The Tide Will Turn: Raging Sea by Michael Buckley

Spangler flashes me a strained smile. "I've watched all the footage of that day in Coney Island. I not only saw what you can do, I saw what you tried to do. You're not the terrorist they have painted you as. You're a hero, and I'm offering you a second chance at it," he says. "Before you can do that, we have to start over. No more solitary confinement. No more whatever it is they are feeding you. I'll free your mother. I'll let the prince and the Triton girl out of their tanks. In return, you have to accept my job offer.

"Job offer?" I cry.

"Saving the world, Lyric. You've seen the news. The world is on the verge of collapse. The East Coast is rubble. Did you see the thing with all the tentacles in the tank during your daring escape? It leaps onto your head, jams it into you, and then drinks you like a milkshake. How do you think that's affecting morale on the front lines? It's my job to make it all stop. You're going to help me."

Halfling Lyric Walker, half-human, half-Alpha, flees the first battle brought on by the seeming invasion of the Alpha sea creatures, capable of human shape but able to shape-shift in the sea into gilled and scaled creatures. The battle has shattered the coast, and Lyric's mermaid mother and human father, and the Alpha prince Fathom she loves are believed dead, and although Lyric knows the Alpha are fleeing the voracious Rusalka from the deep, the humans cannot help but fear and hate Alphas, too.

With her best friend Bex and the warrior creature Arcade, whose arms bear hidden knives, she flees to the west in a "Thelma and Louise" road trip in a battered car, shoplifting food and dodging police and the army in a search for a camp called Tempest where Lyric believes she will find her parents alive. The human inhabitants are hostile, fearful of Alphas and even of the human refugees they call "Coasters" who are trying to escape the carnage on the coast. And finally the three are captured by a militia and taken to Tempest as prisoners. Lyric is held incommunicado in a stainless steel cell, battered and barely fed on half-rotten swill, but she rallies and manages to escape, only to find her father gravely injured but alive, her mother, Fathom, and all captured Alphas floating in filthy tanks, some with amputated limbs or split open. And then the camp leader Spangler makes her a repugnant offer that she ultimately cannot refuse.

It is Lyric's job is to train 33 captured children and young teenagers, half human and half Alpha, to use their powers over water as she does. Like Lyric, they receive the Oracle, a glove which multiplies their power. Lyric feels she is asked to lead virtual babies to their own slaughter, but under her tutelage, their powers burgeon and soon she finds herself leading them in the second battle of Coney Island, The halfling children fight successfully against the Rusalka, but an unforeseen onslaught of the Undine, tentacled brain-sucking Rusalkas, sends her forces and the army into a full retreat. Lyric finds herself facing the absolute Undine, the Mother. And then...

The water is cold and black, and then there is nothing.

To be continued....

After devoting much of Book I of the trilogy, Undertow, to romance between Alpha halfling Lyric and the sea creature Fathom, in the second book, Raging Sea: Undertow Trilogy Book 2, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), author Buckley turns his story to the continuing theme of an Armageddon between the sea people and humans. For readers who prefer fantastic warfare to forbidden romance, the second book provides almost constant conflict--initial power clashes between frenemies Lyric and Arcade, physical conflict at Tempest, the training camp, and a return to what is left of the east coast for a massive battle in the waters off the destroyed Coney Island. A Pyrrhic standoff battle with the murderous Rusalka leaves the storyline is limbo, with Lyric sinking into the ultimate black hole, the Great Abyss.

Readers who dote on dystopic fantasies such as The Hunger Games Trilogy: The Hunger Games / Catching Fire / Mockingjay will find much cross-species mayhem to mull over in this one, and with its cataclysmic cliffhanger conclusion, and will no doubt be back for more in the final book of Buckley's trilogy. Buckley's descriptive writing is vivid and cinemagraphic, the love triangles are intriguing, and the intensity of the plot will make seeing how this series resolves itself irresistible.

See the ominously scored trailer here.

It's in the Cards! Dangerous Deceptions (Palace of Spies) by Sarah Zettel

I could not tear my mind away from Sebastian Sandford and his abrupt return to my life.

