Penny Blubaugh

By day, the Nicollet Mall winds through Minneapolis like a paved canal. People flow between its banks, eddying at the doors of office towers and department stores. . . .

But late at night there's a change in the Nicollet Mall.

From War for the Oaks by Emma Bull:

POWELLS.COM

Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel
War for the Oaks, which first appeared in 1987, is one of the novels that helped define the genre of modern urban fantasy.

Eddi McCandry sings rock and roll. But her boyfriend just dumped her, her band just broke up, and life could hardly be worse. Then, walking home through downtown Minneapolis on a dark night, she finds herself drafted into an invisible war between the faerie folk. Now, much more than her own survival is at riskand Eddi's goals and preferences, musical and personal, are very much beside the point.

By turns tough and lyrical, fabulous and down-to-earth, this novel is as much about this world as about the other one.

"A contemporary fantasy classic."Publishers Weekly

"Emma Bull is really good."Neil Gaiman

"One of the most engaging fantasies I've read in a long time."Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"[This novel] knifes through the fantasy genre like a sharp blade of wind."Charles de Lint Read More 

Strange things can happen at a crossroads.

It might look like nothing but a place where two dusty roads meet, but a crossroads can be something more.

From The Boneshaker by Kate Milford:

KIRKUS REVIEW

In 1913 Arcane, Mo., 13-year-old Natalie Minks loves mechanical things, and her father’s bicycle-repair shop is the perfect place to tinker. Naturally curious, she is intrigued when a medicine show comes to town with promises of healing potions and an array of unusual machines. Folks in town are skeptical of “snake oil salesmen,” but Natalie suspects that the strangers are more sinister than mere con artists. At the same time, she experiences visions that may be connected to the town’s history and these mysterious travelers. These visions heighten her fears that her family and town are in danger from unresolved deals made with the Devil himself. This unusual story, with elements of folklore, tall tales and steampunk, has rich details of small-town America in the early 20th century as well as the impact of budding technology. Natalie is a well-drawn protagonist with sturdy supporting characters around her. The tension built into the solidly constructed plot is complemented by themes that explore the literal and metaphorical role of crossroads and that thin line between good and evil.  Read More 

Meeting

George and Ivan met
seventeen years ago in

Miss Julie’s second grade class
at Pinewood School, one of those

disappeared one-room
schoolhouses – forty kids, eight

grades, and Miss Julie.
Ivan’s family had a

farm, George’s parents
owned Popo’s “So Fresh and So

Clean” car wash. “Only
one for seventy miles,”

Old Popo would boast.
Farmers would bring their trucks, their

Sunday church cars, their
tractors, even, if they were

passing through town, done
with plowing, covered with dust.

The business shouldn’t
have lasted, but somehow it

held on until George
was old enough to learn to

chamois the hoods and
windows, to buff the tires

and polish the rims.
By this time he and Ivan

were the oldest class
at Pinewood, getting ready

to take a bus each
morning to Carruthers High.

One hour and fifteen
minutes each way. “Got to leave

at 6:30 each
morning,” George groans. Ivan just

shrugs. “I’m up before
then, anyway. Cows to milk.”

“Carruthers High School.
Two hundred kids there, Ivan.”

“Don’t need to worry,”
says Ivan. “You’ve got me.” Read More