Inverarity is not a Scottish village

Fairwood Press, 2023, 264 pages

Beck Garrison lives on a seastead — an archipelago of constructed platforms and old cruise ships, assembled by libertarian separatists a generation ago. She's grown up comfortable and sheltered, but starts doing odd jobs for pocket money.

To her surprise, she finds that she's the only detective that a debt slave can afford to hire to track down the woman's missing sister. When she tackles this investigation, she learns things about life on the other side of the waterline — not to mention about herself and her father — that she did not expect. And that some people will stop at nothing to keep her from talking about . . .

Silver Empire, 2020, 466 pages

...She has discovered she has an older sister named Amber, who was stolen-away as a baby. Nobody but Rachel remembers her--not even their parents. Rachel is determined to find Amber and restore her to the family. But how?

She doubts it will be as easy as overhearing the name Rumpelstiltskin.

Meanwhile, Rachel has bigger problems. Wild fey have invaded the campus. If they so much as bewitch even one more student, Roanoke Academy will be forced to close its doors. Rachel and her friends must solve this menace before the academy cancels more classes or, worse, the Year of the Dragon Ball!

But she has hope--if she can keep the school open--because, as Rachel's late grandmother told her, Masquerade balls are a time of wonder... when anything is possible.

Wisecraft Publishing, 2017, 452 pages

What she knows, she dare not tell. Rachel Griffin should be having an amazing freshman year. She has the Princess of Magical Australia and crazy orphan Sigfried the Dragonslayer for friends and a handsome sorcerer boyfriend romancing her with charms magical and otherwise. But otherworldly forces conspire against those she loves. While all others can be made to forget the truth, Rachel cannot. When she runs afoul of the hidden force responsible for hiding these terrible secrets, Rachel must face her most desperate hour yet. This on top of winter fairies, missing friends, Yule gifts, flying practice, and a rampaging ogre…oh, and schoolwork. Then there is the matter of a certain undeniably attractive older boy…

Delacorte Press, 2021, 415 pages

From the number one New York Times best-selling author of the Reckoners series, the Mistborn trilogy, and the Stormlight Archive comes the third book in an epic series about a girl who will travel beyond the stars to save the world she loves from destruction.

Spensa’s life as a Defiant Defense Force pilot has been far from ordinary. She proved herself one of the best starfighters in the human enclave of Detritus, and she saved her people from extermination at the hands of the Krell - the enigmatic alien species that has been holding them captive for decades. What’s more, she traveled light-years from home as an undercover spy to infiltrate the Superiority, where she learned of the galaxy beyond her small, desolate planet home.

Now, the Superiority - the governing galactic alliance bent on dominating all human life - has started a galaxy-wide war. And Spensa’s seen the weapons they plan to use to end it: the Delvers. Ancient, mysterious alien forces that can wipe out entire planetary systems in an instant. Spensa knows that no matter how many pilots the DDF has, there is no defeating this predator.

Except that Spensa is Cytonic. She faced down a Delver and saw something eerily familiar about it. And maybe, if she’s able to figure out what she is, she could be more than just another pilot in this unfolding war. She could save the galaxy.

The only way she can discover what she really is, though, is to leave behind all she knows and enter the Nowhere. A place from which few ever return.

To have courage means facing fear. And this mission is terrifying.

Sourcebooks Fire, 2014, 267 pages

Okiku wants vengeance...and she gets it. Whenever there's a monster hurting a child - the same way she was hurt 300 years ago in Japan - her spirit is there to deliver punishment. But one American boy draws her like no other. The two are pulled into a world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from the American Midwest to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan. The boy is not a monster, but something evil writhes beneath his skin, trapped by a series of intricate tattoos. Can Okiku protect him? Or is her presence only bringing more harm?

Tor Teen, 2020, 368 pages

Django Wexler's City of Stone and Silence is the second book in the cinematic fantasy Wells of Sorcery Trilogy featuring a fierce young woman skilled in the art of combat magic on an epic mission to steal a ghost ship.

After surviving the Vile Rot, Isoka, Meroe, and the rest of Soliton’s crew finally arrive at Soliton's mysterious destination, the Harbor - a city of great stone ziggurats, enshrouded in a ghostly veil of Eddica magic. And they're not alone.

Royalty, monks, and madmen live in a precarious balance, and by night take shelter from monstrous living corpses. None know how to leave the Harbor, but if Isoka can't find a way to capture Soliton and return it to the Emperor's spymaster before a year is up, her sister Tori's life will be forfeit.

But there's more to Tori's life back in Kahnzoka than the comfortable luxury Isoka intended for her. By night, she visits the lower wards, risking danger to help run a sanctuary for mage-bloods fleeing the Emperor's iron fist. When she discovers that Isoka is missing, her search takes her deep in the mires of intrigue and revolution. And she has her own secret - the power of Kindre, the Well of Mind, which can bend others to its will. Though she's spent her life denying this brutal magic, Tori will use whatever means she has to with Isoka's fate on the line...

Del Rey Books, 2020, 336 pages

I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life.

Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans. I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts, I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, make myself the dark queen of the world. At least, that’s what the world expects.

Most of the other students in here would be delighted if Orion killed me like one more evil thing that’s crawled out of the drains. Sometimes I think they want me to turn into the evil witch they assume I am. The school certainly does. But the Scholomance isn’t getting what it wants from me. And neither is Orion Lake. I may not be anyone’s idea of the shining hero, but I’m going to make it out of this place alive, and I’m not going to slaughter thousands to do it, either. Although I’m giving serious consideration to just one.

Balzer + Bray, 2020, 560 pages

After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother.

But nothing is easy when you’re a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodemus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880s America.

What’s more, this safe haven is not what it appears - as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her.

But she won’t be in it alone.

Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by - and that Jane needs her, too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not.

Watching Jane’s back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it’s up to Katherine to keep hope alive - even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.

Hickory Nut Publishing, 2018, 378 pages

Humanity's last hope...

With Earth rapidly becoming inhospitable to human life, GS Archean carries a one-way crew of courageous passengers to Uelara, an Earth-like planet in the Cieri star system. Uelara is ideal, except for one minor detail - its distance from Earth. Traveling at sub-light speed, the generation ship won’t reach Uelara within the original crew’s lifetime.

Thirty years into the journey, a new generation born on the Archean trains to fulfill the first generation’s mission. Eager to reach Uelara, the second-gen crew prepares, as planned, to assume their parents’ responsibilities - that is, until...someone goes missing and a devastating secret is discovered, putting the future of the human race in jeopardy. Will the crew rally and carry out the mission - or is humanity doomed?

It’s all up to the 2nd Gen.

"The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard." (Gaylord Nelson)

Dark Quest, LLC, 2014, 422 pages

Before coming to Roanoke Academy, Rachel Griffin had been an obedient girl – but it is hard to obey the rules when the world is in danger and no one will listen.

Now, she's eavesdropping on Wisecraft Agents and breaking a great many regulations. Because if the adults will not believe her, then it is up to Rachel and her friends – crazy, orphan-boy Sigfried the Dragonslayer and Nastasia, the Princess of Magical Australia – to stop the insidious Mortimer Egg from destroying the world.

But first, she must survive truth spells, fights with her brother, detention, Alchemy experiments, talking to elves, and conjuring class. Oh, and the Raven with blood-red eyes continues to watch her. It is said to be the omen of the Doom of Worlds. Will her attempts to save her world bring the Raven's wrath down upon her?

And as if that is not bad enough, someone has just turned the boy she likes into a sheep.