Given the manner in which I'd left my uncle's house and all that had happened since, it never occurred to me that anyone would want to enforce the betrothal contract that existed between my uncle and Sebastian's father. I'd assumed the contract was broken by my uncle's failure to bring me to the church. But now the horrible possibility that I had been wrong descended upon me. As an underaged girl, I remained completely under the control of my nearest male relative. I could be given in marriage to a street sweeper or sold to an indenture to the Virginia Colony, as he saw fit.

I will admit, given that my other choice was Sebastian, street sweepers and colonies had a certain appeal.

Peggy had thought that as a newly favorite maid-in-waiting at the court of the Hanoverian Princess and Prince of Wales, she was safe from the betrothal in which her nefarious Uncle Pierpont had attempted to bind her. Peggy had barely fought off Sebastian's most improper assault, and when she refused the marriage, she had been literally thrown out of her uncle's house, leaving her orphaned and on the street at the tender age of sixteen. But her mysterious benefactor, Lord Tierney, manages to place her at the Court of St. James, not from kindness, but to serve as an impostor, a spy against the Jacobite conspiracy working to place James Stuart on the throne of England.

Peggy has begun to feel safe at court, having mastered a proper courtier's art of flirtation, the endless little dishonesties at cards, and the rivalrous intrigues of the maids-in-waiting Mary and Sophie, and welcomes the loyalty of her friend Molly Lepell and her cousin Olivia, her true love, Matthew, and the special favor of the six-year-old dog-loving Princess Anne. But she is thrown off-balance by the appearance of Sebastian, whose powerful uncle, Lord Lynnfield, threatens to enforce their marriage contract against her wishes. Peggy's intuition tells her that Sebastian's reappearance is some sort of blackmail to ensure the complicity of her banker uncle, and she has a suspicion that Jacobite loyalists are behind it somewhere. Politics aside, Peggy knows she cannot sacrifice her love for Matthew and marry the brutal Sebastian at any cost.

It all comes down to a wager at cards, in which Lord Lynnfield offers Peggy freedom from the betrothal and a wager of a small fortune only if she can beat his nephew at the gambling table, witnessed by the Princess Caroline, Prince George, and the full court.

My prologue was over. The stage was ready for me. "Mr. Sandford," I said cheerfully, "I believe you asked me for a game of piquet when we last met."

Her Royal Highness had risen. She moved forward to join my party. It was not to be missed that His Royal Highness remained at her side.

"This is most irregular, Lord Lynnfield," she remarked.

But despite her sovereign's offer of support, Peggy agrees that the game go forward. Her opponent is careful not to win too quickly. At long last the deadly game comes down to the last trick.

I pressed my hand to my bosom. Dear God, I must have counted right.

He lay his cards down. "This hand is mine, I believe." The whole of the crowd gasped.

"And there it is, Miss Fitzroy. You're mine."

But, as it turns out, Peggy Fitzroy has a final card up her sleeve, or rather, inexplicably resting on the floor under Lynnfield's own foot.

Peggy turns the tables most literally, but there are plenty of swashbuckling abductions, daring rescues, and quite a dunking in the dank and fetid waters of the Thames before our heroine emerges, high and dry in a surprisingly revealing but unsuspected conclusion, one which assures her rapt readers yet another courtly adventure in the delicious forthcoming Dangerous Deceptions (Palace of Spies) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).  Life at the court of the future King George I of England is anything but polite company, and author Sarah Zettel promises another historical fiction romp, a spy-in-the-salon page turner in this unique and riveting series, with its indomitable heroine Peggy Fitzroy overcoming cardsharpers, blackguards, murderous conspirators, and her cruelly confining corset stays to triumph over all.

To find out more about how Peggy Fitzroy finds herself in such a royal pickle, read my review of Book 1 in this series, Palace of Spies, here. And for those readers who just can't wait for another round of palace intrigues in the the third book in this trilogy, may I recommend Carolyn Meyer's The Wild Queen: The Days and Nights of Mary, Queen of Scots (Young Royals), reviewed here for  a lusty review of Jocobean conspiracies.

