Waiting on Wednesday

If it's the middle of the week we have some titles to post. These titles are the books we're looking forward to reading in the future. This week our picks include stories about old vampires, enchanted lands and curses, and tricking the living while traveling in the land of the dead. What an assortment of topics! Our choices this week are:

Infinite Days (Vampire Queen) by Rebecaa Maizel

• Reading level: Young Adult
• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (August 3, 2010)

DESCRIPTION: She longs to be like everybody else. But her history is written in blood...

Lenah Beaudonte is in many ways your average sixteen-year-old: the “new girl,” she struggles to fit in enough to survive at school, and stand out enough to catch the eye of the golden-boy captain of the lacrosse team. But her challenges are beyond what anyone could have expected. Lenah just happens to be a recovering five-hundred-year-old vampire turned human…

She’s just awakened from a century-long hibernation and each passing hour hears another tick of the time-bomb, counting down to the moment when her abandoned vampire coven will open the crypt where she should be sleeping, and find her gone. As her borrowed days slip by, Lenah resolves to live her newfound life as fully as the passing moments allow. But, to do so, she must first answer the ominous questions at hand: Can an ex-vampire survive in a time and place so alien to her? What can Lenah do to protect her new friends from the bloodthirsty menace about to descend upon them? And how is she ever going to pass her biology midterm?

Reckless by Cornelia Funke
Reading level: MG/YA
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (September 14, 2010)

DESCRIPTION: For years, Jacob Reckless has been escaping to another world--a world behind the mirror, where witches haunt the forests and fairies and dwarfs roam. A world for treasure hunts and magnificent quests--but also a world locked in a deadly war.

Jacob's secret seems safe, until one day his younger brother Will follows him, to disastrous consequence. Faced with a curse that is quickly turning Will to stone, the Reckless brothers are thrust into a race against time to find a cure before one of them is lost forever.

Inspired by the Brothers Grimm, master storyteller Cornelia Funke introduces a lush, enchanting landscape of fairy tales and legends re-imagined as never before. Reckless is a thrilling adventure and a tale of heroism, filled with danger, mystery, and above all, magic.

Crossing Over by Anna Kendall

• Reading level: Young Adult
• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Viking Juvenile (October 14, 2010)
•  DESCRIPTION: Whether it's a curse, or a blessing, or an ability, the fact remains: whenever Roger is injured or in enough pain he crosses over to the land of the dead. Once there, there are rules: only the newly dead will talk, for example, and nothing will raise the longer dead from their tranquillity.

There are rules in the land of the living as well; rules which would have Roger hanged for witchcraft if he was ever caught. But refusing to cross over isn't an option. His uncle depends on Roger to hide under the table in their fairground act, listen to the recently bereaved asking questions of their dear departed, and then cross over to find the answers. It's a hard way of life, made all the harder as his uncle's fists usually provide the trigger for Roger to cross over.

It's not the only way of life, though, and when Roger sees a chance to escape he fights for it - little knowing that love, loss, shocking revelations and, ultimately, war lie ahead of him.

Just because Roger can cross over into the land of the dead doesn't mean he wants to.

Waiting on Wednesday was started by breaking the spine.