Starters

Lissa Price has created a unique plot in her new title Starters. Callie is 16 years old and now solely responsible for her younger, very sickly brother. Forced to evacuate their family home by authorities, Callie, her brother and her best friend roam from deserted building to deserted building in the hopes of escaping capture.

Their world has been turned topsy-turvy and upside down. Callie’s parents are both dead—killed as all middle aged people from a spore war. The government wrongly assumed that only the very young and the very old needed to receive inoculations to protect them. Surely the middle aged people would be able to survive! But the government was wrong.

The society now consists of the very old and the very young. When young ones have no surviving family member to care for them, they must find their own way in the world.

Callie becomes desperate for money to purchase medicine for her younger brother. She decides to visit Prime Destinations—a business that pays “Starters”—young people—to allow “Enders”—the very old-- to rent their physical bodies for short periods of time. The Enders want to ski and dance, party and enjoy life that their older bodies no longer give them the pleasure to do.

Is the implanting of the neurochip in the heads of Starters so Enders can use their bodies safe? Will Callie really be paid by Prime Destinations as they promise? Can anything go disastrously wrong when someone else controls your physical body? Could an Ender have you commit a crime? Read Lissa Price’s dystopian title to find out!

Under the Never Sky

Veronica Rossi’s first book in her trilogy is entitled Under the Never Sun. Some type of cataclysmic ecological disaster has occurred which has destroyed what was called the Unity. Groups exist in many different variations and locations. Some groups are highly civilized and technologically advanced whereas others are primitive—trying to eke out an existence from the parched earth.

Aria and her mother live in the Pod called Reverie. Everyone in the Reverie has a Smarteye connected to his/her left eye. The Smarteye functions much as our computers do today. Through the Smarteye Aria enters various virtual environments called Realms. Because the citizens of Reverie are so limited in their activities, they “travel” to these virtual areas and live vicariously through them.

Aria spends her days in this totally enclosed Pod safe from bad air that exists outside the Pod and safe from the savages who roam the wastelands. When her mother is sent to Bliss, another Pod, to help the people there, Aria and a group of her friends venture into a greenhouse area where one of her friends starts a fire. Fire is catastrophic to the Pod. Even though Aria didn’t start the fire, she is banished from the Pod.

How will she survive outside? She has been taught from a very young age that to breathe the air outside the Pod is sure to bring death.

In a culture clash of massive portions, Aria is thrown together with Perry (Peregrine). Perry hails from the Tides, part of the Wasteland. To Aria, Perry is a wild savage. To Perry, Aria is the worst type of Dweller—totally unable to survive on her own.

How will these two survive in each other’s company. How will they get shelter from the Aether storms, the violent electrical storms that burn everything? Read this dystopian title to find out.

Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917

I knew absolutely nothing about the largest man-made explosion before the atomic bomb. I would venture to guess that not many people know anything about this disaster. The author of Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917, Sally M. Walker, did a wonderful job of researching this piece of history.

The city of Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada was a thriving port in 1917. With more than 45,000 people living in Halifax it was a major “jumping-off” port for ships carrying troops and supplies from North America to the countries involved in World War 1.

Because Halifax had a deep harbor, it could house ships of all sizes. The railroad stretched across the harbor area allowing the easy access of freight to the ships.

On the opposite shore from Halifax lays the settlement of Dartmouth. An unusual aspect of the harbor is its very narrow entry.

The inexplicable accident that caused the ship carrying explosives to ignite, devastated this close-knit community.

Read Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917 to find out  just how the accident occurred, how many people died, and how people for all over the Northeast rallied to help the survivors.

Out of Sight, Out of Time

Ally Carter's fifth book in the Gallagher Girls series will delight fans! Out of Sight, Out of Time is a complex mystery. Cammie has been found! She has been missing for an entire summer when she mysteriously ran away from the Gallagher Academy for Girls( the spy academy). Where was she found? In Europe! Everyone of her friends is angry with her--angry that she ran away, angry that she didn't include them, and angry that Cammie could have died.

Poor Cammie's memory has been altered. She is bruised. There are deep scratches on her arms. She has obviously been tortured yet she recollects none of it.

It is up to Bex, Zach, Liz, and Macey with the help of Cammie's Aunt Abby and her mom to solve the mystery of Cammie's summer that wasn't.

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