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The Religion
Tim Willocks
Synopsis: May 1565. Suleiman the Magnificent, emperor of the Ottomans, has declared a jihad against the Knights of Saint John the Baptist. The largest armada of all time approaches the Knights€™ Christian stronghold on the island of Malta. The Turks know the Knights as the €œThe Hounds of Hell.€ The Knights call themselves €œThe Religion.€ In Messina, Sicily, a French countess, Carla la Penautier, seeks a passage to Malta in a quest to find the son taken from her at his birth twelve years ago. The only man with the expertise and daring to help her is a Rabelaisian soldier of fortune, arms dealer, former janissary, and strapping Saxon adventurer by the name of Mattias Tannhauser. He agrees to accompany the lady to Malta, where, amidst the most spectacular siege in military history, they must try to find the boy - whose name they do not know and whose face they have never seen€“and pluck him from the jaws of Holy War.
Publication Date: 04/29/08
Age Level: Mature Young Adult
Genre: Adventure
If I Were Your Boyfriend
Synopsis:

Social zero meets unlikely hero

How had Keysha gone from popular to social outcast? One word: frenemy. A girl Keysha thought was her friend planted drugs on her—and Keysha got caught. The media blitz on their wealthy suburb turned everyone against her. First day back at school, and Keysha is stared down in the halls. Whispered about. No one will talk to her. And the girl who ruined Keysha's reputation laughs in her face. So when a guy with his own bad rep offers to help, Keysha's first reaction is yeah, right. Talk about an unlikely hero.

But soon she realizes that Wesley Morris is more than just hot, more than just talk. He's been there, done that and turned his life around. But no one wants this so-called bad-news boyfriend anywhere near Keysha. Including her family. Still, Wesley isn't willing to walk away and let Keysha Also Available pay for someone else's crime. He'll even risk everything to save her…and their relationship.

Publication Date: 04/29/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Neptune's Children
Bonnie Dobkin
Synopsis:

A day at the fabled amusement park Isles of Wonder turns deadly when a world-wide biological attack kills every adult, leaving behind only the kids to fend for themselves. Isolated from the world, unsure of what lies ahead, the young survivors assemble under the statue of King Neptune, the mythical ruler of the Isles, to form a new society. Led by the children of the park workers, they choose to remain closed off from the outside world living relatively comfortably inside the self-contained park. But when violence from the infested outside world appears to infiltrate their safe zone, one small group discovers a secret society and a hidden system of underground tunnels, and the stage is set for a war that will determine the future of everyone on the Isles.

As alliances are formed and broken, readers will find themselves taking sides in this suspenseful adventure story that addresses the duality of human nature.

Publication Date: 04/29/08
Age Level: 8 - 12
Genre: Adventure
The Kingdom of Malinas
Synopsis: Sorrel knows what she must do. Enter the Kingdom of Malinas to rescue her people from slavery. It should be easy. But the Kingdom of Malinas harbours evil…
Publication Date: 04/25/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
The Golden Path
Anson Montgomery
Synopsis: FROM: Dianna Torman (dtorman@deadmail.anonymous.guyana.000)
SUBJECT: Warning and Plea.
Sweetheart, I don't want to alarm you, but I fear I must. If you are getting this email it is because something has happened to us. This note is rigged to be sent from a special dead letter drop if I have not checked back in three days.

So begins the email that changes your life forever.
Where have your parents gone? Were they kidnapped? Did they travel on their own to Ungava Bay? Were the explosions at Carlsbad, New Mexico volcanic or something more sinister? Why is the government so interested? And why do your parents, who are college professors, suddenly have $74 million in the bank?

It starts with a simple call into the headmaster's office on a perfect fall day. It turns into a search for your missing parents that takes you and your two best friends on a trip into the hollow Earth. Part thriller, part travelogue, part personal quest, The Golden Path - Volume One weaves a labyrinthine journey as you search for answers to the truth about your past and the clues to your future. Every choice you make could be the difference between your parents life and death, and your ultimate destiny.

Four story lines continue from Volume One to Volume Two. Can you find the ultimate Golden Path?

A Multi-Volume Interactive Epic
Publication Date: 04/25/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Crispin- At the Edge of the World
Synopsis:
The more I came to know of the world, the more I knew I knew it not.

He was a nameless orphan, marked for death by his masters for an unknown crime. Discovering his name— Crispin—only intensified the mystery.  Then Crispin met Bear, who helped him learn the secret of his full identity. And in Bear—the enormous, red-bearded juggler, sometime spy, and everyday philosopher—Crispin also found a new father and a new world.

Now Crispin and Bear have set off to live their lives as free men. But they don’t get far before their past catches up with them: Bear is being pursued by members of the secret brotherhood who believe he is an informer. When Bear is badly wounded, it is up to Crispin to make decisions about their future—where to go, whom to trust. Along the way they become entangled with an extraordinary range of people, each of whom affects Crispin and Bear’s journey in unexpected ways.  To find freedom and safety, they may have to travel to the edge of the world—even if it means confronting death itself.

