Parenthetical.net

Scarlett’s family owns, and lives in, a stately old hotel in Manhattan, but both the hotel and the family have seen better days. They barely have enough money to make ends meet, Scarlett’s brother’s last chance at an acting career is crashing, her older sister is stuck in an Austenesque relationship with Wealthy Fratboy McYacht, [...]

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Another conference speaker with whom I was unfamiliar. She’s also a jazz singer, and gave us a lovely impromptu a capella performance (just reinforcing the sense that I was at a folk festival).
I’ll admit, I found her book tiresome. The prose is lovely, I guess, but it was a Woman’s Sexual Awakening and [...]

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I wrote a whole long thoughtful review of Savvy a couple of days ago and thought it had posted happily — only to notice today that it actually crashed my whole blog and then got eaten by WordPress. Rar!
I’m too cranky to re-write the whole thing or to be “fair and balanced,” so [...]

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Boy, servant to the volatile, isolated stage magician Valerian, is used to being dragged off on obscure missions by his master. But in the last days of the year, Valerian becomes even more unstable than usual, and Boy is caught up in his life-or-death search for a mysterious Book.
This atmospheric tale is set in [...]

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A train gets stuck in a snowstorm in Gracetown, NC (a literally one-Starbucks town, as we’ll soon see), late on Christmas Eve.* Revolving around this event are three interconnected tales of teen love, angst, and romping in the snow.
I’m not usually a short story fan — by the time I get into [...]

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(Janes in Love is the nominated book, but I went back and read The Plain Janes first, so I’ll review them together. It’s not necessary background, but it certainly helped.)
PJ opens with a terrorist bomb going off in Metro City, killing a number of people, and injuring more — including Jane. She’s fine, [...]

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Gingerbread bills itself as “edgy,” with cover quotes from Teen People, Elle Girl, and Twist magazines rather than other authors, and a cover featuring a punky girl with platform boots. But it’s basically your average finding-yourself novel: Cyd hates living with her mom and stepdad, so she acts like a brat until they send [...]

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