Midwinter Blood by Marcus Sedgwick YP FIC SEDGWICK

A reporter in 2073 investigates a remote island said to have discovered the secret to immortality, an archeologist in 2011 tries to dig the island's secrets from the ground, a downed pilot in WW II trying to go home, further back a painter, further back a ghost, further still a vampire, and last or first a Viking king.  Throughout it all a love that lives and dies again and again.  Seven stories that all make on tale of Midwinter Blood.

I can see very easily why this won the prestigious Printz Award. It is dark, lyrical, haunting, and stays with you every time you put the book down. It is a sad, beautiful, and frightening look at lives interconnected by love, loss, and violence. This isn't a ghastly and gory look-out-it's-right-behind-you!!! kind of book, it's a much creepier slow building tension. The feeling of inevitable and inescapable doom. The very first chapters introduce you to a strange, seemingly perfect island. Since, we've all seen the movies and read the books about perfect small towns, that alone puts the reader on edge. Sedgwick ratchets up the tension quickly but vaguely. You know something is very wrong, but not what. This will be a recurring theme!  

Sedgwick jumps each story further back in time repeating images, phrases, and similar characters. This can be maddening at first, because you get so little to go on to solve the ever weirder mystery. Even when you finish the book entirely you may feel like you have more questions than answers. I'd like to go on record as calling that a good thing. It's so refreshing to read a book that respects teen readers enough to let them come up with their own answers.

What's so great about this book, is that it's deep and simple.  Sedgwick relies on as few words as necessary making it a stark and spare style that fits his story and themes perfectly. It also makes it so much easier to be swept quickly again and again on the currents of time. This is a rare and unique novel that should be read by anyone that loves a good story, especially a dark and haunting one

You can find Midwinter Blood in our catalog here.

 

Bad Machinery: The Case of the Team Spirit

British artist and writer John Allison started his web comic career earlier than most — back in 1998. Though his stories and characters have changed, he sets his serialized comics in the fictional English town of Tackleford. He currently has been working on a comic series called Bad Machinery, which follows six mystery-solving Tackleford teens, all students at Griswalds Grammar School.

If patiently reading a comic strip panel by panel on an electronic screen isn't for you, fear not; last year Allison released the first print installment of Bad Machinery, called The Case of the Team Spirit (YP FIC ALLISON). (Volume 2, The Case of the Good Boy, is due out later this spring.) My colleague Luke, our young adult librarian, reviewed Team Spirit back in July of last year and I have to say I really agree with his take on the overseas import.

It's hard enough that classmates Shauna, Charlotte, Mildred, Jack, Linton and Sunny are having to navigate both a new school year and a new school. Before they know it, they're all embroiled in the same extracurricular mess. The girls resolve to help an old woman whose house is threatened because it sits on the site of a planned football (as in English football, i.e., soccer) stadium. The boys, on the other hand, are investigating why the local football team seems to be truly cursed with bad luck.

This is a fun, fast read that rocks along with humor that's both silly and snarky. The wonderfully drawn illustrations (and accompanying sound effects) tell half the story; they crackle with energy. Though the style is Allison's own, the comic has a manga-like feel to it because of its mix of heartfelt drama and sly wit. But the teens' sarcastic (and entirely believable) repartee is definitely the star of the show.

Allison does a great job of conveying the relationships between his main characters, the way they both support and snipe at each other. In addition, he populates Tackleford with a colorful cast beyond the story's six young protagonists, and gives each character a distinct personality, even the minor ones like the local bully and the resident middleman ("Johnny Swaps").

Teens and adults alike will enjoy the adventures of these young sleuths. They'll have you chuckling aloud and rooting for them as they attempt to right wrongs and and, oh yeah, suss out the supernatural while mollifying their teachers and family. We can all relate, can't we?

Dust City by Robert Paul Weston YP FIC WESTON

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?  Unfortunately, everyone in Dust City is, which means Henry Whelp is one marked canid.  His dad is doing hard time for the double murder of Little Red Riding Hood and her Granny, and everyone assumes murder is just in his blood.  When there's a murder at the St. Remus for Wayward Youth, Henry is the first and only suspect. He hightails it away to the dark alleys of Dust City, a place where fairy dust is real and addictive.  He'll have to find the real killer, find out the truth about what happened to Little Red, and solve the mystery of the missing fairies before he gets the axe.  

