In an alternate world, in a nameless totalitarian city, the autocratic Mayor rules the school system with an iron fist, with the help of his Educators. Fighting against the Mayor and his repressive Educators is a group of former students called the Truancy, whose goal is to take down the system by any means possible—at any cost.
Against this backdrop, fifteen-year-old Tack is just trying to survive. His days are filled with sadistic teachers, unrelenting schoolwork, and indifferent parents. Things start to look up when he meets Umasi, a mysterious boy who runs a lemonade stand in an uninhabited district.
Then someone close to Tack gets killed in the crossfire between the Educators and the Truants, and Tack swears vengeance. To achieve his purpose, he abandons his old life and joins the Truancy. There, he confronts Zyid, an enigmatic leader with his own plans for Tack. But Tack soon finds himself torn between his desire for vengeance and his growing sympathy for the Truants….
Isamu Fukui wrote Truancy during the summer of his fifteenth year. The author’s purpose is not just to entertain, but to make a statement about the futility of the endless cycle of violence in the world as well as the state of the educational system. And, as he put it, “I need to be in school myself if I want to write about it.”
With his uneasy suspicion that one of the sisters is a killer, Gabriel sets out to determine which. But the more entangled in the case he becomes, the more deeply he is drawn into the sisters' entrancing world-losing hold of reality even as he falls into mortal danger...
Mike Lupica returns to the big field for the first time since his #1 New York Times bestseller Heat and delivers a feel-good home run, showing how love of the game is a language fathers and sons speak from the heart.
Q&A with Mike Lupica
Q: Where did the idea for The Big Field come from?
A: If it has one starting point, it was when Alex Rodriguez came to the Yankees and left shortstop to play third base. It wasn't so much that Rodriguez was the best all-around player in baseball at the time. It was that I knew he'd always thought of himself as a shortstop. I'm not sure he still doesn't think of himself as a shortstop. And suddenly he was a third baseman. Hutch isn't the best player in this book; Darryl Williams is. But Hutch had been a shortstop his whole life, it defined him as a ballplayer, and now because of the presence of Darryl on their American Legion team, he has to go to second base. It's the starting off point in a book that is ultimately about fathers and sons. But it's about a player having to leave his best position for the good of his team.
Q: In The Big Field, the emotional heart of the story is Keith "Hutch" Hutchinson's relationship with his father, a washed-up ballplayer and former boy phenomenon who never advanced past the minor leagues and who completely soured on the game, setting the stage for a distant relationship with his son. Why did you decide to focus on the father-son dynamic in this novel?
A: Sometimes with fathers and sons, when they can't communicate, they fall back on sports. It is like some universal language for fathers and sons. But at the start of The Big Field, Hutch and his dad don't even have that. And their journey, both of them, and I think it's a great journey, is finding that language again, finding a bond they never really lost. And finding each other.
Q: Can you offer any advice for aspiring sports writers?
A: Read the best guys, in books and newspapers and magazines. And then find ways to write. Write for the school paper, write anywhere you can, but write. I believe strongly that if you have the talent and the spirit, somebody will find you.
Q: When writing a young character do you find yourself looking back to yourself at that age? Or your children?
A: I look back to myself, and remember how important sports were to me, the fellowship, just the sheer fun of having a game with my buddies even if it wasn't organized. I tell people all the time that I still go to games thinking I might see something I've never seen before. I still have that feeling. But more than that, I see sports through the eyes of my children, too. See what they think is good, or cool, or worth watching. See what excites them. They've made me smarter about sports, they really have. But then that always happens when you hang around smart people.
Q: Have you started working on your next book? Can you give us a sneak peak?
A: My next book is already finished. It's about a young foster child, and his love for baseball. He's a catcher. And I think you're going to like him. The book is called "Safe at Home." The book I'm writing right now is my first soccer book. That's all I'm going to tell you!
One day the old woman gives Audrey a peculiar bronze pen and tells her to "use it wisely and to good purpose." It turns out to be just perfect for writing her stories with. But as Audrey writes, odd things start happening. Did Beowulf, her dog, just speak to her? And what is that bumping under her bed at night? It seems that whatever she writes with the pen comes true. However, things don't always happen in the way that she wants or expects. In fact, it's quite difficult to predict what writing with the pen will do. Could the pen be more of a curse than a gift? Or will Audrey be able to rewrite the future in the way that she wishes---and save her father's life?
