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Clarity, by Kim Harrington (book review) – psychic gift or curse?

Jun20

book cover of Clarity by Kim HarringtonIt’s a mystical Monday. What’s your ideal summer job? Bet it’s not like Clare’s, where “the family business” uses the psychic gifts of the Ferns.

Her brother loves summer, when he can romance the visiting girls – what local high school girl would date a guy who gets messages from dead people?

The Ferns can tell tourists about hidden things which have happened in the past, but the new psychic in town starts taking away their customers by promising that she can predict the future.

Add a murder to the summer crowds during an election year, and suddenly Clare’s gift for psychometry is in demand by the local authorities.

Kim Harrington says that Perception (Clarity #2) is due out in March 2012. Hope YA paranormal fans can wait that long! (She’s also writing a middle grades detective series, due out next summer).
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Book info: Clarity / by Kim Harrington. Point (Scholastic), 2011. [author’s website] [author’s blog] [publisher site] [book trailer]

My Book Talk: Just another summer at the family psychic business, where Clare sees what happened with an object by just touching it, brother Perry sees spirits, and Mom hears people’s thoughts. They can’t predict the future, but Cape Cod tourists wanting answers keep them in business.

Too bad the town residents aren’t as accepting of the Ferns – Clarity and Periwinkle (named by hippie parents) have been bullied and scorned ever since their gifts began to manifest. Just another year of high school and they can escape to somewhere else… especially after Clare’s only boyfriend cheated on her.

A murder – the first in decades –shocks everyone on the Fourth of July weekend. The mayor is up for re-election and asks Clare to help the police find clues. So she’s stuck with the mayor’s son (her ex-boyfriend) and the new detective’s son (completely anti-psychics) as she visits the murder scene… and finds that Perry was with the woman before she died! He assures Clare that he did not kill the woman, but they’re not sure that the police will understand visions instead of evidence.

On tourist row, a new psychic arrives, saying she can foretell the future and luring clients away from the Ferns. Perry disappears when a witness states that he was seen leaving a restaurant with the victim. Clare’s worst bullies boast about inside knowledge, then vanish.

How can Clare keep working with Justin when she still can’t forgive him? How can she convince Gabe that her visions are the truth (without telling too much)? Can Clare find the real killer without becoming the next victim? (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Fish (fiction)

Jun17

Ahoy, and welcome aboard on Fun Friday! But ’twere no fun for Maurice Reidy to give up country life and become an errand boy for his uncle in Dublin. The only swimmer in his large and impoverished family, he’s known as “Fish” and would certainly rather swim than fight.

How was Fish to know that he’d be kidnapped by pirates during his very first errand? And what a crew of pirates! A captain who’d rather search for treasure than capture other ships, a gunner who’s expert in cannons and cheese, and a girl cook!

Life on board a pirate ship challenges both Fish’s swimming skills and his conciliatory abilities, as he tries to stave off mutiny while the captain solves an intricate puzzle, then “The Scurvy Mistress” must outrace other would-be pirates to the treasure.

A rollicking read on the high seas, and a great addition to any pirate’s library of fantastic fiction – with nary an Arrrggh in sight!
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Book info: Fish / by Gregory Mone. Scholastic, 2010. [author’s website] [author’s blog] [publisher site] [book trailers one and two]

Recommendation: Living in bustling Dublin or a poor country farm? At age 11, Fish (nicknamed for his swimming skills) will soon find out which he prefers as he leaves his large family’s small farm to work for his uncle as a courier. But his first parcel is snatched just as he is delivering it to Mr. Swift on the city dock! Chasing the thieves, Fish watches them row toward a menacing ship across the harbour and decides to swim after them to recover the bag of coins.

The sailors aren’t going to give up their prize easily, and Fish finds himself kidnapped – aboard a pirate ship! A good captain (and his wife!), a skilled ship’s cook (a girl!), a silent giant, a first mate plotting mutiny, and Fish’s own determination to survive without fighting make life aboard ship complicated. The coins are part of a treasure map that must be unpuzzled…

Ahoy! “The Scurvy Mistress” is being pursued by Mr. Swift and his ship full of treasure hunters who shoot first and talk later! And they want those coins so they can complete the treasure map!

As they race to find the treasure predicted by the mysterious coins, Fish and crew must overcome treacherous waters, nefarious plots, and terrible smells. Who will discover it first – the honest pirates or the dishonest treasure hunters?

Travel the high seas with a young man who’s true to himself in this tale of adventure and danger (and really funny characters!). (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Visconti House (fiction)

Jun14

Out of place. The house is out of place in their small Australian town, and Laura is, too.

Since her dad’s writing can be sent from anyplace, the family moved away from the small house in the big city to this huge old house in the small town, so her mum would have more room to create her enormous sculptures.

Of course Laura explores the house’s many rooms, with their fading hand-painted murals and dilapidated velvet curtains and wants to know why… why Mr. Visconti came all the way from Italy to this particular town, why he built this unusual house, why he spent his life here alone, why the cellar door is wallpapered over, why…

This debut novel by an Australian librarian is a charming story of lost loves, found friendships, and a search for understanding.
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Book info: The Visconti House / Elsbeth Edgar. Candlewick, 2011. [author interview] [publisher site]

Recommendation: Laura loved the elegant old house that she and her parents moved into, but she hated being different from everyone at school. Who else’s mother makes huge sculptures in the dining room? What other dad stays up all night writing?

Exploring the falling-apart rooms and imagining their former beauty is interesting, and soon Laura is trying to find out more about why there’s an Italianate villa in their dusty Australian town. Mrs. Murphy said that Mr. Visconti built it for his bride-to-be who never got to live in it.