Fresh off our Fractured Fairy Tales display, Dust City is a supremely clever mix of magic, gritty hard boiled mystery, and fairy tale.  Henry like most the inhabitants of dust city is an evolved animal.  Wolves, foxes, ravens, and all the animals of Dust City have evolved to walk upright, have hands,and  talk, but they're still second class citizens to hominids. everyone in Dust City uses synthesized fairy dust called Dust that can heal wounds and alter minds. So this is a story about drug addicted animals and murder!  If you've ever read the Non-Disneyfied version of fairy tales, you'd know they're filled with plenty of grisly murder, so a hardboiled fairy tale is actually a perfect fit. A big part of the fun is finding the cleverly re-imagined characters from famous fairy tales. Weston does a great job of laying down a thick level of atmosphere.  He brings the wholly improbable to life and grounds it in a grimy and corrupt city.  Like the teller of tales of old, this book has dark morals, a wicked sense of humor, and is a way to use the fantastic to look at everyday life.  It did take me a couple of chapters to get the hang of how the world worked, but I ended up being glad that Weston revealed things a bit of a time.  It made the story feel more 'real' somehow to not spell out how the animals and magic worked as one big info-dump in the first few pages.  Dust City feels like a real place filled with fascinating, dangerous, and offbeat characters.  Anyone that enjoys fairy tales or new twists on fairy tales will find a lot to love in Dust City.

You can find Dust City in our catalog here.

Bad Machinery: The Case of the Team Spirit by John Allison YP FIC ALLISON

In less-than-jolly old Tackleford, England there are mysteries afoot, and two separate trios of youths are on the cases!  Shauna and Charlotte are total BFFs, but Mildred is totes butting in, will they be able to save poor old Mrs. Biscuits from the evil developer that wants to destroy her home to build a new football (the soccer kind) stadium? Jack, Sonny, and Linton want to solve the curse of the local football team (well Linton does, Jack and Sonny are just bored) who happens to be the aforementioned evil developer.  Also there may be a ghost!

This book is absolutely hilarious.  It is filled with clever gags, great characters and at least one joke on every page!  The book is a recurring webcomic (read it here), so that means every page has to have at  LEAST one joke and forces the funny to be on the money. The cast of sort of wonky 12 year-olds looking for something to do really drives a lot of the jokes.  They're in the middle of not being silly kids anymore and having no clue of how to start being teenagers. Allison has absolutely crackling dialogue and knows how to use lettering and pacing to maximize his jokes.  My favorite bit has to be when Mildred points out how illogical ghosts are, because if ghosts DID exist they would absolutely show up every time an American president made a speech to make fart noises. He also makes all the side characters wonderfully weird.  Even the mysteries which are silly and solved in a ludicrously lazy fashion by the kids pay off very nicely.  there are quite a few Britishisms, but they usally make sense in context and there is a helpful glossary in the back. All in all it's a must read for any one that likes their comics actually comic.

You can look for Bad Machinery: The Case of the Team Spirit here.

Mojo by Tim Tharp YP FIC THARP

Dylan Jones wants 'it'.  Charisma, the x factor, that undefinable something: mojo. With mojo, you have power, respect, without mojo you have Dylan, a practical non entity with just enough friends to count on two fingers.  After he (literally) stumbles upon a dead body in a dumpster, and the richest girl in town go missing, Dylan figures his knack of being in the wrong place at the right time might just lead him to solve the case and maybe finding some mojo along the way.

Full disclosure: I picked this book up hoping it would be a memoir by Mojo JoJo.It wasn't, but dag-nab-it I ended up reading it anyways! It is one of a group of mysteries that takes the hard boiled style of the detective stories of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett and transports them to a high school near you.  As a avid reader of those two-fisted who-dun-its I am a sucker for the gab and grit of those books thrown into a new setting.  Mojo does not disappoint.  It get's plenty hard boiled when our hapless hero happens upon some seriously out of his league criminality. Drug dealers, murder, kidnapping, private school gangsters, and class warfare all stand in the way of Dylan and his big scoop (and chance at some elusive coooool).  The book also has a serious humorous side as Dylan and his friends often crack wise (or crack stupid in his best bud's Randy's case) and find the funny side of crime and punishment.  It's like a bit darker version of the Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin (YP FIC BERK), which I loved. I will say that some of the close shaves Dylan gets out of are a bit fa fetched, but the book was so fun and fast paced I never really minded.  A great summer read for the mystery humor fans.

You can find Mojo in our catalog here.

Becoming Holmes by Shane Peacock YP FIC PEACOCK

Sherlock Holmes is at a crossroads. At 17 is seems his life may be over before it has begun. He has lost or is losing all the people that tied him to his past, the only chances of love he ever dared imagine for himself, and his future is the darkest mystery he has ever faced.  There is only one thing that can, pull him for the darkness of despair, a case! And it is the case of his young career, the evil mastermind Malefactor has finally tipped his hand.  Now Holmes and Malefactor begin a deadly battle of wits.  If Holmes survives this he may yet seize his destiny as the world’s greatest detective.

