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Babymouse: Dragonslayer, by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm
The Babymouse series, written by author Jennifer L. Holm and illustrated by her brother, freelance graphic artist Matthew Holm, are cute, silly, and unabashedly pink, making them an enjoyable alte...
Babymouse: Skater Girl, by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm
Brother/sister creative team Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm’s Babymouse books are a series of witty, girl-friendly graphic novels starring Babymouse, a anthropomorphic young mouse obsessed with...
Bad Taste in Boys and Bad Hair Day, by Carrie Harris
If someone set out to re-write Scooby Doo as a book series aimed at teenage girls, the result would probably look a lot like Carrie Harris's Kate Grable novels: Bad Taste in Boys and Bad Hair Day. Like Scooby Doo, Harris's stories are cheerful, ridiculous, and teaming with monsters—none of which, of course, turn out to be genuinely supernatural...
Banished and Unforsaken, by Sophie Littlefield
I'm sure most bookstores have filed Sophie Littlefield's novels Banished and Unforsaken with the teen paranormal romances, but that's far from accurate. These books are about a girl who discovers that she has magical healing powers, and is immediately targeted by a series of evil scientists, murderous rednecks, and zombies. She does eventually acquire a boyfriend, but their relationship is never more than a minor plot thread...
Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
While looking for something to read on a recent plane trip, I finally cracked open Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's Beautiful Creatures, a book that has been idling on my to-be-read shelf for over two years....
Beautiful Disaster, by Jamie McGuire
Now that E. L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has established itself as the new sales standard to beat, the publishing world is scrambling to fill bookshelves with titles that are as similar to the Grey series as possible, no matter how ridiculous they are. (After all, rampant ridiculousness was no barrier to the success of either Fifty Shades of Grey or its source material, Twilight.)...
Behold, Here's Poison, by Georgette Heyer
Behold, Here’s Poison features one the most creative weapons in murder-mystery history, and is my favorite of the three Heyer novels we’ve reviewed in the past week. Why Shoot a Butler? and...
Bellfield Hall, by Anna Dean
After reading a glowing review on AustenBlog, my hopes for Anna Dean's 2008 novel Bellfield Hall were high. Sadly, I was underwhelmed. There was nothing hideously wrong with the book, but Dean's various elements never gelled into a compelling whole...
Big Clay Pot, by Scott Mills
Scott Mills's delicately illustrated graphic novel Big Clay Pot is the story of Sun Kim, a preadolescent Korean orphan who ends up in a small fishing community in ancient Japan. Sun Kim's klutziness gets her kicked out of camp after camp, until she meets Kokoro...
Black Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives, by Albert Marrin
The vast majority of the books we receive here at Wordcandy are fiction, but every few weeks the odd nonfiction title turns up. I usually choose to review the ones on subjects I enjoy reading about (read: food preparation and money management, both of which I love... in theory, anyway, if not in practice), but Albert Marrin's informative-yet-totally-readable Black Gold: The Story of Oil In Our Lives is the kind of thing everyone should read...
Black Hole, by Charles Burns
Charles Burns’s graphic novel Black Hole is lyrical, meticulously illustrated, and thought-provoking. It’s also creepy, stomach-churning, and unnecessarily grim. Delicate flowers might want to s...
Black Jack: Vol. 1, by Osamu Tezuka
An English translation of Osamu Tezuka’s award-winning manga Black Jack is available again, thanks to the fine people at VIZ Media. The first two volumes of this enjoyably bizarre medical dr...
Black Lagoon: Vol. 1, by Rei Hiroe
As frequent readers of the site know, I have been sick with the Cold from Hell for days, and I spent most of that time reading. I read well-written books, thoughtful books, uplifting books... and ...
Black Magic Woman, by Justin Gustainis
I love monster movies, which is why I’ve always been surprised that the 2004 film Van Helsing was so bad. It had vampires, werewolves, witches, and Hugh Jackman—how could such abundant awesomenes...
Blood Brothers, by Nora Roberts
As someone who has never learned to appreciate delayed gratification, I was pretty excited about the one-book-release-per-month schedule Nora Roberts adhered to for her last trilogy, 2006’s...
Blood Crime, by Kim Harrison
I have never read one of Kim Harrison's books, so when I received a copy of her upcoming graphic novel Blood Crime I had some background research to do. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now fully intend to hunt down the earlier installments in Harrison's "Hollows" urban fantasy series...
Blood Magic, by Tessa Gratton
I winced when I read the promotional materials for Tessa Gratton's Blood Magic, which describe the book as “A natural next-read for fans of Stephenie Meyer”. I am not one of said fans, so this news was not enticing. Having now read the book, let me reassure my fellow Twilight anti-fans that Blood Magic is a gore-splattered, intense YA novel without so much as a hint of love triangles, magical imprinting, or sparkly vampire action...
Blue Dahlia, by Nora Roberts
Nora Roberts’s Blue Dahlia reads like a mix’n’match of about fifty of her previous books. As such, it’s a perfect introduction to her work--like most of Roberts’s books, Blue Dahlia is an enterta...
Blue-Eyed Devil, by Lisa Kleypas
Lisa Kleypas has just released Blue-Eyed Devil, the highly anticipated sequel to her first contemporary romance release, 2007’s Sugar Daddy. As with Sugar Daddy, Blue Eyed-Devil features a few eyebrow-raising plot and characterization decisions, but the final product is romantic drama at its best...
Book Crush, by Nancy Pearl
Naturally, we here at Wordcandy have trouble understanding why you might look to anyone else for your book recommendation needs, but we can—reluctantly—accept that occasionally you’re going to str...
The Book of Blood and Shadow, by Robin Wasserman
Robin Wasserman's novel The Book of Blood and Shadow is ambitious in a way that few YA novels attempt. Everything from the somber cover art to the sheer heft of the book (a solid 432 pages) clearly indicates that this is a novel that wants to be taken seriously, despite its melodramatic tag line: "One Girl. One Night. Centuries of Secrets."...
The Boys Next Door, by Jennifer Echols
It’s clear that Simon and Schuster hasn't exactly pulled out all the PR stops for YA novelist Jennifer Echols. Both of her books (2006’s Major Crush and the just-released The Boys Next Door) are ...
Brave Story, by Miyuki Miyabe
The world is full of fantasy novels featuring eleven-year-old boys with crappy home lives, but Miyuki Miyabe’s Brave Story stands out from the crowd. This award-winning novel combines conventiona...
Buffalo Brenda, by Jill Pinkwater
No Logo author Naomi Wolf recently published an essay in The New York Times bemoaning the current state of YA literature for girls, specifically mentioning the popular...
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home, by Joss Whedon
When we first heard that Joss Whedon was going to write a comic book series that would serve as the eighth season of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show, we weren’t sold on the idea. The first f...
By Invitation Only, by Jodi Della Femina and Sheri McInnis
By Invitation Only is a breezy romantic comedy co-written by Jodi Della Femina and Sheri McInnis, two authors with solid beach-reading street cred: Femina is the autho...