Picks from Amazon

Eleanor by Jason Gurley

Amazon says: When her twin sister is killed in a terrible accident, Eleanor’s family is wrenched apart. She’s forced to grow up too quickly as her parents are consumed by their despair and anger, and she sleepwalks through her days… until one afternoon when she walks through a doorway at school and finds herself in another world. With barely a moment to catch her breath, something rips Eleanor out of time itself… and on the other side, someone is waiting for her. Eleanor has taken thirteen long years to find its way to your Kindle, and it’s Gurley’s most evocative, personal work yet.

Get Jason Gurley’s Eleanor on Amazon

Super by Ernie Lindsey

Amazon says: Lindsey’s Super is a genre-bending mashup that’s part political thriller, part superhero mystery, and has been described as “The Incredibles for adults.” In addition to writing suspense-thriller novels, Lindsey is a stay-at-home father, and you can often find him feeding a toddler with one hand and editing his latest manuscript with the other. His works include the USA Today bestseller Sara’s Game and its sequels, Harmless, The White Mountain, and the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarter-Finalist, Warchild: Pawn.

Get Ernie Lindsey’s Super on Amazon

Picks from Kobo

The Magnificent Devices Series by Shelley Adina

Kobo says: Victoria is Queen. Charles Darwin’s son is Prime Minister. And steam is the power that rules the world.

The Magnificent Devices novels are set in an alternate Victorian age where the combustion engine has been a flop and steam-powered devices are capable of sending the adventurous to another city, another continent … or even another world. Society is divided into Wits (those who make their way using their intellect) and the Bloods (those who have inherited what they have). Lady Claire Trevelyan has been born a Blood, but she has the heart, soul, and mind of a Wit. And therein lies the problem …

Get The Magnificent Devices at Kobo

Mary Hades by Sarah Dalton

Kobo says: Not many seventeen year old girls have a best friend who’s a ghost, but then Mary Hades isn’t your average teenager.

Scarred physically and mentally from a fire, her parents decide a holiday to an idyllic village in North Yorkshire will help her recover. Nestled in the middle of five moors, Mary expects to have a boring week stuck in a caravan with her parents. Little does she know, evil lurks in the campsite…

Seth Lockwood—a local fairground worker with a dark secret—might be the key to uncovering the murky history that has blighted Nettleby. But Mary is drawn to him in a way that has her questioning her judgement.

Helped by her dead best friend and a quirky gay Goth couple, Mary must stop the unusual deaths occurring in Nettleby. But can she prevent her heart from being broken?

The first in a series of dark YA novels, Mary Hades is a spine-tingling tale with romance. Readers will be shocked and entertained in equal measure.

Get Sarah Dalton’s Mary Hades at Kobo

Picks from Wattpad

Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World by Anne Jamison

Wattpad says: Reading Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over The World is like travelling into the belly of the internet, and having a beer to discuss your favorite pop culture icons and the stories surrounding them. Fic’s essays are conversational without being obvious, and informative without being academic. Ficincludes all the juicy bits (slash fic, shipped relationships, fangirls of all ages, genders and backgrounds) but it also talks about the legality, history and future of fanfiction as niche online communities gain power and influence. Fic gives you the facts while still encouraging you to wonder: who would star in the fanfic of your dreams?

Synopsis: Fanfiction from Sherlock Holmes to Fifty Shades of Grey and Beyond . . . What is fanfiction, and what is it not? Why does fanfiction matter? And what makes it so important to the future of literature? Fic is a groundbreaking exploration of the history and culture of fan writing and what it means for the way we think about reading, writing, and authorship. It’s a story about literature, community, and technology—about what stories are being told, who’s telling them, how, and why. With provocative discussions from both professional and fan writers, on subjects from Star Trek to The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Harry Potter, Twilight, and beyond, Fic sheds light on the widely misunderstood world(s) of fanfiction—not only how fanfiction is transforming the literary landscape, but how it already has.

Read Fic: on Wattpad

The UnSlut Project by Emily Linden

Wattpad says: The Unslut Project provides insight to a young girl’s social world with raw emotion and painstaking detail, capturing the harmful realities of bullying and shaming. When Emily was eleven years old, she was branded a “slut” by her classmates. Chronicling her experience through diary entries, The Unslut Project organically raises important questions about gender inequality. Lindin, now a Harvard graduate, PhD candidate, writer, and activist, has cultivated not only a relatable, safe place for those who have been bullied, but also an online community of women who have overcome such hardships.

 The Unslut Project: I was the 6th-grade “slut.” And I kept a diary. So I decided to create The UnSlut Project in the hopes that my own diary entries could provide some perspective to girls who currently feel trapped and ashamed. I am publishing these entries one at a time, without changing a single word except for the names of the people involved. My limited commentary, which is confined to brackets in each entry, is meant to provide the relief of my current perspective, fifteen years later. The UnSlut Project: Working to undo the dangerous slut shaming in our schools, communities, media, and culture by sharing knowledge and experiences.

Read the UnSlut Project at Wattpad

Picks from SmashWords

JD Nixon’s Heller series

SmashWords says: A reader favorite since first uploading her books to Smashwords,  JD Nixon’s quirky mysteries star characters so real you’ll mistake them for family.  Once you meet security officer Tilly Chalmers and her sexy and mysterious boss, Heller, you’ll never want to say ‘Good-bye’.

Each installment in the Heller series has you wondering what outlandish assignment Tilly will get into next.  Meet Tilly and her intense employer for free in Heller, Book 1.

Find JD Nixon’s Heller series at Smashwords, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Kobo, Scribd and Oyster.

Picks from Blurb

Bobby Grossman chronicled New York’s punk/no wave/new wave/post punk scene of the late 70s and early 80s. His book, Low Fidelity, features CBGB stars like Debbie Harry, David Byrne, Johnny Rotten, Iggy Pop, and Joey Ramone – along with New York art scenesters like Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Photographer John Scarpati captured a different scene in the ’80s – less art-school and more beauty-school-gone-to-hell. Cramp, Slash, & Burn is a collection of Scarpati’s work from the ’80s, a rock and roll rogue’s gallery featuring everyone from cult-band 45 Grave to MTV-stars LA Guns.

Before most of Scarpati’s subjects were rocking outrageous, Glaswegian rocker Alex Harvey was setting the stage with music that took glam’s theatrics into a new direction. Harvey’s musical storytelling is brilliantly captured in Janet Mocoska’sAlex Harvey: Last of the Teenage Idols, a book now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s collection.

The Jesus and Mary Chain were one of the loudest, most chaotic, and less reliable bands to have made a name for themselves in the 80s. Fortunately, photographer Andrew Catlin could balance on top of an amp long enough to get those perfect shots. He’s compiled the photos, along with words by Jim Reid, the group’s vocalist, into a tribute.