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316 pp.
| Algonquin
| September, 2018
|
TradeISBN 978-1-61620-373-3$18.95
(2)
YA
Seventeen-year-old Bina (a self-confessed liar) runs away to Catherine House in Manhattan, where she's confronted with ghosts both real and imagined. Suma's Gothic chiller contains an unreliable narrator; a haunted boardinghouse; complicated female relationships; and a deliciously dark, moody atmosphere delivered in lyrical and evocative prose. Those who persist through duplicitous foreshadowing and dead-end clues will be rewarded with an eerie reveal that folds gracefully into a sweetly melancholic resolution.
(1)
YA
"Bloody Ballerina" Orianna Speerling, fifteen, is convicted of murdering two rival dancers. A month after her sentence begins, all forty-two girls at the detention center die in an unexplained mass killing. Ori's story is revealed through unreliable narrators Violet, Ori's best friend and fellow dancer, and Amber, another inmate. Lyrical, authoritative prose weaves the three girls' disparate lives into a single, spellbinding narrative.
360 pp.
| Dutton
| March, 2013
|
TradeISBN 978-0-525-42340-9$17.99
(3)
YA
Seventeen-year-old Lauren is haunted by missing seventeen-year-old girls. The first one is Abby, who appears in Lauren's van near the summer camp she went missing from. Others follow, until Lauren is consumed by their stories; soon it's clear that Lauren needs saving, too. The evocative first-person voice will linger long after this lyrical and riveting psychological mystery's unsettling resolution.
348 pp.
| Dutton
| June, 2011
|
TradeISBN 978-0-525-42338-6$17.99
(4)
YA
Like most people in town, Chloe does anything her sister Ruby asks. When a tragedy threatens to tear the sisters apart, Chloe learns the deadly lengths her sister will go to in order to protect her. Told through the overly doting eyes of Chloe, the plot sometimes drags. The mystery's resolution and supernatural elements may keep pages turning.
266 pp.
| Simon/Aladdin
| September, 2009
|
TradeISBN 978-1-4169-7564-9$15.99
(2)
4-6
Thirteen-year-old Dani sees the world through the lens of noir films that play at her small-town movie theater. That makes it easier to cast her dad as villain and her weepy mom as victim in their divorce; it also allows Dani to see herself in the role of detective, not meddler. Narrator Dani is a believably flawed character with an authentic voice.
Reviewer: Kitty Flynn
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
November, 2009
5 reviews
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