Book Festival Press Release

Click on the image below to see the press release for next Saturday's book festival.  There is a great interview with photos and a schedule of events for the day!

Guadalupe Garcia McCall!

Crystal Allen!

Diana Lopez!

This is audio only.  Sorry, I couldn't find one with video, but it's still a good interview!  :)

Gordon Korman!

Wendelin Van Draanen!

Tim Green!

The Eye of Minds

Michael is a gamer who spends more time on the VirtNet than he does in reality.  He's never even met his best friends, Sarah and Bryson in the real world.  He's pretty content with his life of gaming and hanging out until one day he witnesses a girl committing suicide.  Usually when you die in a game, your body just wakes up, but Tanya ripped out her core before she jumped.  With her connection to her real body severed, virtual death is the same as real death.  Michael can't understand why she would do it, and all she will tell him before she goes is a name:  Kaine.

Now Michael and his friends are on a mission to find Kaine, a gamer with the skills to trap people in the VirtNet and manipulate the raw code to create his own reality.  They may not be able to die in the VirtNet, but they can certainly feel pain, and the trio of friends will have to face dangerous and bloody situations as they track Kaine.

The deeper they travel, the more they question the real purpose of their mission, and Michael has the distinct feeling that everyone is holding back key information that could mean the difference between life and death.

This was a great thrill ride!  The ending was a little rushed, but that will just leave you hungry for the sequel.

Read James Dashner's exciting new book, and then read The Maze Runner before the movie comes out later this year!

Book Festival!

School Spirits

Izzy Brannick is trained to fight monsters.  That's all her family has done for centuries, but it's a dangerous job, and there are only a few Brannicks left.  Really it's just Izzy and her mom since her older sister Fin went missing on a job a few months ago.

Izzy's been distracted since Fin disappeared, so her mom decides they are going to go on an extended job in Ideal, Mississippi, to get rid of a little ghost problem.  It should be an easy job.  All Izzy has to do is salt the ghost's grave and problem solved.

But things are quite that easy.  Izzy will have to enroll in the local high school to investigate the haunting, and she may be fifteen, but she's never been to school or had any real friends before.  Her missing sister, and a teenage warlock whose been trapped in a mirror for a couple of centuries are the only "friends" she has.

Izzy quickly befriends the kids in the Paranormal Management club at school thinking they can help her with background research, but she quickly discovers she actually likes them, and this tough monster hunter is faced with the idea of having real friends and maybe even a crush.  But they don't know the truth about Izzy or that she'll be leaving as soon as the job's finished.

This "routine" job takes a twist for the weird, and Izzy may need all the help she can get to banish an angry ghost bent on getting revenge for a one hundred year old crime.

This series opener by Rachel Hawkins is fun, flirty, and dangerous!

Perfect Ruin

Morgan has lived all her life on Internment, a floating city from which no one can escape.  There are those who've tried--jumpers who are left permanently damaged by the attempt, like her older brother Lex.   Even though Morgan sometimes dreams of the ground and what life might be like there, she feels safe on Internment.  But the discovery of a murdered girl will change the way she sees her city forever, and when the king announces the girl's betrothed as her killer, Morgan is horrified.

The people of Internment are matched from birth to each other.  The city is small and can't support unlimited population growth, so new children can only be born when adults die.  And two children, a boy and a girl, are always approved together.  This way they can grow and learn as a pair, creating a bond that will eventually result in marriage.  Morgan is lucky; she loves Basil.  Not everyone is so perfectly matched, but Morgan is horrified by the thought that one part of a betrothed couple could murder the other.

The more she considers this, the more she begins to really examine her world and doubt the things around her.  Her secret fear is that she too will become irrational and try to jump or something equally horrifying.  Would Basil still love her if he knew the truth?

The more Morgan questions, the more the world around seems to unravel.  Internment is hiding more secrets than Morgan ever considered, and she may be in more danger than she ever thought possible.  

Lauren DeStefano's first book in the new Internment Chronicles series is lush, romantic, and dangerous with a cliff-hanger ending that will leave you hungry for the next installment!

Doll Bones

Zach loves playing the game with Alice and Poppy.  Using dolls and action figures they create elaborate long running tales of adventure and intrigue, but when Zach's dad comes home after a long absence, he decides his son is too old for dolls.  With the action figures gone, Zach feels like his characters are dead.  How can the game go on?

That's when Poppy decides to liberate the queen from the glass case in her living room.  The queen is old and kind of creepy, and once she's out, she tells Poppy she is made from the bones of a dead child named Eleanor, and Eleanor isn't going to rest until her bones are returned to her grave.

Zach and Alice aren't sure they believe Poppy at first, but strange things keep happening, and soon the three friends are headed off on a quest to calm and angry ghost.

Read Holly Black's new tale of friendship, adventure, and a haunted doll!

Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library

When Kyle Keeley learns that the new public library was designed by his favorite game maker, Mr. Lemoncello, he knows he has to be there.  There is an essay contest for twelve twelve-year-olds to win a spot in a library lock in to try out all the awesome library features before anyone else.

What starts out as a normal lock in turns into the ultimate live action game with a fabulous prize.  The contestants have just 24 hours to solve a series of clues, be the first to escape the library, and become the spokesperson for Lemoncello's Games.

Using the library resources, Kyle quickly begins forming alliances and solving the clues.  He was born for this!  He's Mr. Lemoncello's biggest fan, and there's no way he's going to lose even with the annoying and entitled Charles Chiltington working against him.

With enough literary name dropping to stir the heart of any determined bibliophile, this puzzle mystery will keep readers on their toes as they work to solve the puzzles with Kyle and his friends.  It has a bit of a slow start, but once it gets going it's a fun mix of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Wesitng Game!  Will Kyle and his friends solve the clues and learn to love the library in the process?  Read Chris Grabenstein's new book to find out!