Fellside is another terrifying, yet gripping story by M.R. Carey, the author of The Girl With All The Gifts.
Jess Moulson goes on a hunger strike shortly before entering a maximum security prison, Fellside.
Though Jess nearly dies, a young boy gives her a reason to live. Alex, the ghost of the boy whom everyone believes she killed, asks her to do the one thing she cannot refuse.
Fellside is a ghost story that reads like a riveting psychological thriller and suspenseful mystery.
Jess's relationship with Alex is complicated. She wants to protect him from everything but he is also powerful. He saved her when a nurse punctured her artery instead of her vein:
"He'd brought her back from the abyss, from the mouth of the grave. She owed him everything and he owed her nothing except arguably a life for a life and a tooth for a tooth."
Alex knows, however, that the fire Jess started while she was high hadn't killed him.
The fire she set hadn't killed him because he was already dead. So who hurt him and how did he die?
As a favor to Alex who brought her back from the blackness, Jess agrees to appeal her case and investigate what truly happened to him.
For a coming-of-age story that transcends genre, read Emily Fridlund's History of Wolves.
One of the central questions in this tale is culpability.
"What's the difference between what you want to believe and what you do?...And what's the difference between what you think and what you end up doing," Madeleine wonders.
She's a kid surrounded by adults--her parents, Mr. Grierson, the Gardners who shirk their duties and blame others for mistakes they make.The worst offender is probably Patra who blames illogically blames Madeleine for the death of her four-year-old.
Then there's Mr. Grierson, her teacher, who may be reprehensible but is not guilty of what police and Lily charge him with. Madeleine tracks him to Florida after he gets out of prison. She writes letters to him but he seems to have forgotten her.
Though Madeleine is expert at hiking and traversing the streams in her woods, she is less expert at deciphering social cues or understanding human relationships. Perhaps that is why she is fascinated by Patra and Leo's strange relationship.
However capable she is at wilderness survival, Madeleine is strangely powerless when faced with Leo's religious obsession or Lily's duplicity.
“So long as you write it away regularly nothing can really hurt you.” Shirley Jackson.
I think this is why so many writer do what they do. Writing is a snapshot of a particular time, often painful, but sometimes joyful. It's a memory, a recording, that makes the ordinary details of life extraordinary.
The Booth Brothers: Drama, Fame, and the Death of President Lincoln by Rebecca Langston-George
This is a fascinating read for middle school and up. Langston-George highlights the two Booth brothers and the different paths their lives took. One felt he was a Northerner, Edwin Booth, and the other, John Wilkes Booth, felt he was a Southerner.
Why two brothers would have such different points of view is never really discussed. In part, it may have to do with how they were raised. Their father, Junius Brutus Booth, was a famous actor, known for his Shakespeare, who was also prone to drink.
John may have been resentful of his older brother, Edwin. Junius allowed Edwin to tour the country with him but refused to allow John to do the same.
Langston-George gives a clear, succinct summary of the events that led to the shooting and its aftermath. She related little known information, like the strange event that occurred when Edwin Booth died.
This is a historical tale full of ironies. Pictures of conspirators and pictures of the personal belongings of Booth at the end provide context.
I previewed this digital arc on netgalley.com
Kate Moore carefully documents many of the of dial workers' stories who worked in Orange, NJ and Ottawa, IL. In doing so, she preserves an important part of women's history, industrial history, and American history.
Lured by the glamour and high pay, these girls enjoyed their jobs until, one by one, they began getting sick. No laws protected workers from the occupational hazards of radium at this time.
Moore makes much of the fact that these women were unwitting pioneers who paved the way for safer conditions in all workplaces.
The product these women worked with, a radium paste, was called Undark. In the twenties, when glowing watch dials for the military were in hot demand, not much was known about the dangers of working with radium.
By the late 1920's, the companies knew radium was harmful but still did nothing to protect its dial workers who lip-pointed. They would put the radium-tainted brush directly into their mouths to give the brush a point. This practice was encourage for quick production of the dials.
Radium's effects were devastating. Some women died quickly but some suffered a slow and painful death.
Some of these women, notably Catherine Donohue, fought courageously to win a lawsuit against the companies that employed them. Though the payouts were small, they changes working conditions for future employees.
The dial worker's cases led to the formation of OSHA. They also continued to help scientists by participating in tests at Argonne Laboratory.
Though other works on this topic focus on the physicians and scientists, Moore's work puts a human face to this tragedy by focusing on the women themselves.
"I need you to owe me something," Patricia said, "or this won't work. I'm really sorry. I tried to do it every other way, and none of them succeeded. In the end, the most powerful magic is often transactional
in some way."
Patricia to Laurence in All The Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders.
Other adult books that feature magic:
Barker, Emily Croy. The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic.
Flyte, Magnus. City of Dark Magic.
Grossman, Lev. The Magicians.
McGuire, Seanan. Every Heart a Doorway.
Schwab, Victoria. A Darker Shade of Magic.
Walton, Jo. Among Others.
Young adult books that feature magic:
Marillier, Juliet. Wildwood Dancing.
Bow, Erin. Plain Kate.
Black, Holly. The Darkest Part of the Forest.
Durst, Sarah Beth. Ice.
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders is difficult to classify and has often been listed as genre-bending. One of the main character, Patricia, is a witch but the other character, Laurence, is a scientist trying to save the world from destruction.
All the Birds in the Sky contains magical realism, science fiction, and romance. A post-apocalyptic storm, artificial intelligence, and a ground-breaking project to create a wormhole give this novel an exciting edge.
Some of the themes in All the Birds in the Sky resemble the ones in Iain Pears' Arcadia--the ethical ramifications of creating a device that could repopulate the earth's inhabitants in another world.
All the Birds in the Sky, though, is more tightly focused than Arcadia. It appeals to readers in their early twenties because it has elements of what Molly Wetta calls "new adult" fiction or "twentysomething" fiction.
According to Wetta, new adult fiction follow teens "the summer after graduation, on into college, and beyond."
New adult fiction is often wildly inventive, with a focus on technology, relationships, and finding one's place in the world.
Other examples of fiction for new adults that Wetta lists are Rainbow Rowell's FanGirl and Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter.
Though Jess nearly dies, a young boy gives her a reason to live. Alex, the ghost of the boy whom everyone believes she killed, asks her to do the one thing she cannot refuse.
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