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Lurulu
Jack Vance
Synopsis:

Rejoin Myron Tany and the crew of the space freighter Glicca as they ply their way from planet to planet, star to star, and adventure to adventure. Each of them is there by chance, and each has a secret quest. From one world to the next, they will chase their dreams of revenge and fulfillment.

Publication Date: 02/06/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Split Screen: Bride of the Soul-sucking Brain Zombies
Synopsis: In a flip book with two stories back to back, best friends Min and Russel sign up to be extras on the set of a zombie film and then learn that there's nothing scarier than high school romance! Original.
Publication Date: 02/01/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Tough Boy Sonatas
Floyd Cooper, Curtis Crisler
Synopsis: The darkness--and the goodness--in the lives of the young men of Gary, the armpit-city of Chicago, cries out in this poetry. The Chocolate City. Hell. The Land of Robbing Hoods. Gary, Indiana, has a number of names. It stands as a mother guarding her roach-like inhabitants, their crime, their greed. Has God left this town? Has He left the crumbling church where parishioners pocket donations for hamburgers and candy? Or does He turn the other cheek to pious morality, happy instead to see laughing and card playing and love from His flock on Saturday night? The solitary voice of the city's young men pose these questions in this bittersweet, poetic collection. Both angry poverty and innocent childhood are explored in this YALSA/ALA Best Book for Young Adults by Curtis Crisler with unclothed sincerity.
Publication Date: 02/01/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Baboon
Kevin Loring, David Jones
Synopsis: Fourteen-year-old Gerry Copeland has mixed feelings about flying back to his parents’ research camp in the African savanna. While his biologist mom and dad study baboon behavior, he’ll be thinking about the video arcade and restaurants back in the city. Suddenly, their small plane’s engine stutters and dies. They go down hard. Gerry wakes up thinking a baboon has broken his fall. He’s shocked to realize the furry arm is his own. Somehow, he’s become one of the beasts his parents are studying. Gerry’s only chance is to stay with the baboon troop. His parents don’t recognize him and he begins to lose hope he’ll ever be human again. His final, desperate bid to turn back means giving up the animal family he’s come to care about for the human family where he truly belongs. Baboon is the riveting story of one teenager’s journey into the heart of the baboon world, where he confronts terrifying attacks by predators and humans, threatening behavior within the troop, and the day-to-day struggle to survive.
Publication Date: 02/01/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Under the Banyan Tree
Toni De Palma
Synopsis: After her mother leaves, fifteen-year-old Irena runs away from home and hitchhikes to Key West where she tries to make a better life for herself, in a story the uncovers just what it really means to be a family.
Publication Date: 01/31/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Invisible
Mats Wahl, Katarina Tucker
Synopsis: One ordinary Monday morning in May, Hilmer Eriksson walks into his high school classroom and discovers that he has become invisible. No one can see him, no one can hear him. In fact, a police detective named Harald Fors arrives at school that very morning to investigate Hilmer's disappearance. The boy has no idea what's going on, but he's frightened, and he's starting to forget things - including what happened to him a few nights earlier. Detective Fors suspects foul play, and those suspicions lead him - trailed by the ghostlike presence of Hilmer - to a group of skinheads. These unpopular, disaffected kids are very vocal about their Nazi sympathies. But how does Hilmer's life intersect with theirs? As Fors scours the village and interviews area residents for clues, he begins to piece together the puzzle of Hilmer's disappearance. Meanwhile Hilmer waits, silently, to discover what has happened to him.
 
In this riveting mystery set in northern Sweden, Mats Wahl deftly alternates between the policeman's and the victim's points of view, as the story of a missing-persons case shifts with a sad inevitability into a heartbreaking murder investigation.
Publication Date: 01/23/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Mystery at Shildii Rock
Robert Feagan
Synopsis:

To the Gwich'in First Nation, Shildii Rock near Fort McPherson in the Northwest Territories is a place of deep mythological significance.When 12-year-old Robin Harris, the son of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, spots someone on the rock staring at him, he just knows something is wrong. Robin and his friend Wayne Reindeer, a Gwich’in youth, set out to discover what's going on and to gain the respect of their fathers.

But Robin is notorious for his overactive imagination and has a hard time getting anyone to believe him. To make matters worse, there's a crazy Dutch trapper with an ugly disposition and murder in his eyes. And whenever possible a new boy in town throws wrenches into Robin's plans. When murder comes their way, Robin and Wayne realize it’s too late to turn back. Will the boys unlock the secrets of Shildii Rock in time? Or will they, too, fall victim to a killer?

