"BE STRONG MY ABELA." Orphaned by AIDS in Africa, Abela has a long journey ahead.
When Abela’s mother dies of Aids in their African village, she is left to face the lions of the world. Lions like her Uncle Thomas who has plans to sell her in Europe. Lions like his bitter white wife, whom he abandons with Abela. Abela is forced to stay indoors in a sunless London apartment, cooking and cleaning, and hopelessly dreaming of her African homeland. Meanwhile, in a London suburb, Rosa is distraught when her mother tells her she wants to adopt a child. Rosa doesn’t want a sister or brother. Things were so good, why did they have to change?
Berlie Doherty tells parallel stories, each separate and compelling in their own right, but stories that eventually tangle together bringing a message of hope and what it means to be a family.
Agnes and Honey have always been best friends, but they haven't always been so different. Agnes loves being a Believer. She knows the rules at the Mount Blessing religious commune are there to make her a better person. Honey hates Mount Blessing and the control Emmanuel, their leader, has over her life. The only bright spot is the butterfly garden she's helping to build, and the journal of butterflies that she keeps. When Agnes's grandmother makes an unexpected visit to the commune, she discovers a violent secret that the Believers are desperate to keep quiet. And when Agnes's little brother is seriously injured and Emmanuel refuses to send him to a hospital, Nana Pete takes the three children and escapes the commune. Their journey begins an exploration of faith, friendship, religion and family for the two girls, as Agnes clings to her familiar faith while Honey desperately wants a new future.
After Aspen Brooks's senior year of slashed tires and kidnapping, college seemed like the dream deal of the decade-especially with Detective Harry Malone footing Aspen's tuition and paying her to join the most elite sorority, The Zetas. To top it off, Aspen's hottie bf Rand is at the same school! If only she had time to hang out. Instead, she has to investigate the mysterious attempted suicide of the detective's niece, Mitzi.
Harry suspects foul play, and judging by some of the secrets Aspen's sorority sisters are hiding, she has to agree. Rand is jealous of her newfound Greekdom and is spending a lot of time with a skank-ilicious redhead. Meanwhile his rich roommate has fallen psychotically in love with Aspen. She's starting to get the idea that not everyone appreciates her fabulous presence. Even some people that call themselves her 'sisters' could be out to get her.
The next morning we meet at the world headquarters of Leisure-Lee Tours.
Which is a sentence I never thought I'd write.
Ariel Flack never thought she'd write a postcard saying "Wish you were here," especially to Dylan, the boy she's had a crush on forever and is finally (sort of) dating. She also didn't know she'd be sending that postcard from the family vacation from hell—a two-week geriatric bus tour with her crazy mom, annoying sister, embarrassing uncle, and frighteningly energetic grandparents.
As South Dakota rolls by at five miles an hour, Ariel begins to learn that sometimes life is just too complicated to fit on a postcard. Sometimes your parents let you down (and sometimes they don't). Sometimes you meet an unexpected fellow traveler. And sometimes you just have to go where the road takes you—even if the tour bus won't.
This year's award-winning authors include Jack McDevitt, James Patrick Kelly, Peter S. Beagle, Elizabeth Hand, and more. The anthology also features essays from celebrated science fiction authors Orson Scott Card and Mike Resnick.
In the middle of an important meeting, businessman Rick Hamilton has a terrible premonition: His wife is about to die. Racing to save her, he finds her lifeless body in the road, her car crushed by a truck. The light dwindles from his eyes . . . and then she is alive again, begging for help, and Rick Hamilton no longer is himself, but another man with another life, and a different history.
Based on the "many worlds" theory of quantum physics, which posits the existence of parallel universes, The Man Who Turned Into Himself is a suspenseful, mind-bending mystery that addresses our deepest questions about reality, death, identity, and the mind.
Welcome to Grassland, where the only hope of freedom is to go beyond the reach of sinister, silent masters, and the only family you know are your fellow captives. Coriko has never known a world beyond his cell and the fields where he toils all day. He does what he’s told and tries not to anger the Spears, the cruel, masked jailers who guard him and the other child slaves. If he gathers baskets of shards and keeps quiet and orderly, then he can spend time with his cellmate and best friend, Pippa.
But without warning, the children’s orderly lives begin to change—slowly at first, with the arrival of a pair of siblings who speak Coriko and Pippa’s language. Soon after, violent events shake up the quiet world of Grassland, and Coriko must find the strength to grasp his freedom. Full of heartstopping action, Escape the Mask introduces Coriko, Pippa, and their friends—and begins the journey of The Grassland Trilogy.
F&P level: X
F&P genre: F
It’s a sizzling summer Saturday, and Headwaters Speedway has suddenly become the place to be. Thanks to rainouts across the state, this small-town dirt track is drawing both big-time stock cars and local drivers. There’s Trace Bonham, whose Street Stock Chevy is acting up in a big way. And Beau Kim, whose “stone soup” Modified has been patched together from whatever parts he could scrape up. And no one could forget Amber Jenkins, a strawberry blonde who has what it takes to run rings around them all. Keeping everyone on track is Melody Walters, who knows that the impending rain might be exactly what they need to keep her father’s speedway afloat—or sink it for good.
In Will Weaver’s high-revving novel, the first in the Motor series, a cast of car-obsessed teens and adults are all out to prove themselves, both on and off the quarter-mile track, as they move through their day on a collision course to meet on Saturday night dirt.
Saturday Night Dirt is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
It has been ten years since Shabanu staged her death to secure the safety of her daughter, Mumtaz, from her husband's murderous brother. Mumtaz has been raised by her father's family with the education and security her mother desired for her, but with little understanding and love. Only her American cousin Jameel, her closest confidant and friend, and the beloved family patriarch, Baba, understand the pain of her loneliness. When Baba unexpectedly dies, Jameel's succession as the Amirzai tribal leader and the arrangement of his marriage to Mumtaz are revealed, causing both to question whether fulfilling their duty to the family is worth giving up their dreams for the future.
A commanding sequel to the novels Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind and Haveli, The House of Djinn stands on its own. Suzanne Fisher Staples returns to modern-day Pakistan to reexamine the juxtaposition of traditional Islamic values with modern ideals of love.
The House of Djinn is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Fiona Sweeney wants to do something that matters, and she chooses to make her mark in the arid bush of northeastern Kenya. By helping to start a traveling library, she hopes to bring the words of Homer, Hemingway, and Dr. Seuss to far-flung tiny communities where people live daily with drought, hunger, and disease. Her intentions are honorable, and her rules are firm: due to the limited number of donated books, if any one of them is not returned, the bookmobile will not return.
But, encumbered by her Western values, Fi does not understand the people she seeks to help. And in the impoverished small community of Mididima, she finds herself caught in the middle of a volatile local struggle when the bookmobile's presence sparks a dangerous feud between the proponents of modernization and those who fear the loss of traditional ways.
Trasamund, a clan chief of the mammoth-herding Bizogots, the next tribe north, has come to town with strange news. A narrow gap has opened in what they'd always thought was an endless and impregnable wall of ice. The great Glacier does not go on forever--and on its other side are new lands, new animals, and possibly new people.
Ancient legend says that on the other side is the Golden Shrine, put there by the gods to guard the people of their world. Now, perhaps, the road to the legendary Golden Shrine is open. Who could resist the urge to go see?
For Count Hamnet and his several companions, the glacier has always been the boundary of the world. Now they'll be traveling beyond it into a world that's bigger than anyone knew. Adventures will surely be had...