Romance, Espionage, and Empire: Palace of Spies by Sarah Zettel

A warning to all young ladies of delicate breeding who wish to embark upon lives of adventure: Don't.

Hard-won wisdom, earned the hard way by Peggy Fitzroy.

"I must begin with a frank confession. I became Lady Francesca Wallingham only after I met the man calling himself Tinderflint. This was after my betrothal, but before my uncle threw me into the street and barred the door.

Before that I was simply Margaret Preston Fitzroy, known as Peggy."

A orphaned poor relation, Peggy has enjoyed a pleasantly genteel upbringing in her resentful uncle's house, sharing lessons, fashions, and gossip with her cousin Olivia, also sixteen, until her uncle abruptly announces that he has arranged a marriage of convenience for her with Sebastian, the son of another influential merchant. On first sight, at her first grown-up ball, Sebastian seems not too bad, handsome and charming, but with a charm which quickly turns brutish when he assaults her in the garden. Rescued by an unlikely white knight, the rotund, middle-aged gentleman who calls himself Mr. Tinderflint, Peggy tries to put the experience behind her. But when Peggy refuses a forced marriage between herself and her assailant, her uncle casts her out of the house and she turns to Mr. Tinderflint, who makes her a very peculiar offer, to take the place of his ward at court, at a price.

"I will be as plain as I can.  Lady Francesca Wallingham was named one of the maids of honor to Caroline, our new Princess of Wales.  But Lady Francesca was struck by sudden illness while visiting at home and died of a fever.  It is our intent that you should take up the post in her stead."

It seems Peggy bears a striking resemblance to Francesca, and she is promised a crash course in courtly etiquette and entertainments to help with the impersonation, all to provide Mr. Tinderflint with a steady flow of information on the internal politics at court.  Having nowhere else to turn, Peggy agrees to the deception, but when she takes up the pretense of being Lady Francesca, she finds there there is more to her role than playing cards, flirting, and reporting royal gossip.

England's Hanoverian king, George I, is threatened by the ever-plotting and potentially powerful Jacobites, who scheme to restore the Scottish James to the throne, and Peggy soon discovers that Lady Fran had been up to her delicate eyebrows in royal treason, plotting with her lover, the purported footman Robert, to discover Queen's Anne's supposed Letter of Secession passing the crown to James and use it to overthrow the crown. Peggy fears Francesca's death was murder at the hands of a rival faction and realizes that she is caught between two unhappy prospects: she fears she will share the real Fran's fate if she cannot unravel the strands of the Jacobite conspiracy and she knows that if she is discovered to be a spy at court, she will face the gallows.

Sarah Zettel's forthcoming Palace of Spies (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) is a cracking good piece of historical fiction that has it all, a mystery with midnight trysts, documents sewn into the drapes and hidden in fireplace carvings, spies and counterspies galore, and deadly danger all the while, with a smart and witty heroine who cleverly navigates the mean girls among the ladies-in-waiting, carries out a role which rivals that of a stage diva, and wisely defers romance in pursuit of her goals. There are plenty of historical touches that will please costume drama buffs and a hold-your-breath conclusion in the dark, deserted Kensington Palace where Queen Anne died, all the elements which prove author Sarah Zettel the perfect mistress of her genre. A wicked page-turning romp through a turbulent period with a quick-witted heroine with the talent to trump the game.

Sarah Zettel, author of the popular American Fairy series and other science fiction and fantasy novels, promises that this book will be the first of a trilogy of historical fiction adventures for young adult readers.

Buried Truths: The Caged Graves by Dianne K. Salerni

SARAH ANN

Wife of Ransloe Boone

Entered into Rest

November 15, 1852
Aged 22 Years

Beloved Wife and Mother

It was all ordinary information, nothing Verity had not known. Except that the marker stood beside an iron cage that completely enclosed the grave, and the grave was outside the cemetery. A hinged door at the far end of the cage was padlocked shut.

