Hester Wishbone has it made. A recent graduate of Grimoire College, she has a great job as a village hag and is eagerly awaiting the arrival of her familiar. She is also well on the way to earning her Adept Witch designation. But her perfect life starts to unravel. After an unfortunate incident involving a flammable prosthetic nose, Hester loses her job. Her assigned familiar turns out to be a cockroach. And her magick seems to be well and truly gone. With time running out on her Adept qualification period, Hester embarks on an epic job search. Her quest takes her to sticky gingerbread houses, dank bogs, and even the dreaded Outerplane (which is a Level 7 Magick Null Zone). Through it all, Hester must figure out what kind of witch she is, if she has no magick.
Diary fiction
- Author:Brae, RebeccaSummary:
- Author:Kernaghan, EileenSummary:
Wild Talent tells the strange tale of Jeannie Guthrie, a sixteen-year-old Scottish farm worker, who possesses a frightening talent. Believing that she has unintentionally killed her ne’er-do-well cousin, and fearing that she will be sentenced as a witch, she flees to London. There, she is befriended by the free-spirited and adventurous Alexandra David, and introduced to Madame Helena Blavatsky’s famous salon, where she begins to understand the source of her mysterious powers. We follow Jeannie and Alexandra as they venture from the late Victorian world of spiritualists and theosophists to the fin de siècle Paris of artists, anarchists and esoteric cults; and finally to the perilous country of the Beyond. It is against these eerie late 19th century backdrops that Kernaghan weaves an engrossing tale of myth and magic.
- Author:Williams, DavidSummary:
A riveting and unexpected novel that questions whether a peaceful and nonviolent community can survive when civilization falls apart. When a catastrophic solar storm brings about the collapse of modern civilization, an Amish community in Pennsylvania is caught up in the devastating aftermath. Once-bright skies are now dark. Planes have plummeted to the ground. The systems of modern life have crumbled. With their stocked larders and stores of supplies, the Amish are unaffected at first. But as the English (the Amish name for all non-Amish people) become more and more desperate, they begin to invade Amish farms, taking whatever they want and unleashing unthinkable violence on the peaceable community. Seen through the diary of an Amish farmer named Jacob as he tries to protect his family and his way of life, When the English Fall examines the idea of peace in the face of deadly chaos: Should members of a nonviolent society defy their beliefs and take up arms to defend themselves' And if they don't, can they survive' David Williams's debut novel is a thoroughly engrossing look into the closed world of the Amish, as well as a thought-provoking examination of "civilization" and what remains if the center cannot hold.
- Author:Palmer, Dorothy EllenSummary:
A spaceship hurtles towards the moon, hippies gather at Woodstock, Charles Manson leads a cult into murder and a Kennedy drives off a Chappaquiddick dock: it's the summer of 1969. And as mankind takes its giant leap, Jordan May March, disabled bastard and genius, age fourteen, limps and schemes her way towards adulthood. Trapped at the March family's cottage, she spends her days memorizing Top 40 lists, avoiding her adoptive cousins, catching frogs and plotting to save Yogi, the bullied, buttertart-eating bear caged at the top of March Road. In her diary, reworking the scant facts of her adoption, Jordan visions and revisions a hundred different scenarios for her conception on that night in 1954 when Hurricane Hazel tore Toronto to shreds, imagining her conception at the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital or the CNE horse palace, and such parents as JFK, Louisa May Alcott, Perry Mason and the Queen of England.
- Author:Mi, Ai, Holmwood, AnnaSummary:
Yichang municipality, Hubei province, China, early 1970s. High-school student Jingqiu is one of many educated urban youth sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" under a dictate from Chairman Mao. Jing's father is a political prisoner somewhere in China, and her mother, a former teacher branded as a "capitalist," is now reduced to menial work to support Jing and her two younger siblings. When Jing arrives with a group at Xiping village in the Yangtze River's Three Gorges region, she meets geology student Jianxin, nicknamed "Old Three," who is the son of a high-ranking military officer, but whose mother committed suicide after being branded a "rightist." Despite their disparate social backgrounds and a political atmosphere that forbids the relationship, Jingqiu and Jianxin fall desperately in love. But their budding romance is cut short by fate... A sensitive and searing love story, Under the Hawthorn Tree is sure to become an instant classic.