When Leon moved in with his grandmother and joined Laura’s junior high class, he ignored the teasing better than she could. As she tracks down Mr. Visconti’s history, Leon’s viewpoints lead to other clues.

Can they discover why Mr. Visconti’s beloved never got to live in the beautiful house? Where is the statue which once stood in its gardens? And why did Leon suddenly move here, anyway?

Mystery, misunderstandings, and maybe a ghost! Plan on visiting The Visconti House with Laura and Leon soon! (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

The House of Dead Maids, by Clare B. Dunkle (book review) – prequel to Wuthering Heights

May21
book cover of House of Dead Maids by Clare B Dunkle published by Henry Holt

Sometimes you wonder what happened in a person’s past to make them turn out the way they did. What’s their backstory? But authors don’t often give us the behind-the-scenes glimpses that we desire.

Such is the case with Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights, whose creator Emily Bronte tells us so little of how he was orphaned or why his unseen childhood turned him into such a brutal man.

Clare B. Dunkle decided to tell Heathcliff’s backstory in this very creepy and very plausible prequel to Wuthering Heights – lots and lots of scary packed into a short book! (I don’t ever, ever want to travel to those moors…)
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Book info: The House of Dead Maids / by Clare B. Dunkle; illus. by Patrick Arrasmith. Henry Holt, 2010. 146 pgs. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer]

My Book Talk: Hired as a nursemaid for a little boy, Tabitha wonders what happened to the other girl from her orphanage who held the position before her. Seldom House is a huge, gloomy place on the English moorlands, with no windows facing south and a bleak inner courtyard where nothing grows.

The villagers stare and whisper, no one from Seldom House goes to church with her, and Tabby finds odd toys suddenly uncovered in her bedroom. Who is the other girl she hears running down the hall? Mrs. Winter says that no other girls live in the house.

Soon Tabby sees the ghosts she’s been hearing, all the dead maids of the house, and meets the little boy, who’s savage and wild, who has been promised that he will be Master of Seldom House, who can see the ghosts of all the dead masters. Overhearing a plan to murder them during a thunderstorm, as the land must have blood to be satisfied, she vows that they’ll both escape.

This chilling prequel to Wuthering Heights gives the dark background of the little orphan boy brought to Seldom House to ensure its luck, to take the place of its master, to learn of murder – the savage little boy who grew up to become Heathcliff… (one of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.u

The Haunting of Charles Dickens, by Lewis Buzbee (book review) – mystery in London, Dickens on the case

May18

book cover of The Haunting of Charles Dickens by Lewis Buzbee published by Feiwel and Friends Did you remember to celebrate Biographers Day on May 16th (our Guest Post Day)? In the hands of a skilled biographer, an average life becomes a nuanced tapestry worth noting, and an extraordinary life shows all its colors. But what of the fictionalized biography?

I remember being surprised as a child that the “Little House on the Prairie” books were in Fiction, because they were about real people who really did live in the Big Woods and on the Prairie, where you can visit a replica of Laura’s cabin today. By choice, Laura and daughter Rose used selected elements of the Ingalls’ and Wilders’ lives as they crafted the Little House books, as this NPR program notes, recreating conversations from decades earlier and omitting events for better story flow.

We have to trust that writers of fictionalized biographies will stick to the major facts of their subjects’ lives (like early baseball book Mudball, by Matt Tavares), or else tell us that we’ll be traveling off the path of real history and far into the woods of speculation (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, anyone?).

I think that Lewis Buzbee indeed warns us fairly that The Haunting of Charles Dickens uses just one bit of the writer’s life and runs through the alleys of London with it, as Dickens helps the Pickel family of printers solve a mystery. A fun book, with enough of the real Dickens in it that older readers will grasp how the wretched backstreet life that he witnesses becomes the heart of his books, but not so much literary insider talk that younger mystery fans will find it distracting.

On second thought, let’s just enjoy this book in honor of International Old Friends, New Friends Week, shall we?
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Book info: The Haunting of Charles Dickens / by Lewis Buzbee, illustrated by Greg Ruth. Fiewel & Friends (Macmillan), 2010. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer ]

Buzbee also wrote Steinbeck’s Ghost, another literary mystery for middle graders which received good reviews and would be a great read for Steinbeck fans of any age. Watch for his upcoming lit-mystery, Mark Twain and the Mysterious Stranger.

My Book Talk: Meg is frantic when her big brother Orion disappears from their family’s London printshop. Has he been captured by a press-gang to work on the new railway or sail away on a trading ship? Six months gone, with no word at all!

And he’d taken the last section of Great Expectations with him as well! Their good friend Charles Dickens had Meg gasping and laughing and worrying about Pip through the earlier parts of his book, but she never got to finish the story and she can’t stop worrying about Orion, even if he is 15 and old enough to take care of himself.

When she spots a strange green glow on a nearby rooftop, Meg asks Mr. Dickens to help her investigate. They find a spiritualist medium at work, using tricks to get money from sorrowful families who want to communicate with their dead loved ones. When actual ghosts come out to meet the pair on the rooftop later, they give clues about Orion’s disappearance.

Racing through the dim alleys, into London’s dangerous underworld of petty thieves and master criminals, Meg and Mr. Dickens follow Orion’s trail as they interpret signs and signals that point to a greater and more dangerous plot.

New antiques, tunnels to nowhere, a trip abroad without leaving London – can they find Orion before he disappears forever? Can Meg and Mr. Dickens stop the danger that threatens the whole city and still keep the famous writer’s name out of it? (one of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.