Fast Five Friday

Fast Five Friday is a new meme we are starting here at Reader Noir!

Basically you choose five books you are looking forward to reading and tell us a little bit about them. You can share your list in the comments or link to your blog!

Thanks for joining and enjoy!

#1 The Whispering Skull

by Jonathan Stroud (September 16^th 2014, Disney Hyperion)

In the six months since Anthony, Lucy, and George survived a night in the most haunted house in England, Lockwood & Co. hasn't made much progress. Quill Kipps and his team of Fittes agents keep swooping in on Lockwood's investigations. Finally, in a fit of anger, Anthony challenges his rival to a contest: the next time the two agencies compete on a job, the losing side will have to admit defeat in the Times newspaper.

Things look up when a new client, Mr. Saunders, hires Lockwood & Co. to be present at the excavation of Edmund Bickerstaff, a Victorian doctor who reportedly tried to communicate with the dead. Saunders needs the coffin sealed with silver to prevent any supernatural trouble. All goes well-until George's curiosity attracts a horrible phantom.

Back home at Portland Row, Lockwood accuses George of making too many careless mistakes. Lucy is distracted by urgent whispers coming from the skull in the ghost jar. Then the team is summoned to DEPRAC headquarters. Kipps is there too, much to Lockwood's annoyance. Bickerstaff's coffin was raided and a strange glass object buried with the corpse has vanished. Inspector Barnes believes the relic to be highly dangerous, and he wants it found.

The author of the blockbuster Bartimaeus series delivers another amusing, chilling, and ingeniously plotted entry in the critically acclaimed Lockwood & Co. series.

#2 All Four Stars
by Tara Dairmen (July 10^th 2014, Putnam Juvenile)

Meet Gladys Gatsby: New York’s toughest restaurant critic. (Just don’t tell anyone that she’s in sixth grade.)

Gladys Gatsby has been cooking gourmet dishes since the age of seven, only her fast-food-loving parents have no idea! Now she’s eleven, and after a crème brûlée accident (just a small fire), Gladys is cut off from the kitchen (and her allowance). She’s devastated but soon finds just the right opportunity to pay her parents back when she’s mistakenly contacted to write a restaurant review for one of the largest newspapers in the world.

But in order to meet her deadline and keep her dream job, Gladys must cook her way into the heart of her sixth-grade archenemy and sneak into New York City—all while keeping her identity a secret! Easy as pie, right?

#3 The Slanted Worlds (Chronptika #2)  

by Catherine Fisher (March 18^th 2014, Dial)

Part Dr. Who, part Blade Runner, and part A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this genre-busting fantasy from the author of Incarceron asks: If you had the chance to change the past, would you do it?

In book two of the critically acclaimed Obsidian Mirror series, New York Times bestselling author Catherine Fisher, called “the first lady of British fantasy” by the London Times, once again shows us that she is a master of world-building and surprising plot-twists. Jake, Sarah, and Oberon Venn continue their fight for control of the Obsidian Mirror, and whoever wins will either save a life, change the past, or rescue the future.

But the Mirror has plans of its own.

 

#4 Scarlett 

by Cathy Cassidy (October 19^th 2006, Viking Juvenile) 

Scarlett's in trouble at school. Again. With black fingernails and dyed ketchup-red hair, she's not your average twelve-year-old Londoner. So her mum—sick of trying to get her into another school—ships Scarlett to her father's cottage in Ireland. Having to learn Gaelic in a one-room schoolhouse and enduring a new stepmum and younger stepsister is just too much. Scarlett wants to leave—until she meets Kian. 

He seems too good to be true with his dark, rugged looks, kind nature, and horse named Midnight. As Kian helps Scarlett let go of her anger, she begins to accept her family, her friendships, and most of all, her dreams. A captivating new novel from a writer reviewers have called "a British import with a refreshingly light touch." —School Library Journal on Indigo Blue.

#5 Rose and the Magician's Mask
by Holly Webb (July 1^st 2013, Hodder & Stoughton)

A precious mask of unimaginable power has been stolen from the royal palace. Rose suspects that dark magicians are at work – and that danger looms...
 
The race to stop the evil thieves will take Rose to the mysterious city of Venice, where nothing is quite what it seems... Can Rose use her magic to find the terrible mask, before its true powers are revealed?