Best Books of 2015

So many books, so little time! Here are some of the books that I really enjoyed in 2015, listed alphabetically by title. Click on the titles to read my reviews:

Alex as Well by Alyssa Brugman
All the Rage by Courtney Summers
Dead Ringers by Christopher Golden
A Deafening Silence in Heaven by Thomas E. Sniegoski
Edgewater by Courtney Sheinmel
The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough
Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen
Sounds Like Me: My Life (so far) in Song by Sara Bareilles
Tin Men by Christopher Golden
The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten


Check out my full list: Best Books of 2015 - as posted at my blog, Bildungsroman.


What were some of your favorite books from 2015? Leave the titles in the comments below!

Attention Filmmakers and Readers: Make a Snowblind Trailer!

Attention filmmakers (and readers!)

Want to show the world what you can do AND spread the love of a good book? St. Martin's Press and Talenthouse are accepting 1-minute trailers for Christopher Golden's upcoming book SNOWBLIND. All of the submitted videos will be seen by some pretty cool folks - legitimate directors, writers, producers - and one will be selected to be the book's official trailer.

If you are interested, you should enter.

If you know other filmmakers - be they amateur or professional, adults or teens or kids - please let them know about this incredible opportunity.

Trust me. I've read the book, and it's amazing. With edge-of-your-seat tension and jaw-dropping twists, Christopher Golden's Snowblind blizzard is going to blow you away!

So what are you waiting for? Spread the word, gather a production team, and make that mini-movie!

Here's the official press release and all of the pertinent information. Good luck!

St. Martin's Press and Talenthouse invite amateur filmmakers to produce a short horror book trailer for SNOWBLIND, the highly anticipated novel by New York Times bestselling author Christopher Golden. The winning trailer will be heavily promoted and used as part of an integrated marketing and advertising campaign for the book and will also receive a consultation with one or more of the judges to discuss their work.

Helping St. Martin's Press judge the entries are:

FRANK DARABONT (Director, Writer, Producer) - The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Walking Dead, Mob City, among others.

DAVID S. GOYER (Writer, Director, Producer) - Man of Steel, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Blade, Da Vinci's Demons, among others.

DON MURPHY (Producer) - Transformers 1-4, Real Steel, Natural Born Killers, Vampire Academy, among others.

STEPHEN SUSCO (Writer, Producer) - The Grudge 1 and 2, Texas Chainsaw 3D, Red, High School, among others.

CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN (Author, Editor) - Of Saints and Shadows, Baltimore, Tin Men, The New Dead, among others.

For more information on how to enter:
http://www.talenthouse.com/create-a-video-for-snowblind

SNOWBLIND trailer competition guidelines

Video should be a maximum length of 1 minute.

The end shot of the trailer must provide the publication information for the book, including title, book image provided, and the publication information:

SNOWBLIND
On Sale
January 21, 2014
Wherever Books Are Sold

Choose one of the three options listed below:
1) Create a scene from pages 28 - 30 featuring Cherie, her dog, and the iceman. (See the book excerpt linked below.)
2) Create a scene from pages 48 - 51 featuring Isaac looking out the window at the ice men dancing in the snow in his yard, with Jake not believing him. (See the book excerpt linked below.)
3) Entrants are invited to create their own scenes or images inspired by a provided sample from Snowblind. These original trailers should capture the tone of the novel. For example:
- A woman sitting on her bed with the covers drawn up, hugging her knees, staring in terror at the window with the wind rattling the glass, snow piling up against it or pelting it.
- A woman smoking a cigarette outside a bar at night with the snow falling. She hears a sound, turns, looks terrified.
- An anchor reads the news about the blizzard and what happened twelve years ago and then the power goes out and you hear the whistling of the wind as snow whips across the screen, perhaps suggesting the image of evil features looking in.

The presence of the snowstorm/blizzard may suggest digital effects but they are not required.

Entrants may devise their own approach to representing the ominous presence of the storm and the fear of the townspeople.

Judges will consider many factors, including imagination and ingenuity.

Submit by: January 6th, 2014


Direct links to all of the necessary ingredients:
SNOWBLIND Novel Excerpt
About the book
St Martin's PRESS Logo
3D Book Shot SNOWBLIND
Judging Panel Official Bios

Get Snowblind:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
BAM
Indiebound

Teens Wanna Know: Otherworldly YA Books

Looking for an awesome YA book that will take you out of this world? Love sci-fi/fantasy series? Check out my guest post at Teens Wanna Know! 

I've recommended five fantastic stories by Christopher Golden (Prowlers), Thomas E. Sniegoski (Fallen), Scott Westerfeld (Uglies), Justine Larbalestier (How to Ditch Your Fairy), and Holly Black (The Curse Workers). These books include angels, shapeshifters, surgeries, good luck, and bad luck, among other things. 

If you haven't read them yet, you should. If you have read them, let me know which one you liked the best.

Check out my Otherworldly YA post at Teens Wanna Know and leave a comment!  

Joe Golem and the Drowning City by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden

Run - don't walk - to get Joe Golem and the Drowning City by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, especially if you like steampunk.

I've recommended Christopher Golden's books here at readergirlz many times, and for good reason: his stories rock, and they often feature a strong female protagonist. In the heart of Manhattan, you'll find 14-year-old Molly McHugh. Described as "all freckles and red hair and youthful vigor," Molly is a force to be reckoned with. The girl's got moxie, and she can certainly hold her own. She trusts her gut, which has helped her to survive in the Drowning City.

