The first book in a new series from 19-year-old author Lucy Saxon, Take Back the Skies offers readers an incredibly fast-paced mixture of fantasy and steampunk. It’s full of twists and turns that will shock even the most ardent fantasy fan.

Fourteen-year-old Cat Hunter has lived a privileged, sheltered life on Tellus, a world where children approaching adolescence are “collected” to fight in a far-off war. Cat’s father, Nathaniel, is a high-ranking government official, so, unlike the commoners, their family escapes all of the hardships that come with living in a war-torn country. Her life isn’t all champagne and caviar, however. Nathaniel is a cruel, sometimes abusive father, and has promised Cat’s hand in marriage to a boy she finds loathsome. To free herself from the oppressive environment, Cat disguises herself as a boy and becomes a stowaway on the skyship Stormdancer.

After she boards the ship, nothing prepares her for what she learns about her home country and her father. And then there’s Fox, a fiery redhead with a personality she loves to hate. Soon Cat must choose between saving her father and saving the world. Will her new skyship family embrace her and go along with her insane scheme, or will they leave her in the far-flung country of Siberene?

With action on every page, Take Back the Skies is great for fans of Scott Westerfeld and Cherie Priest. With five more books to come in the series, readers won’t have to wait long to read more about this fascinating world.

If Meg Cabot wrote an episode of “Downton Abbey,” it might end up being this delightful debut novel in which two teenage girls inadvertently switch roles at an English estate in 1938.

Hannah Morgenstern is a Jewish cabaret singer who performs nightly at her parent’s club in Berlin. A chatty girl with an operatic voice, she is the darling of the Nazi customers until Kristallnacht destroys her parents’ club and her safety. Hannah’s mother sends her to live with some distant relatives at Starkers, an English estate, but there’s a mix-up and Hannah is assumed to be the new kitchen maid rather than family. Hannah, having been warned of her relatives’ odd behavior, takes it all in stride. She dons the uniform and tries her best, even as she commits every conceivable service faux pas.

Meanwhile, Anna Morgan arrives to Starkers as a spy for her Nazi-sympathizing father. She’s sent as the kitchen maid, but with her charming good looks and diplomatic airs, she’s mistaken as the German cousin. Anna may not know German, but she can use her good looks to snag the interest of the wealthy heir, Teddy. Anna does catch Teddy’s eye, but it’s Hannah who he meets nightly in the yews for meaningful conversations in German. Except, in the dark, Teddy thinks he’s speaking to his cousin and not the spritely kitchen maid.

Readers have to suspend their belief, as the major plot twist can easily be cleared up if Hannah would just come out of the dark yews so Teddy can see her in the light. The cast of characters is a charming, oddball lot, and the tension of World War II is eased with the silliness of the situations at hand. Happy endings all around make this novel a fun read in dark times.

Kimberly Giarratano is the author of Grunge Gods and Graveyards, a young adult paranormal mystery.

BookPage Teen Top Pick, May 2014

When 16-year-old Laureth receives an email stating that her writer father’s notebook (which he’s never without) has been found in New York, rather than in Switzerland or Austria (where she thought he was), she suspects that something very bad has happened to her dad. Her mother doesn’t seem to care about the missing notebook, or about her father’s inability to return voicemails. So Laureth takes matters into her own hands, enlisting her 7-year-old brother Benjamin (and his inseparable stuffed raven named Stan) to help her travel from London to New York in search of their father.

Why does she need her younger brother’s help? Because Laureth is blind, and although she can quite capably navigate the landmarks of her home, school and neighborhood, she knows she can’t negotiate international travel on her own without seeming helpless or vulnerable—the very last things she wants to be.

Soon Laureth and Benjamin are involved in a tense and risky search. Even after they find their dad’s notebook, which is filled with increasingly cryptic and disordered notes about the power and limits of coincidence, they can’t find the man himself—and it appears they may not be the only ones trying to track down his trail.

Sedgwick’s remarkable novel is reminiscent of Siobhan Dowd’s The London Eye Mystery in its sensitive and perceptive portrayal of difference, as well as its recognition that all kinds of people can investigate mysteries and solve problems. The narration from Laureth’s point of view manages to be rich and detailed without relying on visual descriptions. Most importantly, Laureth is depicted as a complex and vibrant character quite apart from her blindness, a fully realized person for whom courage is a daily decision rather than an extraordinary virtue. She Is Not Invisible is not only a compelling thriller; it’s also a portrayal of disability that is neither patronizing nor aggrandizing, but rather exquisitely sympathetic and true.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In 1951, adopted teenager Lily’s Chinese features attract the wrong kind of attention from classmates at her Kansas City high school. The United States is at war, defending South Korea from the invasion of Chinese Communists via North Korea. Propaganda designed to gain American support for the war features evil, slanted-eyed Commies eager to destroy any nation that blocks its path to supremacy, including the U.S. Lily wonders why her Chinese birth mother, whom she now thinks of as “Gone Mom,” could have abandoned her daughter to this fate of ethnic isolation.

