Mara by Veronica Bane is a project of Black Hills Press-an independent publishing company dedicated to the novella. So Mara was short, but there's more coming. The sequel, Miyuki, will be out in 2014. 
 Mara is the first book I've read that could be classified as "suburban" fantasy-the titular heroine and her fellow Unusuals live in the small desert town of Jericho, which segregates the "Natives" from the normal folks. The first book in the Unusuals series, Mara is about a group of high schoolers with strange powers to control the elements-in Mara's case, fire... 
 Read the rest of my review at http://giantsquidbooks.com/2014/02/06...