Navigating Early

Navigating Early
Clare Vanderpool
Fiction V28n

After his mother's death at the end of World War II, Jack Baker is suddenly uprooted from his home in Kansas and placed in a boy's boarding school in Maine. There he meets Early Auden, the strangest of boys, who reads the number pi as an unending story and collects clippings about sightings of a black bear in the nearby mountains. Feeling lost and adrift, Jack can't help being drawn to Early, who refuses to believe what everyone accepts to be the truth about the great Appalachian bear, the timber rattlesnakes, and the legendary school hero known as the Fish, who was lost in the war. When Jack and Early find themselves alone at school, they set out for the Appalachian Trail on a quest for the great black bear. Jack's ability to be a steadfast friend to Early will be tested as the boys discover things they never knew about themselves and others.

(From publisher.)

Hollow City

Hollow City
The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children
Ransom Riggs
Fiction R448h

September 3, 1940. Ten peculiar children flee an army of deadly monsters. And only one person can help them—but she’s trapped in the body of a bird.

The extraordinary journey that began in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children continues as Jacob Portman and his newfound friends journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. There, they hope to find a cure for their beloved headmistress, Miss Peregrine. But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk around every corner. And before Jacob can deliver the peculiar children to safety, he must make an important decision about his love for Emma Bloom.

(From publisher.)

Into the Still Blue

Into the Still Blue
Veronica Rossi
Fiction R7359i

The race to the Still Blue has reached a stalemate. Aria and Perry are determined to find this last safe haven from the Aether storms before Sable and Hess do—and they are just as determined to stay together.

Within the confines of a cave they're using as a makeshift refuge, they struggle to reconcile their people, Dwellers and Outsiders, who are united only in their hatred of their desperate situation. Meanwhile, time is running out to rescue Cinder, who was abducted by Hess and Sable for his unique abilities. Then Roar arrives in a grief-stricken fury, endangering all with his need for revenge.

Out of options, Perry and Aria assemble an unlikely team for an impossible rescue mission. Cinder isn't just the key to unlocking the Still Blue and their only hope for survival—he's also their friend. And in a dying world, the bonds between people are what matter most.

(From publisher.)

Curtsies & Conspiracies

Curtsies & Conspiracies
Gail Carriger
Fiction C235c

Does one need four fully grown foxgloves for decorating a dinner table for six guests? Or is it six foxgloves to kill four fully grown guests?

Sophronia's first year at Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality has certainly been rousing! For one thing, finishing school is training her to be a spy--won't Mumsy be surprised? Furthermore, Sophronia got mixed up in an intrigue over a stolen device and had a cheese pie thrown at her in a most horrid display of poor manners.

Now, as she sneaks around the dirigible school, eavesdropping on the teachers' quarters and making clandestine climbs to the ship's boiler room, she learns that there may be more to a field trip to London than is apparent at first. A conspiracy is afoot--one with dire implications for both supernaturals and humans. Sophronia must rely on her training to discover who is behind the dangerous plot-and survive the London Season with a full dance card.

(From publisher.)

Edda

Edda
Conor Kostick
Fiction K848ed 2012

When your whole world is virtual, what is reality?

Everyone in the universe of Edda is made of pixels—except for Penelope. While her body is kept alive in a hospital bed, her avatar runs free, able to go anywhere and do anything, including create deadly weapons for Edda’s ruler, her guardian Lord Scanthax. When Scanthax decides to invade another virtual world, Erik/Cindella from Epic and Ghost from Saga become part of the story—and soon the virtual universes are alive with fighting, alight with bombs, and brought together by three teenagers who want peace and understanding.

(From publisher.)

Saga

Saga
Conor Kostick
Fiction 848s 2009

Ghost is part of an anarcho-punk airboard gang who live to break the rules. And there's a good reason--their world, Saga, has a strict class system enforced by high-tech electronics, armed guards, and a corrupt monarchy.

But something is changing within Saga. Strangers are appearing and disappearing on the streets, like some kind of special effect. Soon Ghost and her gang learn the complicated truth. Saga isn't actually a place; it's a sentient computer game. The strangers are "playing" from their home on New Earth, and access to Saga works on them like a drug. The Dark Queen who rules Saga is trying to enslave the people of New Earth by making them Saga addicts.

And she will succeed unless Ghost and her friends -- and Erik, from Epic, and his friends -- figure out how to stop her in time.

(From publisher.)

The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean telt by hisself

The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean, telt by hisself
David Almond
Fiction Aℓ68t

Billy Dean is a secret child. He has a beautiful young mother and a father who arrives at night carrying the scents of candles and incense and cigarettes. Birds fly to his window. Mice run out from his walls. His world is a carpet, a bed, pictures of the holy island, and a single locked door. His father fills his mind and his dreams with mysterious tales and memories and dreadful warnings. But then his father disappears, and Billy’s mother brings him out into the world at last. He learns the horrifying story of what was saved and what was destroyed on the day he was born, the day the bombers came to Blinkbonny. The kind butcher, Mr. McCaufrey, and the medium, Missus Malone, are waiting for him. He becomes The Angel Child, one who can heal the living, contact the dead, bring comfort to a troubled world. But there is one figure who is beyond healing, who comes looking for Billy himself — and is determined on a kind of reckoning.

(From publisher.)