But now I'm having trouble sticking with my decision. After all, if it wasn't for modeling, I might still be the invisible wallflower. Hot guys like Paulo wouldn't be interested in me. And I'd never have seen Brazil or Spain-and now France! On the other hand...
I also wouldn't have to choose between my best friend from home and my agent's shrill demands. Or anguish over my body the way only runway models do. Not to mention all this trouble I'm getting into for speaking out in the press about eating disorders.
Maybe the life of an international model isn't for me. But if I quit for good, I might always wonder...What if?
Dark forces are at work at the House of Night and fledgling vampyre Zoey Redbird's adventures at the school take a mysterious turn. Those who appear to be friends are turning out to be enemies. And oddly enough, sworn enemies are also turning into friends. So begins the gripping third installment of this "highly addictive series" (Romantic Times), in which Zoey's mettle will be tested like never before. Her best friend, Stevie Rae, is undead and struggling to maintain a grip on her humanity. Zoey doesn't have a clue how to help her, but she does know that anything she and Stevie Rae discover must be kept secret from everyone else at the House of Night, where trust has become a rare commodity. Speaking of rare: Zoey finds herself in the very unexpected and rare position of having three boyfriends. Mix a little bloodlust into the equation and the situation has the potential to spell social disaster. Just when it seems things couldn't get any tougher, vampyres start turning up dead. Really dead. It looks like the People of Faith, and Zoey's horrid step-father in particular, are tired of living side-by-side with vampyres. But, as Zoey and her friends so often find out, how things appear rarely reflects the truth…
Chosen is the third in the House of Night series by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast.
A rip-roaring pirate romance and mystery
In a world where infants with magical powers are torn from their parents to be raised by the mysterious and powerful Danisoba, who have a monopoly on magic, Kestrel has managed to keep her abilities concealed―and herself free. First hiding in back alleys as a street urchin, she hid when they killed her parents, and then served as a young tavern maid before escaping to sea, where magic is cancelled by water.
Now an adult, as the quartermaster of a pirate ship, Kestrel loves the freedom of living on the seas. But her way of life could end if anyone on board learns her closely guarded secret―that she has magical control over the wind.
One day a black ship appears, and her life changes. Its captain is a handsome rogue of whom Kestrel is strangely, constantly aware.
When Kestrel's captain is led into a trap and is arrested, she gathers her crew and sets sail in relentless pursuit. . . .
Two teams, six innings, one game.
A lively cast of characters--baseball-loving boys between the ages of eleven to thirteen--are playing the biggest game of their lives. With acrobatic catches, clutch hits, dramatic whiffs, and costly errors, this game is full of action. But as the book unfolds, pitch by pitch, a deeper story emerges, with far more at stake: Sam and Mike, best friends, are trying to come to terms with Sam's newly diagnosed cancer. And this baseball diamond becomes the ultimate testing ground of Sam and Mike's remarkable friendship as they strive to find a way to both come out winners.
This is for the championship.
This is for life.
Six Innings is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
I look at the clock: 4:23 a.m. In approximately three hours I have to wake up again to go to school, and I haven't even gone to sleep yet. How can I possibly care about pop quizzes, bad hair days, and beauty makeovers now that I've found a major clue to the true identity of my missing father?
IDENTIFYING DATA
Subject: Portia Avatar -- Girl Psychoanalytic Detective
Background material: Twelve years old. Lives with earth mom, Indigo, and gray-and-white cat (who thinks he's a dog) named Frederick. To date, Portia does not know the whereabouts of her mysterious father, Patch.
Recent developments: An earthquake shakes up Portia's sleepy hometown of Palmville, California. A photograph of Patch is uncovered. Portia's life, as she knows it, is about to change forever.
From "America's nerviest journalist" (Newsweek)--a breath-taking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space. "Tom Wolfe at his very best" (The New York Times Book Review)
Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.
Inspired by actual events, Primavera is a dazzling coming of age story set during a time of beauty and wealth, ambition, rivalry and brutality. Historical art references to Boticelli and his famous painting, Primavera, give this book an appeal similar to Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Ann, a teenage girl living in the security-obsessed, elitist United States of the very near future, is threatened on her way home from school by a mysterious man on a black motorcycle. Soon, she and a new friend are caught up in a vast conspiracy of greed involving the megawealthy owner of a school testing company. Students who pass his test have it made; those who don’t disappear . . . or worse. Will Ann be next?
For all those who suspect standardized tests are an evil conspiracy, here’s an edge-of-your-seat thriller that really satisfies.