Teen Pick of the Week: Twisted

Twisted: An Intertwined Novel by Gena Showalter
Sixteen-year-old Aden Stone has had a hell of a week. He's been: Tortured by angry witches, hypnotized by a vengeful fairy, spied on by the most powerful vampire in existence, and, oh, yea, killed--twice. His vampire girlfriend might have brought him back to life, but he's never felt more out of control. There's a darkness within him, something taking over...changing him. Worse, because he was meant to die, death now stalks him at every turn. Any day could be his last. Once upon a time, the three souls trapped inside his head could have helped him. He could have protected himself. But as the darkness grows stronger, the souls grow weaker--just like his girlfriend. The more vampire Aden becomes, the more human Victoria becomes, until everything they know and love is threatened. Life couldn't get any worse. Could it?

Check out the other books in this series! Book 1: Intertwined and Book 2: Unraveled

Click on the titles to place them on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Read a great teen book recently? Want to recommend it as Teen Pick of the Week? Email me!

Teen Pick of the Week: Glimmerglass

Glimmerglass: A Faeriewalker Novel by Jenna Black
Dana Hathaway doesn't know it yet, but she's in big trouble. When her alcoholic mom shows up at her voice recital drunk, again, Dana decides she's had enough and runs away to find her mysterious father in Avalon: the only place on Earth where the regular, everyday world and the captivating, magical world of Faerie intersect. But from the moment Dana sets foot in Avalon, everything goes wrong, for it turns out she isn't just an ordinary teenage girl--she's a Faeriewalker, a rare individual who can travel between both worlds, and the only person who can bring magic into the human world and technology into Faerie. Soon, Dana finds herself tangled up in a cutthroat game of Fae politics. Someone's trying to kill her, and everyone seems to want something from her, from her newfound friends and family to Ethan, the hot Fae guy Dana figures she'll never have a chance with...until she does. Caught between two worlds, Dana isn't sure where she'll ever fit in or who can be trusted, not to mention if her world will ever be normal again.

Read the following two books in this series with Book 2: Shadowspell and then Book 3: Sirensong!

Click on the titles to place them on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Read a great teen book recently? Want to recommend it as Teen Pick of the Week? Email me!

Teen Pick of the Week: The Scorch Trials

The Scorch Trials by James Dashner
Solving the maze was supposed to be the end. No more puzzles. No more variables. And no more running. Thomas was sure that escape meant he and the Gladers would get their lives back. But no one really knew what sort of life they were going back to. Burned by sun flares and baked by a new, brutal climate, the earth is a wasteland. Government has disintegrated--and with it, order-- and now Cranks, people covered in festering wounds and driven to murderous insanity by their infectious disease known as the Flare, roam the crumbling cities hunting for their next victim... and meal. The Gladers are far from done running. Instead of freedom, they find themselves faced with another trial. They must cross the Scorch, the most burned-out section of the world, and arrive at a safe haven in two weeks.

Be sure to read the first in the Maze Runner trilogy titled The Maze Runner by James Dashner. Also newly published is the third book The Death Cure by James Dashner.

Click on the titles to place them on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

New Fiction this Week

The Sisters by Nancy Jensen
Growing up in hardscrabble Kentucky in the 1920s, with their mother dead and their stepfather an ever-present threat, Bertie Fischer and her older sister, Mabel, have no one but each other--with perhaps a sweetheart for Bertie waiting in the wings. But on the day that Bertie receives her eighth-grade diploma, good intentions go terribly wrong. A choice made in desperate haste sets off a chain of misunderstandings that will divide the sisters and reverberate through three generations of women.

The River Killers by Bruce Burrows
Danny Swanson, Department of Fisheries and Oceans employee and ex-fisherman, isn't exactly upset when he's reassigned from a desk job in Ottawa to a job on the West Coast. His superiors think they're punishing him for insubordination, but Danny is pleased to be back on the Pacific, reconnecting with his old fishing buddies. Revisiting his past life, though, is trolling up some old memories, including a troubling incident from ten years ago, when Danny and his crew pulled up a deformed fish. His shipmate, Billy, reported it to the DFO in Vancouver. Billy and the fish were never seen again. Danny's buddy is on his mind when he stumbles across a photo of the fish in the DFO database, and now Danny won't let Billy's disappearance go unsolved.

