Beauty Queens follows a simple concept: what if a plane full of beauty queens crash-landed on a deserted island, a la Lord of the Flies?
Except it’s not quite so simple as that. This is the story of the survivors, fourteen typical (and atypical) beauty queens who must work together to stay alive and keep their pageant skills sharp until help arrives.
It is France, 1714, and a young French village girl named Addie kneels on the forest floor on the eve of her wedding and prays for freedom from an arranged marriage. She forgets, though, that it is after dark, and the gods that answer after dark never play fair. In a moment of desperation, she makes a bargain with the devil himself — freedom to wander, to explore, to dream, but with one catch: she will be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Janella Angeles’s Where Dreams Descend follows ambitious showgirl Kallia as she fights to compete for a spot as the headlining magician of the Conquering Circus.
The competition takes place in Glorian, a city full of secrets. While competing, Kallia encounters Daron Demarco, the enigmatic young judge with a hidden past. Kallia, too, wishes to forget her past — but Jack, the owner of the club she left for the competition, won’t let her get away so easily.
Nightshade is the twelfth installment of the Alex Rider series. When a secret agent is killed by a ruthless 16-year-old assassin in Brazil, teenage MI6 spy Alex Rider is sent to Gibraltar, a maximum-security prison, assuming the identity of his lookalike nemesis, Julius Grief. His mission? To bond with and extract information from the assassin, Freddy.
Just Mercy is a first-person account of Bryan Stevenson, a black lawyer, who helps prisoners that did not receive fair trials as part of a non-profit organization. Stevenson writes about various clients that he has worked for over the years and how the justice system has failed them.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is a comedy/tragedy following the adventures of Alonso Quixano, aka Don Quixote. Enchanted by the stories of medieval knights, Don decides, to go out, with his neighbor and squire, Sancho, into the world and imitate the stories of chivalry that he so adores.
The Bird and The Blade is set in the ancient Mongolian empire. Jinghua, our protagonist, is a slave in the Khipkhak Khanate, that is, until the kingdom is taken over by enemy forces and the only people able to escape are the Khan (King), the prince, and Jinghua. Together they journey across the kingdom, fleeing pursuing forces. With no other options, Khalaf plans to marry Turandokht, the cunning and beautiful daughter of the Great Khan. Easier said than done.
Loki: Where Mischief Lies expands off of the popular character from the Marvel Universe, following Loki in his misadventures on Midgard (or Earth, as we know it) far before the events of the first Thor movie and The Avengers.
Twelve-year-old orphan Max Einstein is a smart girl. She has a brain just as big and creative as the legend Einstein. She loves Einstein and has a passion for him. She is living above a horse’s stall, and learning at a college. One day she is taken to the CMI: Change Makers Institution, and is chosen to become a team leader to save the world. Max and her friends go to a place trying to solve the problems in cities around the world. But, the problem is that Dr. Zimm and his team, Corp, is trying to find Max Einstein, and take her away from the CMI.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a work of art. Set in the roaring 20s in New York, the novel follows Nick Carraway as he unravels the truth about his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, his cousin Daisy, and everyone else surrounding his new apartment in West Egg. For the first six chapters of this novel, I didn’t understand the hype, but I was sold by the end.
