Book Reviews

Uptown Oracle Reads… The October Men

Otto Parsons, a brilliant physicist, is missing. The October Men is a story of Otto’s experiment in quantum physics – trying to create zero gravity without going into space – which yields spectacularly unexpected results: time travel. Professor Dan Sibley, ever more desperate to secure funding to keep the experiment running, allows their work to…
Uptown Oracle Reads… The Zanna Function

When fourteen-year-old Zanna Mayfield gets an acceptance letter from St. Pommeroy’s School for Gifted Children, she jumps at the chance to put her considerable intellect to good use. But nothing can prepare her for the first day, when she discovers that she is a Scientist —one able to see and bend the basic functions of…
Uptown Oracle Reads… Roar

In a land ruled and shaped by violent magical storms, power lies with those who control them. As the sole heir of Pavan, Aurora’s been groomed to be the perfect queen. She’s intelligent and brave and honorable. But she’s yet to show any trace of the magic she’ll need to protect her people. To keep her…
Uptown Oracle Reads… Inkmistress

Asra is a demigod with a dangerous gift: the ability to dictate the future by writing with her blood. To keep her power secret, she leads a quiet life as a healer on a remote mountain, content to help the people in her care and spend time with Ina, the mortal girl she loves. But…
Uptown Oracle Reads… Switched

Things at Fairy Tale Reform School are great. Rumpelstiltskin has been chased off, and everyone is excited that Beauty and the Beast have joined the teaching staff. Everyone, that is, except Gilly, who can’t seem to focus on anything but Anna. How is it that her sister somehow went bad and joined up with Rump?…
Uptown Oracle Reads… Heart of Iron

Found as a child drifting through space with D09, Ana was saved by a fearsome space captain and the crew she now calls family. But D09 – one of the last remaining illegal Metals – has been glitching, and Ana will stop at nothing to find a way to fix him. Ana’s desperate effort leads…
Uptown Oracle Reads… The Secret of Spellshadow Manor

Alex Webber thought he was hallucinating. But when he sees the mysterious man following Natalie multiple times, he can no longer disbelieve his eyes. Alex sees her walking with him down a road in his neighborhood he’s never seen before – and can’t help but follow where he finds himself standing before a decrepit old…
Uptown Oracle Reads… The Dark Net

The Dark Net is real. And now an ancient darkness is gathering there. This force is threatening to spread virally into the real world unless it can be stopped by members of a ragtag crew: Twelve-year-old Hannah wonders why she sees shadows surrounding some people; Lela, a technophobic journalist; Mike Juniper, a one-time child evangelist who has…
Uptown Oracle Reads… The Tombs

New York, 1882. A dark, forbidding city, and no place for a girl with unexplainable powers. Sixteen-year-old Avery Kohl pines for the life she had before her mother was taken. She fears the mysterious men in crow masks who locked her mother in the Tombs asylum for being able to see what others couldn’t. Avery…