The Curse by Harold Robbins
Art investigator Madison Dupre knows a fake when she sees it. When the mysterious Dr. Kaseem offers to pay her a handsome sum to "ransom" a scarab stolen from the tomb of King Tut, her gut tells her to walk away. Since she still needs to pay the rent, Madison throws caution to the wind and prepares to search for the Heart of Egypt. Before she can pack a suitcase, she finds herself framed for murder and on the run. Drawn to Egypt in search of the scarab, Madison is trapped in the land of pharaohs when her passport is seized at the airport. She knows she is being played by Kaseem, who believes the Heart has the power to galvanize the masses to support his secret cause.

True Crime and Hairdressing

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale
It is midnight on 30th June 1860 and all is quiet in the Kent family's elegant house in Road, Wiltshire. The next morning, however, they wake to find that their youngest son has been the victim of an unimaginably gruesome murder. Even worse, the guilty party is surely one of their number--the house was bolted from the inside. As Jack Whicher, the most celebrated detective of his day, arrives at Road to track down the killer, the murder provokes national hysteria at the thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class home--scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing.

Upper Cut: Highlights of My Hollywood Life by Carrie White
Behind the scenes of every Hollywood photo shoot, TV appearance, and party in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, there was Carrie White. As the "First Lady of Hairdressing," Carrie collaborated with Richard Avedon on shoots for Vogue, partied with Jim Morrison, styled Sharon Tate's hair before her wedding to Roman Polanski, and got high with Jimi Hendrix. But behind the glamorous facade, Carrie's world was in perpetual disarray and always had been.

Teen Pick of the Week: Heist Society

Uncommon Criminals: A Heist Society Novel by Ally Carter
Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life: Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she's simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That's why Kat isn't surprised when she's asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners. There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn't been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long--and in Kat's world, history almost always repeats itself. But it's the third problem that makes Kat's crew the most nervous, and that is... the emerald is cursed. Kat might be in way over her head, but she's not going down without a fight. After all, she has her best friend--the gorgeous Hale--and the rest of her crew with her as they chase the Cleopatra around the globe dodging curses and realizing that the same tricks and cons her family has used for centuries are useless this time. Which means, this time, Katarina Bishop is making up her own rules.

England, Spain, Ireland, and France

Tides of War by Stella Tillyard
Tides of War opens in England in 1812 with the recently married, charmingly unconventional Harriet prepared to say good-bye to her husband, James, as he leaves to join the Duke of Wellington's troops in Spain. Their interwoven stories of love and betrayal propel this sweeping and panoramic novel as it moves between Regency London on the cusp of modernity--a city in love with science, the machine, money--and the shocking violence of the Peninsular War. When Harriet befriends the older and protective Kitty, Lady Wellington, her life begins to change in unexpected ways.

The Chisellers by Brendan O'Carroll
Mother. Father. Business consultant. Cop. To her seven high-spirited "chisellers," Agnes Browne is all of these, and more. In the Dublin working-class neighborhood known as The Jarro, it's the Browne clan against the world--and against the backstreet villains and white-collar emissaris of market forces that threaten to tear this upwardly aspiring family apart. The Browne brood is about to be relocated to the wilds of suburban Finglas when their tenement is demolished as part of an "Inner City Renewal Plan." With the help of her ambitious eldest boy and her persistant French suitor, Agnes copes with the ups and downs of "rural" life, one unscrupulous gangster, and the son who is well on his way to breaking his mother's heart.

Obedience by Jacqueline Yallop
Sister Bernard has lived in a grey-stone convent in rural France for more than seventy years. In that time, a once youthful and lively cloister has gradually emptied, until only Bernard and two other nuns remain, a knot of survivors facing the creeping challenges of old age--ailing bodies and worn-thin friendships, slips of minds and, in their most secret moments, slips of faith. Now, the halls will fall silent as the three women pack away their few possessions into wooden boxes, preparing to leave the building that has been their home for decades.

Teen Pick of the Week: Soul Surfer

Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board by Bethany Hamilton
They say Bethany Hamilton has saltwater in her veins. How else could one explain the passion that drives her to surf? Or that nothing--not even the loss of her arm--could come between her and the waves? That Halloween morning in Kauai, Hawaii, Bethany responded to the shark's stealth attack with the calm of a teenage girl with God on her side, resolutely pushing aside her pain and panic while being rescued and brought back to shore. "When can I surf again?" was the first thing Bethany asked after her emergency surgery, leaving no doubt that her spirit and determination were part of a greater story--a tale of personal empowerment and spiritual grit that shows the body is no more essential to surfign, perhaps even less so, than the soul.

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