Teen Books

Growing up Deaf

ByMichael Thal January 28, 2019

Audiologists acknowledge four levels of deafness—mild, moderate, severe, and profound. Author Cece Bell is severely to profoundly deaf. At the age of four she contracted meningitis, robbing her of most of her hearing. When she started public school, Cece was mainstreamed into a regular classroom. She knew she was different from the other kids due…

The Thirteenth Princess: A Gripping YA Fairytale

ByMichael Thal November 29, 2018November 29, 2018

History must have order and some symmetry of meaning so its students can process its content in an organized fashion. Consequently, history only records twelve princesses, a highly composite number, when in truth, there were thirteen of them. History also records those princesses going to sleep every night and waking up to find their slippers…

The Hunt for Xanadu: A YA Thriller

ByMichael Thal October 29, 2018October 29, 2018

We’ve all heard of the mythical city of Xanadu appearing in literature and movies. It’s an exotic utopia first described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a nineteenth century English poet, in his 1816 poem, “Kubla Khan.” Author Elyse Salpeter has embraced the myth and expanded the concept of Xanadu to a higher plane in her first…

YA Medieval Historical Fantasy

ByMichael Thal October 13, 2018

Set in England during the middle ages, author TF Gray begins Murdoch’s Tale: Book 1 of Corwin’s Chronicle.The novel introduces Corwin, a young child torn away from his family and home by war. Rescued by Tovan of the faer and dropped off to a human family for adoption, Corwin goes through life with the dream of…

The Koolura Series: YA Fantasy at It’s Best

ByMichael Thal September 12, 2018

Twenty-four years ago author Michael Thal began what would become The Koolura Series. His prime motivation at the time was to get his daughter Channie excited about reading. Then in the sixth grade, she promised to read the book upon its publication. Good for her word, even though she was twenty-eight years…

YA Horror: The Beautiful Monster Series

ByMichael Thal September 12, 2018

Beautiful Monster: The Exchange (Book 1) His vampire brother turned Lev Baronovsky a hundred years ago. Since then, he’s waged an internal battle to retain his humanity by refusing to neither kill a human nor turn one into a creature of the night. It’s a tough battle, for his brother, Alexei is his polar opposite….

Middle Grade Fantasy/Detective Story

ByMichael Thal September 1, 2018

Chef Nana, the head cook at the New Harmonia, an exclusive New York City hotel, is dead. Her son, Michael Lawson, is tapped to replace her, and Chef Lawson needs to move from Chicago to New York with his son Stephen. Stephen Lawson is a pre-teen boy raised by a single parent….

A Rapunzel Story Better than the Grimm’s Fairy Tale

ByMichael Thal August 24, 2018August 24, 2018

Remember Rapunzel? She was a Grimm’s Brother’s princess locked in a tower and rescued by a prince willing to climb her long golden tresses to save her. Ever wonder what happened to the princess when released from her prison? Wonder no more. Leila Howland solved the dilemma in her creative fairy…

A Peter Pan Re-Telling Better Than the Original

ByMichael Thal August 15, 2018

In 1783 Wendy Darling was a foundling placed at the door of a London almshouse. As a child, she read The Live and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,and ever after longed to sail the seven seas and experience all the magical wonders of the world. Mortimer Black, another orphan, knew the ways of the…

Magic 2.0: A YA Fantasy Series

ByMichael Thal August 9, 2018

A twenty-three-year-old computer hacker illegally enters the computer of a cell phone manufacturer and finds a curious file. It’s huge with five terabytes of plain ASC11 text characters with a boring name—repository1-c.txt. He gives it a look and finds something curious; many of the numbers change constantly. Then he searches the file for his name….