Publishers Weekly: Charbonneau continues the trilogy that began with The Testing with this densely plotted follow-up, a tense, paranoid story in which layers of treachery, deceit, and danger are peeled away one by one. Having survived the lethal Testing, which forces the best and brightest of a ravaged and rebuilding future America to fight for survival, and having completed her initial courses at the University in Tosu City, Cia Vale is ready to discover what field of study she’ll be assigned. Continue reading »
Oct 302013
Kirkus: Calling itself a “novel-in-stories,” this debut collection of 20 tales takes a close, respectful look at poor folks in contemporary rural Arkansas. Members of several families recur: Dalton, Pribble, Womack, Tatum; women named Staci, MeChell and Birdie; men named Rusty, Cleo and Skinny Dennis. Many of the stories are vignettes. Together, they paint a grim picture of a community that may or may not have been prosperous once but now is not.
DMLA congratulates John Hornor Jacobs on winning the Moonbeam Children’s Gold Medal for 
VOYA Magazine: In the Heartland, corn is both king and conqueror. It shackles the people to the land and allows the rich to live decadent, worry-free lives atop floating islands in the sky. Seventeen-year-old Cael McAvoy is determined to break free from a dead-end future, and when he discovers rogue vegetables growing among the cornfields, he knows he has found his ticket to the good life.
Booklist: Roy Alison, the linchpin in this novel-in-stories set in the Louisiana-Arkansas border area, has a dreadful legacy to overcome. At 16, he was high on drugs when he caused the car accident that killed his parents, starting him on a decade-long downward spiral of life in institutions, punctuated by violence in which people sometimes died. Now back home and living with his grandmother, Alison wants to be a better person. But events, generally motivated by the region’s dreadful economy, are conspiring against him.
Adam Christopher’s The Burning Dark, The Jovian Conspiracy, The Stars Below (Books 1-3 in the Spider Wars series) to Natalie Laverick at Titan Books by Stacia Decker.