Publication Date: 01/20/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Crazy In Love
Dandi Daley Mackall
Synopsis: Determined to hold on to her virtue until she is married, high school senior Mary Jane finds it nearly impossible when the cutest boy in school, Jackson House, begins to flirt with her and her very first love begins to bloom.
Publication Date: 01/18/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
God Can Work It Out
Stephanie Perry Moore
Synopsis:

Stephanie Perry Moore, author of the popular Payton Skky books for teens, introduces the Novelzine™ series for young women. This inspirational fiction presented in a magazine format for teen girls ages 11–15—complete with sidebars, photos, callouts, and article–sized chapters—invites young readers to explore the story’s themes of family, friendship, and faith in new ways.

Teenager Faith Thomas’ life from the outside looks ideal, but the reality is different. Faith’s parents fight, she and her sister have a rivalry, her friends start acting strange, and God seems distant.

This engaging, honest, and contemporary story reveals how even in the midst of a young woman’s questions, struggles, and surprises, God is in control and making it all work out.

Publication Date: 01/15/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Raven League- Buffalo Bill Wanted
Bill McCay, Alex Simmons
Synopsis: After the clues regarding an attack on a policeman lead to an investigation of Buffalo Bill Cody and a member of his troupe, a Sioux warrior, while they are on tour in London, Buffalo Bill knows that he will need help to get out of the trouble he faces and so turns to the Raven League for assistance in clearing their good names.
Publication Date: 01/11/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Story of a Girl
Sara Zarr
Synopsis: When she is caught in the backseat of a car with her older brother's best friend--Deanna Lambert's teenage life is changed forever. Struggling to overcome the lasting repercussions and the stifling role of "school slut," she longs to escape a life defined by her past. With subtle grace, complicated wisdom and striking emotion, Story of a Girl reminds us of our human capacity for resilience, epiphany and redemption.
Publication Date: 01/10/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Forever on Blue
Ann Brashares
Synopsis: With unraveled embroidery and fraying hems, the Traveling Pants are back for one last, glorious summer.

Lena: Immerses herself in her painting and an intoxicating summer fling, fearing that the moment she forgets about Kostos will be the moment she sees him again.

Carmen: Falls under the spell of a sophisticated college friend for whom a theatrical role means everything and the heritage of the Pants means nothing.

Bridget: Joins a dig for an ancient city on the coast of Turkey and discovers that her archaeology professor is available in every way except one.

Tibby: Leaves behind someone she loves, wrongly believing he will stay where she has left him.

Join Ann Brashares's beloved sisterhood once again in a dazzling, fearless novel. It's a summer that will forever change the lives of Lena, Carmen, Bee, and Tibby, here and now, past and future, together and apart.
Publication Date: 01/09/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
5-Jul
Joseph M. McHugh
Synopsis: What does a poor, black high school kid from the projects have in common with a rich high school kid who drives a Porsche? What do those two have in common with a working-class, Irish-American high school teen, full of what he thinks is angst? What brings them together? What nearly tears them apart? And how does a mysterious, successful businesswoman, hated by the community, compel them to come to a new understanding of themselves and the world around them? These are the questions answered in Joseph M. McHugh’s gripping new novel, July 5, set in the world of a major American city. Josh Stanton is on his way to Harvard. Jerome Banneker lives a hard-scrabble life in an inner-city black neighborhood. Rob Flaherty feels trapped in the Irish working-class ghetto. These unlikely three meet, and when they undertake a special project for the despised businesswoman, they discover the secrets of the world, and the secrets of their souls. But first they must endure a trial that threatens to shatter their spirits, and changes their lives forever.
Publication Date: 01/08/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Rubber Houses
Ellen Yeomans
Synopsis: In spare, lyrical verse, this powerful novel tells a beautiful and heartbreaking story of love and loss. It perfectly captures the intense and excruciating pain of the loss of a loved one, and the slow but gradual hope of living again and finding one's way back home.
Publication Date: 01/03/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
All The Way: Prom Night
Synopsis: Finding her newcomer status going from bad to worse when a popular jock tells a lie about her virtue, high-school senior Carmen struggles to land a role in the school play, endeavors to win the heart of Tyler North, and plots revenge for the prom. By the author of Prom Night: Making Out. Original.
Publication Date: 01/02/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Poker Diaries
Liza Conrad
Synopsis: From the author of Rock My World and High School Bites-a tale of a poker-playing teen whose two lives are about to collide.

For a city girl, Lulu has the best of both worlds-uptown and downtown. Her mother teaches her about art and high society...then every other weekend she's with her dad, playing poker in the back room of her grandfather's bar. Mark, her downtown crush, is almost as good at the game as she is, but her uptown friends lose their shirts. So when her buddy Dack gets mixed up with the wrong crowd and loses a bit more than he should, it's up to Lulu to win it back for him. But things have become even more complicated- especially now that her mom is dating Mr. Toughon- Crime himself, the Mayor of New York City.
Publication Date: 01/02/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction

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