Some titles that recently caught my eye in Booklist:

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe (the title alone drew me in): "Harvard graduate student Connie Godwin is determination personified. She will get her doctorate and find success as a historian, whether her aura-reading mother understands her bookishness or not. But first she has to contend with her tweedy adviser’s oddly urgent demands and her late grandmother’s incredibly old, long-abandoned house in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The house is cloaked in vines and stuffed with dusty old bottles and books, but its clutter yields a tantalizing scrap of paper carrying the words “Deliverance Dane.” Connie hasn’t a clue, but the reader knows, thanks to alternating chapters set in the late-seventeenth century, that Deliverance was a good woman accused of being a witch during the infamous Salem witch hysteria. Soon Connie, admirably sensible in the face of mystifying, even terrifying occurrences, zealously searches archives and libraries for healer Deliverance’s “shadow book,” while struggling to understand her own weird, new powers. Historian Howe’s spellbinding, vividly detailed, witty, and astutely plotted debut is deeply rooted in her family connection to accused seventeenth-century witches Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor and propelled by an illuminating view of witchcraft. In all a keen and magical historical mystery laced with romance and sly digs at society’s persistent underestimation of women. "

I don't usually excerpt the whole review but on this one it sounds so good - the combination of research, double plots and "society's persistent underestimation of women". Donna gave it a starred review which certainly makes me move it to the top of the "want" list. It might also work for older teens looking for a different angle on Salem; I'll have to see.

The Dead Drop by Jennifer Allison. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the new Gilda Joyce and here it is. Somehow I missed this one in all the catalogs - not sure how but this is the review: "First you have to get past the fact that 14-year-old Gilda Joyce, psychic detective, has gotten herself an internship at Washington, D.C.’s International Spy Museum and shares an apartment with a twenty-something. (True, her application did say she was 15.) But this book, one of the strongest in the series, is full of excitement as it pulls together lots of plotlines (the inner workings of the International Spy Museum! Cold war spies! Psychic spies!) into a bustling, often-amusing read. Gilda is as sassy as ever, and though she doesn’t always come across as a real teen, she certainly comes across as fun."

I dunno - doesn't bother me at all that Gilda has an internship at the Spy Museum. Half the appeal of this series is that while it is mostly believable, it's not always completely believable. There's always a bit extra to Gilda's adventures that keep them just beyond our own dull lives. Plus she's funny as hell. Still the best girl detective out there.

Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes. This one was just sent my way by Sharyn November and it certainly sounds like something special. "Set over the span of just six days in 1973—but weighing in at more than 500 pages—Barnes’ coming-of-age epic is overlong, tangled with tangents, and takes a kitchen-sink approach when it comes to teenage trauma. Yet rarely will you read something so lovingly vulgar, so fiercely warmhearted, and so exuberantly expansive that even its long-windedness becomes part of its rogue charm. It’s the story of Karl Shoemaker, a senior starting the first week of classes in his blue-collar Ohio town. This year he’s determined to execute Operation Be Fucking Normal, but that isn’t easy when he is working five jobs to pay the bills of his drunkard, star-child mother; wakes up early to clean up the poop from their zillions of cats (and bury the dead ones in their backyard Cat Arlington); and is deeply connected to the other kids forced to take school therapy—aka the Madman Underground. "

This sounds like a kid trying to make it out of his truly sucky life and let's be honest - there are a ton of us who had truly sucky moments in our lives and can empathize. Teen life can often be appalling; I'm game for another look at how to handle that.

