The Raven Boys - Maggie Stiefvater

Shadowland - Peter Straub

Shadowland - Straub, Peter

Summary: This horror classic is once again brought to life as two best friends, apprentices to a Master Magician, enter a dark realm of immeasurable evil, more ancient than death itself, where only one of them will survive.



Reviews
“Gripping.”—The Memphis Commercial Appeal

“Savor the novel to the fullest.”—Dayton Daily News

“Eerily effective.”—BusinessWeek

“You will be transported.”—Houston Chronicle

“A masterpiece.”—Richmond News-Leader

“A blend of…the old horrors that crouch in the dark corners of the adult mind.”—John Lutz, author of Jericho Man

“I thought it was creepy from page one. I loved it.”—Stephen King

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Nos4a2 - Joe Hill

 Nos4a2 - Hill, Joe

Summary: When Charles Talent Manx, an unstoppable monster who transforms children into his own terrifying likeness, kidnaps her son, Victoria McQueen, the only person to ever escape his unmitigated evil, must engage in a life-and-death battle of wills to get her son back.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In Heart-Shaped Box (2007) and Horns (2010), Hill showed hints of an enlarging literary toolbox. With this 700-page opus, the tool set is complete, and Hill has indeed built something very big. The story follows Vic, from 8-year-old girl to troubled teen to embattled mother, as she struggles to survive as a "strong creative"—one who has access (in her case, via a ramshackle bridge) to an alternate universe constructed from imagination. Problem is, a chief attraction of this other America is Christmasland, a snowy Neverland carnival controlled by cheery, ageless child-abductor Charlie Manx (think Bentley Little's Mailman or Stephen King's Pennywise). Manx tries to take Vic to Christmasland as a kid, and years later, in the book's central conflict, he tries to take her son. Hill doesn't spend much time in reality before careening deliriously off into a la-la land of horrifying absurdism (a bottomless Scrabble bag, a mouth full of fish-hook teeth). This engenders inelegance; at times, the parts are more than the whole. But Hill is omnivorous in his appetite for story and character, and here he has created his best: Lou, Vic's obese, warm-hearted lover; Bing, Manx's demented chief elf; and gutsy, heartbreaking Vic. Occasional drawings by Hill's Locke & Key conspirator, Gabriel Rodriguez, add one more element to this vast and gangly but undeniably readable work. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: What isn't being done for horror fiction's heir apparent? Big advertising, big author tour, big e-book teasers, big videos—even the advance reading copies are gorgeously produced. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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The diviners - Libba Bray

The diviners - Bray, Libba

Summary: Seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill is thrilled when she is exiled from small-town Ohio to New York City in 1926, even when a rash of occult-based murders thrusts Evie and her uncle, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, into the thick of the investigation.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Here's your headline, boss: "Small-Town Dame Lands in Big Apple, Goes Wild, Tries to Stop Resurrection of Antichrist." It'll sell bundles! Indeed it will, as Bray continues her winning streak with this heedlessly sprawling series starter set in Prohibition-era New York. Slang-slinging flapper Evie, 17, is "pos-i-tute-ly" thrilled to be under the wing of her uncle, who runs the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. Business is slow (i.e., plenty of time for Evie to swill gin at speakeasies!) until the grisly arrival of what the papers dub the Pentacle Killer, who might be the reincarnation of a religious zealot named Naughty John. Even Evie's new pals—hoofers, numbers runners, and activists, but all swell kids—are drawn into the investigation. It's Marjorie Morningstar meets Silence of the Lambs, and Bray dives into it with the brio of the era, alternating rat-a-rat flirting with cold-blooded killings. Seemingly each teen has a secret ability (one can read an object's history; another can heal), and yet the narrative maintains the flavor of historical fiction rather than fantasy. The rest of the plot—well, how much time do you have? The book is big and wants to be the kind of thing you can lose yourself in. Does it succeed? It's jake, baby. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: One need only peruse Bray's track record (the Gemma Doyle Trilogy; Going Bovine, 2009; Beauty Queens, 2011) to see that the heavy promo plans and author tour are well earned. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews

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The physick book of Deliverance Dane - Katherine Howe

The physick book of Deliverance Dane - Howe, Katherine

Summary: While readying her grandmother's abandoned home for sale, Connie Goodwin discovers an ancient key in a seventeenth-century Bible with a scrap of parchment bearing the name Deliverance Dane. In her quest to discover who this woman was and seeking a rare artifact--a physick book--Connie begins to feel haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials and fears that she may be more tied to Salem's past than she could have imagined.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Harvard graduate student Connie Godwin is determination personified. She will get her doctorate and find success as a historian, whether her aura-reading mother understands her bookishness or not. But first she has to contend with her tweedy adviser's oddly urgent demands and her late grandmother's incredibly old, long-abandoned house in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The house is cloaked in vines and stuffed with dusty old bottles and books, but its clutter yields a tantalizing scrap of paper carrying the words "Deliverance Dane." Connie hasn't a clue, but the reader knows, thanks to alternating chapters set in the late-seventeenth century, that Deliverance was a good woman accused of being a witch during the infamous Salem witch hysteria. Soon Connie, admirably sensible in the face of mystifying, even terrifying occurrences, zealously searches archives and libraries for healer Deliverance's "shadow book," while struggling to understand her own weird, new powers. Historian Howe's spellbinding, vividly detailed, witty, and astutely plotted debut is deeply rooted in her family connection to accused seventeenth-century witches Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor and propelled by an illuminating view of witchcraft. In all a keen and magical historical mystery laced with romance and sly digs at society's persistent underestimation of women. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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