the portal

Let The Right One In

Oskar lives with his mum in a high rise building in the western suburbs of Stockholm. It’s the early eighties and he likes listening to Kiss on his Walkman, solving puzzles-including the Rubik’s cube-and pasting grisly murder stories from the newspaper into his scrapbook.

Oskar doesn’t have many school friends, but is interested in the strange new neighbour next door. Eli introduces herself but she’s a little strange-she smells bad, doesn’t feel the cold at all, even in November, and from time to time her hair has a lot of grey.
Soon after Eli’s move to Blackeberg a child’s body is found hanging from a tree. The media think a serial killer is wreaking havoc in the town and affecting everyone’s lives, but they’re wrong-it’s a vampire.

This extraordinary and powerful novel is part horror, part comedy and mostly love story. (Penguin)
The perverse and ugly violence in this novel may put off some people – definitely not for younger teenagers.(Mrs Sweeney).

The Shadow Thief

Amazingly, Alexandra Adornetto was only 13 when she wrote this enchanting book. She is now 14 and working on the sequel!

‘Drabville is a model town, where Milli Klompet lives with her slightly offbeat family and spends her time longing for adventure. Then one day, along with her cautious best friend and amateur geologist, Ernest Perriclof, Milli discovers ‘Hog House…but the afternoon’s entertainment takes a different turn when they are held prisoner by the wacky Mr and Mrs Mayor and a cohort of evil magicians , led by the sinister Aldor. ‘ (Harper Collins)

Someday Angeline

This is the new one from Louis Sachar ( author of Holes and Small Steps). Angeline is a ‘genius freak’ who could read before she was old enough to turn the pages of a book, and mastered the piano without a single lesson. Despite this, life isn’t much fun until surprising things happen when she makes friends with a boy who tells the best jokes and a teacher who loves tropical fish. (Bloomsbury)

Fox Hunt

For all James Phelan’s fans…an international crisis…an ex-navy hero…time’s running out.When the world faces a deadly threat from a lost weapon, Lachlan Fox, disillusioned ex-Navy operative, is forced back into action. James Phelan is a guest at our Literature Festival, so you can quiz him about the inspiration behind this book! (Hachette Books)

The Ghost’s Child

Sonya Hartnett is one of my favourite authors, a master of imaginative, suspenseful and unusual stories. Less dark than previous novels, The Ghost’s Child is ‘a fractured fairytale about an engulfing yet impossible love between an ardent young woman from a privileged background and a feral young man with an affinity for sea birds and the ocean’ (Rosemary Neill’s review – The Australian June 30).

(Penguin)

King Dork by Frank Portman

Frank Portman (aka Dr. Frank) is the singer/songwriter/guitarist of the influential US punk band the Mr.T Experience (MTX). MTX has released around a dozen albums since forming in the mid-eighties and continues to record and tour. King Dork is his first novel, and it’s receiving rave reviews.

‘If you’re in a band or wish you were, if you loved or hated The Catcher in the Rye, if you like girls or are one, King Dork will rock your world’ – John Green, author of Looking for Alaska.

‘King Dork is well and away the best YA book I’ve read this year and Frank Portman is definitely someone to watch out for. It’s inventive and sexy, it’s fun to read and provides endless food for thought – everything I want from a book.’ – Melvin Burgess (Penguin)

For complete lists of items purchased by the library over the last 3 months see ‘New Items’

Mrs Sweeney