Zarafa: The Giraffe Who Walked to the King by Judith St. George, Illustrated by Britt Spencer: "St. George recounts a true story of a giraffe’s journey from infancy to fame in this handsome picture book. In 1824 the viceroy of Egypt, wanting the two countries to be good friends, decided to give the king of France a giraffe, an animal of unimaginable exoticism at the time. The story follows Zarafa as she sailed on a tiny boat down the Nile to Alexandria, boarded a much bigger ship to cross the Mediterranean, and then walked more than 500 miles with her beloved handlers to be presented to the king. Although there isn’t much drama other than charting Zarafa’s moods, which, according to St. George, were almost uniformly cheerful, Zarafa’s sensational impact on the people around her is readily apparent on every page. Spencer’s winsome artwork, though verging on stereotype at times, is the highlight here, with scenes of cheering and amazed crowds surrounding the placid and magnificent Zarafa. "

I don't often highlight picture books but this blend of history and animals should make the book extra appealing (I know it will around my house). Plus this whole trading of exotic animals to impress fellow royals just mystifies me. I read The Medici Giraffe years ago - the adult title that looked at this practice and I see that ten years ago there was an adult NF title on Zarafa alone: Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris by Michael Allin which also sounds quite good.

Voyages of Discovery by Dr. Tony Rice. This one was just a blurb in an ad for Firefly books when I turned the page but the cover alone jumped out at me. It came out last November; here's a bit of the review from that time: "Ten of the most famous of these scientific voyages are highlighted in this lushly illustrated tribute to the marriage of art and science in the recording and dissemination of new discoveries in natural history. Beginning with Hans Sloane’s voyage to Jamaica in 1687 (discovering that chocolate could be made much more palatable by mixing it with milk) and ending with the Challenger expedition of 1872–76 (the first expedition to study the deep ocean, and with photography), the book tells the story of each voyage and highlights some of the illustrations produced of the specimens collected. Though intended to be scientifically accurate, many of the illustrations were also beautiful and were the Western world’s first view of exotic species from such locales as Suriname and the Galapagos."

I'm a huge fan of natural history - I find so many of those early voyages to be fascinating - and the inclusion of "hundreds of illustrations" makes this sound like a major winner. I'll be seeking it out for sure.

Here's one that sounds really unusual: A Monster's Notes by Laurie Sheck. What if Frankenstein's monster still walked the earth? Here is what he might be thinking: "Here are glimpses into the audacious lives of Mary, her feminist-philosopher mother, her half-sister Fanny, her stepsister Claire, and her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Here, too, are the contemplative monster’s musings on Arctic explorers, art, science, the self, and the tyranny of appearance. Sheck also imagines Mary Shelley’s character Henry Clerval painstakingly translating the Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber while brooding over the fate of a man with leprosy. In this empathic, virtuosic, haunting literary hybrid patterned with reflections on ice and ostracism, love and defiance, deformity and pestilence, Sheck delves into the metaphysics of otherness, the mystery of creativity, and the crushing tragedies within Shelley’s circle. "

Whoa. Sounds like a lot of history and poetry wrapped in what one might think of as horror or Sci Fi (because we will never agree on what Frankenstein was). Certainly an unusual spin on a classic that's for sure. Here's another monster story this time for MG readers:

Monster's Proof by Richard Lewis. "Ten-year-old genius Darby is a third-generation mathematician with a head for navigating forests of x’s and y’s. Darby solves a proof abandoned by his aunt (dubbed by her as the Thingamabob Conjecture before she went insane), which subsequently materializes as “Bob,” an alien “Alpha Omega Function” in the shape of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Bob hungers after elegance and symmetry, and his straightening of the Leaning Tower of Pisa only hints at his ultimate goals. Lewis’ mix of abstract theory, algebraic cult worship, and divine intervention is nothing short of audacious, but like a telescoping long-division problem, it spills off the page after a point. A finale featuring a VW Beetle piloted by a love-struck angel flying through outer space will be appreciated by fans of the absurd. A true original, to say the least."

I love how this book sounds - I really really love it. I love the notion of math and the absurd to be bought together into the mind of a ten year old. It has quirky kid book written all over it and I hope it follows through on the promise of this review. (I'm not liking the cover at all though - it yells "popcorn horror" and suggests nothing more.)