- Author:Barrett, AndreaSummary:
In 1885 Erasmus Darwin Wells embarks an expedition to the Arctic to search for the explorer, John Franklin. Erasmus' fears of failure seem to be realized when the voyage threatens to turn violent.
- Author:Fergus, Jim.Summary:
"Laura Hicks renders this imaginative work splendidly. She is vivacious and expressive as May Dodd...Her vocal characterizations, especially of the various immigrant women Dodd encounters, are lively. A work this unusual needs a performance that is versatile and out of the ordinary, both of which have been achieved."-AudioFile on One Thousand White Woman. The stunning sequel to Jim Fergus' award-winning One Thousand White Women. 9 March 1876 My name is Meggie Kelly and I take up this pencil with my twin sister, Susie. We have nothing left, less than nothing. The village of our People has been destroyed, all our possessions burned, our friends butchered by the soldiers, our baby daughters gone, frozen to death on an ungodly trek across these rocky mountains. Empty of human feeling, half-dead ourselves, all that remains of us intact are hearts turned to stone. We curse the U.S. government, we curse the Army, we curse the savagery of mankind, white and Indian alike. We curse God in his heaven. Do not underestimate the power of a mother's vengeance... So begins the journal of Margaret Kelly, a woman who participated in the government's "Brides for Indians" program in 1873, a program whose conceit was that the way to peace between the United States and the Cheyenne Nation was for One Thousand White Women to be given as brides in exchange for three hundred horses. These "brides" were mostly fallen women; women in prison, prostitutes, the occasional adventurer, or those incarcerated in asylums. No one expected this program to work. The brides themselves thought it was simply a chance at freedom. But many of them fell in love with the Cheyenne's spouses and had children with them...and became Cheyenne themselves. The Vengeance of Mothers is an audiobook that explores what happens to the bonds between wives and husbands, children and mothers, when society sees them as "unspeakable." What does it mean to be white, to be Cheyenne, and how far will these women go to avenge the ones they love' As he did in One Thousand White Women, Jim Fergus brings to light a time and place in American history, and fills it with unforgettable characters who live and breathe with a passion we can relate to even today.
- Author:Marello, LauraSummary:
Laura Marello writes, through the voice of Eduard Steichen, that “… all these powerful artists are so invulnerably weak.” Rodin, his lover Camille Claudel, Picasso, Rousseau, Nijinski, Matisse, Rilke and others, all tenants of Hôtel Biron, and all brilliantly and excitedly human, presented by manuscripts fictionally collected. The result is an appropriately cubist look at each, because we see each from several subjective vantages. This is a brilliantly conceived work of reflective and self-reflective parts. With Marello we get to imagine, as war is coming on, the confusions and certainties of competing artists, conflicting and collaborating geniuses in a world of misunderstood avant-garde where gallery patrons sometimes slashed canvases. The tenants, as a “decadent” group in much of the public eye, were entropic, burning up on mutual energy but producing lasting art and reputation. And there is a love story at the core: Rodin and Claudel, medieval in its passion and constraint, physical and spiritual amidst wild theologies of art. As each character speaks to us from manuscript and letters, their mutual story moves on. Chaucer would have loved it.
- Author:Weldon, Fay.Summary:
Sappho was so happy when she married Gavin. She was in love and it seemed that at last everything was falling into place. But she hadn't considered his daughter, Isobel. Now cast in the role of Wicked Stepmother, Sappho tries all she can to befriend Isobel and find her place in the new family. It's not easy, but no one had promised it would be.