"Why?" Verity's voice was raw and hoarse. "Why is my mother's grave inside a cage?"

Impetuously, seventeen-year-old Verity Boone has accepted an offer of marriage from Nathaniel McClure, a landed young farmer whose courtship letters and gifts of poetry had convinced her to travel from Worcester, where she had lived with her aunt since her mother's death fifteen years earlier, to the small town of Catawissa, Pennsylvania, where the father she has not seen in years lives alone. Nate  is mannerly, but awkward and reserved, and the easy exchange of thoughts that flowed in their letters seems missing. Still, he  is handsome and seems to be earnestly trying to please when she suggests that they take a walk toward the small church near her father's farmhouse. What she sees there shakes her deeply.

Her mother and aunt are buried in caged graves outside the graveyard walls, in unhallowed ground. As if they were what?....Witches?" she wonders. Verity realizes with dread that there are many more secrets buried in that small community than she could have imagined, secrets that she must understand before she can remain in that place and happily make a marriage with Nate.

Her father is distant and will tell her little about her mother's death, and although her intended mother-in-law and her daughters seem welcoming and affectionate, they only hint that secrets are better left buried. But in her father's house, Verity uncovers her mother's journals which hint at mysterious deaths, deaths which came suddenly upon several members of one family which preceded her own, including her Uncle John's first wife, Asenath.  Asenath was a strange young girl, not even twenty, a maker of "charms and remedies" and a relentless searcher for the treasure supposedly hidden nearby after the Revolutionary War. Horrified, Verity reads her mother's own account of those undiagnosed deaths, including her own symptoms in the days just before her death.

"Every person in this town with the name of Clayton has fallen to it.  It is no wonder people are remembering the stories of a curse upon that wretched family!

Asenath's heart beats slow.  She waters from the eyes, nose, and mouth. Chokes if we lay her down. She is very sleepy, but we are afraid to let her sleep. Those who died fell into a stupor before they passed."

And then Verity turns the page to read her mother's last entry on the day before her death:

"Asenath pins her hopes on Miss Piper's remedies.

Pains so bad I fear I will lose this baby.
Watering like dog..."

Verity realizes that no one is telling her the whole story of her mother's death and strange burial, and she turns to the young apprentice doctor, Hadley Jones, even though she is uneasy with the strong attraction between them.

"The only way to put down a lie is to uncover the truth," she realizes, and when Hadley Jones' diagnosis of poisoning substantiates her own suspicions, Verity realizes that the murders are all tied to the story of the buried treasure and a someone's sinister manipulations to have it  all at last.  The burden of this knowledge and her divided feelings for both Nate and Hadley convince Verity that she must discover the truth behind her mother's death, and soon, before she, too, falls victim to the murderer's long-term greed.

Diane K. Salerni's forthcoming The Caged Graves (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) is a crackerjack Gothic romantic mystery, set in a seemingly idyllic small town in 1867 with dark but unspoken conflicts symbolized by the caged graves beside its church.  Verity is an adventurous young woman, one caught up a swirl of   mysterious and threatening events, tales of ghosts and buried gold, witchcraft, dismembered corpses, and grave robbers,  and torn between two attractive suitors earnestly vying for her love.  A solid, well-crafted romance novel built around real history and an absorbing mystery of dark family secrets just right for reading on a dark and stormy night.

(Die)-Cut to the Chase: Where Does Love Come From? illustrated by Milena Kirkova

IT COMES FROM YOUR HEART! is the ultimate answer in Accord Publishing's diecut board book Where Does Love Come From? (Accord, 2011), which along the way allows for other engaging questions to be asked, if not answered.

Little fingers can locate and follow the cut-out hearts which lead to "answers," and offer the next little love teaser, queries such as whether love blooms in gardens, washes up on the waves, or blows upon the breeze.

A good choice as a lap book which reinforces recognition of the heart shape and colors displayed through cutouts on each page, as well as many other vocabulary-reinforcing images, this one offers tactile exploration as each page presents a new cut-out which leads to the question on the following page in sequence.

