A LIT & Speculative Blog

One Trick Pony by Daniella Brodsky

Meet the regulars at the One Trick Pony, Brooklyn's finest coffeehouse:Jesse the Player - gorgeous, charming, and oh-so-irresistible, he goes through girls quicker than you can say, "Check, please!"Abigail the Poet - quiet and beautiful, with a heart full of pain, she's scared that she won't recover from the loss of her mother.Randall the Musician Ñyour typical procrastinator and Ÿber-sensitive emo guitarist, he can't find the courage to tell Abigail he loves her. Kate the Know-It-All - stunning, overconfident, and a well-meaning buttinsky, she has everything figured out, or so she thinks.When their favorite hangout closes, these four friends are more adrift than ever before. A mysterious young Frenchwoman named Caroline Deneuve reopens the doors of the One Trick Pony. And their lives will never be the same.Read an excerpt.

The Poker Diaries by Liz Conrad

For a city girl, Lulu has the best of both worlds-uptown and downtown. Her mother teaches her about art and high society...then every other weekend she's with her dad, playing poker in the back room of her grandfather's bar. Mark, her downtown crush, is almost as good at the game as she is, but her uptown friends lose their shirts. So when her buddy Dack gets mixed up with the wrong crowd and loses a bit more than he should, it's up to Lulu to win it back for him. But things have become even more complicated- especially now that her mom is dating Mr. Toughon- Crime himself, the Mayor of New York City.

Candyfloss by Jacquelin Wilson

Floss loves spending weekends with her dad in his greasy spoon cafe, even if it isn't the smartest place in town and only has three regular customers. Even Floss's best friend Rhiannon turns her nose up at it. When Floss's mum and her new husband Steve move to Australia, Floss faces a difficult choice, but decides to stay at home with Dad. He's not much good at ironing school clothes or putting up garden swings, but they muddle along happily on a diet of chip butties and candyfloss from the local funfair. But then disaster strikes and they find themselves homeless. Will their new fairground friends help out? Could Dad and Floss be destined for a life on the road? Read an excerpt.


Dumb Love by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson

In a small mountain town, high-schooler Carlotta, a pleasantly plump (like Botticelli's Venus) years for Pete, a teen who works at a local garage. She's amazingly well adjusted given her crazy life. Her ploys to win Pete's heart are paralleled in her novel-in-progress, an ever-changing mix of ghost story, romance, thriller, and western. And when she joins the writing circle at the high school, she expects to let her talent shine. Unfortunately, the other two students in the group continuously stall her progress, namely her likeable rival Andrea who steals her story's main hero.