Fiction

Fiction genre

Whanau Ii

As soon as she saw it, Miro Mananui knew what it was. An owl, its cryptic colors flaring with the dawn. Who has the owl come for? Whose name has it cried out to Miro Mananui the Matua of the village of Waituhi? In Whanau II, many lives and many stories intersect. The passionate Mattie Jones bears a horrifying secret; Tama Mananui makes the most of an arranged marriage with a woman twenty years older; Nani Paora holds the key to the past and a history filled with bloodshed; and his grandson Pene may well be the key to the future. Pita Mahana’s attempts to reinstate the past set in train events that lead to the return of the owl for its victim.

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

No longer content to lay eggs on command only to have them carted off to the market, a hen glimpses her future every morning through the barn doors, where the other animals roam free, and comes up with a plan to escape into the wild–and to hatch an egg of her own.

The Smart One: A Grandfather’s Tale

The future is often foretold in stories of the past. As families flee the Debaltseve in Eastern Ukraine in 2015, Ken Goodman’s The Smart One: A Grandfather’s Tale takes us back to families fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe at the turn of the Twentieth Century. It is a compelling story of Jewish migration to America, which begins in Smorgon, now in Belarus, a former Soviet Republic, but at the time Smorgon was in Vilnius, a district of Lithuania, and a part of the Russian Empire.

Two White Rabbits

They travel mostly on the roof of a train known as The Beast, but the little girl doesn’t know where they are going. She counts the animals by the road, the clouds in the sky, the stars. Sometimes she sees soldiers. She sleeps, dreaming that she is always on the move, although sometimes they are forced to stop and her father has to earn more money before they can continue their journey.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 8, Issue 3

Only You Can Save Mankind (Johnny Maxwell Trilogy)

Twelve-year-old Johnny endures tensions between his parents, watches television coverage of the Gulf War, and plays a computer game called Only You Can Save Mankind, in which he is increasingly drawn into the reality of the alien ScreeWee.

A Hat Full Of Sky

The Heroine: Tiffany Aching, incipient witch and cheese maker extraordinaire, once saved world from Queen of the Elves, and is about to discover that battling evil monarchs is child’s play compared to mortal combat with a Hiver. At eleven years old, she is boldest heroine ever to have confronted the Forces of Darkness while armed with a frying pan. The Threat: A Hiver, insidious disembodied presence drawn to powerful magic. Highly dangerous, frequently lethal. Cannot be stopped with iron or fire. Its target: Tiffany Aching.

The Illmoor Chronicles: The Ratastrophe Catastrophe (Illmoor Chronicles)

An odd assortment of bumbling humans and creatures comes together to find and free the children held by a young man who, under the influence of dark magic, spirited them away from the mismanaged town of Dullitch with his flute music.