Select book by title
Take the Key and Lock Her Up, by Ally Carter
Take The Key and Lock Her Up is the final installment in Ally Carter’s Embassy Row trilogy. Sadly, this series ends the way it began: fun, frenetic, and stylish, but ultimately a little empty...
Tales from Outer Suburbia, by Shaun Tan
It's difficult to maintain an genuinely dreamlike atmosphere over 90+ pages, but Australian graphic novelist Shaun Tan's Tales from Outer Suburbia manages it... or very nearly. One or two of his...
Tales From the Teachers' Lounge, by Robert Wilder
Robert Wilder (author of the whimsical parenting book Daddy Needs a Drink) has written another book, and it’s just as funny, profanity-laden, and stomach-churning as his first. Tales From the Teachers’ Lounge is a series of humorous essays about the questionable joys of teaching...
Tales Too Ticklish To Tell, by Berkeley Breathed
When it comes to 1980s comics, Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County was the odd one out. Doonesbury was political, The Far Side surreal, and Calvin and Hobbes genuinely moving—Bloom County veered wildly between all three, and the end result was 70% amazing, 25% mediocre, and (it must be said) 5% terrible...
The Talisman Ring, by Georgette Heyer
First published in 1936, Georgette Heyer's The Talisman Ring is a story built around a MacGuffin, with a theatrical setting and a highly mannered cast of characters. It's a tribute to the author's skill that she manages to transform such a slight, silly confection of a story into one of her most endearing books...
Tandem, by Anna Jarzab
Anna Jarzab's last novel, The Opposite of Hallelujah, was a thoughtful and original exploration of family, faith, and mental illness. I loved it, but it didn't exactly scream “Teen Blockbuster”. Her latest effort, Tandem, hews much closer to the tried-and-true formula of recent bestsellers: love triangles, fantasy elements, violence, and deeply stupid choices abound...
Tantalize, by Cynthia Leitich Smith
I have loads of horror/fantasy novels on my shelves—everything from Carmilla to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell—but Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Tantalize is unique: it stands alone as the only book that has ever inspired me to genuinely freak out. I’m a pretty unflappable person, but when I saw the words “chilled baby squirrels, simmered in orange brandy, bathed in honey cream sauce” on the restaurant dessert menu featured on page 174, I needed to lie down...
Teardrop, by Lauren Kate
In the author's note following her novel Teardrop, Lauren Kate shares the following story: once, when she was crying, her husband reached out and swiped a tear from her cheek, blinking it into his own eye. If that's the kind of thing that strikes you as indescribably romantic, Teardrop is the book for you. If (like me) your reaction hovers somewhere between “Ew” and “...why?”, move right along...
Teen Idol, by Meg Cabot
It’s not that Meg Cabot’s most recent young adult novel Teen Idol is a bad book. On the contrary, it is a clever, entertaining, and occasionally thought-provoking read. If Teen Idol had been written by an unknown author, I would have been thrilled to discover it and immediately passed it around to all of my friends...
Tell Me Lies and Crazy For You, by Jennifer Crusie
Even on her warmest, fuzziest day, Jennifer Crusie doesn't go for the hearts-and-flowers approach to romance writing. Her books are funny and sharp-tongued and sexy, and even her sweetest titles—...
Tempest Rising, by Nicole Peeler
The cover art for Nicole Peeler's Jane True series is a perfect fit for the books: eye-catching, cartoonish, charmingly goth-lite. Also like the books, the covers would be improved by a bit...
Tena on S-String (Yen Press Extravaganza Part IV), by Sesuna Mikabe
More graphic novels! While Sesuna Mikabe's Tena on S-String is typically described as a seinen (young men's) manga, the series' second volume focuses more...
Texas Gothic, by Rosemary Clement-Moore
The title of Rosemary Clement-Moore's new novel Texas Gothic is misleading: there are no gloomy mansions or dark family secrets, and Clement-Moore's heroines have never been fragile. It would ha...
That Ain't Witchcraft, by Seanan McGuire
That Ain't Witchcraft is the eighth novel in Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series, and the author deserves all the fun-book awards: she keeps trotting out installment after installment, each just as lively, imaginative, and entertaining as the others. I've read more impressive standalone fantasies, but I can't remember another series delivering so consistently and fast...
