Good Reads & Views

The Girl With All The Gifts by Mike Carey
Fiction

Melanie and the other students in her class live in cells and are strapped into wheelchairs before being brought into the schoolroom. Melanie loves her favorite teacher, Miss Justineau, even though the teacher sometimes seems very sad. Occasionally the doctor in charge will ask for a student or two, and those students are never seen again. So what’s really happening here? Why are the children fed only once a week, and why are they only fed grubs? This gritty horror story, soon to be released as a movie, will keep readers riveted.

In The Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters
YA Fiction

A colleague gushed about this book, saying she didn't usually read historical fiction but couldn't put this down. I really liked the historical details about WWI and the flu epidemic of 1918. For example, people used a lot of folk remedies, like eating lots of onions, to try to keep the flu away. I also liked the gutsy character of Mary Shelley Black, who loves mechanical things and science experiments.

Mary Shelley Black gets out of Portland right after her father is arrested for helping men escape the WWI draft. She goes to San Diego to stay with her aunt, a big believer in Spiritualism, who wants Mary Shelley to pose for another picture for Julian, a spirit photographer and brother to the young man Mary Shelley loves who is going off to war. Julian has been using Mary’s earlier picture as an advertisement for his business, but she suspects his ghosts are frauds ... until she sees a ghost herself.

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
Fiction

Vic “the Brat” McQueen has a special skill—she can find lost things simply by riding her bike across the Shorter Way bridge straight to wherever the lost thing is hidden. Finding things has its price, both psychological and physical, as Vic discovers the time she goes looking for trouble and finds Charlie Manx. Every year, Charlie Manx seeks out a special child to drive in his vintage Rolls Royce Wraith to Christmasland, where it is Christmas every day and children never grow up. The trouble is Christmasland exists for Charlie’s amusement, not the children’s. When he tries to take Vic to his special place, she escapes, the only child ever to do so. Years later, when Charlie takes Vic’s son Wayne for a ride, Vic and Wayne’s father Lou set out to get him back. Vic is fearless and heartbreaking, Lou is kind and loving and Manx is terrifying.  Block out some time on your calendar, because once you begin reading Joe Hill’s (Heart-shaped Box, Horns) latest, you won’t want to stop until you’ve read this hefty tome from cover to cover.