Kristin is taking names and kicking ass in this follow-up to Baby Shark’s Beaumont Blues. Five years have passed since she was brutalized in Baby Shark. The detective agency she and her business partner Otis Millet run has proven to be successful but maybe even more than ever they are running across people who are willing to shoot first and ask questions later. Sent to Oklahoma to ransom a bootlegger’s girl friend, they find they’ve been set up to be killed. As always they escape but not unscathed. Returning the young woman to her own bootlegging family they find they aren’t out of the woods when people keep trying to kill them. On a stake out Otis ends up delivering a baby girl in the hallway of a residential hotel and when the bad guys come out of the room he is critically injured leaving Kristin on her own. Kristin has honed her skills and grown up a lot since her debut in Baby Shark. Fate’s dialog and descriptions make the 1950s come to life as the body count rises and we even get to see Kristin do what it is that earned her the name Baby Shark in this series that always satisfies.

This anthology of fifteen enchanting stories from some big name authors and others who should eventually be big names offers a range of stories that will have something to captivate every fantasy reader out there. Holly Black’s urban fantasy features homeless teens and a unicorn. Cassandra Clare’s Lovecraftian story will appeal to those who love creepy stories, especially all the Cthulu fans. Cecil Castellucci’s Hollywood tale features alternate realities and the power of one young actress. Tiffany Trent’s story features a character from her Hallowmere series. I had never read Beth Bernobich before but I’ll definitely be looking for more stories from her in the future after reading her fairy tale with an Asian setting “Pig, Crane, Fox: Three Hearts Unfolding.” I also really enjoyed “Out of Her Element” by E. Sedia, a story about a Victorian girl with consumption and a salamander. It has the atmosphere and feel of Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle series and Jenny Davidson’s forthcoming novel The Explosionist. Berman’s comments about each author following their brief bios at the end of the book are hysterical.

Eighteen year old Veronica May who is a plus size actress, full of confidence from years as a success in community theater, heads for Hollywood when her widowed father decides to remarry, her job evaporates, and the director of the community theater decides to stage a production that has no place for her. A talented larger than life performer, Vee discovers that not being a size 0 makes her stand out in a bad way in Hollywood after a few horrible auditions where people aren’t interested in her talent, just her size. She has moved in with a friend from high school, one of V’s, who is now going by Reed, her last name. Between movement classes, yoga classes, and acting classes, Vee takes a job as a barista. Her hunky boss is a former actor who does not date employees and she becomes pals with a gay coworker and a paranoid conspiracy theorist one. It is an entertaining heartfelt story. It is great to have a plus size heroine in teen lit who is beautiful and has a great sense of humor.

OK. So I am not the biggest fan of Graphic Novels. I usually prefer to read text. It goes so much faster. It is like a big data dump and my brain instantly conjuring up the images. With Graphic Novels I have to take it slowly. Each frame tells part of the story so must be carefully considered and can’t just be poured into the old brain. Part of this may be because I majored in Art as an undergraduate. That said there are some graphic novels that I love. My favorite of all time is The Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryon Talbot so I don’t dislike Graphic Novels. After having two different teens tell me about Life Sucks and how great it was I just had to try it and they were right. It is terrific. I’m a little tired of vampires but this was a fresh story and the art really worked for me. I liked Dave who looks like a ordinary convenience store clerk but is actually a vegetarian vampire who must obey his master and turn the hot dogs, rotate the stock, and do whatever his master tells him. He has a crush on Rosa, a goth girl customer who would like to meet a real vampire, one of those sexy mysterious beings. Dave also has a friend, Jerome, he hangs out with who is a vamp who works in a neighboring store which really brings the movie Clerks to mind. Dave’s nemesis is a surfer vamp who goes after Rosa.

A story within a story as a contemporary divorcee discovers old bones when digging a rose garden at her newly purchased historic home and finds letters that take her back into the story of a young Irish immigrant whose sister dies shortly after giving birth in a Boston hospital. Rose, takes her niece who seems to be the object of a well funded and deadly search, and keeps her safe. Along the way she falls in love with a poor young med student who is in classes with Oliver Wendell Holmes. Meanwhile a serial killer has killed both nurses who assisted at the delivery of Meggie and the young student becomes the prime suspect. Meanwhile in the present, the divorcee finds friendship and perhaps love herself. Resurrection men, those who dug up bodies for medical research in the early part of the 19th century have appeared in a couple of teen books recently, too. The historical detail revolving around medical practices and training of the 1830s was particularly interesting.

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” -Benjamin Franklin. Marcus Yallow and three of his friends skip out of school to participate in a game I don’t understand but that sounds so much like fun I tried googling it. In a horrible case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time they witness the San Francisco Bay Bridge being blown up, perhaps by terrorists. When the quartet tries to go to ground in a BART station the press of the crowd proves deadly and his friend Darryl is stabbed. Up on the street, trying to flag down help to get Darryl to a hospital, they are picked up as suspected terrorists by the Department of Homeland Security and taken to a secret prison where Marcus is tortured and interrogated. Days later he is allowed to go home but threatened with retribution if he is to reveal that he had been imprisoned and tortured. An accomplished hacker, he figures out a way to fight back. Full of heart and terrifyingly real, Doctorow’s first novel written specifically for teens is sure to be discussed and applauded by both teen and adult readers who realize the significance of the dystopian world that is evolving before us. Readers who have not yet read Orwell’s 1984 will want to as they will find interesting and scary parallels.

