Parenthetical

Briony Larkin is a witch. Her stepmother told her so before she died, a death for which Briony feels responsible. Briony’s youthful temper and magic also caused her twin sister Rose to be developmentally disabled. Briony avoids the swamp and the Old Ones that call to her, sullenly cares for Rose, and hides from the [...]

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Best friends Kayla and Mishalla are GENs, Genetically Engineered Non-humans. In other words, slaves. Built in tanks from human and animal DNA, designed with special “skets” (skill sets), they are at the bottom of the strictly hierarchical society humans have built on their colony planet Loka. They have no say about where they work, where [...]

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To understand how excited I was to read this book, you have to know that I am a huge fan of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. I’ve said for years that I want Sisterhood Goes to Grad School, Sisterhood of the Traveling Wedding Dress, Last Summer in the Nursing Home, etc. So when [...]

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“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.” So begins this lushly imagined tale of “forbidden love, an ancient and epic battle, and hope for a world remade.” The real story opens with Karou, blue-haired and tattooed Prague art student. She is the human foster child [...]

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Anya Balanchine has a lot of responsibilities. As the orphaned oldest daughter of a mafiya boss, with only her bedridden grandmother for a guardian, she is surrogate mother for her brain-damaged older brother Leo and younger sister Natty. She tries to keep all of them out of the family business, but of course she can’t [...]

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For years, ever since right before her parents’ death, Emerson has seen ghosts. She can interact with them, but no one else sees them and they pop if she touches them. Desperate to help, her much-older brother/guardian Thomas sends her to one last specialist: the young, mysterious, and (surprise) devastatingly sexy Michael Weaver. Man. I [...]

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Sick of taking a backseat to the endless rivalry between her school’s soccer and football teams, Lissa, the quarterback’s girlfriend, convinces other athletes’ girlfriends to join her in a sex strike. (Whew! I love a book with a one-sentence premise.) Lissa’s a little bossy and overly organized (she even works at the library! …um), but [...]

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After her best friend Julia’s accidental death, Cass is at loose ends. She hangs out on the edges of the Julia’s theater crowd but feels like she doesn’t belong. Cass only reluctantly agrees to participate when they throw themselves into producing Julia’s final effort, a half-finished musical called Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad. When they [...]

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Rose’s parents, the heads of the most powerful corporation in the universe, have put her in stasis periodically her whole life. Usually just for a few months, but it adds up — her best friend Xavier, who was born when she was 7, eventually caught up in age and became her boyfriend. But then Rose [...]

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Aerin Renning, fugitive from a slave planet, gets an unbelievable chance to attend Academy 7, “the most prestigious school in the universe.” Dane Madousin, son of the Alliance’s top military man, also scores high enough on his entrance exam to attend Academy 7. She is terrified and withdrawn; he has deep-seated anger and a death [...]

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