This is in many ways a perfect ending to Peacock’s excellent series.  It finally brings Holmes to the position to become THE Sherlock Holmes we know from the original mysteries. It even very cleverly accounts for differences in the original stories and this series in a dramatically satisfying manner.  One of the things that works best about this series is the mix of the very real London of the time (complete with real historical figures) and the classic mystery style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The dark and dreary streets of London are one of the greatest characters in the series.  The greatest triumph is crafting a believable young Holmes and giving his story enough weight that it feels like an important addition to the Holmes legend. Which is why the surprise ending of this book may be a betrayal to fans of Sherlock Holmes.  Peacock has Holmes do something many fans would never accept.  I would say that Doyle’s Sherlock would not have done what Peacock’s Sherlock does, but I think Peacock has built his Holmes in a way that it is believable and works with the original Holmes’ stories too.  Some readers may feel this is cheapening Holmes, but I loved the alternate view of Holmes that Peacock crafted and feel like it is one of the finest Sherlock series besides the original books.  I highly recommend you start this series from the very first book and read until this final chapter.  

You can check our catalog for Becoming Holmes here.

 

The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison YP FIC ELLISON

Lo (short for Penelope) collects things, well everything actually.  Is started as a hobby, it became an obsession. Ever since she couldn’t save Oren.  Shouldn’t have thought about him! Can’t breathe. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, banana, banana, banana. Better. But she can make it right, maybe.  She finally found something important.  A butterfly necklace that belonged to a dead girl named Sapphire. A girl killed when she was moments away.  It has to mean something. The girl that was killed was also deemed damaged and unimportant, as was her runaway brother, as is Flynt the young man that lives in the shadows of the streets and tells her she’s beautiful. Now she can’t stop thinking about Sapphire and has to find out who killed her.  But this obsession could prove fatal.

This book made my brain itch. It is a strange, dark, and twisty thriller.  Lo is a unique voice, because she is very disturbed and using Obsessive and Compulsive tics to try to push away her pain and sadness. Not the Nancy Drew type, clearly.  But that’s what makes the mystery so thrilling.  Lo is drawn to venture into in underworld of Neverland (the homeless kid shanty town) and Sapphire’s dark past, because she knows what it’s like to feel discarded and deemed a freak.  Also her obsessive nature means she notices things other people don’t, but fortunately it isn’t turned into gimmicky gift ability either. Ellison does a great job at getting into Lo’s scary psyche.  Her ticks and obsessions and overwhelming anxiety are very compelling and got deep under my skin.  That underlying unease and tension elevated the murder mystery element and made me feel that the danger was real and palpable in a way most thrillers never do.  I kept worrying for Lo in every dark corner she went down and jumping at every shadow with her. I won’t say I enjoyed being in Lo’s mind, but I certainly was affected by it.  That’s hard to do for someone that reads as many books as I do! The central mystery is complicated by the slow reveal of what happened to Lo’s brother and by the developing relationship with Flynt.  Which means Butterfly Clues is always working on multiple levels at the same time.  This book won me over in spite of myself and I found myself caring about Lo even as she drove me crazy.  If you like dark lit like Ellen Hopkins and want a creepy mystery with a twisted twist, definitely grab this one.  

You can check our catalog for The Butterfly Clues here.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield YP FIC ROSENFIE

Amelia Anne is dead but she isn’t gone quite yet.  Becca is ready to get away.  Get away from her small town and everyone that knows her, but the sudden violent death of a stranger keeps Becca stuck as her life seems to spiral out of control over a long summer.  She soon learns that she has more in common with a dead stranger than anyone she thinks she knows and loves, and that the people around her know more about the stranger’s death than they’re letting on.

This book is a weird hybrid between small town coming-of-age tale, gritty murder mystery, and poetic look at the similarities and differences between love, sex, and death. That may seem like an odd combination, and at times it does veer perilously close to melodrama, the end result is an original and powerful look at the perilous period between adolescence and adulthood.  The book occasionally gives chapters from Amelia Anne’s point of view, teasing the reader with knowledge the main character doesn’t have.  This also highlights how much Amelia and Becca have in common and how (and this is sort of a major theme of the book) people that never even meet in life can be connected by death and how violence has ripple effects no one could ever anticipate.  The slow reveal of what REALLY happened to Amelia really builds the tension and having the mystery develop from two points of view makes the story richer and more entertaining. 

Honestly, I had a hard time liking Becca at first because she’s going through a hard time and doesn’t handle it all that well at first.  Also, I immediately liked Amelia Anne and that made the comparison sort of unflattering, but Amelia is several years older than Becca and as I read on I started to see why the death of a total stranger was having such a bizarre effect on Becca. It’s to the author’s credit that she never spells it directly out for the reader and allows you to figure it out for yourself what lies beneath the surface. The prose is truly the shining star of the book.  Rosenfield makes the ordinary seem vital (which is crucial in a book that takes its time to build to any climax) and is able to slowly unfold a moment with her words.  I think Ellen Hopkins fans will appreciate this book (even though it isn’t in verse it’s beautifully written words often feel like poetry), but it moves slower than some of her novels.  It’s dark, sad, and offers no easy answers, but I think honest books about violence ought to be complex.  A very good and very rewarding read that isn’t for everybody, but that will stay with everybody that reads it.

You can check our catalog for Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone here.