![]() Clique lit fans will recognize the familiar mix of label-dropping and mean girl behavior, but the dark mystery adds a compelling layer. ![]() ![]() Kicked out of her foster home and mistaken for Sutton by Sutton's friends and family, Emma starts living her privileged life the stakes rise dramatically when she learns her other half is dead. She tries to contact her, but a planned reunion goes awry when Sutton never shows up (readers know this is because she has been killed Sutton narrates the book as a ghost, unable to communicate with Emma, but eager to "solve my own murder"). Foster kid Emma never knew she had an identical twin until she sees an online video of a girl named Sutton being choked by a masked figure. Those who get past the improbable premise of Shepard's (the Pretty Little Liars books) series debut will find a fun and fast-moving mystery. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Prolonged periods of sub-freezing temperatures, high competition, and shortages of food all lower the probability of these birds to make it through winter. Northern, non-migratory birds must face tough winters every year. ![]() One possibility is that its range is limited by temperature. ![]() Photo by Bob Vuxinic from Crossville, TN. However, is that because of the cold, or because there isn’t enough food in winter? Peanuts are a good choice if you want to attract Carolina Wrens. Thus, their northern range seems to be limited by harsh winter. When winters are rough and snowfalls abundant, these birds may struggle to survive. Nonetheless, they visit feeders Carolina Wrens are tiny, active birds that are constantly in search of food to satisfy their high metabolic rate. ![]() Their diet consists mostly of insects with only about five percent being seeds and vegetable matter. Photo by Laura Frazier from Middleway, WV.Ĭarolina Wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus) are small, enthusiastic insectivores that people hear more often than see. If you see one visiting you feeder in winter, you might be helping it more than you think. Thanks to Facundo Fernandez-Duque for this excellent student blog post about Carolina Wrens and their love of feeders in winter. Blog One peanut can go a long way for a Carolina Wren ![]() ![]() ![]() While the landscape is beautifully portrayed and deftly mined for subtext and symbolism, the novel can’t overcome its central contradiction. When Gemma’s escape attempts end in near death, Ty rescues her, returning her to captivity, using such handy teachable moments to instruct her on outback ecology. Abandoned child turned wasted drifter and stalker, Ty is now an expert survivalist, bent on teaching his abductee admiration and respect for the harsh world in which he’s imprisoned her. Her captor, Ty, in his late 20s, is a less-successful creation. Privileged Gemma, 16, is sympathetic and believable. ![]() From its compelling opening, the novel delivers taut suspense and a riveting plot in a haunting setting. This debut novel about an English teen’s abduction and imprisonment in the Australian outback unfolds as a letter from captive to captor. ![]() ![]() ![]() Interstellar travel is an arcane art and only vaguely understood. Attempts to terraform planets are sometimes abandoned halfway through, leaving unstable climates and settlements exposed to the ravages of space. There’s a notion that the elite have a conscious plan of allowing the worst of humanity to die out in the name of civilisation. ![]() This is not an optimistic science fiction future in which all of our problems are solved - if anything, humanity faces more and bigger problems than at any other point in history, with a deeply stratified society causing misery and poverty for millions. The pervading sense of danger and chaos is communicated very well and the tone is unrelentingly dark, gritty, and realistic. The first volume felt like a prelude to a series of grand scope and in the second we see that series flower and unfold. ![]() While The Heretic was an excellent introduction to the fictional universe of Lucas Bale, Defiance goes deeper. The world of Beyond the Wall comes of age You can pre-order Defiance here: or Amazon UK. I was fortunate enough to be invited to read a pre-release version. Lucas Bale has been busy and has already made the second instalment in the series available for pre-order on Amazon. In my original review I wrote: “The author paints an uncomfortable and frequently bleak vision of a future in which humanity has spread beyond the ruins of an Earth destroyed by climate change and conflict.” The Heretic plunged the reader into a frightening and chaotic universe. Earlier in the year I reviewed the debut novel of science fiction writer Lucas Bale. ![]() ![]() ![]()