In this riveting sequel to the Newbery-Award winning Crispin: The Cross of Lead—the second book in a planned trilogy—Avi explores themes of war, religion, and family as he continues the adventures of Crispin and Bear.
Publication Date: 04/22/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Attack of the Spider Bots
Synopsis: Know Your Star-FightersBeamer: California transplant to a weird Midwestern town. Feels like he’s living on another planet. Scilla: the gangly tomboy next door. Ghoulie: the class nerd. Add one spaceship-shaped tree house capable of taking them most anywhere in the universe. Hop in and blast off for fantastic outer space adventures in Star-Fighters of Murphy Street―the quirky, funny, fast-paced new trilogy by Robert West.Taking a shortcut home from school, the Star-Fighters are chased by a horrible one-eyed creature into a cavern that houses an entire miniature world. Everything is animated―cars, trucks, moon, clouds, stars―but no one is at the controls. Who would make such a thing and then abandon it?The Star-Fighters’ search leads them on a wild adventure to a palatial mansion within a wintry jungle that hides a terrible secret―a secret that defines the limits of trusting God.
Publication Date: 04/20/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
There's a Spaceship in My Tree
Synopsis: Know Your Star-FightersBeamer: California transplant to a weird Midwestern town. Feels like he’s living on another planet. Scilla: the gangly tomboy next door. Ghoulie: the class nerd. Add one spaceship-shaped tree house capable of taking them most anywhere in the universe. Hop in and blast off for fantastic outer space adventures in Star-Fighters of Murphy Street―the quirky, funny, fast-paced new trilogy by Robert West.Newly arrived from California, thirteen-year-old Beamer MacIntyre feels like an alien in this bizarre Midwestern town. Strangest of all is the spaceship-shaped tree house in his yard. Surprises await Beamer and his two new friends, Ghoulie and Scilla, when they climb inside and blast off to a universe full of adventure―including a surefire way to make the school bully stop harassing Ghoulie (provided it doesn’t backfire!).
Publication Date: 04/20/08
Age Level: 8 - 12
Genre: Adventure
Braless in Wonderland
Debbie Reed Fischer
Synopsis: After being approached by a modeling scout and convinced to go to Miami to start a career in the industry, Allee Rosen feels quite out of her element away from her classes and friends, yet as her success grows, the pressure grows, and the in-fighting gets more fierce, Allee finds herself changing in more ways than she could have ever imagined.
Publication Date: 04/17/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
The King Commands
Meg Burden
Synopsis: The Northlands are in turmoil, divided by those who support King Alaric's decrees welcoming the Southlings and their magic, and those who will stop at nothing to send them back to the Southland where they belong. But the Southland, too, is being torn apart as the Southlings with mental gifts and healing magic are hunted by the mysterious Guardians, captured and never heard from again.As the legendary peace of the Southland crumbles and the throne of the Northlands is challenged, Ellin Fisher, the powerful young Southling who befriended the Northlands royalty, must make a terrible choice. Is it her destiny to fight for equality in the Northlands, or to embrace her calling as a Healer and help other True Southlings escape from the Guardians who killed her family? In the midst of this, while the home she's chosen and the land she left behind both stand poised on the brink of civil war, Ellin must choose where her heart lies, as well. She loves King Alaric, but will Princess Nathalia, another newcomer to the Northlands, stand in the way? Loyalty and romance, secrets and destinies, threaten to tear Ellin and her newfound family in the Northlands apart, especially when a loved one betrays her and old enemies become new friends. Only one thing is certain: the Borderlands will never be the same again.
Publication Date: 04/14/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Escape the Mask
David Ward
Synopsis: The first in a new adventure trilogy full of danger, bravery, and unexpected friendships

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
Publication Date: 04/01/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
The Camel Bookmobile
Masha Hamilton
Synopsis:

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.

Publication Date: 04/01/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Window Boy
Andrea White
Synopsis: Set in 1968, this touching novel tells the story of Sam Davis, a young man with cerebral palsy who peers though his bedroom window every day at the school he longs to attend. With great determination and the help of both his caretaker and his imaginary friend, Winston Churchill, Sam not only succeeds in gaining admittance to the school and the acceptance of his peers, but also fulfills his dream of becoming the school's basketball coach. The narrative, full of poignant insights into attitudes toward people with disabilities, provides a glimpse into the life of Winston Churchill, who is a key inspiration for young Sam.
Publication Date: 04/01/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Beyond the Gap
Harry Turtledove
Synopsis: Count Hamnet Thyssen is a minor noble of the drowsy old Raumsdalian Empire. Its capital city, Nidaros, began as a mammoth hunters? camp at the edge of the great Glacier. But that was centuries ago, and as everyone knows, it?s the nature of the great Glacier to withdraw a few feet every year. Now Nidaros is an old and many-spired city; and though they still feel the breath of the great Glacier in every winter?s winds, the ice cap itself has retreated beyond the horizon.

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...
Publication Date: 04/01/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Synopsis: Dorothy thinks she is lost forever when a terrifying tornado crashes through Kansas and whisks her and her dog, Toto, far away to the magical land of Oz. To get home Dorothy must follow the yellow brick road to Emerald City and find the wonderfully mysterious Wizard of Oz. Together with her companions the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion whom she meets on the way, Dorothy embarks on a strange and enchanting adventure. With a charming introduction by award-winning Cornelia Funke, The Wizard of Oz is one of the twenty wonderful classics being relaunched in Puffin Classics in March 2015.
Publication Date: 03/27/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Fairy Tail 2
Hiro Mashima, Hiro Mashima
Synopsis: THE BOOK OF SECRETS

Beautiful celestial wizard Lucy has teamed up with the crazy fire wizard Natsu and his bizarre flying cat, Happy. Their job: to steal a book from the notorious Duke Everlue. But the eccentric Everlue has killed wizards before, and Lucy’s team is walking right into his death trap!
Publication Date: 03/25/08
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure

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