Can This Be Real?

“Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.” Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish writer


Ruiz Zafon, Carlos. The Midnight Palace.  New York: Little, Brown, 2011.

Ben has been raised in an orphanage in Calcutta, India.  He thinks he is alone in the world until he discovers, on his sixteenth birthday, that he has a twin sister.  He also discovers that a monstrous ghost from the past is trying to kill both of them. Set in the 1930s, this suspense-filled novel, translated from Spanish, will be enjoyed by readers 11 to 16 years old.  (India; Historical fiction; Demonology; Orphans; Twins; Secret societies; Friendship)

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“If you try to cure evil with evil, you will add more pain to your fate.” Sophocles, ancient Greek playwright

Ryan, Pam Muñoz. Echo: a Novel.  New York: Scholastic Press, 2015.

“Lost in the Black Forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and finds himself entwined in a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica–and decades later three children, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California find themselves caught up in the same thread of destiny in the darkest days of the twentieth century, struggling to keep their families intact, and tied together by the music of the same harmonica.” – CIP. A 587-page Newbery Honor book recommended for readers 10 years old and up. 

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“Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”  Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Yelchin, Eugene. The Haunting of Falcon House.  New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2016. 

“In 1891, twelve-year-old Lev Lvov travels to Saint Petersburg, Russia, to assume his duties as Prince, but must first use his special gift to rid the House of Lions of a ghost.” – CIP. Written by Prince Lev Lvov with pictures drawn in his own hand; translated by Eugene Yelchin who writes in the preface, “when I was a schoolboy in St. Petersburg, Russia,…I came upon a bundle of paper held together with frayed twine….Some years passed….Resolved to faithfully restore Lvov’s original narration, I set to work. To carry Prince Lev’s feelings across to the reader, I became inwardly connected to the young prince…” A spell-binding story for readers 11 to 14 years old. [Aunts; Extrasensory perception; Haunted houses; Orphans; Princes]

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“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” Thomas Merton, American writer