(3) YA Drawing on Balinese legend, this riveting horror story is chock-full of nightmarish sacrifices and grisly occult imagery. After being held as a suspected terrorist, Jesse longs to live unobtrusively in his new small-town home. He soon realizes, however, that he's the only one who can stop a raging, grieving teenage witch from unleashing an unspeakable evil. Jesse is an empathetic reluctant hero.

Reviewer: Amy Lee Bennett

(4) YA In this novel set in Aceh (on the island of Sumatra, in Indonesia) during the 2004 tsunami, American Sarah and Indonesian Ruslan make their way through the ravaged landscape searching for their fathers and for a doctor. Some superficial characterizations and an abrupt, unresolved ending mar the tale, but graphic descriptions of the storm and its aftermath are compelling.

Reviewer: Miriam Lang Budin

(4) YA Set in the weeks around September 11, this convoluted but intriguing novel seeks to explore the conflicts and commonalities between Christian and Islamic fundamentalism. Isaac and his friend Ismail (the Biblical parallels are explicitly outlined) are torn apart when an extremist group targets Isaac's Indonesian missionary school. Unfortunately, graphic scenes of torture alternating with long-winded theological explanations may lose many readers. Glos.

Reviewer: Norah Piehl

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Debra Frasier. "There--in the space of the sky is a field for the sun, a sea for the moon, clouds where storms can hide, stars where silence sings." This celebration of sky and earth (the spaces outside of us) and the world of dreams (the space within us) is interesting but too abstract to be truly compelling. Appealing cut-paper collage lends crispness and definition to the poetic but somewhat vague text.

Reviewer: Jim St. Claire