![]() ![]() When he’s not dropping hot takes on Twitter, Adam is a recurring co-host on the popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast Slayerfest98. Surrender Your Sons is a Young Adult thriller novel published in 2020 by author Adam Sass. (He’s sorry it distracted him from making your latte.) Though he was raised in an Illinois farm town, his desire for a creative career took him to Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and currently, North Carolina, where he lives with his husband and dachshunds. ABOUT THE AUTHORĪdam Sass began writing books in Sharpie on the backs of Starbucks pastry bags. But first, he’s exposing the camp’s horrible truths for what they are-and taking this place down. Connor plans to escape and bring the other kidnapped teens with him. Born Perfect is proud to support and partner with Adam Sass on his debut novel, Surrender Your Sons, a riveting thriller that. At Nightlight, everyone has something to hide-from the campers to the “converted” staff and cagey camp director-and it quickly becomes clear that no one is safe. Surrender Your Sons is an LGBTQ+ YA mystery / thriller that expertly blends together humor, horror, and heart, in a wholly unique read like no other. His final destination: Nightlight Ministries, a conversion therapy camp that will be his new home until he “changes.”īut Connor’s troubles are only beginning. His SAT scores bombed, the old man he delivers meals to died, and when he came out to his religious zealot mother, she had him kidnapped and shipped off to a secluded island. ![]() ![]() Connor Major’s summer break is turning into a nightmare. ![]() ![]() ![]() This beautiful Macmillan Collector’s Library edition of Brighton Rock features an introduction by the poet, biographer and editor, Professor Richard Greene.ĭesigned to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. A classic of modern literature, it maps out the strange border between piety and savagery. Set among the seaside amusements and dilapidated boarding houses of Brighton’s pre-war underworld, Brighton Rock by Graham Greene is both a gritty thriller and a study of a soul in torment. ![]() Rose, a naive young waitress at a rundown cafe, has the unwitting power to destroy his crucial alibi, and Ida Arnold, a woman bursting with easy certainties about what is right and wrong, has made it her mission to bring about justice and redemption. ![]() Pinkie Brown, a neurotic teenage gangster wielding a razor blade and a bottle of sulfuric acid, commits a brutal murder – but it does not go unnoticed. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Then the sole human the treaty allows into atevi society is marked for an assassin's bullet. Now, nearly two hundred years after that conflict, humanity has traded its advanced technology for peace and an island refuge that no atevi will ever visit. It was a war that humans had no chance of winning on this planet so many light-years from home. On this alien world, law was kept by the use of registered assassination, alliances were defined by individual loyalties not geographical borders, and war became inevitable once humans and one faction of atevi established a working relationship. It had been nearly five centuries since the starship Phoenix, lost in space and desperately searching for the nearest G5 star, had encountered the planet of the atevi. The groundbreaking novel that launched Cherryh's eponymous space opera series of first contact and its consequences ![]() ![]() Of the stories even more effective to read through and I was seriously creeped How horrifying these illustrations are as they make the horror aspects in each Was the illustrations done by none other than Stephen Gammell! Now, whileĪrtwork was highly controversial when this series first came out, I honestly love Reading genuinely terrifying tales, especially in October)! But, probably the best part about this book ![]() To being slightly scary but having a somewhat humorous twist towards the end (“Is Something Wrong)? I like the fact that Alvin Schwartz is able to juggle between horror and humor in thisĬollection as it made the stories interesting to read through (even though I haveĪlways preferred the more straight-forward horror themed stories since I love ![]() ![]() In the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”Įxcellent job at narrating these spooky tales that range from being deeplyĭisturbing (“Harold” and “Just Delicious”) ![]() ![]() She has also worked as a fashion and beauty editor and has written for many publications including The New York Times, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Allure, The San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney’s, Teen Vogue, CosmoGirl! and Seventeen. ![]() Her books for adults include the novel Cat’s Meow, the anthology Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys and the tongue-in-chic handbooks How to Become Famous in Two Weeks or Less and The Fashionista Files: Adventures in Four-inch heels and Faux-Pas. Melissa de la Cruz is the New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of many critically acclaimed and award-winning novels for teens including The Au Pairs series, the Blue Bloods series, the Ashley's series, the Angels on Sunset Boulevard series and the semi-autobiographical novel Fresh off the Boat. ![]() Her work as a fashion writer for Marie Claire was the inspiration for How to Become Famous in Two Weeks or Less which she co-authored with Karen Robinovitz. Her work as a nanny and her visits to The Hamptons formed the background for the book series, The Au Pairs. She went on to study art history and English at Columbia University. ![]() The family settled in San Francisco, where she graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School. ![]() Melissa Ann de la Cruz, daughter of Concepcion and Alberto de la Cruz, spent her early years in Manila in the Philippines and emigrated to the United States with her family when she was 12. ![]() |