(4) YA Savannah Grey knows there is something very wrong with her throat. She meets a guy named Reece who has a similar problem, and the two discover that their voices are weapons designed by nature to kill a monster. Exactly how Savannah bests the monster (with love) is farfetched, but the book is fast paced with a unique plot twist.

Reviewer: Lauren Chambers

(4) YA Freya's obsession with angels led to years of mental illness and institutionalization. At fourteen, just when she's determined to attain normalcy, she starts to become an angel. Though the mundane aspects of the story never quite mesh with the philosophical, undermining the novel's intensity, McNish's dreamlike imagery and haunting characters anchor this ambitious parable about the agony of responsibility.

Reviewer: Claire E. Gross

(3) 4-6 Silver Sequence series. The carnivorous continent-size Roar reaches Earth, bent on satiation. All the children of the world have gathered at Coldharbour for protection, many strangely altered; five-year-old Jenny, transformed into a weapon, joins her giant winged brother as humankind's best hope. Tense action sequences blossom into a joyous, fulfilling conclusion, but it is the imagery--lyrical, mysterious, haunting--that will linger.

Reviewer: Claire E. Gross

(3) 4-6 Jack, who suffers from severe asthma, moves into a house inhabited by tortured spirits that only he can sense: four trapped children and the woman who consumes their souls while purporting to mother them. The Ghost Mother covets Jack's love and possesses his mother in an attempt to gain it. Haunting imagery and fully realized supernatural mythology charge this eerie ghost story.

Reviewer: Claire E. Gross

(4) 4-6 Silver Sequence series. Four children--Walter, who grows to be twelve feet tall; Freda and Emily, who walk like crabs; Helen, who reads minds--are drawn to the derelict mudflats of Coldharbour where they join forces with a young healer. Something bad is coming, and so far only these children sense it. Despite flat characterization, well-wrought atmospherics permeate this first volume of a projected series.

Reviewer: Dorrie Karlin

(4) 4-6 Illustrated by Geoff Taylor. Snatched from their cellar by the witch Dragwena and her minion Morpeth, Rachel and her brother Eric learn of their special powers to resist evil in the land of Ithrea. Spells, fantasy creatures, and many other types of magic abound in a detailed landscape. Though the story is derivative, the narrative is tight and fantasy fans will enjoy reading about Rachel heroically fighting Dragwena.

Reviewer: Frieda F. Bostian