- Author:Groen, HendrikSummary:
Hendrik Groen may be old, but he is far from dead and isn't planning to be buried anytime soon. Instead, he sets out to write an exposé: a year in the life of his care home in Amsterdam.
- Author:RolliSummary:
A flash fiction novel, The Sea-Wave details the aftermath of the kidnapping by an elderly and emotionally damaged man of a severely disabled, wheelchair-bound, unusually bright, depressive 12-year-old girl incapable of speech. The novel consists of the girl's entries in her diary-like memorandum book, entries which relate her own, surprising thoughts on her kidnapping, family, and disabilities, in addition to her verbatim transcriptions of the old man's monologues, which appear to reveal, in fragments, the details of a very specific and unusual period in his life.
- Author:Berg, ElizabethSummary:
Disturbed by the course of her life and marriage, Nan embarks on a backroad odyssey, following the moon and stopping to talk with women, men, her husband through letters, and herself through her diary.
- Author:Mann, GreysonSummary:
Through some creative creeping, Gerald manages to get a few new events on the Overworld Games' schedule that he may be able to compete in successfully, but the team from the Nether looks awfully tough and he could be in way over his head.
- Author:Brockmeier, KevinSummary:
In the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a private journal of love notes written by a husband to his wife passes into the keeping of a hospital patient, and from there through the hands of five other suffering people, touching each of them uniquely.
- Author:Hepworth, SallySummary:
From the outside, everyone might think Fern and Rose are as close as twin sisters can be: Rose is the responsible one, with a home and a husband and a fierce desire to become a mother. Fern is the quirky one, the free spirit, the librarian who avoids social interaction and whom the world might just describe as truly odd. But the sisters are devoted to one another and Rose has always been Fern's protector from the time they were small. Fern needed protecting because their mother was a true sociopath who hid her true nature from the world, and only Rose could see it. Fern always saw the good in everyone. Years ago, Fern did something very, very bad. And Rose has never told a soul. When Fern decides to help her sister achieve her heart's desire of having a baby, Rose realizes with growing horror that Fern might make choices that can only have a terrible outcome. What Rose doesn't realize is that Fern is growing more and more aware of the secrets Rose, herself, is keeping. And that their mother might have the last word after all.
- Author:Rennison, LouiseSummary:
Teenaged Georgia continues her diary entries as she searches for the perfect boyfriend among the sexy Italian Masimo, the fun-loving Dave, and her ex-love Robbie.
- Author:Zehr, E. PaulSummary:
Superheroes, science, and one ordinary girl's quest for greatness Join 13-year-old Jessie as she keeps a diary of her class's yearlong research project on superheroes, which culminates in the Superhero Slam: a head-to-head debate battle! It's shy, comics-obsessed Jessie's dream come true . . . and worst nightmare. She decides to champion Batgirl, a regular person (albeit with major talent and training under her utility belt), and soon Jessie wonders what it would take to be Batgirl. Will she prove to her best friends, Cade and Audrey, that she's more than a sidekick? Can she take down archenemy Dylan at the Slam? Combining science facts, lively illustrations, and comic-book trivia with actual correspondence from superhumans such as NYPD Sergeant Mike Bruen, Olympian Clara Hughes, and Captain Marvel writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, Project Superhero is a celebration of the heroes among us and of one girl's super-secret identity: herself.
- Author:Cabot, Meg.Summary:
Princess Mia's junior year in high school begins with a difficult course load, a crazy student council race, Grandmere's search for temporary lodging, and learning that her boyfriend is moving to Japan for a year, partly because she will not sleep with him.
- Author:Cabot, Meg.Summary:
Princess Mia is introduced to her Genovian subjects, and more importantly, she goes out on a date.
- Author:Cabot, Meg.Summary:
It's an all new school year for Princess Mia, with all new classes, all new challenges . . . and all new worries. With a baby brother at home who won't stop crying and a potential eco-disaster in her native land that has all of Europe in an uproar, Mia's got a lot more on her mind than just a case of the sophomore slumps.