Also of interest...in young adult and juvenile fiction

Who Could That Be at This Hour?

by Lemony Snicket (Little, Brown, $16)

The first book in Lemony Snicket’s new All the Wrong Questions series “demands to be read twice—once for the laughs and the second time for the clues,” said Chelsey Philpot in The Boston Globe. A clever noir mystery for brainy kids, it’s told as memoir, recounting how young Lemony became an apprentice in a secret society and was charged with finding a missing statue of a mythical beast. As he did in his popular Series of Unfortunate Events, Snicket “challenges as he entertains.”

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The Peculiar

by Stefan Bachmann (Greenwillow, $17)

Stefan Bachmann’s debut novel is “so polished that one would never suspect he was in high school when he began to write it,” said Susan Carpenter in the Los Angeles Times. This “steam-punk fairy tale” follows Bartholomew Kettle, a half-faery changeling or “peculiar,” as he tries to rescue his sister from a mysterious child-snatcher. Bachmann is “an unusually gifted young writer”—so “elegantly witty” and steeped in literary classics that you’d swear he couldn’t still be just 18.

Son

by Lois Lowry (Houghton Mifflin, $18)

Long before the The Hunger Games, Lois Lowry’s The Giver “invented the contemporary young-adult dystopian novel,” said Robin Wasserman in The New York Times. That 1994 Newbery award winner “shocked child and adult sensibilities alike” by touching on euthanasia and political oppression, launching a quartet that Son completes. But don’t expect a clichéd final showdown. Son “gloriously rebels” against genre rules, offering a “quiet, deeply moving” story about the obligations of love.

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel

adapted and illustrated by Hope Larson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $20)

Hope Larson’s illustrated take on Madeline L’Engle’s classic time-travel adventure is a “heartfelt tribute” and a dazzling work on its own, said Lauren Davis in io9.com. Though many of L’Engle’s concepts about multiple dimensions are tough to illustrate, Larson rises to the occasion. She does a “particularly beautiful” job with L’Engle’s protagonist, Meg Murry, “making her physically awkward but giving her moments of sheer loveliness.”