Clockwork Angel - The Infernal Devices, Book 1 (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2010) by Cassandra Clare is a prequel to the author's Mortal Instruments series (which I haven't read yet, but now want to...).

16 year old Tessa Gray takes a ship to London where she is kidnapped by the Dark Sisters, who train her in transformations. She ends up with the Shadow Hunters who promise to help her find her lost brother. The story has vampires, demons, magic, steampunk, romance (Will or James) and is fascinating and scary.

Book 2 is called Clockwork Prince and is now out. Book 3, Clockwork Princess, is scheduled to come out the end of 2012.

On Cassie's website I discovered she'll be touring Germany, the UK and Ireland this spring.

Heart of a Shepherd (Random House Books for Children, 2009) by Rosanne Parry is a lovely book. I enjoyed the intergenerational relationships, the faith of the main character, and a look into a military and shepherd family's life.

12 year old Brother (Ignatius) is not happy. His dad, who is in the Reserves, has to go to Iraq. His older brothers are away at school and he and his grandparents have to keep the ranch going. Brother thinks that keeping the ranch the same will help bring his dad home safely. But sheep ranching is not really his thing.

One of the things I especially enjoyed on Rosanne's website is the story of how she got her idea for Heart of a Shepherd. Here's encouragement for other writers from her site: "It took me seven years to go from my first idea for Heart of a Shepherd to a finished book. But in those seven years I also wrote another novel, two mysteries, lots of short stories and many newspaper and magazine articles."

I next plan to read Second Fiddle, another book by Roseanne about military families.

Great first line: "I'm alive today because I was grounded." How could you not read on after that?

But there's more than one meaning of "grounded" in Grounded (Feiwel and Friends, 2010) by Kate Klise. Besides being a really good story, the book has a sympathetic character and a mystery to solve. No wonder it is an award winner!

Daralynn's brother, sister and father die in a plane crash. After her mother fixes their hair, shaves her husband for their funerals, she gets hired to do the hair for corpses at the mortuary. When her mother gets so good at doing hair that live people want her to do their hair, she uses the insurance money to open a beauty parlor. Daralynn/Dolly gets to help with the parlor. But then Clem comes to town with a crematorium which threatens her mother's job. So Dolly (nicknamed so after all the dolls she got after the funeral) puts a plan into effect: living funerals, so you can hear what people have to say before you die.

This is my first time to read a book by Kate Klise, but I plan to read more. Look at her website and see all the other books. I recently saw a mention on twitter from a librarian about Kate's book, Dying to Meet You. @tgaletti says its a popular book in her library. Guess that's the one I'll need to read next.

One Crazy Summer (Amistad, 2010) by Rita Williams-Garcia is set in 1968 and would be eye-opening for younger readers to learn how blacks, then called Negroes, were treated. Even for me living at that time in a community where I didn't see much prejudice, it's rather shocking.

12 year old Delphine and her two younger sisters are flying from Brooklyn to California to spend time with their mother Cecile who left them 7 years ago right after Fern was born. Cecile doesn't want them--takes the money Pa sent and spends it on takeout food. Girls had been hoping for a trip to Disneyland. Mom sends the kids to a Black Panther summer camp to get rid of them!

I loved Delphine and her determination!

I also loved reading about Rita herself on her website. (NoMo? You'll only know what it is if you visit...) She's written four award winning books! Find out about them and what else she's written under the My Books tab.

In Blink & Caution (Candlewick, 2011) by Tim Wynne-Jones I never mistook whether I was hearing 17 year old Caution or 16 year old Blink. Maybe that's why it won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for fiction for 2011!

These two runaway/street kids in Toronto are both in trouble. They meet through a con and despite herself, Caution wants to help Blink solve the mystery he witnessed. But can these two learn to trust each other?

This Tim Wynne-Jones is NOT the nuclear physicist, according to the author website. But there you can learn about the variety of books Tim has written, about all his awards, and more.