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Dark Well of Decision
Anne Kimberly
Synopsis: In one frightening moment... after peering into the foreboding opening of an ancient well, thirteen-year-old Zoe finds herself pulled by a strange force down into its liquid depths. Trapped and completely alone, she cries out to a God she is not sure exists. Out of the darkness... a tiny balcony suddenly appears, softly illuminated by flickering lanterns. Where did it come from? It wasn't there before! And where does it lead? In the midst of another world... she is faced with the biggest decision of her life while pitted against a powerful evil that seeks to destroy her.
Publication Date: 12/01/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Ghost of Schafer Meadows
inside map, Guy Zoellner, cover, Maria Vekkos, Beth Hodder
Synopsis: 2008 Independent Publisher Book Award winner! Jessie Scott, 12, and her dog, Oriole, solve a mystery at the Schafer Meadows Ranger Station in Montana's Great Bear Wilderness.
Publication Date: 11/28/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Sachiko
Shizue Tomoda
Synopsis: Loosely autobiographical, Sachiko by Shizue Tomoda is a romantic novel that turns the tides of fortune and misfortune into a spiritual awakening. Robust and heartfelt, this novel is filled with genuine love and heartache as a young Japanese girl comes-of-age during the Viet Nam era. This breathtaking book describes the vibrant backdrop against which she begins to define herself and the things she will hold dear. After the death of a father with whom she shared a tumultuous relationship, and amidst a relationship with a man that she must learn to love with complete abandon, she sketches the portrait of the strong woman she will become. Wonderfully prophetic, achingly tender, and ultimately tragic, this is a story of bitter disappointment, soaring hope, ingenuity, and truth.
Publication Date: 11/25/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Mind of a Genius
David Snowdon
Synopsis:
Publication Date: 11/16/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Choices, My Secrets
Thomas Wade Bounds
Synopsis: My Secrets, the first of a series on Choices for young teens and their parents, tells the compelling story of Rachel, a teenager faced with unexpected choices in a quest to find her way after a summer romance brings her more than she bargained for. Searching for hope things spin out of control as she finds more issues while leaving out the possibilities to talk with friends, family and God until a chance encounter helps her think. See if she plows ahead or does she find her true self and gain the faith, hope, and courage to consider the best choices to guide her through her incredible journey. Thomas Wade Bounds, is a businessman and the founder of Heritage Values. He lives with his wife Elsa and their two children, in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Publication Date: 11/15/07
Age Level: Mature Young Adult
Genre: Fiction
Oblivion Road
Alex McAulay
Synopsis: Five stranded teenagers must battle for their lives against a group of escaped convicts, and each other, in this shocking survival thriller from the author of Bad Girls and Lost Summer.

Courtney Stanton thinks she's on just another ski trip with her friends -- until a horrific car accident strands them all on an isolated Colorado road during a blizzard. Frightened but alive, Courtney and her companions discover an abandoned vehicle nearby, and seek help. But the vehicle turns out to be a prison van, with the inmates missing, and the guard's dead body in the front seat.

Soon after, a stumbling figure emerges from the snow, a handcuffed refugee from the van. He says he's been in prison for selling meth, but that he once served in the army. Dare they trust him? He pleads innocence about the guard's murder, warns them about the other fugitives, and promises he will help guide them out of the wilderness. But as the group begins a nightmare trek across the frozen landscape, they start to get the feeling he hasn't told them the entire truth, and someone -- or something -- is secretly watching their every move.
Publication Date: 11/13/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Snakehead
Anthony Horowitz
Synopsis: What goes up must come down, and when we last saw Alex Rider, he was as up as can be—in outer space. When he crash lands off the coast of Australia, the Australian Secret Service recruits him to infiltrate one of the ruthless gangs operating across South East Asia. Known as snakeheads, the gangs smuggle drugs, weapons, and worst of all, people. Alex accepts the assignment, in part for the chance to work with his godfather and learn more about his parents. What he uncovers, however, is a secret that will make this his darkest and most dangerous mission yet . . . and that his old nemesis, Scorpia, is anything but out of his life.

From the slums of Bangkok to the Australian Outback to the middle of the Timor Sea, Snakehead is Alex Rider’s most action-packed adventure yet.

Watch a QuickTime trailer for this book.