Three Bags Full, by Leonie Swann
The set-up is stock casual mystery: in a rural Irish town, a friendly, reclusive shepherd is found dead in his pasture with a spade in his stomach. Everyone in the town had a reason to not only want him dead, but also to fear his death. None of the locals, including the police, care to investigate. Instead, the mystery is left to be solved by a set of lovable amateurs—the shepherd’s abandoned flock...
Three Black Swans, by Caroline B. Cooney
First cousins Missy and Claire, the heroines of Caroline B. Cooney's latest novel Three Black Swans, are so close they can finish each other's sentences. They also look uncannily similar, so when Missy is assigned a school project on scientific hoaxes, she and Claire successfully trick her classmates into thinking they are long-lost identical twins...
Threshold, by Caitlin R. Kiernan
Caitlin R. Kiernan's novel Threshold is 90% atmosphere, 10% plot. That's not necessarily a complaint, but anyone setting out to read this novel better be prepared for the literary equivalent of visiting a haunted house that consists mostly of smoke machines being blown in your face, with only occasional, unsatisfying glimpses of an actual monster...
Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas
Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass is the second teen-girl assassin book I've read in the past few months, and while I preferred Robin LaFevers's Grave Mercy (which sang to my very soul), Maas's offering is pretty fun, too. Between the two of them, “Ruthless killer” is fast becoming one of my favorite types of fantasy heroines...
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, by Jasper Fforde
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels is the fifth book in Jasper Fforde’s comedic fantasy series about the adventures of literary detective Thursday Next. As the story opens, Thursday is attempting...
Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers, by Walter Hoving
Clearly courting the doting-grandparent market, Random House recently released a 50th Anniversary edition of Walter Hoving's Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers. Hoving, a former chairman of Tiffany's of New York, offers readers advice on a variety of fine-dining conundrums: how to eat asparagus; the proper way to tilt a soup bowl; what to do with an olive pit...
Tighter, by Adele Griffin
I have always loved Henry James's 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw. When it comes to classic horror, this masterpiece of subtle, uncanny creepiness is the gold standard. Tighter, Adele Gr...
Timeless and Timekeeper, by Alexandra Monir
Here's my problem with time-travel stories: even for great writers, it's tough to come up with a workable plot when you're starting from a fundamentally problematic central concept. I've read a few successful time-travel books, but most of them offered a pleasingly vague “It's magic!” explanation...
Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, by Stephan Pastis
While people usually compare Stephan Pastis's Timmy Failure series to Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, they're missing an even closer relation: the Timmy Failure books are basically a novel-length version of Marjorie Sharmat's Nate the Great series, albeit with racier humor and a stupider protagonist...
To All the Boys I've Loved Before, by Jenny Han
To All the Boys I've Loved Before is the perfect back-to-school treat: a YA romance with an adorable heroine, endearing love interest, and enjoyably ridiculous plot. Plus, the entire trilogy has already been released, and Netflix has just released a super cute movie adaptation, so impatient fans (read: ME) won't have to wait to see how it all turns out...
To Lure a Proper Lady, by Ashlyn MacNamara
When I reviewed a previous Ashlyn MacNamara book, I gave her writing a lukewarm but honest endorsement. Unfortunately, her upcoming novel To Lure A Proper Lady is the kind of hot mess that undoes a lot of preexisting goodwill...
To Scotland, With Love, by Karen Hawkins
Karen Hawkins has written another story in her MacLean Family series--this one's called To Scotland, With Love, and it's about a thousand times better than her previous effort...
The Tokyo Look Book, by Philomena Keet and Yuri Manabe
With text by anthropologist Philomena Keet and pictures by Yuri Manabe, The Tokyo Look Book attempts to give readers a complete tour of the Tokyo fashion scene. While it doesn’t quite manage to c...
Tomorrow, by C.K. Kelly Martin
I always feel weird making this criticism, but C.K. Kelly Martin's Tomorrow is Too Much Book. It crams enough action and drama for an entire series into a scant 250 pages, leaving readers more shell-shocked than anything else...
Torment, by Lauren Kate
As I turned over the final page of Torment, the second book in Lauren Kate's best-selling Fallen series, my first thought was Aw, man... now I'm totally gonna need to read the third one. Not the ...
Touched and Dead River, by Cyn Balog
Cyn Balog's standalone novels Dead River and Touched are the kind of stories that allow YA readers to dip their toes into the horror genre. They're disturbing enough to send the odd shiver up one's spine, but still guaranteed to come with a safely happy ending, making them an ideal choice for kids who aren't quite ready for, say, Stephen King...
