Fantastic Five: Upcoming Contemporary Titles

Fantastic Five is a new-ish feature at The Hiding Spot! These posts will always feature five of something - whether it be forthcoming novels, favorite authors, books with a common theme, or newly released covers. Whatever the topic, there will always be five items featured and they will always be fantastic!

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Blink Once by Cylin Busby 
Bloomsbury/11.4.2012 

West is a high school senior who has everything going for him until an accident leaves him paralyzed. Strapped down in his hospital bed, slipping in and out of consciousness, West is terrified and alone. Until he meets Olivia. She’s the girl next door—sort of. A patient in the room next to his, only Olivia can tell what West is thinking, and only Olivia seems to know that the terrible dreams he’s been having are not just a result of his medication. Yet as West comes to rely on Olivia—to love her, even—certain questions pull at him: Why has Olivia been in the hospital for so long? And what does it mean that she is at the center of his nightmares? But the biggest question of all comes when West begins to recover and learns that the mysterious girl he’s fallen in love with has a secret he could never have seen coming.

Then You Were Gone by Lauren Strasnick
Simon Pulse/1.8.13

Two years ago, Adrienne’s best friend, Dakota, walked out of her life. One week ago, she left Adrienne a desperate, muffled voicemail. Adrienne never called back. 

Now Dakota is missing, and all that remains is a string of broken hearts, a flurry of rumors, and a suicide note. 

Adrienne can’t stop obsessing over what might have happened if she’d answered Dakota’s call. And she’s growing more convinced each day that Dakota is still alive. 

Maybe finding and saving Dakota is the only way Adrienne can save herself. Or maybe it’s too late for them both.

The Almost Truth by Eileen Cook
Simon Pulse/12.4.12

Sadie can’t wait to get away from her backwards small town, her delusional mom, her jailbird dad, and the tiny trailer where she was raised…even though leaving those things behind also means leaving Brendan. Sadie wants a better life, and she has been working steadily toward it, one con at a time.


But when Sadie’s mother wipes out Sadie’s savings, her escape plan is suddenly gone. She needs to come up with a lot of cash—and fast—or she’ll be stuck in this town forever.


With Brendan’s help, she devises a plan—the ultimate con—to get the money. But the more lies Sadie spins, the more she starts falling for her own hoax…and perhaps for the wrong boy. Sadie wanted to change her life, but she wasn't prepared to have it flipped upside down by her own deception. With her future at stake and her heart on the line, suddenly it seems like she has a lot more than just money to lose....

Small Damages by Beth Kephart
Philomel/7.19.12

It’s senior year, and while Kenzie should be looking forward to prom and starting college in the fall, she is mourning the loss of her father. She finds solace in the one person she trusts, her boyfriend, and she soon finds herself pregnant. Kenzie’s boyfriend and mother do not understand her determination to keep the baby. She is sent to southern Spain for the summer, where she will live out her pregnancy as a cook’s assistant on a bull ranch, and her baby will be adopted by a Spanish couple. 


Alone and resentful in a foreign country, Kenzie is at first sullen and difficult. She begins to open her eyes and her heart to the beauty that is all around her and inside of her.

Stealing Parker by Miranda Kenneally
Sourcebooks Fire/10.1.12

Parker Shelton pretty much has the perfect life. She’s on her way to becoming valedictorian at Hundred Oaks High, she’s made the all-star softball team, and she has plenty of friends. Then her mother’s scandal rocks their small town and suddenly no one will talk to her.


Now Parker wants a new life.


So she quits softball. Drops twenty pounds. And she figures why kiss one guy when she can kiss three? Or four. Why limit herself to high school boys when the majorly cute new baseball coach seems especially flirty?


But how far is too far before she loses herself completely?

Review: Dangerous Neighbors by Beth Kephart

Title: Dangerous Neighbors
Author: Beth Kephart
Publisher: EgmontUSA
Pub. Date: 8.24.2010
Genre: Historical YA
Keywords: Sisters, Twins, Grief, Regret, Love
Pages: 192
Description (from GoodReads):
Could any two sisters be more tightly bound together than the twins, Katherine and Anna? Yet love and fate intervene to tear them apart. Katherine's guilt and sense of betrayal leaves her longing for death, until a surprise encounter and another near catastrophe rescue her from a tragic end. Set against the magical kaleidoscope of the Philadelphia Centennial fair of 1876, National Book Award nominee Beth Kephart's book conjures the sweep and scope of a moment in history in which the glowing future of a nation is on display to the disillusioned gaze of a girl who has determined that she no longer has a future. The tale is a pulse by pulse portrait of a young heroine's crisis of faith and salvation in the face of unbearable loss.