All these hearts, of course, lead back to the main question posed in the title. This book doesn't exactly answer its question (one probed by poets, philosophers, and recently physiologists alike) but it does provide some heart-y fun for youngsters along the way.

Love Bites! Smelly Bill: Love Stinks by Daniel Postgate

Bill is a pooch who loves to nosh on trash, a habit which has rightfully earned him the name "Smelly Bill." But when Cupid's arrow finds its mark, everything changes.

When Bill saw Peachy Snugglekins
Come trotting past the rubbish bins,
His knees felt weak, his eyes grew wide.
He felt all gooey inside.
He dropped his bag of rotting stuff.
He'd seen enough.
He was in LOVE!

It's obvious that Peachy's mistress, Great Aunt Bleach, is not going to look with favor upon Bill in his current garbage-grungy state, so the next morning Bill's family awakens to a brand-new sight (straight out of Harry the Dirty Dog)--Bill in the bathtub, scrub brush in his mouth, begging for a bath.

The bath doesn't do much for Bill's looks, but he smells so good that his owners decide to enter him in the town's pooch parade, competing for the "Best Dog" Prize. Bill is thrilled; it's his chance to woo the lovely Peachy Snugglekins and make a better impression on Aunt Bleach as well.

But alas, Bill without the smell is still Bill, not exactly a winningly winsome sight with his long, pointy snout set off with snaggly teeth. The parade viewers are not kind:

"He's like a walking toilet brush!"

Bill is crushed.

But then danger strikes. A huge hound of horror, Vesuvius, begins to erupt in a frenzy of snarls and barks, and Aunt Bleach's little darling is pursued into the mucky swamp deep in the middle of the forest. Only Bill has the right stuff to rescue the imperiled Peachy and win her heart as well. Pretty is as pretty does, and even Aunt Bleach sees Bill's inner beauty just in time.

Daniel Postgate's second doggy drama starring his canine hero Bill, Smelly Bill: Love Stinks (Albert Whitman, 2010) is a jolly rhyming canine variant of Beauty and the Beast which will please primary-grade pooch lovers everywhere. Pair this one with Rob Scotton's tale of his love-smitten kitten, Love, Splat (Splat the Cat) for a pair of pet lover-pleasing love stories for the upcoming Valentine season.

Daniel Postgate's first Bill story is Smelly Bill.

How Sweet It Is: Henry in Love by Peter McCarty

Henry knows it going to be a good day when he awakes to the smell of blueberry muffins. Packing an extra one in his backpack, he heads off to school with brother Tom and friend Sancho. Along the way the three meet up with a high school football player who amazingly offers to throw them some long ones. To his surprise, Henry snags a pass and a compliment.

"Way to go, little man! You're pretty fast. I have a sister your age--she's fast, too!"

Henry knew his sister.

He thought she was the loveliest girl in his class.

Her name was Chloe. She sat in the back row.

The truth is, Henry is sweet on Chloe, who in her demure pink dress, wears a flirtatious smile whenever Henry meets her eye across the classroom.

On the playground he tries to impress her with his forward somersault, which she immediately matches with a carefree cartwheel, and when Henry is IT in a game of tag, Chloe scampers up the climbing bars, with a coy "You'll never catch ME." Henry is even more smitten and decides to make his move.

"You're not going to talk to a GIRL, are you?" asked Sancho.

But after all, it is Henry's lucky day. Back in the classroom, his teacher decides to change the seating chart then and there, and Henry finds himself right beside the object of his affections. At snack time, he remembers the beautiful blueberry muffin in his backpack and is thrilled to exchange it meaningfully for a carrot with the coquettish Chloe, and love is in bloom!

Pete McCarty's charmingly illustrated Henry in Love (Balzer and Bray, 2010)captures the subtleties of a schoolboy crush in this heartwarming story of very young love. Accented with hearts and flowers whenever Henry's and Chloe's gazes lock on each other, McCarty's text is never patronizing, expressing the seriousness of Henry's feelings perfectly in this story of very young sweethearts.