Sheila's Guests and Reviews

I had just started high school. We had to borrow books from the school library, but there were rules. We had to borrow one fiction and one non-fiction book every week. And we were meant to read them. Anyone who knows me knows I love to read. I read quickly, and I'd happily have borrowed way more than two books. But... one non-fiction book! Every week! No way! The trouble was, I really didn't enjoy reading non-fiction. Then I discovered the "mythology" shelf. I couldn't believe my good fortune. Here were all these wonderful short stories and novels, all those amazing fantastical words, all these great characters, and they weren't fiction! I was hooked. I've loved mythology ever since. And so I couldn't possibly resist when someone suggested I try reading a middle-grade novel called Minotaur, by Phillip Simpson . It's a wonderful reimagining of the familiar story, with mostly human heroes and monsters, beautifully researched history, and fascinat...

Today I'm delighted to welcome Dean Economos, author of A North Shore Story, to my blog. It's an intriguing, fairly short YA novel, set among the high-schoolers of Chicago, where... well, you'll have to read on to find out... Welcome Dean, and over to you. Sex. Greed. Drug-abuse, by Dean Economos Now that I have your attention... Everyone has a hidden vice. We hate to admit it to others; sometimes worse, we hate to admit it to ourselves. We’re attracted to the allure of it, kind of like how you kept reading this blog post after I named a few common vices. Yet we hide our obsessions in secrecy like an addict and, at the end of the day, get engulfed into the lies we’ve created. A North Shore Story is a combination of three storylines intertwined into one. It includes adolescent struggles, like the ones named in the first line, as well as love and relationships. It delves into how the consequences of one’s actions can affect the other people in their lives. V...

I'm delighted to welcome author Helen Sedwick to my blog today. I have her young adult novel, Coyote Winds, on my to-read pile and I'm really looking forward to it: an historical novel set on the western prairie in the years before the Dust Bowl, a time of optimism and confidence, a time when a man was measured by what he produced not what he could buy. When thirteen-year old Myles brings home a coyote pup half-blinded by a dust storm, his father warns him a coyote can’t be trusted. His neighbor loads his rifle and takes aim. Yet Myles is determined to tame the pup just as his father is taming the land. Of course, the land may prove hard to tame... Seventy years later, when Andy remembers his Grandpa Myles’s tales about growing up on the prairie, he wonders what stories he will tell when he has grandchildren. Algebra, soccer practice, computer games, a day at the mall? Determined to keep his grandfather’s memories alive and have some adventures of his own, Andy heads ou...