Trackers and Trackers: Shantorian, by Patrick Carman
Patrick Carman's Trackers series is simultaneously one step forward and several steps back: it features even more digital bells and whistles than his Skeleton Creek quartet, but it's markedly less readable than his recent novel Floors or his earlier Land of Elyon series...
Trade Me, by Courtney Milan
I have complaints about Courtney Milan's novel Trade Me, but I want to give the author props for getting one thing totally right: unlike the vast majority of “New Adult” books (and in spite of her far-fetched premise), this book actually deals with real, compelling, and young adult-specific issues...
Tramps Like Us Vol. 14, by Yayoi Ogawa
TOKYOPOP has just released the final volume of Yayoi Ogawa’s sublimely romantic manga Tramps Like Us, and while we are definitely going to miss seeing new installments of this story every few months, we are thrilled that Ogawa ended her fourteen-volume series on such a satisfying note...
Trapped at the Altar, by Jane Feather
Before I begin, a word of warning: Jane Feather's Trapped at the Altar ends on such an inexplicably abrupt note that I found myself wondering if the e-reader advance copy I was sent was somehow missing several final chapters. But after poking around a bit online, I'm assuming my copy is fine—it seems that's just the way the story ends. However, if I find out later there's secretly another 100 pages out there, I promise to go back and update this with a more fair assessment...
Treasury of the Lost Litter Box, by Darby Conley
I really enjoyed Darby Conley's comic strip Get Fuzzy, which ran in my local paper for more than a decade, and my family still routinely refers back to his joke about how you can “verb anything”. Conley and his strip disappeared about five years ago, much to my chagrin, but when I recently ran across a copy of his Treasury of the Lost Litter Box collection...
The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle, by Rick Riordan
While I thoroughly enjoyed Rick Riordan's 'Heroes of Olympus' series, I was dismayed by the way the author handled Nico di Angelo, his first major gay character. I applauded Riordan's efforts to be more inclusive, but Nico seemed downright tortured by his sexuality, which—considering both modern attitudes towards sex and other, far more pressing problems in the poor kid's life—felt unnecessarily overwrought. I'm assuming I wasn't the only person to complain, because...
Tribute, by Nora Roberts
When I channel-flipped past Lifetime’s made-for-television adaptation of Nora Roberts’ novel Tribute a few days ago, I thought it looked ridiculous—the TV equivalent of spray-can cheese, with...
Tricks for Free, by Seanan McGuire
This is a unusual thing to say about the seventh book in an ongoing series, but Seanan McGuire's Tricks for Free surprised me. This story is much different in tone and content from McGuire's previous installments, but plenty entertaining in its own right...
The Truth Commission, by Susan Juby
Susan Juby's The Truth Commission is 60% snappy young adult novel; 40% unexpectedly effective horror story. I really enjoyed the teen stuff, but I'm a little sorry Ms. Juby didn't go full-out on the horror, because this book is proof positive that she can create characters that would leave Stephen King weeping with envy...
Tunnels and Deeper, by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams
Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams's Tunnels series has a great back story. Their first book (originally titled The Highfield Mole) was allegedly inspired by a real—and very strange—place: the Wil...
The Turning: What Curiosity Kills, by Helen Ellis
This might be a stretch, but I'm including a novel about shape-shifting cats in my Halloween read-a-thon. I realize were-kittens aren't quite as threatening as zombies or whatever, but they fall somewhere along the monster spectrum, right? (On, like, the cuter end...
The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily is the sequel to 2010's Dash and Lily's Book of Dares. Once again, the authors flip between the two title characters' points of view, as Dash and Lily drift around New York at the holidays. A year into their relationship, the once-devoted couple is struggling on several fronts, but don't worry—in Cohn and Levithan's books, there are few problems that can't be fixed with an impossibly twee grand gesture...
Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
Stephenie Meyer’s novel Twilight appealed to me for two reasons—I liked the cover, and my mom mentioned that it was a vampire story set in the town of Forks, Washington. If you’ve ever been to...
The Two-Income Trap, by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi
I first heard Elizabeth Warren speak in 2003 during an interview with Michele Norris on NPR’s All Things Considered. Warren appeared on the show to discuss The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class...