At times, when I'm reading one of Beth Kephart's novels, I find myself distracted by the gorgeous phrasing and richly described settings and characters. It's easy to find oneself swept away by the beautiful writing, but I always remind myself to go beyond that aspect Kephart's novels because the writing isn't meant to distract readers from a mediocre tale: Kephart is a thought-provoking storyteller as well.

DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS is a slim volume, but the I felt Katherine and Anna's story fit well within its covers. This novel is not for readers who favor action and a quickly paced story. At all. The story begins slowly and continues at a leisurely pace, meandering between past and present.

I found Katherine's relationship with her sister, Anna, and her father interesting. There isn't very much dialogue in the novel, but each interaction holds weight and meaning and I found myself analyzing the words exchanged and considering how Katherine would have reacted and felt. The flashbacks, to me, held the most meaning, as they were the only time readers are able to observe Katherine and Anna's interaction. I couldn't help imagining Katherine collecting these memories like a crow collects shiny baubles, though many of the memories lacked the luster of happiness.

Kephart tells her characters' stories with a delicate hand and deposits them carefully into the reader's heart. DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS, with it's beautiful language and acute heartache, is no exception.

Grade: B+

Cover Comments:
This cover is perfect for DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS. The colors and image both convey the delicate subject matter and writing.

Review copy provided by EgmontUSA.

Cover of the Week (2)

Dangerous Neighbors by Beth Kephart
Publisher: EgmontUSA
Pub. Date: September 2010

I love Beth Kephart's writing and am super excited about this novel. The only information I have about the book is from an interview that Beth did for The Hiding Spot back when I reviewed her (amazing) book NOTHING BUT GHOSTS:

     "...in September 2010, I am releasing, with Egmont USA, DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS, an historical novel that takes place in Centennial Philadelphia. It’s about two twin sisters, a devastating accident, and a terrifying fire. It’s about loss and love and guilt. "

Um, yeah. It sounds pretty awesome! :)

Contest: Win a copy of Nothing but Ghosts by Beth Kephart! CLOSED

Beth Kephart has generously donated a copy of NOTHING BUT GHOSTS to be won by one lucky reader at The Hiding Spot!

This contest is open to those with mailing addresses in the US and Canada. The contest will close CLOSED!

My review of Nothing But Ghosts can be found here!

An interview with Beth Kephart can be found here!

To enter, use this entry form:

If this form isn't working, please leave me a message in the comments, this is my first attempt at using a form! Hopefully it will make entering contests faster and easier and cut down on spam from leaving email addresses in the comments. :)

EDIT: You should be able to scroll down the form to hit submit. For those of you still having issues, feel free to leave your entries in the comments, I'll be sure to add them in to my spreadsheet.

RKCharron, yes that is perfect! Those of you who did not put +2, +3, etc. are still okay, I can figure it out! :)

Interview: Beth Kephart (Author of Nothing but Ghosts!)

I'm excited to welcome Beth Kephart, the extremely talented author of ten books, including the stunning Nothing but Ghosts.

A Brief Biography:

Beth Kephart is the author of ten books, including the National Book Award finalist, A Slant of Sun; the BookSense pick, Ghosts in the Garden; the autobiography of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, Flow; and the critically acclaimed novels for young adults, Undercover, House of Dance, and Nothing but Ghosts. A fourth young adult novel, The Heart is Not a Size, will be released by HarperTeen in March 2010 and a fifth, Dangerous Neighbors, is slated for a fall 2010 release from Egmont. Beth Kephart’s short story, “The Longest Distance,” appears in the May 2009 HarperTeen anthology, No Such Thing as the Real World. She is a winner of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fiction grant, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Leeway grant, a Pew Fellowships in the Arts grant, and the Speakeasy Poetry Prize, among other honors. Kephart’s essays are frequently anthologized and she has judged numerous competitions. Kephart teaches nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania and is the current readergirlz author in residence. Kephart has conducted writing workshops at Chanticleer Garden, Radnor Senior High School, Agnes Irwin High School, The San Francisco School, University of Pennsylvania, Loyola University, Villanova University, Rutgers University, St. Joseph’s University, Blue Sky Arts, and elsewhere.

