The dead hold no terrors for me. But this little maid was a ghastly thing…it was the holes where her eyes should have been

Lots of new books arriving this month – here’s a taste of 5 of them – all ghost stories:

                   

Beyond  by Graham McNamee  
Jane and her best friend Lexi call themselves the Creep Sisters. Only Lexi knows why Jane is different from anyone else: her own shadow seems to pull her into near-fatal accidents. Jane is determined to find out why these terrifying things happen and to overcome her shadow enemy.  But her sleuthing connects her to the secret history of a serial killer.

Paper valentine by Brenna Yovanoff
Hannah’s best friend, Lillian, starved herself to death 6 months ago. Hannah has been haunted by her ever since, and now Lillian’s ghost wants Hannah to find out who has been killing girls in their suburban neighbourhood. Hannah is drawn into a horrifying world of ghost girls and frightening secrets.

The house of dead maids   by Clare B. Dunkle
Tabby thought she was at the dusty mansion of Seldom House to be a maid, but she’s not being asked to cook or clean.  Then a small boy arrives, insisting he’s the master of the house and Tabby is to be his playmate. The young master is a savage little creature, and the house is haunted. Tabby is afraid for her life.

The madness underneath  by Maureen Johnson
Surviving a near fatal attack by a ghostly killer will leave its mark. Seventeen-year-old Rory Devereaux has painful scars and deadly new powers at her fingertips. But without her secret ghost-fighting squad she feels brutally alone. She’s lying to her boyfriend, failing in class and, worse still, Rory fears that a terrifying horror stalks the streets of London.

Ghosts of Parihaka  by David Hair
Life hasn’t been easy for Matiu Douglas, magical Adept. One of his friends is now a ghost, his enemies have stolen the Treaty of Waitangi, he can’t date the girl he really likes and he keeps getting unwanted marriage proposals from a dangerous, centuries-old tohunga’s daughter. But when his best friend, Riki, is snatched into the ghost-world of Aotearoa during a school trip, Mat has to put all his other worries aside and act fast. For Riki vanished at Parihaka, scene of one of the darkest acts from New Zealand’s colonial past, and in Aotearoa such places are deadly dangerous.

A young girl must lead her tribe into the future on an island that time forgot

Island’s end  by Padma Venkatraman

“Uido is ecstatic when she’s chosen to become the oko-jumu, or spiritual leader, of her island tribe. But as excited as she is to complete her training, what looms largest on Uido’s mind are the strangers from a nearby island who have started visiting her island”.  Uido has a visionary dream, where a spirit commands her to go to the beach one early morning. As she and her little brother, Tawai, wait cautiously at the jungle edge, a metal boat bearing three strange men arrives on their shore. Uido is compelled to chase them away, running at them and shouting until the strangers leave.  But they do return, several days later, and now Uido’s peaceful island life is under threat.  She must face the rigorous training required of one who is chosen to be oko-jumu, try to win the trust of her people, and find a way to balance the harmonious traditions of their old ways with the influences of the outside world. 

I enjoyed this book, partly because it is set in a real place, the Andaman Islands, which lie hundreds of miles east of India in the Bay of Bengal, and it is an area of which I had no prior knowledge. The author, Padma Venkatraman, was born in India,studied in the US, and lived in the Andaman Islands for a year as part of her oceanography studies.  So I did a bit of googling around and looked at maps, just to get a better feel for the history and nature of these islands. What a beautiful groups of islands, and its so amazing to learn that there are still a few native tribes living in the islands, struggling to preserve their culture.  Also, the tsunami that happens in the story is the catastrophic Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 that killed over two hundred thousand people in the region. And it is true that some of these  tribes survived the catastrophe because their ancient knowledge of the natural world provided them with warnings so that they fled to the safety of higher ground.

She taught me how to believe in magic, how to swallow spells

Without Tess    by Marcella Pixley

“If you look inside Lizzie Cohen’s high school locker, you will see that her world is falling apart…On the top shelf, beneath an old sweater, she is hiding something. A secret. It is a battered journal that used to belong to her older sister, Tess, who died six years ago.”   This Pegasus Journal is filled with Tess’s drawings and poems, evidence of an highly imaginative young girl who believed in magic, believed she was a selkie, believed she could fly, and wanted her younger sister Lizzie to always be a part of her fantasy world. But when Tess makes friends with a new girl who moves in next door, Lizzie is fearful of losing her sister’s companionship. As the girl’s parents become increasingly aware of the serious side to Tess’s imaginations, Tess herself seems to slip even further away from reality.  This is a beautifully told tale of the love between siblings, of the fine line that exists between what is happening in the “real world” and the way we interpret this inside our own heads.  With Tess gone from her life, Lizzie has to come to terms with the terrible guilt and loss she is experiencing. The Pegasus Journal and the wise guidance of her counsellor, Dr. Kaplan, help Lizzie to find peace.

