Archives par étiquette : JABberwocky

MAGIC BELOW STAIRS de Caroline Stevermer

In an alternate Regency England, a plucky young boy is hired be a wizard’s assistant and with help from his fairy guardian, he will excel at his job and break a curse on the wizard. This charming Middle Grade novel is set in the same world as Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede’s beloved Cecilia and Kate novels.

MAGIC BELOW STAIRS
by Caroline Stevermer
Dial Press, 2010
(via JABberwocky)

11-year-old Frederick is plucked from an orphanage to be a servant to the wizard Lord Schofield. With help from Billy Bly, the brownie who has been his « fairy guardian » over the years, Frederick quickly proves his worth and excels at the difficult tasks assigned by Lord Schofield.

However, Lord Schofield has banished all magical creatures from his holdings so Frederick must keep Billy Bly’s existence a secret. When Billy Bly discovers dark magic within the Schofields’ manor house, it’s up to Frederick and Billy to break the curse and save the manor.

Caroline Stevermer is the multiple-award-winning author of the Cecelia and Kate Novels, the College of Magics Series, the Glass Magician Series, and the middle grade novels River Rats and Magic Below Stairs.

RIVER RATS de Caroline Stevermer

In a post-apocalyptic world, a group of kids living on a steamboat rescue a downtrodden man and race to uncover a buried treasure before their enemies get there first.

RIVER RATS
by Caroline Stevermer
Open Road, 2022)
(via JABberwocky)

The award-winning author of the Scholarly Magic series delivers the thrilling adventure of a crew of young kids working their way through a post-apocalyptic world on a steamboat they call home . . .

No one knows for sure what caused the Flash. They just know that nothing has been the same since. Cities have been destroyed by pestilence, riots, and fires. The paddleboat River Rat, once a museum, was turned into an orphanage. But a dangerous storm forced the children to flee with the boat to safer waters, making it theirs for good.

Since then, Tomcat, Toby, Esteban, Lindy, Spike, and Jake have traveled, bartered, and performed their way up and down the Mississippi River. One rule that has served them well: no passengers. But after watching a man on shore being pursued by a vicious pack of locals, the group has no choice but to save him.

At every stop, the boat is met by the man’s tireless hunters. They want what the fugitive knows: the location of a bunker filled with guns. A currency more valuable than gold . . . and one that the crew of the River Rat might well pay for—with their lives.

This standalone Middle Grade novel was highlighted as a “Best Book for Young Adults” by the American Library Association (ALA), the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), and the New York Public Library. It also won the Golden Duck Award and the Golden Kite Award, both regional awards in the United States.

Série DREAD NATION de Justina Ireland

At once provocative, terrifying, and darkly subversive, DREAD NATION is Justina Ireland’s stunning vision of an America both foreign and familiar—a country on the brink, at the explosive crossroads where race, humanity, and survival meet.

DREAD NATION SERIES
by Justina Ireland
Balzer + Bray, 2018 – 2020
(via JABberwocky)

Book 1: DREAD NATION (April 2018)

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever.

In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.

But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.

But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose.

But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies.

And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.

Book 2: DEATHLESS DIVIDE (February 2020)

After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother.

But nothing is easy when you’re a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodemus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880s America.

What’s more, this safe haven is not what it appears—as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her.

But she won’t be in it alone.

Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by—and that Jane needs her too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not.

Watching Jane’s back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it’s up to Katherine to keep hope alive—even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.

Justina Ireland is the New York Times bestselling author of DREAD NATION and its sequel, DEATHLESS DIVIDE, as well as Vengeance Bound and Promise of Shadows. She is also one of the creators of the Star Wars High Republic series and is the author of the Star Wars adventures A Test of Courage, Out of the Shadows, and Mission to Disaster. She lives with her family in Maryland, where she enjoys dark chocolate and dark humor and is not too proud to admit that she’s still afraid of the dark.

WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYARD GIRLS de Grady Hendrix

In the vein of Rosemary’s Baby, Grady Hendrix’s next highly-anticipated horror novel takes place in the 1970s at a home for unwed mothers, exploring motherhood and women’s autonomy.

WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYARD GIRLS
by Grady Hendrix
Ace, TBD
(via JABberwocky)

Set in 1970, at a home for unwed mothers in Florida, this book follows five pregnant teenage girls as they wait out the last three months of their pregnancy in seclusion, hoping to have their babies, surrender them for adoption, and return to their regular lives. They must be hidden away from the public, their communications are monitored, and they’re not even allowed to share their real names with each other.

Each girl has a betrayal in her recent past that brought her here, whether it’s being ditched by her married lover, parents breaking up her planned marriage to a boyfriend they think is inappropriate, or rape. Then there’s Holly, barely 13 years old and enormously pregnant, who doesn’t speak at all. In the pressure cooker of the home, the girls begin to believe that the house is haunted, and they soon realize that most of the supernatural activity revolves around Holly. One by one they reach their due dates and come back from the hospital traumatized, prompting the remaining girls to vow that they won’t give up their babies, which sets them against the women who run the home and who are determined to get them to surrender their babies.

As the war between the girls and their social workers intensifies, it becomes very clear that the house isn’t haunted, Holly is. The father of her baby may not be human, and soon the house’s worst nightmare is going to come true as he shows up to cause a kind of trouble few people have seen and survived.

Grady Hendrix is the author of the novels Horrorstör, about a haunted IKEA, and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which is like Beaches meets The Exorcist, only it’s set in the Eighties. He’s also the author of We Sold Our Souls, and The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.

He’s also the jerk behind the Stoker award-winning Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the 70’s and 80’s horror paperback boom, which contains more information about Nazi leprechauns, killer babies, and evil cats than you probably need.

ESPERANCE d’Adam Oyebanji

Perfect for fans of Nnedi Okorafor and Blake Crouch, this book melds the ethicallycomplex Afrofuturism of Black Panther with the unflinching brutality of No Country for Old Men.

ESPERANCE
by Adam Oyebanji
Quercus, TBD
(via JABberwocky)

Ethan Krol is a white cop in Chicago with the misfortune of landing an impossible murder case. A Black father and infant son are found dead in the living room of a 20th floor apartment, drowned, with their lungs full of sea water — 700 miles from the nearest ocean. There are no signs of struggle and the victims’ wife and mother is found unconscious, but unharmed, in the bedroom.

Ethan’s initial investigation turns up eerily similar, unsolved cases in Rhode Island and Nigeria, and puts him on the heels of a phantom who can thwart every camera in our highly-surveilled, present-day world.

In Bristol, England, Abidemi Eniola is having as much trouble adjusting to her new surroundings as they are to her. While her appearance might place her as coming from Lagos, her accent sounds more like something out of 1950’s Hollywood. To better pursue her relentless agenda Abidemi recruits Hollie Rogers, a local Bristolian, who slowly realizes that Abidemi is capable of almost anything and that there’s nothing Hollie could do to stop her.

Of Scottish and Nigerian descent, Adam Oyebanji is an escapee from Birmingham University and Harvard Law School. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA with a wife, child, and two embarrassingly large dogs.