The Interview:
First off, tell us a little bit about your novel, NOTHING BUT GHOSTS.

GHOSTS is the story of a rising high school senior named Katie who is trying to come to terms with the sudden loss of her mother to cancer. She’s got an eccentric dad who restores paintings for a living. She’s got a job at a nearby estate. A mystery emerges concerning a recluse. In trying to solve the mystery, Katie is also solving the bigger mysteries of life and love.

What inspired you to write GHOSTS?
In the wake of my own mother’s passing, I began to notice all these signs — finches at my window, lines of music, fox encounters — that in some ways returned her to me. Katie grew out of my own relationship to the larger world during a long period of mourning. It also grew out of my passion for a particular garden named Chanticleer, which I fictionalized for the purposes of the novel.

Are you anything like your main character, Katie?
All of my characters have some aspects of me laced within. Katie is watchful. She is protective. She loves her dad and worries about him being alone. All of that is very much a part of me.

GHOSTS has an variety of minor characters, including a teenage boy, a mysterious old woman, a glamorous librarian, a frazzled father… and an inquisitive little boy. What is Sammy’s role, as part of the bigger, underlying message of the story?
Sammy is the little boy who lives across the street from Katie and her dad. He seems like a terror on wheels at first, an interference, but in fact he is pivotal to Katie and her dad as they each try to reconstruct the idea of family.

Did you do any research while writing GHOSTS? If yes, please explain.
Well, the book takes place in a town very much like my own hometown. I was taking a lot of photographs throughout the writing of this book and studying them carefully. I was also researching the potential life story and details of the mysterious recluse—trying to shape her life based on facts I would find in historic documents and old newspapers.

What was the most difficult aspect of writing GHOSTS?
The mystery! I wrote it several times, several ways. It’s not that the plotting was hard. It was that it had to mean a certain thing.

Did you always want to be a writer?
Since childhood I’ve loved words and written poems. But I was also a tomboy and an ice skater. So I combine these two things in my life—the very cerebral and the very physical. I don’t think I could ever live without one or the other.

What jobs did you have on your way to being a writer? Did they help you in any way as a writer?
This is a great question! I started working when I was a teen—in gift shops, at life insurance companies, in libraries, etc. By the time I was 25 I had my own business, doing the marketing and writing for a dozen area architecture and engineering firms. I now run a boutique communications firm that has its roots in that early business, and I also teach. I think it’s important, always, to know things, to be around people, to hear how they talk. The business has always placed me in the center of others’ dreams. The teaching does that, too.

When and where do you usually write?
Lately I write with pen and paper on a couch. Typically at 3 or 4 in the morning. I type what I’ve drafted in between business calls and during other quiet hours. But it starts with paper and pen and moves into many drafts before it’s anything I’d share with another.

Is there something that is a must have for you to be able to write?
I like really good apples, chocolate, and cheese. I try not to eat too much of them when I am writing!

What author or book most influenced you as a writer or in general?
I fell in love with Michael Ondaatje, his huge capacity for a gorgeous sentence and for deep feeling.

What are currently reading?
My students’ papers and my friends’ manuscripts, to be honest. But I’ve also been reading a lot of research for a novel I’ve been writing for adults.

Can you tell us anything about your next YA novel(s)?
THE HEART IS NOT A SIZE is due out next March, and I’m very excited about it. It concerns a goodwill trip that a number of students take to Anapra, a squatters’ village in Juarez, Mexico. It also concerns a best friendship between two girls hoarding dangerous secrets. After that, in September 2010, I am releasing, with Egmont USA, DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS, an historical novel that takes place in Centennial Philadelphia. It’s about two twin sisters, a devastating accident, and a terrifying fire. It’s about loss and love and guilt. I loved writing it.

The Hiding Spot is dedicated to my personal hiding spot, books. Is there a place, activity, or person that is your hiding spot?
Wow. Love that question. I hide inside the world of dance (it seems public, but I’m very much in my own quiet, floating space when dancing). I hide in gardens. I hide during long walks. Hiding is a talent of mine.

