Badass Bookie

Every child in Belle Dam is taught about the feud from an early age. There are ‘our’ people and ‘their’ people. Friends and enemies. Associates and strangers. It’s the kind of town where eyes are always watching, and you don’t need a reason to sell out your neighbors. But the feud is a lie. As a new wave of fury sweeps through the town, creating a third front to an already overtaxed war, Braden has been broken worse than ever. His innocence? Shattered. His heart? Crushed. His magic? Gone. His new life? Ruined. And this is only the beginning. Beneath the city lay deep wellsprings of power. The one who controls them is the one who will win the feud. In a city filled with puppet masters, Braden must elude their strings and end the feud once and for all. But first, he must outsmart his father, evade Catherine’s dark magic, regain what was stolen from him, trick a phantom who refuses to die, and foil a demon’s master plan. Even then, he may not survive. Because power is a problem, and victo...

THE DARK WOODS is a bewitching collection of young adult short stories, ranging from science fiction and fantasy to paranormal, all featuring a lesbian heroine. This collection is part of Project Unicorn , a fiction project that seeks to address the near nonexistence of lesbian main characters in young adult fiction by giving them their own stories. Stories by Sarah Diemer Witch Girls (Dark Fantasy): The wild witch girls lurk at the edge of the woods, waiting to snatch away any girl who’s less than good. Gran’s warnings are the same every day: be good, or the witch girls will take you. But what if you want to be taken? Witch Girls is my favorite of Sarah’s contributions. The warning about the witch girls only made me want to be one of them. Surfacing (Fantasy): When Alice’s brother John takes a mermaid out of the sea and drags her into the woods to die, Alice must find the courage to stand up to the worst bully she’s ever known in order to save a life. This was a sad but wonderful st...

To the cozy little town of Benevolence, the Wolf of Winter is a distant memory. Two generations ago, this nightmare creature crept through the streets and brought with it a blizzard of catastrophic proportions. So goes the story. Isabella Fox finds the legend hard to believe. A witch for hire, she's just moved to Benevolence because it's the only place in the world where nothing ever happens. As the new village magicmaker, she's expected to cast only one spell a year--freeing up her time to pursue new dreams, and perhaps love. As the Winter Solstice celebration draws near, Benevolence flurries with the magic and wonder of the holiday season. But not all are welcome to partake in the town's festivities. Outcast shapeshifter, Emily, lives alone in the mountains. She is a mystery to Isabella, until they happen upon each other by chance in the snowy wood... On the night of the Winter Solstice, love is in the air...but so is the cold, sky-piercing howl of the Wolf of Winter...

Liza never knew that falling in love could be so wonderful . . . and so confusing. "'Liza,' Mom said, looking into my eyes, 'I want you to tell me the truth, not because I want to pry, but because I have to know. This could get very unpleasant . . . Now--have you and Annie--done any more than the usual experimenting . . . ' 'No, Mom,' I said, trying to look back at her calmly. I'm not proud of it, I make no excuses--I lied to her." This groundbreaking book is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings. This book is so truthful and honest, it has been banned from many school libraries and even publicly burned in Kansas City. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden is the third lesbian book written for teens. But it stands out as the first lesbian book for teens in which the characters are punished ...

The #1 New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong delivers the novel her fans have been clamoring for: The epic finale of the Otherworld series. It’s been more than ten years, a dozen installments, and hundreds of thousands of copies since Kelley Armstrong introduced readers to the all-too-real denizens of the Otherworld: witches, werewolves, necromancers, vampires, and half-demons, among others. And it’s all been leading to Thirteen, the final installment, the novel that brings all of these stories to a stunning conclusion. A war is brewing—the first battle has been waged and Savannah Levine is left standing, albeit battered and bruised. She has rescued her half brother from supernatural medical testing, but he’s fighting to stay alive. The Supernatural Liberation Movement took him hostage, and they have a maniacal plan to expose the supernatural world to the unknowing. Savannah has called upon her inner energy to summon spells with frightening strength, a strength she never k...

Three thousand years ago, a god told a lie. Now, only a goddess can tell the truth. Persephone has everything a daughter of Zeus could want--except for freedom. She lives on the green earth with her mother, Demeter, growing up beneath the ever-watchful eyes of the gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus. But when Persephone meets the enigmatic Hades, she experiences something new: choice. Zeus calls Hades "lord" of the dead as a joke. In truth, Hades is the goddess of the underworld, and no friend of Zeus. She offers Persephone sanctuary in her land of the dead, so the young goddess may escape her Olympian destiny. But Persephone finds more than freedom in the underworld. She finds love, and herself. The Dark Wife is a YA novel, a lesbian revisionist retelling of the Persephone and Hades myth. I was first introduced to The Dark Wife when Sarah Diemer emailed me about reviewing it. She sent me a copy, and... it sat and sat and sat... I finally picked it up almost a year later, an...

