I actually didn't realise that Carlos Ruiz Zafon wrote young adult fiction, but I loved The Shadow Of The Wind, and I think this book has some tonal similarities. Following the death of her father in 1937, Irene moves with her mother and younger brother to a small island where her mother can work as …
Continue reading The Watcher In The Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
I think what strikes you first about de Bernieres is how human is writing is. It's mundane, describes the ordinary, or perhaps ordinary people caught up in history, in change. While war wages around the sleeping, pastoral island of Cephallonia, for example, goats must still be milked, fathers scolded and meals shared, distant politics debated, …
Continue reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
A dark fairy tale for older children or young teens, this one will also appeal to some adults too. With beautiful, dark illustrations, the book follows the story of a boy called Connor whose mother is very, very sick and who is visited by a monster who says it will tell him three stories …
Continue reading A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness & Siobhan Dowd
This book tells two stories about two girls. One a child acting out to deal with the loss and change around her, as her physician father moves closer to his work in what she calls a human zoo. The other, a young woman who appears on a road leading to Vienna, naked, beaten and telling …
In this story of psychological horror, a young doctor takes a position at an out of the way hospital for the mentally ill, where a new form of therapy is being undertaken on six damaged women, who are kept under permanent sedation in the Sleep Room. As the doctor notices the women's sleep cycles synchronising, strange …
I like Alice Hoffman books, with their subtle magic, darkness and everyday lives. I had forgotten that she also wrote young adult fiction, so when I ordered this one, it looked more like a novella. It's a sad book, the story of a 15 year old girl, whose parents and sister head into the city …
Everything is covered in cold, white snow in this novel of family trauma and intrigue in 1908 Wisconsin. Goolrick was inspired to write this book after coming across Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip, a photographic collection of residents of this area in the early 1900's with stories from records and newspapers of the subject's stories. …
Written by blogger The Virtual Victorian, this book tells the story of a 17 year old girl, Phoebe, coming of age caught between her strictly religious mother and beloved opera performer aunt. When her aunt kills herself after seeing a man from her past at a performance, family secrets start to emerge. Based in the …
A snappy, romantic tale of family secrets and restoring houses, this book is about a pretty realtor, Melanie, who inherits a crumbling mansion in Charleston from an old man she only met once. The house seems full of mysteries and secrets, but then, so is Melanie: ever since she was a little girl, she's been …
Set in the 1300's, a beautiful, wealthy widow comes to the small town of Lincoln with her children, shadowed by a mysterious one-handed man. When she starts up a friendship with a wealthy merchant, she soon worms her way into his heart, and as his wife starts to sicken, tongues start to wag. Is this woman using …
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