In today’s world, Chinese daughters thrive all over the U.S. But in Lily’s time, the rules of segregation reign. Mr. Howard, a black man who works as a janitor at Lily’s school, witnesses her anguish and steps in as a mentor, helping her cope with prejudice. Author Barbara Stuber captures Lily’s isolation beautifully: “I am a Chinese character without a plot.” Lily’s white parents seem shallow, concerned only with appearances, but her half-brother Ralph, with his jug ears and stinking feet, comes alive as Lily’s one true ally. A subplot involving a potential romance with an artist named Elliot pales in comparison to Ralph’s exuberant love for his sister.

Girl in Reverse is a worthy follow-up to Stuber’s 2010 debut, Crossing the Tracks, a finalist for the William C. Morris Debut Award. There are many pieces that must come together to reveal Lily’s past: a box in the attic containing things left by Gone Mom; Elliot’s perceptive artwork; the owners of a Chinese restaurant; and the recollections of Sister Evangeline from the orphanage. The integration of all these pieces strains the story’s pace and requires near-magical coincidences, but it is in keeping with Sister Evangeline’s comment, “A complicated past is best understood a bit at a time.”

Diane Colson works at the Nashville Public Library. She has long been active in the American Library Association's Young Adult Library Association (YALSA), serving on selection committees such as the Morris Award, the Alex Award and the Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Gretchen Müller is a Nazi darling. Ever since her father died protecting Adolf Hitler in 1923, Uncle “Dolf” and his National Socialist cronies look out for Gretchen and her family. It’s Uncle Dolf who gets Gretchen’s mother a job running a Munich boarding house and indoctrinates Gretchen’s brother into the Nazi party. And it’s Uncle Dolf whom Gretchen loves like a father. Then one fateful night in 1931 she meets Daniel Cohen, a Jewish reporter, who claims he has information that Gretchen’s father was not martyred for the Nazi cause, but was murdered for the cause. At first Gretchen refuses to believe him. After all, she’s been taught that Jews are dangerous subhumans. But the more information she digs up about her father’s death, the more she sees Daniel as an ally, one she finds both attractive and kind. When a brutal assault leaves her abandoned by the Nazis who are supposed to protect her, Gretchen finally sees her beloved Uncle Dolf for the man history knows him to be: a psychopath.

Anne Blankman’s masterful debut novel is a suspenseful mystery involving the most notorious and nefarious historical figures of the 20th century. Blankman portrays Hitler as one would imagine him to be: charismatic but manipulative, cruel and deeply disturbed (his relationship with his half-niece is highly unnerving).

With Prisoner of Night and Fog, readers shouldn’t expect an alternate history. The outcome will still be the same: the eventual extermination of 10 million innocent people, 6 million of them Jews. But what readers can expect is the transformation of a teenage girl entrenched in Nazi propaganda into a young woman determined to expose the Nazi’s true plans in hopes of changing the world for the better. A sequel set in 1933 is forthcoming.

Kimberly Giarratano is the author of Grunge Gods and Graveyards, a young adult paranormal mystery.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Set on the beaches of a fictional island located off the coast of Connecticut, What I Thought Was True is the story of a young woman learning firsthand of the mystifying intricacies of love, lust, luxury and loyalty—and how each can change drastically for her friends, her family and herself.

High school junior Gwen Castle is the half-Portuguese daughter of a divorced housecleaner and an off-brand fast-food restaurant owner. She lives in a cramped house on Shell Island with nearly her entire family, all of whom work multiple jobs to help pay the bills. Gwen’s life couldn’t differ more from that of Cassidy Somers, an attractive, wealthy boy and her own personal Kryptonite. Cassidy is the picture of wealth and class—just another one of the stereotypical, WASP-y “summer people” who escape to Gwen’s island to enjoy her beaches for the warmer months. But when he takes a summer job as a lawn boy—work typically reserved for the regulars of the island—Gwen begins to think that there could be more to Cassidy than his family’s money and prestige, and that their random hookup from last year just might have something more hidden within it than simple carnal release.

Huntley Fitzpatrick worked as an editor for Harlequin publishing for many years before penning her first novel, My Life Next Door, which was a RITA Award finalist and a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults title. What I Thought Was True, her second novel, continues on the same path, tempering young love and attraction with the realities of human existence—something writers too often forget when crafting their idyllic stories of young love. It also reminds us how the facets of class and money can alter, sometimes unfairly, our perceptions of people, including ourselves.

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.