Book Report: Past and Present

I haven't done a book report in a while. I've been reading a lot, but some of it has been reference and some has been re-reads. This is a selection of noteworthy books that might be of interest to my readers from among all my recent reading.

First, I have an interesting compare/contrast between two books that are superficially similar, but ultimately different. Both books would fall loosely into the steampunk category and both involve parallel story lines about two orphan (or semi-orphan) teen...