FREE BOOK FRIDAY

Check out this website, FREE BOOK FRIDAY. Every Friday they give away free copies of books. All you have to do is put in your name and email address. They also have some cool author interviews and what not.

Cool Website

Check out this website, all about the books THEY don't want you to read. pssh
click below

BANNED BOOKS

PRISM by FAYE & ALIZA KELLERMAN

Kaida and two of her classmates she doesn’t know well get stuck riding together in a van on a class trip to Carlsbad Caverns. Kaida drifts off to sleep and wakes up as the van careens off the road, rolls and burst into flames. Her and her two classmates escape and wait roadside in the desert. It starts to pour so they run into a cave. As they go deeper into the cave, Joy falls into a hole and the other two fall in trying to help her.

Suddenly, Kaida wakes up and she is at home in her own bed, about a week before the trip is supposed to take place. She figures it’s all a dream until she goes to school and both Zeke and Joy come to tell her that they had the same experience. Other things are off in the world they live in. As Zeke and Kaida are walking home, they see a man get struck by a car. No one seems to notice or do anything to help. Instead, a cleaning crew comes, cleans up the mess, and takes the man’s body. Nothing is quite the same as it used to be, so they try to uncover why, but they aren’t supposed to know the truth.

Faye Kellerman is a best selling adult mystery author and she wrote this one with her daughter. It's a great mystery with some action thrown in as well.

VACATIONS FROM HELL

Here's a fun one. A collection of short stories from today's best writers of teen fiction. This one is all about vacations that go terribly wrong, mostly from paranormal occurrences.
Authors include :
Libba Bray (Great and Terrible beauty- Gemma Doyle trilogy)
Cassandra Clare (Mortal Instruments series)
Claudia Gray (Evernight)
Sarah Mlynowski (Magic in Manhattan series) and
Maureen Johnson (Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes)

This is a great warm-up to the Halloween season. You could read a story each night for 5 nights and be done. Be sure to check out the first anthology Prom Nights from Hell which includes a story from Stephenie Meyer.

NEXT BIG THING?

Twilight spawned a whole slew of authors trying their hand at writing the "next big thing." So what series or book will be the next 'Twilight?'

The Hunger Games from Suzanne Collins has gotten a lot of buzz and the second book in the trilogy, Catching Fire, comes out September 1st. The trilogy is set in the future and the United States is divided into 12 districts with an oppressive government and shortage of food. Each year, group of kids are selected by lottery to compete in this massive reality show/game to win food for their district. Suddenly it's kill or be killed, all while the citizens of the district watch and hope for their competitor to survive and win them food.


The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (author of Coraline) is another hit for the popular writer. I could see this one being a Tim Burton movie someday. It is similar to the Jungle Book, but the young baby escapes a murderer and ends up in a graveyard. The ghouls and spooks of the graves raise him (they call him "Nobody") from infant to teenager, much like the animals of the jungle raised Mowgli. This recently won the Newbery Medal.






Wings by Aprilynne Pike is set to become a movie. It is the first of four books about a girl who suddenly sprouts wings on her back. She then discovers that her parents found her on their doorstep when she was a baby, so she goes about to uncover her past and who her real parents are.

BRUTAL by MICHAEL HARMON

Brutal is a cute book about Poe, who is sent to live with her absentee father after her mother deserts her to provide aid in South America. The story follows Poe as she tries to get to know her dad and figure out why he left their family in the first place. She has always been a free thinker and a bit of a trouble maker so, at her new school, she tries to stir things up by pointing out all the unfairness to school administrators. This causes some trouble as her dad is the school counselor. However, Poe thinks it is necessary as she is trying to protect her sort-of-friend Velveeta after he becomes the target of some vicious bullies.
The story was interesting, but I would have liked a little more character development with Velveeta and Theo. It was a fast read and will appeal to boys and girls age 13+

SO PUNK ROCK by MICOL & DAVID OSTOW

So Punk Rock (and other ways to disappoint your mother) follows 4 friends from a conservative jewish school who form a punk band. The band was the brain child of Ari Abramson, who just wanted to play good music. He recruited his best friend Jonas, who is in it for the "fame" and girls, the only drummer he knows- social outcast Yossi, and Yossi's sister Reena, who has to be in it because their parents insist.
Their band, The Tribe, is the first and only band to come from their school, so they quickly find themselves the talk of the town. This creates some trouble for Ari, who keeps the band a secret from his parents. Soon, they find themselves bigger than they can handle as egos inflate and Ari struggles to keep his secret.
This is a fun read and I learned a lot about Jewish culture as well. For fans of music books and humor.