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Find out moreLaura Ruby is an author of books for adults, teens, and children, including the Printz award-winning Bone Gap, Edgar-nominated mystery Lily's Ghosts, the 2006 Book Sense Pick Good Girls, and the acclaimed novels Play Me and Bad Apple. She is on the faculty of Hamline University's MFA in writing for children and young adults program and lives in the Chicago area. View her website or you can follow her on Twitter
January 2017 Book of the Month | Winner of the 2016 Michael L. Printz Award | In a Nutshell: Unconventional magic realist thriller | A entrancingly unique novel about a boy’s search for a young woman who’s disappeared from their eccentric small town. “Bone Gap had gaps just wide enough for people to slip through, or slip away, leaving only their stories behind”. That’s what the townsfolk of Bone Gap believe, and so none of them are shocked when beautiful Roza vanishes, as mysteriously as she arrived. Well, not quite none of them. Finn is certain that Roza was abducted, snatched by “the man who moves like a cornstalk in the wind”, but since he’s considered “a little weird”, no one believes him. Then, as he searches for Roza, he finds an ally in Petey, who describes herself as looking like a “giant bee”, and reckons Finn is face-blind, only able to recognise the most distinct of faces. As they become close and discover truths about themselves, so light is shone upon Roza’s vanishing. The sequences with Roza and her captor possess the sublimely sinister atmosphere of fairy tales. “You'll love me one day”, her captor insists, over and over, while extolling her to be the most beautiful woman in the whole world. And perceptions of beauty, and how we interpret what we see, are central to this enthralling genre-defying novel. ~ Joanne Owen