“She taught me
how to believe in magic
how to swallow spells
without water, letting them
slide down my throat like
egg whites.
She showed me
how to run my tongue
over a lie, keep it safe
in the corner of my cheek
so I could taste it every time.
But now years have passed.
My jaw aches.
I long to unclench,
part my chapped lips,
let the truth
finally slide through my teeth
white and clear as rain.”

What do boys REALLY want? Adam thinks he knows – Lita is pretty sure he doesn’t.

What boys really want   by Pete Hautman

Lita and Adam are JUST FRIENDS. They think they know each other pretty well, but when Lita asks Adam “What do you really want? ..You as in boys. Adolescent males”, Adam replies “Fast cars, fast women and a kick-ass sound system”.  But Lita doesn’t believe him.  Adam observes: “Arguing with Lita is like trying to eat an ice-cream cone from the bottom up. Very messy”. So Adam sets out to write a self-help book about what boys want, and Lita tries to break up his relationship with the skankiest girl in school.  A funny, insightful look at relationships.

I haven’t blogged for a week as we’ve had a major loss in my family – still reeling and not reading much.  Thought I’d preview something light and fluffy that’s sitting on my new books shelf.
“ When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”  Kahlil Gibran

It’s a prison, a blood bank, a death camp – where fear and paranoia rule.

The farm     by Emily McKay

Just finished reading this book yesterday with very mixed feelings.  A potentially exciting plot, for sure.  The brave young heroine, Lily, is incarcerated on The Farm with her autistic twin sister Mel. The Farm is not just a prison; it is a blood bank, and young people are held there, “milked” for their blood, and used for breeding purposes.  Lily’s determined to protect Mel, and they keep themselves tucked away in a storage cupboard in a semi-deserted building.  All the prisoners are electronically chipped so they can be monitored as they come in for meals, and when they are herded in to give blood. The world outside the Farm has been over-run with Ticks – sub-human zombies with monstrous strength and speed – who seek out humans to feed on.  Lily has a plan for her and Mel to escape from the Farm, but she knows that their chances of survival are slim.

A few days before Lily plans to escape she has a bruising encounter with a new arrival at the Farm, who seems to be spying on her and Mel.  Fearful that he will turn her in to the authorities, she finds it hard to trust him even when he says he has been looking for her since they were classmates together at the same school, in the time before the Ticks ravaged the land.  But when Lily’s attempt to break through the electric fence surrounding the farm goes horribly wrong, she has to put aside her misgivings and work together with this new guy, Carter, and his strange, other-worldly colleague, Sebastian.

The plot gripped me at first but then it got a bit out of hand.  The characters are OK - I found Lily to be strong and determined, but her responses to Carter’s affection and her constant arguing and indecision irritated me.  (I get annoyed when in books and movies, in the midst of being stalked by blood-sucking monsters, characters stop for a kiss!!  Like, really??)  And some things were repeated far too often, like how Lily must protect Mel at all costs, and how she regretted her initial opinion of the pregnant McKenna, and could she really trust Carter?    Perhaps there was just too much of everything in this novel – zombies, vampires, romance, paranormal powers, all wrapped up in a dystopian setting – by then end it had become so unbelievable that I’m not hanging out for the sequel, The Lair, due for publication in November 2013.

A perfect specimen of Hitler Youth

 Auslander  by Paul Dowswell  
Peter was born in Poland but he is of German blood. When both his parents are killed in 1941, he is sent to an orphanage in Warsaw. Because he is a perfect specimen of Hitler Youth, with his blond hair and blue eyes, someone important adopts Peter. At first Peter is happy to be out of the orphanage and living a privileged life in Berlin, but as the Nazi atrocities grow, he does not want to become a Nazi himself, and begins to take greater risks to follow his own treasonable ideas.  “Paul Dowswell weaves meticulous research into a thrilling narrative, exposing a different angle of the horrors of Nazi Germany.”

An interesting perspective on how Hitler held such power over the German people, and although the story is slow-moving, it is engrossing and reaches an exciting climax.

Dangerous promises and beguiling threats swirl together in a dozen stories …

Faery tales & nightmares  by Melissa Marr

If you’re a Melissa Marr fan you’ll want to get your hands on this new book.  “Tales of favourite characters from Marr’s Wicked Lovely novels mix with accounts of new characters for readers to fall in love with … or fear” .

Short of attention span?  Short of time?  Short stories grab you?  Have a look here at our Short Stories board on TeenTheme Pinterest for some more enticing morsels!