I’m going to play around with a new format this week.

Title: Pandemonium
Author: Lauren Oliver
Genre: young adult – fantasy – dystopia
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publishing Date: February 28
Summary: The old Lena is dead. The old Lena remains with Alex in Portland, Maine, behind a wall of smoke and flame, but the new Lena was born in the Wilds, transformed by hardship, deprivation, and loss.
Now an active member of the resistance, Lena fights for a world in which love will no longer be considered a dangerous disease. Her inner life is as turbulent as the world around her. . . . Although consumed with grief for Alex, might she be falling in love with someone else?
The second in Oliver’s “Delirium” trilogy.

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Title: And Then It’s Spring
Author: Julie Fogliano
Genre: children’s
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Publishing Date: February 14
Summary: Following a snow-filled winter, a young boy and his dog decide that they’ve had enough of all that brown and resolve to plant a garden. They dig, they plant, they play, they wait . . . and wait . . . until at last, the brown becomes a more hopeful shade of brown, a sign that spring may finally be on its way. Julie Fogliano’s tender story of anticipation is brought to life by the distinctive illustrations Erin E. Stead, recipient of the 2011 Caldecott Medal.

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Title: The Dressmaker
Author: Kate Alcott
Genre: historical fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publishing Date: February 21
Summary: Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she’s had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be a personal maid on the Titanic’s doomed voyage. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men, one a roughly-hewn but kind sailor and the other an enigmatic Chicago millionaire. But on the fourth night, disaster strikes.
Amidst the chaos and desperate urging of two very different suitors, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a lifeboat. Tess’s sailor also manages to survive unharmed, witness to Lady Duff Gordon’s questionable actions during the tragedy. Others—including the gallant Midwestern tycoon—are not so lucky.
On dry land, rumors about the survivors begin to circulate, and Lady Duff Gordon quickly becomes the subject of media scorn and later, the hearings on the Titanic.

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Title: Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now – As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It
Author: Craig Taylor
Genre: nonfiction
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publishing Date: February 21
Summary: Five years in the making, and published on the eve of the 2012 Olympics, “Londoners” is a fresh and compulsively readable view of one of the world’s most fascinating cities–a vibrant, narrative portrait of contemporary London, featuring unforgettable stories told by the real people who make the city hum.