy Oh no buzz that followed that fine finding, Susan stepped in.  She fixed the problem.  The crisis was no more.

Susan spoke before I did to the gathered YA crowd.  She was so smart, so funny, so wise that if I had not just been saved by her in the excruciating moments leading up to the panel, I might have been jealous.  No, that's not true.  I'm never jealous when a real talent is in my midst.  I'm just proud, as a human being, that she exists.

Ever since Orlando, Susan and I have been trying to see each other again.  This past Wednesday, as some of you know, I put the corporate pressures aside, threw caution to the wind, and trained down to the University of Pennsylvania.  Susan and I would spend the next several hours walking the campus, sitting in one of my former classrooms, taking charge of an unhappy soda machine, exclaiming over Please Ignore Vera Dietz, and munching through a tossed salad (but not the peaches we had jointly hoped for).  We talked about the things we love.  Truly great writing—"crunchy" she calls sentences she celebrates.  Landscape as story.  Honest and earned research—the kind that digs beneath whatever a Google search can deliver.  Reconstruction America.  The history of Pennsylvania.  Smart, kind editors.  Course design.  Teaching.  Students.  Our children.  Judging book contests (we both chaired a Young People's Literature Jury for the National Book Awards, we discovered.)  We were walking to Susan's car when she mentioned that she had recently been talking with Markus Zusak as part of a PEN American Center PENpal program.  

The Markus Zusak? I asked.  Mr. The Book Thief?

But of course that was the one, for Susan, too, has written of that Nazi Germany in her widely praised (go to her website and find out more for yourself) Hitler Youth. 

I have so many things I want to ask Susan.  So much I can learn from her.  But for now I am and always will be grateful for our day together.  For locating, in this turbulent, unstable world of ours, such a fully engaged, deeply seeking mind.

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Well, here I am, fighting for every blooming second alone to write my Dangerous Neighbors (Egmont USA) prequel—a book featuring brothers and two boy best friends, a murder and its avenging, a stint in a terrible prison, the rescue of animals—and here this wise and lovely soul sits, in a room somewhere, talking about why we don't have more teen boy readers, and why we need them, and what we (as a society and publishing community) can do about it.

I have three corporate projects I have to finish today so that I can turn (secretly, feverishly) to the 20,000th word of my work in progress.

I'm letting this young woman speak for me.

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I have been so grateful to those of you who have written to me about YOU ARE MY ONLY.  You do this author's heart a whole lot of good.

It occurred to me that it might be helpful to answer some questions in a broader format, and so I have prepared this new permanent page for the blog, featuring a Q and A, a list of upcoming appearances, a glimpse of an early review, and contact information.

It can all be found here.

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Because I finished working through the last of the copy edits of You Are My Only this week, and because I have lately been hearing from a few early readers (and I thank them from the bottom of my heart), and because this photograph reminds me of Autumn, one of my characters, it occurred to me to post this small excerpt from the book, due out from Egmont USA in October.

I hear the creak of a bed. I hear another blow of giggles. Finally Granger walks to the curtain and snaps it back, and there Autumn is, standing on her own thin cot in a gray T-shirt and a red puff skirt, throwing a ridiculous curtsy. Through the small round of the window behind her, the sun comes in and where it hits her hair, there’s a burst of yellow orange.

“What happened to you?” she asks me.

“Be nice,” Bettina tells her.

“It’s a question,” Autumn says, “is all.” And now she curtsies again, pinches the red puff up into her skinny fingers, cracks her legs at her knees, and says, her voice gone solemn, “Welcome to State.”

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One hour to rewrite the past . . .

For seventeen-year-old Emerson Cole, life is about seeing what isn't there: swooning Southern Belles; soldiers long forgotten; a haunting jazz trio that vanishes in an instant. Plagued by phantoms since her parents' death, she just wants the apparitions to stop so she can be normal. She's tried everything, but the visions keep coming back.So when her well-meaning brother brings in a consultant from a secretive organization called the Hourglass, Emerson's willing to try one last cure. But meeting Michael Weaver may not only change her future, it may change her past.

Who is this dark, mysterious, sympathetic guy, barely older than Emerson herself, who seems to believe every crazy word she says? Why does an electric charge seem to run through the room whenever he's around? And why is he so insistent that he needs her help to prevent a death that never should have happened?

I'm not sure I can accurately express how much I adored Myra McEntire's Hourglass. It's one of those books I'll be happy to read over again, and I can't wait to see how Myra fleshes out the rest of the series.

Here are just a few of the reasons why I wouldn't mind snuggling up to Hourglass again and again:

Simplicity - Yes, Hourglass is a sci-fi, time travel novel (with a bit of paranormal and romance mixed in), but you don't have to have a degree in quantum physics to understand how Em's world works. McEntire takes actual scientific theory and explains it in a way that's both easy to grasp and fun to explore. Hourglass isn't just for sci-fi or time travel fans.

Southern wit - I've read too many novels set in the South that focus so much on the culture and the sayings that it just feels fake. I start to wonder, has this author ever even been to the South? But Myra McEntire is a true Southern girl, which makes Em's voice authentic and addictive. And the humor! If not for anything else, pick this book up for the wit. I found myself laughing out loud throughout the entire novel, as well as shedding a few tears.

Click here to read the rest of my review!

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I am stealing a meme from dear, so-talented, and missed Eating a Tangerine with this up-to-the-moment report on what is making me happy.

First, the cherished memories of my trip to the BEA this past week. Thank you, so many of you, for being such an integral part of my adventure, thank you Armchair BEA for the love, and thank you Florinda for the conversation.

Second, the news that Dangerous Neighbors has been chosen as the summer read by a lovely local private school. I have so wanted that for this book of mine, and I am grateful.

Third, the happy reality that, after allowing myself to stall for a few days (as I imagine most authors waiting to hear about circulating manuscripts do), I have found my way back to my prequel-in-progress to Dangerous Neighbors. Research proved to be the key. I have lucked onto something astonishing and juicy—a little known fact that will give my story heft, suspense, momentum, and (I'll toss the word in there) thrills. I have myself a riveting something. Now I just have to write it.

Fourth, spending time at the Devon Horse Show, taking photographs of horses, children, riders, and the big jumpers. Today I'll be photographing the carriages that are rolling down my street (two just did, so I interrupted this blog to catch them) as well as the famous puppy contest.

Fifth, spending an hour with Kim, my former student, at the show yesterday.  There she is, petting a three-month-old mini. Both are, I think, beyond words.

Finally, receiving and reading the richest imaginable e-mails from my son, now in his fourth day in London. The Brits are treating that great guy of mine exquisitely well, and he is turning most every hour into something worthy of a story. In exactly two weeks I'll be there, in London, too. Laughing, I'm certain. And listening.

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I'm off to teach at Agnes Irwin today, while back in New York City, the book bloggers have gathered in force. A few days ago, as those of you who followed the Armchair BEA know, I had the chance to talk to Florinda while Elizabeth Law of Egmont USA videotaped our conversation. I re-post the video here, in celebration of the book bloggers I have come to know and love.

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