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| Gather Her Round: A Novel of the Tufa by Alex BledsoeContemporary Fantasy. Not long after Cloud County resident Kera Rogers disappears, her half-eaten body is found in the woods near Needsville, Tennessee. Was she attacked by feral hogs? Murdered by a spurned lover? Or is there a less mundane explanation? After all, Needsville is the home of the Tufa, an insular group rumored to be descended from the fair folk. The discovery of a second victim, one of Kera's boyfriends, prompts an investigation by game warden Jack Cates and Tufa military veteran Bronwyn Chess. Imagine Charles de Lint's Newford series but with the plotting of an Appalachian murder ballad and you've got Alex Bledsoe's Tufa novels, beginning with The Hum and the Shiver. |
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| Sins of Empire by Brian McClellanEpic Fantasy. Set in the world of author Brian McClellan's Powder Mage trilogy, this intricately plotted novel kicks off the Gods of Blood and Powder series. Amid rising unrest in the colony of Fatrasta, Lady Chancellor Lindet summons powder mage Lady Vlora Flint and her Riflejack mercenaries to Landfall, the capital, to keep the peace. As Vlora and her crew defend the city against indigenous Palo resistance fighters, her local contact, a member of the "Blackhats" secret police, attempts to track down the authors of a spate of seditious pamphlets. But the recovery of powerful artifacts from beneath Fatrasta, which sits atop the ruins of the ancient Dynize empire, poses a far greater threat than insurgency. |
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Magical Coming-of-Age Stories
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| The Life of Elves by Muriel Barbery; translated by Alison AndersonContemporary Fantasy. Although they don't yet know it, two orphaned girls must join forces to save the world. Maria grows up in a village in Burgundy, France, where she demonstrates a strong affinity for the natural world -- including an ability to see beyond the veil that separates this realm from the next. Carla, raised by a priest and his housekeeper in Abruzzo, Italy, is a musical prodigy whose talent is accompanied by powerful visions. Saying more might spoil the many surprises of this enchanting novel, but if you enjoy atmospheric and leisurely paced coming-of-age tales that unfold in lyrical language, this is a book you'll savor. |
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| Thorn Jack: A Night and Nothing Novel by Katherine HarbourContemporary Fantasy. Haunted by her older sister's suicide, Serafina “Finn” Sullivan moves with her father to Fair Hollow, a tiny town in upstate New York. Attending a local college, Finn meets the enigmatic Jack Fata (with whom she falls in love) and his strange, insular family, who unsettle her for reasons she cannot quite articulate. Based on the Scottish ballad Tam Lin, this opening installment of the Night and Nothing trilogy may appeal to fans of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, another version of the tale set at a small liberal arts college. |
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| Roses and Rot by Kat HowardContemporary Fantasy. Having grown up with a parent who rivals any wicked stepmother, sisters Imogen and Marin are understandably obsessed with fairy tales, which inform their present-day careers as a writer and a dancer, respectively. Having lived apart since adolescence, the once-close siblings are reunited when both women are accepted to Melete, a prestigious artist's colony that seems too good to be true. And it is, of course, though neither woman could have ever imagined the darkness concealed beneath the colony's idyllic facade. For another fantasy novel that uses folklore to explore sisterly bonds, try Krassi Zourkova's Wildalone. |
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| Among Others by Jo WaltonFantasy. After the death of her twin sister, 14-year-old Morwenna, or "Mori," flees her unstable mother and her Welsh hometown to live with the father she barely knows -- and never will, since he immediately packs her off to a boarding school in the English countryside. Grief-stricken and friendless, Mori takes refuge in books, eventually meeting others who share her interests in fantasy and science fiction. But Mori can't avoid her past forever. Unfolding in the form of a diary, Among Others is both a coming-of-age story full of magic and a love letter to literature that fans of Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock may enjoy. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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