Fantasy/Short Stories: Lips Touch Three Times

New writer Laini Taylor has a gift for creating unique, mesmerizingly fallible characters. In this insipred collection of short stories, three strong female heroines navigate curses, goblin entrapments, and alternate worlds.

The three fantasy tales are each illustrated with short graphic prequels in rich reds and blacks. These graphic introductions give readers a backstory that can't be fully understood until they unravel the text of the tales.

The stories all have a thread of romance, and a chilling core of horror. The author has woven legends, zoroastrian myths, and victorian poetry into a compellingly dark series of tales where the good may not always come out on top.

Fantasy - Short Stories

Grades 10 and up

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Fantasy: Fire

Fire is a monster. She looks human, but she's part of a separate species; her kind appear similar to normal animals or people, but they are incredibly, irresistably attractive. Kings and paupers alike are drawn to them, and for Fire, this is a curse.

Fire has spent her entire life hiding her wild flame coloured hair, and trying to pass as normal. She fears that her monstrous gift - to read and influence the minds of men - will be used for evil by those in power. People fear her power at the same time as they adore her, and she lives under a constant threat of assassination.

But inside, Fire is a normal girl, with hopes, fears and desires of her own. When she is summoned to the King's palace to help uncover a plot against the country, Fire decides to go despite the risk to herself. She knows that many in the King's city will hate her for her power, and believe that she is a risk to the throne: nevertheless, Fire knows that she can't stay in seclusion forever, hiding her face and her gifts.

Fire's journey to the capital is fraught with danger and, strangely, romance. She struggles to understand her place in human society, and wrestles with the fears and joys that are part of every adolescent's experience.

This powerfully written fantasy novel is a gripping read, full of internal growth and struggles. It's a companion book to Kristin Cashore's other award winning book "Graceling", but does not need to be read as a sequel.

Fantasy

Grades 10 and up

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Suspense: Ruined

Rebecca isn't too pleased about being uprooted from her stylish New York City life, and transplanted to the middle of New Orleans. Sure, she'll be living with her aunt and cousin in the famous garden district, but what about all her friends, her school, her life? But it's not like she has a choice: her Dad will be working in China for a few months, and that means she has to go.

The Garden District shows no signs of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, but Rebecca begins to suspect that something even more destructive lies beneath the old money attitudes and southern manners of the girls and boys at her exclusive new private school. They hang out at night in the creepily elegant Lafayette cemetary, and there's talk of centuries-old curses and murder.

No one will tell Rebecca anything about what's going on, though they all seem to know something: so when she meets a honest to goodness ghost in the cemetary, she takes the opportunity to ask a few questions of her own. Pretty soon, Rebecca is caught up in the resolution of the curse...and she's far more involved than even she realizes.

A spooky and atmospheric tale that includes a fair amount of really interesting history about race relations and the foundation of fabulous city of New Orleans.

Suspense

Grades 10-12

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Fantasy/Horror: Malice

Malice is the perfect book for kids who aren't afraid of the dark. Believe me, there's plenty of darkness in this graphic novel hybrid! Part comic, part thriller novel, this book will keep middle schoolers on the edge of their seats with a mix of horror and suspense.

Everybody at Kady's school has heard of Malice. It's a secret comic series about an alternate world, full of deadly tricks and traps. The sinister Tall Jake is master of this alternate reality, and if you want to get in, you must say the rhyme six times: Tall Jake, take me away.

Kady is overcome by trepidation when her friend Luke says the rhyme. She's not sure why, but she knows that Malice is evil, and that Tall Jake is no fairytale meant to scare gullible kids. When Luke disappears the very next day, Kady and Seth are sure that something horrible has happened. There's only one way to help Luke, and that's to enter the nightmare world of Malice...and do their best to survive.

This wildly popular book is unique and original in it's darkly inventive descriptions (and pictures!) of Malice's beasts and monsters. Highly recommended for brave kids.

Fantasy/Horror

Grades 7-10

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Adventure/Thriller: Lockdown

Lockdown is the ferocious new title in Alexander Gordon Smith's new series, Escape from Furnace. For kids who like Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series, or Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak, this book will strike exactly the right balance of adventure and terror.

The trouble started when Alex got caught. Sure, he'd been stealing cars and breaking into houses since he was a kid, but he'd never been busted by the cops...until one night, the B&E seems just too easy. Sure enough, there's someone waiting inside...and they're not the police. Not even close.

Alex runs, but there's no escape. Soon he's in jail for a crime he didn't commit: murder one. And not just any jail, but the infamous Furnace Penitentiary, a state of the art prison for young offenders. Years ago, England decided to deal with the gang problems by building the most sophistocated prison ever. It sinks down miles underground, built into a deep crevice in the rock. No one has ever escaped: anyone who tries is executed with extreme prejudice. Alex can feel hope falling away from him with every metre the elevator drops, but he hasn't got a clue what's really going on in the guts of Furnace's tunnels.

Death is the least of Alex's worries when he reaches the bottom of the pit, for the boring mundanity of prison jobs and tasteless slop for meals is punctuated by the terror of being hauled away by the nightmarish prison guards, and turned into something horrible. Escape is the only option for Alex, because he knows that even in death there's no way out of Furnace.

Adventure/Thriller

Grades 8-12

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