Teen Tuesday

Last night, I went to an event at Mysterious Galaxy in Redondo Beach that featured three teen authors, Michelle Gagnon, Lauren Miller, and Amy Tintera. 

There was a fairly small group in attendance, which allowed the discussion to be rather informal.

Although both Amy and Lauren have been writing since they were kids, and have written for television,  Reboot (first in a duology) and Parallel (a standalone) are their debut novels. Both of them also  have books being released next May.

Michelle had already published four adult thrillers before taking a crack at writing for teens.  She has published two of the three books in the Persefone trilogy (Don't Turn Around and Don't Look Now)  as well as a standalone called Strangelets.  The third book in the trilogy is due next fall.

After the requisite signings and picture-takings, I browsed the stacks for a while, and managed to limit myself to buying only two (more) books, Maggie Stiefvater's The Dream Thieves (the second book in The Raven Cycle) and Enchanted (The Woodcutter Sisters Book 1) by Alethea Kontis.

Reviews of Parallel, Reboot, The Dream Thieves and Enchanted will be posted on Teen Tuesday in coming weeks.

Stay tuned!

Meeting Beethoven

City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte (Penguin trade paperback, 27 November 2012).


Prague has a reputation for being a mysterious and shadowy city.
It's where  the  alchemists Edward Kelley and John  Dee  worked, for a time, under the patronage of Emperor Rudolf.  Superstition has it that Prague is also home to at least one hell portal.

When musicology student Sarah Weston accepts a summer position cataloguing Beethoven's manuscripts for a private collection in Prague, she is warned by more than one person that the city  "is a threshold, and it is steeped in blood".

Knowing that the experience will be the highlight of her resume, she accepts, but before she even leaves, strange things begin to happen. Her apartment is broken into, and though nothing is taken, a strange symbol is painted on the wall.

When she arrives in Prague, she learns that her mentor Absalom Sherbatsky, who recommended her for the position before his death, had been behaving erratically before his supposed suicide.  Her colleagues at the museum are distinctly odd, and she begins to suspect that Dr. Sherbatsky did not, in fact, take his own life.

It's difficult for Sarah to tell who she can trust, who might be dangerous, and who is playing a role, because the place is rife with intrigue and politics.

Complicated, yes, but the story is fascinating.   Reminiscent of the All Souls series by Deborah Harkness, this is much lighter, more humorous, and quicker to read, and should be popular with readers of romantic-mystery-paranormal fiction


The Penguin Group has very kindly offered a copy of CITY OF DARK MAGIC to one of my readers.  Please comment on this post, and make sure you include contact information.  Entries from the US only, please.



FTC full disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher for a review copy of the book. 

Covers v. Content

Pilgrims Don't Wear Pink by Stephanie Kate Strohm.

It's not that the cover of this book belies the content, although, technically Eighteenth-Century women wore stays rather than corsets.   The protagonist, Minnesotan Libby Kelting is blonde, and she does sneak her cellphone into the bra she defiantly wears.  

But besides being a humorous romance, this is also a mystery (is there really a ghost?) that teaches the reader a great deal about Colonial history.  Libby, a sixteen-year-old Austen-loving history buff,  whose best friend is a fashion-obsessed boy, has landed a summer job at a living history museum in the town of Camden Harbor, Maine.  Dev takes pride in having taught the geeky Libby how to dress and wear makeup, and Libby has definitely taken it to heart.

She has trouble cramming all the clothes she wants (including a pair of shoes to match every outfit) into her pink suitcase.  And when she arrives at the interns' dorm in Camden Harbor, she discovers to her horror that when she's on the grounds, she must either wear khakis and a polo bearing the park's logo, or  period garb.

Yes, this is reminiscent of Legally Blonde; Libby even compares herself to Elle Woods.  Like Elle, she has hidden depths.  She knows enough about the period that she's able to teach the 8-year-old girls in the group she leads as "Education and Interpretation Intern" how to bake gingerbread over a fire, make lemonade from scratch, and embroider. 

But Libby is still a sixteen-year-old girl, and thus prone to making mistakes like trusting the wrong people, a lesson she learns the hard way.

But, as the cover implies (this isn't really a spoiler!), the story does have a happy ending.  And the book will have a sequel:  Confederates Don't Wear Couture (June 2013), in which Libby joins a group of Civil War re-enactors. 



FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.