Anything else you would like to share with us?
These were perfect questions, and I thank you for them.

Read my review of NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, here!
Win your own copy of NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, here!

Review: Nothing but Ghosts by Beth Kephart

Title: Nothing but Ghosts
Author: Beth Kephart
Publisher: HarperTeen
Pub. Date: 2009
Genre: YA
Main Themes: Grief, Loss, Family, Love, Mystery
Pages: 278
Plot (from book cover):
"Ever since her mother passed away, Katie's been alone in her too-big house with her genius dad, who restores old paintings for a living. Katie takes a summer job at a garden estate, where, with the help of two brothers and a glamorous librarian, she soon becomes embroiled in decoding a mystery. There are secrets and shadows at the heart of NOTHING BUT GHOSTS: symbols hidden in a time-darkened painting, ans surprises behind a locked bedroom door. But most of all, this is love story - the story of a girl who learns about love while also learning to live with her own ghosts."

Nothing But Ghosts was absolutely beautiful. There was something so calming about this novel - I can't say that it was exciting necessarily; it is better described as engrossing.

The story unfolds so perfectly; I found the story to be compelling and engaging. There are two main plot lines in Ghosts: Katie's and that of the mysterious old woman Katie works for. Beth Kephart wove the two stories together perfectly to create just the right balance of past, present, and future.

I have never lost a parent, thank goodness, but I know many people my age that have. The closest experience that I can relate to losing a parent is losing my grandparents. Still, I could empathize with Katie's grief and confusion over the death of her mother; the disbelief that someone can be vibrant and full of life and then be gone forever. Even though my grandfather passed away a few months ago, I still forget that he is gone sometimes and when I remember and it hits me, I feel the pain of his loss all over again. I can only imagine that Katie, living in the house that she once shared with her mother, surrounded by her things, her room untouched, exactly the same as it was when she was living, and feeling distanced from her father, must feel. Kephart wrote this aspect of the novel particularly well.

I loved the mystery in this novel! Katie's quest to uncover the truth about the old woman who was a socialite in her youth, but has grown to be a recluse, was one of my favorite aspects of Nothing but Ghosts. I was amazed by the Kephart's skill as all the pieces of the puzzle slowly came together. I loved that I didn't figure out the secret until near the end of the novel, it is a bit anticlimatic when it is too easy to figure out the mystery. I love the fact that the mystery brings so many of the minor characters out of the background as well.

There is also a love story within Nothing but Ghosts. This aspect of the novel isn't really a main plot line, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. When I started the novel, I wasn't really sure that there would be a romantic plot line, so I was pleasantly surprised when one developed.

Ratings (Out of 10):
Plot: 10
Characters: 10
Writing: 10
Romance: 10
Originality: 10
Total: 50/50 (A!)

Nothing but Ghosts is an amazing novel and I will definitely be reading Kephart's other novels! Ghosts is a novel that I need  to have a copy of on my bookshelf!

Check out my interview with the author, Beth Kephart, here!
Go here to win your own copy of NOTHING BUT GHOSTS!

TBR Thursday (5): Nothing But Ghosts

TBR Thursday is a meme hosted by Drea. (Inspired by Waiting on Wednesday/Breaking the Spine.)


TBR Thursday highlights all those books that are already out (whether you own them or not) that you’re dying to read, but haven’t had the chance to yet. There can be some old books, some new books, and some that are in between, but they have to be books that you want/hope to read and review!

This week's pick is:

Nothing but Ghosts by Beth Kephart
Ever since her mother passed away, Katie's been alone in her too-big house with her genius dad, who restores old paintings for a living. Katie takes a summer job at a garden estate where, with the help of two brothers and a glamorous librarian, she soon becomes embroiled in decoding a mystery. There are secrets and shadows at the heart of Nothing But Ghosts, symbols hidden in a time-darkened painting, and surprises behind a locked bedroom door. But most of all, this is a love story-- the story of a girl who learns about love while also learning to live with her own ghosts.

I really want to read this one, yet it still sits on my shelf! Hopefully I'll get to it in November!


Head over to Drea's blog, Book Blather, to share you TBR Thursday pick!