Seven tightly interwoven narratives. Three harrowing hours. One fateful day that changes everything.
Delaware, the morning of April 19. Senior Skip Day, and April Donovan’s eighteenth birthday. Four days after the Boston Marathon bombing, the country is still reeling, and April’s rare memory condition has her recounting all the tragedies that have cursed her birth month. And just what was that mysterious gathering under the bleachers about?
Meanwhile, in Nebraska, Lincoln Evans struggles to pay attention in Honors English, distracted by the enigmatic presence of Laura Echols, capturer of his heart. His teacher tries to hold her class’s interest,
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How do you move on from an irreplaceable loss? In a poignant debut, a sixteen-year-old boy must learn to swim against an undercurrent of grief—or be swept away by it.
Otis and Meg were inseparable until her family abruptly moved away after the terrible accident that left Otis’s little brother dead and both of their families changed forever. Since then, it’s been three years of radio silence, during which time Otis has become the unlikely protégé of eighteen-year-old Dara—part drill sergeant, part friend—who’s hell-bent on transforming Otis into the Olympic swimmer she can no longer be.
But when Otis learns that Meg is coming back to town,
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Winner of the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Youth/Teens
A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book
Cowritten by Malcolm X’s daughter, this riveting and revealing novel follows the formative years of the man whose words and actions shook the world.
Malcolm Little’s parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that’s a pack of lies—after all, his father’s been murdered, his mother’s been taken away, and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him laughed out of school.
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Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. Darling Days is a provocative examination of culture and identity, of the instincts that shape us and the norms that deform us, and of the courage and resilience it takes to listen closely to your deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to let six-year-old, female-born iO play ball, iO instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity through the tenderest years.
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National Outdoor Book Award Winner
“Don’t die before you’re dead.” –Old Keb
Keb Wisting is somewhere around ninety-five years old (he lost count) and in constant pain and thinks he wants to die. He also thinks he thinks too much. When his grandson, James, a promising basketball player, ruins his leg in a logging accident and feels he has nothing left to live for, Keb comes alive. Together with a rogue’s gallery of colorful characters and a dog named Steve, they embark on a canoe journey deep into wild Alaska and into the human heart,
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Junior Library Guild Selection
In her powerful debut, Kristin Bartley Lenz delivers an evocative story of grief, acceptance, and ultimately, self-discovery.
Competitive climber Cara Jenkins feels most at home high off the ground, clinging to a rock wall by her fingertips. She’s enjoyed a roaming life with her mountaineering parents, making the natural world her jungle gym, the writings of Annie Dillard and Henry David Thoreau her textbooks. But when tragedy strikes on an Ecuadoran mountaintop, Cara’s nomadic lifestyle comes to an abrupt halt.
Starting over at her grandparents’ home in suburban Detroit,
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