Book Confessions of an Ex-Ballerina

Hello and welcome to my very first Top 5 Wednesday! This is going to be a blast. Today's topic is Books Featuring Paranormal Creatures. This is a great way to start off my T5W, since I love paranormal books and mythical creatures of all kinds. Without further ado, here are my top five picks.

5. Wild Ride by Jennifer Cruise and Bob Mayer. This was a fun read that I picked up over the summer. Who doesn't like strange things happening at the fair? The creepy creatures in this one were possessed clown statues. Um.. no... I hate clowns. It was a creep fest from the beginning to the end.  It was really a wild ride and definitely in my top 5 this week.

The wildest ride at Dreamland isn?t the roller coaster. Lots of women think they?ve fallen in love with a demon. Mab Brannigan really has . . . Mary Alice Brannigan doesn't believe in the supernatural. Nor does she expect to find that she?s the newest recruit in the Guardia, an elite team of demon fighters formed centuries before to guard the five Untouchables, the most powerful demons in the history of the world, now imprisoned right there in the Dreamland amusement park. That would be bad enough, but there?s a guy she?s falling hard for, and there?s something about him that?s not quite right . . . Then there?s Ethan Wayne, a former Green Beret who?s come home to Dreamland to die. Ethan has his own problems including a bullet in his chest inching closer to his heart, a true love who shoots him on sight, and a mother who drags him into the Guardia after he?s possessed by a crazed killer mermaid demon. Between ducking his mother?s attempts to reform him and dodging the bullets of a secret government agent he?s pretty sure is his soulmate, Ethan really doesn?t have time for demons, touchable or not. But rocky romances and demented demons aren?t Mab and Ethan?s only problems: they?re also coping with a crooked politician, a supernatural raven, a secret government agency, an inexperienced sorceress, a betrayer within the Guardia, and some mind-boggling revelations from their own pasts. As their personal demons wreck their newfound relationships and real demons wreck the park, Mab and Ethan find out that the Untouchables have escaped and opened the gate to hell on earth. Now they?re facing down the Devil himself and finding out what everybody who?s ever been to an amusement park knows: the end of the ride is the wildest. 

4. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen. If you can look past the absurdity of what this wonderful Jane Austen book as become, there is actually a fun story about zombies underneath. Do I really have to tell you what the paranormal creature is in this book?

The New York Times Best Seller is now a major motion picture starring Lily James and Sam Riley, with Matt Smith, Charles Dance, and Lena Headey. 

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Can Elizabeth vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read. 

3. Sabriel by Garth Nix. This author is one of my all time favorites of all time. Sabriel was the first book I picked up of his, and my favorite character was Mogget, the free magic creature trapped in the body of a cat.

Sent to a boarding school in Ancelstierre as a young child, Sabriel has had little experience with the random power of Free Magic or the Dead who refuse to stay dead in the Old Kingdom. But during her final semester, her father, the Abhorsen, goes missing, and Sabriel knows she must enter the Old Kingdom to find him.

With Sabriel, the first installment in the Abhorsen series, Garth Nix exploded onto the fantasy scene as a rising star, in a novel that takes readers to a world where the line between the living and the dead isn't always clear—and sometimes disappears altogether. 

2. The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden. Talking horses. Yes, you read that right. The Girl in the Tower has talking horses among other really cool, but creepy things. This was a great read, but make sure you pick up The Bear and the Nightingale first.

The magical adventure begun in The Bear and the Nightingale continues as brave Vasya, now a young woman, is forced to choose between marriage or life in a convent and instead flees her home—but soon finds herself called upon to help defend the city of Moscow when it comes under siege.Orphaned and cast out as a witch by her village, Vasya’s options are few: resign herself to life in a convent, or allow her older sister to make her a match with a Moscovite prince. Both doom her to life in a tower, cut off from the vast world she longs to explore. So instead she chooses adventure, disguising herself as a boy and riding her horse into the woods. When a battle with some bandits who have been terrorizing the countryside earns her the admiration of the Grand Prince of Moscow, she must carefully guard the secret of her gender to remain in his good graces—even as she realizes his kingdom is under threat from mysterious forces only she will be able to stop.  

1. Jade Green by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I love this book! This was the first paranormal story that I really got into and possibly the culprate that got me hooked. The paranormal creature to watch out for is a floating ghost hand. Yes...

"Then at the end of the street, the house--the large brown house with the two eyes--made me suddenly clutch at the driver's arm as if to say, Turn back! Turn back!" At the first sight of her uncle's house--her future home--an inexplicable cloud of foreboding engulfs orphaned teen Judith Sparrow. Unfortunately, her fears are confirmed when she hears a mysterious scratching at the back of her closet and senses a ghostly presence hovering over her at night. Even more chilling, Judith learns of the death of a girl named Jade Green from the town gossip--a girl who lived in her uncle's house before Judith and died a horrible death on the attic stairs. As it turns out, Jade dearly loved the color that was her name. Suddenly, Judith knows the reason she was forbidden by her uncle to bring anything green into the house. She fears that by smuggling in a small green picture frame, she has roused the sleeping ghost of Jade Green and assured the doom of all who sleep under her uncle's roof! --Jennifer Hubert