Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

Lynn: Move over Philip Marlowe, a new gumshoe is in town.  Meet J.J. Tully, former search and rescue dog  – now turned out to grass in his retirement.    And sister, there’s chickens in that grass.  J.J. has barely settled in when trouble comes knocking – trouble in the form of a pretty tough bird.  [...]

Cindy: My first experience with Wuthering Heights comes from a Classics Illustrated version of the title from my childhood. Still, Heathcliff haunts me and who wouldn’t be intrigued by the story behind this brooding, evil character living on the English moors. The House of Dead Maids (Henry Holt, 2010) is Clare Dunkle’s creepy prequel-of-sorts to [...]

Lynn: There is always a big demand for mysteries for the middle school set so it was doubly exciting to find one that provides a well plotted puzzle AND a lot more besides. Crunch (Harper/Katherine Tegen, 2010) features the charming Marriss family: narrator 14-year-old Dewey, his 18-year-old sister Lil, shy 13-year-old Vince and the five-year-old [...]

Lynn: Don’t you love it when you find a book that is wonderfully written, will be a sure-fire winner with teens AND provides the perfect booktalking quote too? Revolver (Roaring Brook, 2010) does all this in 200 accessible can’t-stop-reading-them pages. The book opens with a bang as young Sig looks at the dead body of [...]

Lynn: As a teen (a loooong time ago) I balanced my sf/fantasy reading with big doses of romantic mysteries by authors like Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt. As a librarian, I struggled to find books to meet that same interest for the girls in my 8th-9th grade building. This new series, The Agency, promises to [...]

Lynn: Here in Michigan we have two glorious weeks left before the school bell rings the day after Labor Day. Many families are wedging in one more trip and we’d like to remind everyone of a terrific way to while away the miles, avoid squabbles and enjoy something together. Listen to an audio book! I [...]

Cindy: Things That Suck You In Books that make you want to flip back to the beginning and start an immediate reread. Books you actually take the time to reread. When You Reach Me (Random House/Wendy Lamb, 2009). Books you want to read a third time. Books you want to clutch to your chest. Things [...]

Lynn: It’s not every fourteen-year-old girl who can successfully work as a Perditorian (finder of lost things) on her own in the teeming dangerous streets of London. Enola Holmes is no ordinary girl and she is doing quite nicely, thank you, solving cases that baffle even her famous brothers. Before she disappeared, Enola’s eccentric mother [...]

Lynn: Any other re-readers out there? I confess to being a major re-reader most of my life. It is harder to do these days but I still love to revisit old favorites. Sometimes it can be disappointing but I am happy to say that I recently reread two Nancy Werlin mysteries and they are just [...]

Lynn: Do not be deceived by the saccharine sweet cover! This wonderful little gem is a wacky mix of Jane Austen, Sherlock Holmes and Jack Gantos at his bizarre best. Wealthy orphaned Petronella Arbuthnot is celebrating her sixteenth birthday with an assembly of friends. Her guardian, Augustus T. Percival, laughing widely at a joke, inadvertently [...]