When her father dies, a girl and her mother's futures are forever altered. As a 14-year-old living in a 17th-century Persian village, she expected to be contentedly married, looking forward to starting her own family, not unlike her best friend who is already heavy with...
After years of keeping secrets, Rakhee Singh's "demons" have finally "clawed their way free." Without confronting what happened to her family that summer in India when she turned 11, she finds herself unable to embrace her future – her impending architecture degree, her promising design job, and most importantly,...
I really, really don't want to tell you what this book is about because I don't want to ruin your delight of discovery. I knew nothing at all of its premise ...
First thing first: although every volume offers possibly standalone chapters, to get the full narrative arc, you really need to read them all in order. [Click here to check out the rest of Ikigami.] If you're not yet familiar with this chillingly effective, utterly addictive series, the most important...
As sensational as Hollow City is, Ransom Riggs' latest novel most definitely is not a standalone. Take that "The second novel of ...
Laila, 15, is newly arrived from an unnamed Middle East country. She's living in a modest apartment in the suburbs of Washington, DC, with her mother and younger brother. She's at a new school with new friends, and she's doing her best to adjust to her...
While production doesn't seem to have started just yet, news that Marie Lu's bestselling dystopic trilogy is coming to a theater near you keeps resurfacing since CBS Films bought rights to Legend in 2011. That Lu has a much-hyped new series, The Young Elites, hitting shelves this fall, will surely add pressure to...
Canadian cousins Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki’s first collaboration, Skim, won enough major awards to make their second title an eagerly anticipated publishing event. Get ready because This One Summer hits shelves May 6. And here's the bottom line: Summer is spectacular without a chance of sophomoric slump in sight. "Okay. Awago Beach is...
As I feel I know so little about the literature of our Down Under friends, I admit I'm surprised to find I've posted almost 30 titles with Australian origins here on BookDragon thus far. If you were to pop-quiz me on Aussie authors, my instant...
At 15, Farrin is the privileged only child in a tense, unhappy, albeit very wealthy family. Her father runs a construction company that takes advantage of illegal, desperate Afghan workers to make big profits. As successful as he might be, Farrin's mother continuously laments that she has...
In the small town of Caledonia, Iowa, Jewel stands out: she's "'half-Jamaican, a quarter white, and a quarter Mexican.'" As if to provide a physical embodiment of Jewel's hapa background, the audible producers cast Amandla Stenberg, who played the heartbreaking role of young Rue in the film version of The...
Christy Jordan-Fenton and her mother-in-law Margaret Pokiak-Fenton began publishing stories in 2010 about the older Pokiak-Fenton's difficult childhood as a young Inuit child growing up in Canada's Northwest Territories. Their four books in four years are comprised of two titles for middle grade readers, Fatty Legs and A Stranger at Home, which were then...
Check out this toothsome battle-cry: "The kimchi revolution: How Korean-American chefs are changing food culture" by Paula Young Lee for Salon.com. The article's first paragraph introduces a bi-coastal feast: Momofuku's NYC bad-boy David Chang (his signature cookbook is posted here) and L.A.-based Roy Choi. [The...
When I read Andrea Cheng's The Year of the Book almost two years ago, I had no clue it would turn out to be a series! Such staying power bodes well that later printings of Book have been fully corrected; click on The Year of the Book post for...
Okay, so what are the chances?! Varsha Bajaj's exuberant debut middle grade novel begins with a food allergy that sends her teen protagonist, the titular Abby Spencer, to the ER with an anaphylactic reaction. Talk about eerily prescient – less than 12 hours later, I'm repeating...
Meg Wolitzer's latest bestseller begins with an intricate overview of the hierarchy of privileged teenagers. In the summer of 1974, six 15- and 16-year-olds meet in Boys' Teepee 3 at Spirit-in-the-Woods, an arts-focused summer camp for the entitled, and baptize themselves the titular Interestings. Four of the...
*STARRED REVIEW "I do not specifically reveal the era or elucidate Korea's political situation," writes Kyung-sook Shin, recipient of the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize for Please Look After Mom, in the ending of her latest spectacular novel in English translation. Ironically, those missing details make this story...
"To transform suffering into art": Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan While the Vietnam War ended for the United States with the April 1975 military withdrawal, death and destruction continued, moving into neighboring Cambodia and Laos. With the evacuation of U.S. troops, the Communist...
Whenever I hear that a book is about to be transformed into celluloid, I get into a little panic to read the original, oftentimes titles I ironically wouldn't have opened otherwise. Occasionally, I'm pleasantly rewarded, Miss Peregrine among those few that fill me with literary gratitude....
I spent my last birthday with Sherman Alexie ...
