An Academy Award]-winning screenwriter for Best Short Film ("Trevor") makes a stunning debut. Phoebe Hertle's gay cousin Leonard moves in and turns her world upside-down. Soon afterward Leonard is found dead. Unraveling the mystery of his murder becomes Phoebe's obsession. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Starred Review. Lecesne, the Academy Award winning writer of the film short Trevor, turns out a stunner of a first novel, using a deliberately leisurely pace to develop a careful view of a smalltown New Jersey community and then shattering it. Phoebe, the ruminative 15-year-old narrator, is appalled when the orphaned son of her uncle's ex-girlfriend moves in with her fatherless family: it's not just that 13-year-old Leonard shows up in pink-and-green plaid capris, a midriff-baring T-shirt, platform sandals and pierced ears I like different. I am different, Phoebe explains to readers but something about him seemed to invite ridicule. Like he was saying, go on, I dare you, say something. Soon Leonard wins over Phoebe's mother, who operates a hair salon, and her clients, as he prescribes exactly what they need to release their inner beauty. But before these characters harden into types, the mood blackens, not unexpectedly but nevertheless horrifyingly. Lecesne is an artist with small details, using them liberally both to heighten his characters' world and to plant material whose significance emerges only much later. A somewhat didactic ending does not dim this book's pleasures nor flatten its complexities; readers are still left to wrangle with ambiguities and unmeasured depths. Ages 12-up. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr 8 Up The small coastal town of Neptune, NJ, is thrown for a loop when flamboyant and flashy Leonard, 14, arrives to live with the Hertle family. His cousin Phoebe, 15, resents his inclusion and watches with annoyance as he proceeds to join the high school drama crowd and give her mother's beauty parlor clients makeovers of body and mind. When Leonard goes missing, Phoebe begins to realize that she had not been able to see beyond his six-inch platform sneakers; his love for others and his desire to be loved in return touched the people of Neptune more deeply than anyone had expected. As she struggles to make sense of his disappearance, she leans on Travis, her wrong-side-of-the-tracks boyfriend who had at an earlier time accosted Leonard. This novel touches on myriad sensitive topics, including incest, shoplifting, wounded veterans, abandonment, sexual identity, and hate crimes, giving the book something of a crowded feel. Still, the frank tone of Phoebe's narration and the tragedy of Leonard's abbreviated life will give readers plenty to ponder. Nora G. Murphy, Los Angeles Academy Middle School Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information