Lesbian zombies, fucked up love and a sentient world... Once, Mana stole back souls for a living. As a Runner, it was her job to snatch the dead out of After and spare them from a dubious future provided by a machine known as the Recycler. Through magic and will, she joined the stolen souls to their dead bodies and brought them back to "life" as Reanima. It was gruesome--and illegal--but it was business. Mana was the best Runner in the nameless city... And then she met Far. Far had been waiting her entire life to die. The city smothered her, and there was no way out. Far had treasonous questions about her existence, and though Mana loved Far with all her heart, love was not enough to save her. When Far dies, Mana goes against her wishes and steals back her lover's soul, losing her own in the process. Now a Reanima and alone, Far must decide what's more important: truth, freedom, or the love of her death. "Far" is a dark fantasy short story, just over ten tho...

Sugar Moon Elise sells magic, charms and dreams out the back door of her brightly painted wagon. A Witch and daughter of the Maja, she believes that everything happens for a reason, but she has never quite understood why there is a hollow feeling in the place where her heart should be. One night, at the fabled Moon Market, she meets a stranger. The woman's name is Via, and in a single night, love finds Elise; for the first time in her young life, she feels no emptiness. But Elise's past is catching up with her. In the dark of night and burn of day, the Fevered turn their soulless faces in her direction, changing course. They hunt her, intent on devouring her light. SUGAR MOON is the first novella in the MAJA Trilogy. I picked up Sugar Moon by Sarah Diemer because it sounded like something a lovely pagan, such as myself, should read. While I love witchy tales (including Harry Potter, The Hollows, and the Caster Chronicles), there is a distinct lack of witchy tales that are tr...

Readers are immersed into the minds and hearts of lesbian, bisexual, transgender, gay, queer, and questioning young people in this new collection of short fictions, grl2grl 2. In the first story, "Give Me a D", a young lesbian's need to hide and lie about her sexuality spills over into every aspect of her life as bitterness and blame. The second story, "Her Secret Life" shows a different perspective of coming out to family as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The third story, "Blessings and Miracles," is a seasonal story of love, joy, giving and receiving. Everything I've read by Julie Anne Peters has been amazing, so when I found these three short stories at Smashwords, I had to grab them. grl2grl 2 is the second anthology she's done. The first one - grl2grl - you can find in book format, but this one is ebook only. The first two stories were short, but they left a definite impact, showing the struggle that women go through admitting th...

Is it worth falling in love if you have to keep it a secret. With a steady boyfriend, the position of Student Council President, and a chance to go to an Ivy League college, high school life is just fine for Holland Jaeger. At least it seems to be. But when Cece Goddard comes to school, everything changes. Cece and Holland have undeniable feelings for each other, but how will others react to their developing relationship? Being gay doesn't have to be a secret anymore. Recent news reports show that many more people are identifying themselves as gay or lesbian during their teenage years, and the number of high schools with clubs such as gay-straight alliances has grown dramatically. But there are still very few young adult novels that celebrate the love between teens of the same sex. In her trademark, darkly humorous voice, Julie Anne Peters has written a moving, compelling, and witty love story between two girls. Keeping You a Secret is a contemporary, worthy successor to such clas...

Nature is out of balance in the human world. The sun hasn't shone in years, and crops are failing. Worse yet, strange and hostile creatures have begun to appear. The people's survival hangs in the balance. To solve the crisis, the oracle stones are cast, and Kaede and Taisin, two seventeen-year-old girls, are picked to go on a dangerous and unheard-of journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen. Taisin is a sage, thrumming with magic, and Kaede is of the earth, without a speck of the otherworldly. And yet the two girls' destinies are drawn together during the mission. As members of their party succumb to unearthly attacks and fairy tricks, the two come to rely on each other and even begin to fall in love. But the Kingdom needs only one huntress to save it, and what it takes could tear Kaede and Taisin apart forever. The exciting adventure prequel to Malinda Lo's highly acclaimed novel Ash is overflowing with lush Chinese influences and details inspired by the I Ch...

One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens—both named Will Grayson—are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical. Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan’s collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humor that have won both them both legions of faithful fans. I've heard so many great things about Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan. Actually, I've heard many great things about both authors and pretty much everything they've written. But this was my first John Green book and my second by David (I've read one of his book co-written with Rachel Cohn). But I have to say... there were things I loved and things I hated. The first Will Grayson, the one who narrates the...

Braden was born with witch eyes: the ability to see the world as it truly is: a blinding explosion of memories, darkness, and magic. The power enables Braden to see through spells and lies, but at the cost of horrible pain. After a terrifying vision reveals imminent danger for the uncle who raised and instructed him, Braden retreats to Belle Dam, an old city divided by two feuding witch dynasties. As rival family heads Catherine Lansing and Jason Thorpe desperately try to use Braden's powers to unlock Belle Dam's secrets, Braden vows never to become their sacrificial pawn. But everything changes when Braden learns that Jason is his father--and Trey, the enigmatic guy he's falling for, is Catherine's son. To stop an insidious dark magic from consuming the town, Braden must master his gift—and risk losing the one he loves. I was really looking forward to Witch Eyes by Scott Tracey. My best friend had talked about how much she was looking forward to it in 2010 that I imme...