Danny Lopez goes to National City, just south of San Diego to spend the summer with his father’s relatives when his mother and sister go off to San Francisco with his mother’s new boyfriend. At home he felt like an outsider in his preppie private school because of being half-Mexican. In National City he feels like an outsider because he looks so white and speaks no Spanish. In the course of the summer he teams up with Uno, a kid who is half African-American and half Hispanic in a scheme using his phenomenal pitching skills to make money so he can go to Mexico to visit his dad and Uno can move to Oxnard to live with his dad. Danny also falls for a gorgeous half-Mexican girl who doesn’t speak any English which makes their relationship kind of tough. This great coming of age story has interesting baseball action and compelling characters set in a warm but also menacing environment where danger lurks alongside the ubiquitous graffiti and gangs.

Vlad Tod, is a vampire in eighth grade. Orphaned three years previously, he lives with his late mother’s best friend Nelly a nurse who is able to obtain blood for him. The only person besides Nelly who knows Vlad is a vampire is his best friend Henry who he sort of accidentally bit when they were eight years old and with whom he now shares a telepathic bond. If eighth grade weren’t bad enough Vlad is the favorite target of the school bullies, his beloved home room teacher has gone missing, he has a major crush on an awesome girl, and the new substitute teacher is very strange and seems to know Vlad’s secret. This combination of horror and humor should entice reluctant readers.

Retired mercenary Jon Moore made one mistake when went to the lovely undeveloped planet Macken, he paid upfront for substantial time in his vacation rental which allowed him to be found by a Slake, the head Kelco executive on the planet. Kelco hires Jon to retrieve his kidnapped daughter. In pursuit of the mission, Jon who has some exceptional nanotech enhancements and the ability to communicate with mechanical objects, manages to acquire Lobo, a sentient assault vehicle. Mission accomplished he goes to another planet for repairs on Lobo, discovers that there is a price on his head, and that he totally fubared the kidnap rescue. Teaming up with former comrades in arms, he sets out to make things right. This entertaining, fast moving science fiction yarn is exactly the type that turned so many sf readers into fans. Hopefully this is just the first of many adventures for John Moore and Lobo. The second book in the series, Slanted Jack is due out in July.

Zane Guesswind looks white but has Black and Wyandot ancestors. When he was very young he discovered that he could sometimes stave off Grand Mal seizures by writing something. Now he writes on his bedroom walls and ceiling. Sometimes what he writes comes true but even all his writing trying to make his mother recover from chloroprene didn’t work and she used a family heirloom gun to kill herself. Now Zane has crossed his grandfather out of a picture he drew and found the smelly old man dead in living room. Stealing the ‘69 Barracuda left behind by his father, Zane takes off heading for Zanesville, Ohio where his mother is buried to kill himself. Along the way he picks up a girl who calls herself Libba Ration and learns much about himself and his families through conversations along the way with various dead relatives and ancestors. This astonishingly enthralling verse novel will appeal to reluctant readers for the strength of the story and to sophisticated readers for the powerful language.

Part comedy, part tragedy, part two, too fun. A year after they started living happily ever after Queen Marigold and King Chris are at odds with each other for no reason and so are the five dogs who all want the same blue dog toy. Queen Olympia who suffered amnesia and turned into a decent person called Angela after falling in the river and being swept away at their wedding regains her memory and meaness and returns to the palace with Lazy Susan, Sleeping Beauty’s sister. Sending King Swithbert? (already passed the book on to a teen reader so I can't look up the name), Ed the Troll, and Magnus to the dungeon to await execution for treason, Olympia rewrites the constitution. Meanwhile Marigold and Christian find a secret way into the dungeon and seek a way to fix things and save the lives of their adopted dads and their friend. Full of all the great malapropisms, kindness, and gentle lessons that were in Once Upon a Marigold, this terrific tale will be enjoyed by those who like intelligence and wit in the characters they read.

Since I make my living writing about the adult and teen fiction I read, I tend to not read "children's" books. So when I received a review copy of this and saw that the protagonist was only 11 I decided to pass on it. But, it was sf and sounded like it would really be fun so even though I didn't think it would fit in with my professional reading I put it on my tbr bookshelf along with other books that I can't justify reading for work but that I still want to read someday.

I don't know how many times I've told groups that speculative fiction readers don't really care about whether a book is for children, teens, or adults, if it is good they want to read it. I've also often relayed Garth Nix's concept that books shouldn't have age ranges attached, they should have entry levels. For instance this book was probably marketed with an age range of 8-12. Using Nix's concept the entry level would be age 8 but it would be appropriate for anybody over that age who likes this type book. I should listen to myself sometimes.

With The True Meaning of Smekday being nominated for Best Books for Young Adults and a finalist for the Andre Norton award I decided I could justify reading it and am I glad I did. Gratuity "Tip" Tucci is an endearing inventive heroine and the story just rolls along sucking the reader in like the tube J-Lo used to get the water out of the flooding car.

Tip, and the other kids in her class are assigned to write an essay on the "true meaning of Smekday" for possible inclusion in a time capsule that will be buried for 100 years. Tip's story actually starts when her mother dreams of being abducted by aliens and a huge color changing mole appears on her neck. On Christmas her mother disappears and the alien Boov conquer the earth. When they send all humans to a reservation in Florida, Tip decides to drive herself down there along with her cat, Pig, and along the way meets a fugitive Boov named J-Lo who modifies her car and together they experience all kinds of adventures as they try to find Tip's mom and free the Earth