Dark Fantasy. Cassel Sharpe comes from a family of criminals and "curse workers," people who practice magic illegally and can alter others' luck or memories--or even kill them--with a single touch. Cassel, who doesn't seem to have inherited his family's talents, tries very hard to convince his private-school classmates that he's just a regular guy. But he's haunted by a dirty secret from his past, a white cat that keeps appearing in his nightmares, and the odd way that his brothers have been acting around him lately. Right from the start, when Cassel awakens from a nightmare to find himself on the roof of his dormitory, this 1st volume in the Curse Workers series is a fast-paced, intense, and mysterious read.

Fiction. Smart, hard-working Efrain Rodriguez is a likely candidate for valedictorian at his Bronx high school and has his sights set on Harvard. But a disappointing score on his first crack at the SAT and the reality of nearly $33,000-per-year tuition have Efrain seriously worried. Convinced that "doing the right thing" won't pay his tuition, he resorts to desperate measures in order to finance a second round of test prep and to bankroll his higher education. In her debut novel for teens, author Sofia Quintero, who also writes hip hop novels under the pen name Black Artemis, has created memorable characters and an "explosive" (Publishers Weekly) story that fans of gritty realistic fiction will love.

Fiction. Alton Richards--freshly dumped by his girlfriend, jobless, and with no plans for the summer--has just been recruited as a driver and cardturner for his blind great-uncle, a master bridge player. Uncle Lester is elderly, crotchety, and "rich enough that he never had to be nice to anyone," and Alton's parents are eager for Alton to buddy up to him and hopeful that they'll be rewarded in Lester's will. We know what you're thinking: "A novel about an obscure card game that only old people play? Really?" Well, yes, really. Fabulous characters, humor, romance, and more excitement and suspense than you'd ever expect are in store for those who give this unusual novel a try.

Historical Suspense. Sig Andersson is sitting in his family's remote cabin with the corpse of his father, Einar--who fell through too-thin ice and froze in a nearby lake just hours earlier--when a burly stranger with a gun shows up demanding gold that he swears Einar stole from him. Sig's stepmother and sister could return home at any time, and Sig isn't sure whether he can get to his father's hidden pistol or escape from the intruder before they do. And even if he does get the gun, can he pull the trigger? Flashbacks to the Alaskan gold rush reveal what really happened between Einar and his erstwhile business partner, and tension builds steadlily in the one-room cabin 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle. This atmospheric and intense story will chill you to the bone.

Adult Nonfiction. With their combined 1700 pounds of muscle and their blunt, in-your-face approach, the heavily tattooed members of the animal-rescue group Rescue Ink can seem a pretty intimidating bunch. After all, do you really expect a biker nicknamed "Batso" to have a soft spot for kittens? Maybe you should: these New Yorkers have made it their mission to improve the lives of abused and neglected animals. This inspirational book gives background information on each fascinating member of the organization and tells the stories of many of their rescue adventures.

Adult Nonfiction. By the time you get this newsletter, you'll probably know where NBA superstar LeBron James, a free agent as of July 1, 2010, is going--but what do you know about where he came from? Writing in cooperation with the author of Friday Night Lights, James tells about growing up poor in Akron, Ohio and later playing killer basketball with his best friends, "the Fab Five," on the Shooting Stars amateur youth team and at St. Vincent-St. Mary's high school. Fans of on-the-court action will especially enjoy this "warm, thoughtful memoir" (Booklist).

Adult Nonfiction. Who needs gasoline? Not Greg Melville--and, if you ask him, "nearly anyone can operate and maintain a french-fry car." To prove it, he converted a dilapidated old Mercedes from a diesel-powered car into one that uses recycled grease as fuel and drove it from Vermont to California with his old college buddy Iggy riding shotgun. Collecting fuel from restaurant dumpsters along the way, Greg and Iggy also tour a number of sites powered by green energy (including geothermally heated Fort Knox and Google's solar-powered headquarters). The New York Times calls this book "an entertaining combination of On the Road and An Inconvenient Truth."

Nonfiction. Two guys named Jason, former college roommates, chase their dreams and ponder the meaning of their lives in this mélange of verse and artwork that, in two distinct voices, tells about a single, universal journey. The Jasons--one a poet, one a painter--struggle financially after moving to the Big Apple to seek their fortunes, and just when one of them is ready to give up hope, the other buoys him up. Just the thing for artists, free thinkers, and philosophical types, this "touching [...] yet gritty and hip" (VOYA) tale of The City is a quick and inspiring read.

Adult Nonfiction. At one point or another, most of us struggle to feel like we fit in--and humorist Mishna Wolff's story is a prime example of that struggle. In the 1980s, Wolff and her family, all of them "white Americans of European ancestry," moved to a poor black neighborhood in Seattle, where Wolff's father--who truly wanted to be black--could embrace African-American culture. Wolff tried desperately to fit in with her classmates, but she wasn't "black enough"; then, after her mother had her transferred to a private school, she found she wasn't quite white enough, either. Check out I'm Down for Mishna's hilarious, absorbing, and bittersweet story.