Just what has happened to the once-glorious city? Here's a little backstory:

Fifty years ago, earthquakes shook Lower Manhattan, submerging the city and forever changing the landscape and livelihood of all who lived there. As the years passed, the gap between the classes widened: the wealthy live and thrive in Uptown, where they grow wealthier, as the poor people in submerged Downtown try desperately to survive in what is now known as the Drowning City.

It is in Downtown that aging magician Felix Orlov resides. Molly, his energetic and devoted assistant, lives the floor above him. Dark dreams, a seance, and an attack lead to Orlov's abduction and cause Molly to run away - and enlist the help of Simon Church, an investigator, and Joe Golem, the bodyguard to end all bodyguards. If Hellboy were mixed with Eliot Spencer from Leverage and dressed in clothes from some classic Warren Beatty films, he might just be Joe Golem.

Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola make me want to live in the Drowning City, to meet the wonderful characters they've created and help them defeat the monstrous villains. They've also offered up a short story, Joe Golem and the Copper Girl, but I still want more. Mignola's black-and-white illustrations are, as always, memorable. One only hopes that the movie, which is currently in development, captures the spirit and intensity of this book. The submerged city, falling buildings, and fight scenes need to be Inception-level awesome on screen. This captivating story deserves all of that, and more. I also recommend this novel to fans of Fringe. (Hello, Manhattan and alternate history!)

Want to know more? Read my full review at my blog, Bildungsroman.

Cover Stories: The Secret Journeys Of Jack London by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, Illustrated by Greg Ruth

In a special treat of a Cover Story, there are three people weighing in today. Here are Tim Lebbon (TL) and Christopher Golden (CG), the authors, and Greg Ruth (GR), the illustrator who did the cover (actually, editor Jordan Brown weighs in too, so it's the first ever four-person Cover Story!).

Did you have an idea in mind for your cover as you were writing the book?
TL: I think I always imagined the cover featuring Jack himself, probably in an action scene, although I'm always concerned at what a character might look in cases like this. Greg's final product exceeded my wildest expectation - there's so much power in that image, so much Wild, that it just took my breath away.

CG: I had been thinking of something almost antique and old-fashioned looking to go along with the Jack London era adventure tone. Greg managed to come up with something that served that desire while being totally contemporary and beautiful. We're lucky to have him on this. Despite warnings to the contrary, people often do judge books by their covers, and this one is a home run.

GR: I think the notion going in was to thread the needle between making a cover that was distinctly Jack London, but without actually showing Jack's face... which was of course the hard trick to manage. I needed then to make everything about the image a contributor to his character, and to that I did a number of initial sketches of him atop some snow ridge, either with his back to us, or facing us, but his face obscured by snow and light. We quickly settled on the former and worked it towards fulfilling the initial goal along those lines.

[Below, see two of Greg's eight intial sketches for the cover, at left, all very different ideas, these are the two to which we most gravitated. They loved the scale and the weight of the one with Jack looking out from the precipice, and also the intricate detail of the more close-up image of Jack's back. They asked if Greg could combine them a bit in a more refined sketch, and that one is on the far right:]

Did your publisher ask for your input before the art dept started working?
TL: We talked generalities about book design, the feel we wanted for it. But we didn't impose any restrictions, because we all had faith that Greg would come up with something wonderful..."

Read the rest of this epic Cover Story (and see more initial designs) at melissacwalker.com.

PS-The full post is part of a huge blog tour, so here's the full schedule in case you want to learn more!

Monday, February 28th
Little Willow at Bildungsroman

Tuesday, March 1st

Kiba Rika (Kimberly Hirsh) of Lectitans

Wednesday, March 2nd
Kim Baccellia from Si, Se Puede! and Young Adults Book Central

Thursday, March 3rd
Melissa Walker's blog

Friday, March 4th
Justin from Little Shop of Stories

Monday, March 7th
Rebecca's Book Blog

Tuesday, March 8th
Martha Brockenbrough, author of Things That Make Us [Sic]

Download the electronic press kit for THE SECRET JOURNEYS OF JACK LONDON.

Prowlers by Christopher Golden, recommended by Little Willow

After reading October's spotlighted title, Lips Touch by Laini Taylor, you'll probably want to sink your teeth into another shapeshifter story. Run, don't walk, to get the Prowlers novels by Christopher Golden, which we've named recommended reads this month.



In this thrilling four-book series, a young man named Jack has to face the shapeshifters who killed his best friend. The monsters have the ability to change at any time, which, to me, makes them more frightening and deadly than werewolves who may only change when there's a full moon. In addition to their physical strength, they are also incredibly cunning, and they are usually human in appearance. Instead of being mindless killing machines, they are incredibly layered characters who have all of the wonderful and horrible strengths and weaknesses we do when it comes to those we love or things we stand for or against, making them dynamic adversaries for the good guys.

Golden also takes a cool angle on the classic love triangle: the main character, Jack, falls for Molly, who was his best friend's girlfriend. You know, his best friend, Artie, who was killed by the Prowlers. Artie's now a ghost, but he doesn't want Jack to tell anyone that he can see him. Plus Jack's got this awesome older sister, Courtney, and then there's Bill, who...well, you have to read the books to find out!

This series should be read in order.
Prowlers
Laws of Nature
Predator and Prey
Wild Things

Read my post about Prowlers at my blog, Bildungsroman.

Learn more about the series at the author's website.

Pssst... If you're planning to watch The Walking Dead on AMC tonight, check out this St. Martin's interview with authors whose short stories appear in the zombie anthology The New Dead and see what they think about the new TV show!

Have a happy Halloween, readergirlz. Please be safe!

TRW Tribute: Christopher Golden 3:15

"I write smart, courageous, formidable females because that's the way I see them, and that's the way I want young girls to see themselves."

Christopher Golden