YA Fantasy Adventure: 100 Cupboards

I guess it’s okay to admit to you that I read young adult fiction since it seems as though it’s now the fashionable thing to do.  I just came across N.D. Wilson’s 100 Cupboards and Dandelion Fire.  I love the unique concept for this series:

Twelve-year-old Henry York wakes up one night to find bits of plaster in his hair. Two knobs have broken through the wall above his bed and one of them is slowly turning . . .Henry scrapes the plaster off the wall and discovers cupboards of all different sizes and shapes. Through one he can hear the sound of falling rain. Through another he sees a glowing room–with a man pacing back and forth! Henry soon understands that these are not just cupboards, but portals to other worlds.

I’ve been reading the author’s blog, and I like his writing style just from that alone.  I can already tell I’m going to enjoy these books (and I just got not one, but two, amazon gift certificates! — woot woot and all that).  Also, Wilson’s guest post over at Powell’s Books, titled The Amazing Tale of the Butterfly-Unicorn-Ballerina-Princess and the Giant, Creeping Land Squid, had me cracking up.  Do not read this post without clicking on that last link, people.  I promise it will make you laugh, or at the very least, chuckle.

You can also visit the author’s website here.

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22 Year Old Author Publishes 9th Novel!

I want this book:  A Madness of Angels: Or The Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin.  Here’s a description of the plot:

“Two years after his untimely death, Matthew Swift finds himself breathing once again, lying in bed in his London home.  Except that it’s no longer his bed, or his home. And the last time this sorcerer was seen alive, an unknown assailant had gouged a hole so deep in his chest that his death was irrefutable…despite his body never being found.”

Not only does the book look interesting, the author seems pretty interesting herself.  Although she is just 22 years old, this is her 9th novel!   She published her first novel when she was just 14 (Mirror Dreams, a young adult novel, published under the name Catherine Webb).

Here is what Kate/Catherine says about the book, which is set in London, in her author interview at Neth Space (where you can also see a somewhat dated photo of her):

It’s (I hope) funny enough to make the tired commuter smile, strange enough to make the mundane seem peculiar, real enough to catch at the memory of pretty much anyone who’s ever waited for the last train on a cold night in December while wearing the wrong kind of shoes…

(If you’d like to see a more recent photo, go to the author interview at Yatterings.)   You can also read the Kate Griffin blog here.