Publication Date: 11/13/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Copper Indian
J. P. Morgan
Synopsis: Police work is fun, and unorthodox, in the 1950s and '60s. The booking of a dead man; making a prisoner pay for his taxi ride to jail; and the disappearance of a corpse are all part of a day's work. In The Copper Indian, the reader has an inside look at the skimming of drugs and money, and learns how bounty driven narcs make arrests based on intuition and profiling. This novel combines the suspense, humor, and action encountered by an idealistic and frustrated Native American, Jim Utze, when he joins the NYPD, one of the most storied cultures of society in the mid-twentieth century. Jim longs for the days of the Wild West when good people helped the weak and oppressed. The Lone Ranger radio show that he listened to in the 1930s as a youth provides the heroes he wants to emulate. All too often, however, a police situation arises where it appears that the end can justify the means. When the erosion of his integrity becomes too prevalent, Detective Utze questions his continuing acceptance of the system. Even his girlfriend Ruth, an Israeli mystery woman, becomes an enigma, especially when Jim suspects she may have played a part in the use of his personal weapon in an assassination. The author has almost forty years' involvement in law enforcement, with active experience at the municipal, state and federal levels, advancing to Chief in the first two and FBI Special Agent Supervisor in the latter. In academia, Dr. Morgan rose to the levels of tenured Associate Professor of Police Management and Chairman of the Department of Criminal Justice at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Director of the Police Science Division at the University of Georgia. His doctorate in theology exemplifies the diversity of his background.
Publication Date: 11/09/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Breathe My Name
R.A. Nelson
Synopsis: Since her adoption, seventeen-year-old Frances has lived a quiet suburban life, but soon after she begins falling for the new boy at school, she receives a summons from her birth mother, who has just been released after serving eleven years for smothering Frances's younger sisters. Original.
Publication Date: 11/08/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Chess Rumble
Jesse Joshua Watson, G. Neri
Synopsis: Branded a troublemaker due to his anger over everything from being bullied to his sister's death a year before, Marcus begins to control himself and cope with his problems at home and at his inner-city school when an unlikely mentor teaches him to play chess.
Publication Date: 11/08/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Case Against My Brother
Libby Sternberg
Synopsis:

Orphaned and penniless in 1922 Baltimore, Maryland, fifteen-year-old Carl and seventeen-year-old Adam Matuski are forced to move across the continent to live with their Uncle Pete in Portland, Oregon. Almost from the beginning, homesick Carl desperately wants to return east with his brother, but his plans fall apart when Adam is sought by police for the theft of expensive jewels from his wealthy girlfriend’s home. Carl is convinced that Adam is being fingered unfairly. He and his brother are Polish Catholics, and Portland is awash in anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant sentiment. Voters, in fact, are being asked to decide whether Catholic schools, indeed all non-public schools, should be outlawed entirely. Carl works at one such Catholic school. Fueled by the Ku Klux Klan and other unsavory groups, the campaign touches Carl personally as he strives to clear his brother’s name and solve the mystery: Who really took the family jewels, and why?

Publication Date: 11/07/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Band: Finding Love
D. L. Garfinkle
Synopsis: When rock band Amber Road is invited to play at a music festival in Berkeley, Tracie's parents forbid her to go, Sienna has plans that weekend, and Lily expects to hear about a solo record deal that she has not discussed with the others.
Publication Date: 11/06/07
Age Level: Mature Young Adult
Genre: Fiction
Icecore: A Carl Hobbes Thriller
Synopsis: Hypothermia is never far away.

When the shivering stops, that's when you should start to worry. It's your body's way of signaling that it's lost the battle to keep your blood warm. But by then you'll be too weak to retrace your steps. Chances are you'll be so confused and disoriented that you won't even recall what it was you were fleeing in the first place. All you'll want to do is lie down in the snow and close your eyes.

Publication Date: 11/06/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Hot Mama
Jennifer Estep
Synopsis: By day, Fiona Fine is a successful couture designer, catering to the high society players of Bigtime, New York. By night, she's Fiera, a member of the heroic Fearless Five who can create and manipulate fire with her bare hands.

Fiona's personal life, though, isn't so hot. She still misses her fiancÂŽ, who was killed by ubervillains a year ago. Still, men admire Fiona's smoking assets, and she decides to get back in the dating game- especially after she meets Johnny Bulluci. But this notorious playboy has plenty of secrets to go along with his sexy smile. And, with two new ubervillains in town who are intent on raising hell, Fiona's love life might just crash and burn.
Publication Date: 11/06/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Queen Geeks In Love
Laura Preble
Synopsis: Last year, Shelby Chapelle and her friend Becca founded the Queen Geek Social Club, and set out to find others of their kind. This year, Becca has even bigger plans for the Queen Geeks. She thinks working on the club's website and planning Geekfest (a talent show of geek-tastic proportions) should be Shelby's number one priority.

Guys have always been strictly secondary to the goal of spreading geekiness to every corner of Green Pines High School...and then the world! But sophomore year heats up when Shelby is swept off her feet by the karaoke stylings of a guy named Fletcher. And then Becca and another Queen Geek fall for the same guy, which results in a cursed love triangle-or a doomed love rhombus, if you count Shelby and Fletcher.

The going can get tough when Queek Geeks fall in love, but Shelby knows that being true to your inner geek is the most important thing.
Publication Date: 11/06/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Geek High
Piper Banks
Synopsis: At this school, everyone's a geek. And Miranda Bloom still can't fit in...

Miranda is a math genius with divorced parents, an evil stepmother, and no boyfriend in sight. She can't even fit in with the other geeks at the Nottingham Independent School for high-IQ students, because they actually have useful talents. Miranda, on the other hand, is known as "The Human Calculator," which doesn't amount to much when people have, you know, their own calculators.

Then Miranda gets stuck planning the school's Snowflake Gala. And as she struggles to find a date and drum up some school spirit at Nottingham-aka "Geek High"-she finds that who you are means more than where you fit in.
Publication Date: 11/06/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction

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