Month: June 2014

Text Game
by Kate Cann (Author)

Booktalk: Mel’s so excited – she has a new boyfriend and he’s perfect. She can’t believe he’s going out with her. But then the weird texts start. They say Ben’s cheating on her, seeing someone else. Should Mel ignore them? Or could they be telling the truth?

Snippet: Ever since I started going out with Ben, I’ve felt great when I wake up in the morning, kind of happy, excited. But when I get up this morning there’s something horrible turning and twisting in my mined, ruining everything, and I know it’s that text.

Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

Twelve Minutes to Midnight
by Christopher Edge (Author)

Booktalk: Penelope Tredwell is the feisty thirteen-year-old orphan heiress of Victorian Britain’s bestselling magazine, the Penny Dreadful. Her spine-chilling tales–concealed under the pen name Montgomery Finch–are gripping the public. One day she receives a letter from the governor of the Bedlam madhouse requesting Finch’s help to investigate the asylum’s strange goings-on. Every night at precisely twelve minutes to midnight, the inmates all begin feverishly writing-incoherent ramblings that Penelope quickly realizes are frightening visions of the century to come. But what is causing this phenomenon?

Snippet: They arrived at Bedlam just after 11 p.m, the hospital suddenly looming in front of them out of the fog and drizzle. Above the entrance, its high dome and six-columned portico were wreathed in pale shrouds of mist, while the wings of the hospital stretched out on either side, countless rows of pitch-black windows staring out into the night like empty eyes. As they left their hansom cab and scurried inside, Penelope thought she could almost hear the low moans of the patients incarcerated there, carried on the chill wind that whipped across St. George’s Fields.

Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

Outside In
by Sarah Ellis (Author)

Booktalk: Lynn’s life is full — choir practice, school, shopping for the perfect jeans, and dealing with her free-spirited mother. Then one day her life is saved by a mysterious girl named Blossom, who introduces Lynn to her own world and family — both more bizarre, yet somehow more sane, than Lynn’s own. Blossom’s family is a small band of outcasts and eccentrics who live secretly in an ingenious bunker beneath a city reservoir. The Underlanders forage and trade for the things they need (“Is it useful or lovely?”), living off the things “Citizens” throw away. Lynn is enchanted and amazed. But when she inadvertently reveals their secret, she is forced to take measure of her own motives and lifestyle, as she figures out what it really means to be a family and a friend.

Snippet: “Where are we? What is this place? I mean, what was it before it was your house?”

“It’s one of the forgotten places. Fossick says it was some kind of construction storage area when they were building the reservoir. It got walled off.”

“How did you guys find it?”

“Fossick discovered it, before I was born. He likes to look around behind things. He says that even in a city there are many places unaccounted for. I’ve lived here my whole life.”

Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.