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By Margaret Peterson Haddix [Librarything - Amazon]

Luke was never supposed to exist. The Population Law says that families can only have two kids—and the Population Police will murder any third children they find. But So Luke lives in hiding in his parents’ attic, never allowed outside, not even allowed to eat with the family in case someone glances in the kitchen window.

But then everything changes—from his hiding spot he sees another child like him, a girl who shouldn’t exist, another third. He risks everything to meet her…And it turns out that she has a daring plan which might not just liberate the two of them, but every hidden child in the country. If only they can find the courage to do it…

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Sorry about the lack of posts, guys; Rebecca and I were both doing NaNoWriMo and all other writing sort of fell by the wayside. But we’re back!

By Diane Stanley [Librarything - Amazon]

Despite the periodic wars that ravage her country, Bella’s childhood has been an idyllic one – raised by a loving, comfortable peasant family and bosom friends with Prince Julian. That is, until she discovers that she is actually the daughter of a knight, who sent her away when her mother died in childbirth, but who now wants her back. Bella is miserable with her cruel father and distant stepmother, and her misery increases when she hears of a threat to both Prince Julian’s life and the country’s tenuous peace with the neighboring kingdom. Now, armed only with a prophetic ring and her own courage, she must travel to a foreign land to save her friend, and hopefully bring peace to both realms.

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By Jane Johnson [Series at Librarything - Series at Amazon]

Ben’s world is changed when a very demanding little cat named Iggy begs Ben to free him from the evil Mr Dodds’s Pet Emporium. Iggy, it seems, hails from the magical world of Eidolon, where Dodds – known in Eidolon as the Dodman, a terrifying monster with the head of a vicious dog – has been kidnapping magical creatures to sell as exotic pets in England. Worse, Ben’s own mother is Eidolon’s rightful queen, and as magic is siphoned from the land by the Dodman’s cruel trade, Ben’s mother grows steadily sicker. Her only hope – and Eidolon’s – is for her to return to Eidolon, stop the Dodman, and reclaim her birthright. But though Ben and his sisters are the prophesied saviors of Eidolon, can they really defeat the Dodman and the various monsters he has gathered against them?

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By Michael Buckley [The Sisters Grimm at Librarything - The Sisters Grimm at Amazon]

Jess and I decided that our co-written review for HP7 was so much fun, we wanted to do it again! And since this series was, at least in part, the inspiration to start this site, it seemed like a great series to co-review. So here we go!

Since their parents disappeared a year and a half ago, Sabrina and Daphne Grimm have been shuffled from foster home to foster home. That is, until their grandmother, a woman they thought was dead, comes out of the woodwork to claim them. Granny Relda tells them that they are descended from the famous Brothers Grimm - and what’s more, that all of the characters their ancestors wrote about are real, and living in the girls’ new home of Ferryport Landing. Soon Sabrina and Daphne are running from giants, eating dinner with the Big Bad Wolf, and matching wits with Puck, the Pied Piper, and Prince Charming. Granny Relda is eager to train the girls to follow in her footsteps as fairy tale detectives, but for Sabrina and Daphne there’s one mystery that’s the most important of all: can they rescue their parents from the fairy tale conspirators who kidnapped them - without falling into the bad guys’ clutches themselves?

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By Philip Reeve [Librarything - Amazon]

Floating out in space like a miniature planetoid, Art’s hodgepodge house Larklight has always been rather isolated and boring, much to his social-climbing sister Myrtle’s dismay. But when giant spiders attack Larklight in search of a mysterious “key,” Art and Myrtle are quickly forced to adjust to a far less boring way of life – one that includes man-eating moths, sentient storms, a motley crew of aliens, the British Secret Service, and the dashing space pirate Captain Jack Havock. Now the siblings must figure out how to save the entire solar system – and, more importantly, the Queen – and the answers may just lie in Larklight itself.

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Dragonlance: The New Adventures
By Tim Wagoner [Librarything - Amazon]

When Nearra awoke in the woods, she couldn’t remember who she was. After an attack by goblins, nearly being eaten by a dragon, and almost getting run down by a minotaur, she collects a group of friends (a ranger, a warrior, a kinder adventurer, an elfin guide, and the minotaur) who help her on her quest to discover who she is. Her only hope is to find a mystical temple and ask the priests and priestesses there to heal her. But it’s a dangerous trip, and there are all kinds of evil folks chasing them, and one in their own group may be a traitor…

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By Adrienne Kress [Librarything - Amazon]

Life is good for Alexandra Morningside – she loves living with her uncle in the flat above his doorknob shop, and she loves her sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Underwood, a stickler for grammar and an expert on fencing. But Mr. Underwood is the descendent of one of history’s most feared pirates and the inheritor of the Wigpowder treasure, and the dreaded pirate Captain Steele will stop at nothing to claim the treasure before Mr. Underwood can. It’s up to Alex to rescue her kidnapped teacher and find the treasure – if she can survive the increasingly more bizarre hurdles along the way.

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By Nancy Farmer [Librarything - Amazon]

The Sea of Trolls is the story of a boy named Jack, who is nothing but a poor farmer’s son until the village’s mysterious bard offers to take him as an apprentice and teach him magic. But they’ve barely started when Northmen raiders attack, strike the bard down, and take Jack and his sister Lucy as slaves. From there, it’s all Jack can do to keep them alive—and try to use what he’s learned to someday get home.

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By E.D. Baker [LibraryThing - Amazon]

Princess Emeralda is clumsy and awkward. She doesn’t fit her mother’s idea of a princess (and she hates her mother’s idea of a proper prince for her to marry), and she’s also no good at the magic her aunt Grasssina, a powerful witch, has been trying to teach her. When it gets to be too much, Emeralda takes off and does something impulsive—she kisses the talking frog who says he’s really a prince. And he isn’t lying…but instead of freeing him from his enchantment, she’s turned into a frog, too. Now Emeralda and Eadric have to try and track down the witch who cast the spell in the first place if they ever want to be human again.

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By Tobias Druitt [Librarything - Amazon]

Corydon the shepherd boy is a monster, a mormoluke, with one normal human leg and one goat leg. That’s why he was thrown out of his village, and that’s why he is picked up as a freak in a pirates’ sideshow. There he meets other monsters like him: the Minotaur, the Sphinx, the beautiful, tragic Medusa, and more. With the help of a magic staff, Corydon and the monsters escape from the pirates, but the gods of Olympus are united against Corydon and his friends, and it isn’t long before the greedy and cowardly Perseus is uniting the “heroes” of Greece into an army to wipe out the monsters. Corydon must journey into the Underworld to learn how to use the staff to save his new family, but what exactly does such salvation mean?

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