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The Ruby Kingdom
Patricia Bow
Synopsis:

Mountains, travel, adventure ― Amelia Hammer wants it all. Instead, her globe-trotting parents have dumped her in tiny, boring Dunstone, Ontario, in the middle of winter with her grandmother and her geeky cousin Simon. Simon isn't having much fun either, saddled with a sulky stranger in black leather and with neon hair.And he has to be nice to her.

But life in safe little Dunstone turns dangerously exciting when Mara comes to town. Amelia is enchanted by this tall, proud, fearless girl, but Simon worries that Mara might be mixed up in something weird. He’s right. Mara is not what she seems, and neither is the shape-shifting assassin who’s tracking her. When the cousins take Mara's side in a war for an alien world, Amelia has to spread her wings ― literally ― and Simon must find out how far he will go to save a cousin who has become a friend.

Publication Date: 02/10/07
Age Level: 8 - 12
Genre: Adventure
Winter Maejic
Terie Garrison
Synopsis: In this captivating sequel to AutumnQuest, Donavah is learning to control her vast maejic powers under the tutelage of Yallick, a revered mage. Maejic is outlawed in Alloway, and dreadful news of the Royal Guard drives the majes―along with Xyla the red dragon―from their hidden forest sanctuary. No one realizes the traitor in their midst until it’s too late and Donavah is brutally attacked. Stripped of her voice, the use of her hands, and her maejic, she is utterly helpless until rescued by a handsome and mysterious young man.

Evil forces are scheming to dispose of the mages and overthrow the king. Their fate rests on Donavah―perhaps their only hope for restoring the rightful rule of the dragons. Crippled physically and spiritually, can the young mage break free from the terrible spell before all is lost?

Publication Date: 02/08/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fantasy
Celebrity Skin
Liane Bonin
Synopsis: Two high school students, one a major television star and the other under constant academic pressure from her Korean-born parents, remain best friends in spite of loss, love, and the spotlight. Original.
Publication Date: 02/06/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Chick Lit
The Time It Takes To Fall
Margaret Lazarus Dean
Synopsis: Dreaming of a future in space travel while growing up in 1980s Cape Canaveral, young Dolores Gray struggles with the harsh realities of her increasingly unstable home life and is shocked by the devastating 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. A first novel. 30,000 first printing.
Publication Date: 02/06/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Historical Fiction
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: Science Fiction
Ace of Spades
David Matthews
Synopsis: A take-no-prisoners tale of growing up without knowing who you are
When David Matthews's mother abandoned him as an infant, she left him with white skin and the rumor that he might be half Jewish. For the next twenty years, he would be torn between his actual life as a black boy in the ghetto of 1980s Baltimore and a largely imagined world of white privilege. While his father, a black activist who counted Malcolm X among his friends, worked long hours as managing editor at the Baltimore Afro-American, David spent his early years escaping wicked-stepmother types and nursing an eleven-hour-a-day TV habit alongside his grandmother in her old-folks-home apartment. In Reagan-era America, there was no box marked "Other," no multiculturalism or self-serving political correctness, only a young boy's need to make it in a clearly segregated world where white meant "have" and black meant "have not." Without particular allegiance to either, David careened in and out of community college, dead-end jobs, his father's life, and girls' pants.  A bracing yet hilarious reinvention of the American story of passing, Ace of Spades marks the debut of an irresistible and fiercely original new voice.
Publication Date: 02/06/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Silent Echoes
Carla Jablonski
Synopsis: Focusing on two girls living in two different eras, the reaction to these women hearing voices is vastly different as one is revered by the rich as a talented medium while the other is hospitalized and labeled a schizophrenic.
Publication Date: 02/01/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Bloodline: Reckoning
Synopsis: Thinking she was forever clear of her connection to Transylvania and the world of Count Dracula, Mary Seward is fearful when she has reoccurring nightmares at her home in England, thus when a strange virus makes her father ill and a strange man appears at her home, Mary knows she must face her fears in order to end these horrors once and for all.
Publication Date: 02/01/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Paranormal
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: Romance
So You Want To Be A Film Or TV Director?
Synopsis: Takes a look at the art of directing and discusses how directors have influence over the entire creative process.
Publication Date: 02/01/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Educational
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
My Space My Kids
Jason Illian
Synopsis:

Boasting more that 75 million users, the MySpace online community is the second most visited site on the Internet. It has become a haven for teens and young adults, a virtual hangout where friends (and strangers) share thoughts, pictures, music, video, and more. Parents naturally wonder...

Should they be concerned? What can they do to protect their kids? Are there valuable uses for MySpace?

Jason Illian demonstrates that with careful use and close monitoring, MySpace can help kids facilitate relationships and help parents understand and interact with their children’s world like never before.

In addition to teaching adults how to log on to MySpace and set up an account, this valuable guide explains how parents can talk with their kids about their MySpace communications, join groups, forums, and bulletin boards to keep informed, and use filters, alerts, and other technologies to track their kids’ online activities.

Publication Date: 02/01/07
Age Level: Adult
Genre: Nonfiction
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: Fantasy
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
Patriot's Reward
Stephen Clarkson
Synopsis: Patriot's Reward is a fictional tale about a real-life slave owned by the author's ancestor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire during the American Revolution. His struggle to be free leads him to heroism in battles at Quebec, Lake Champlain, Bennington and Saratoga, and finally to a petition to the NH Legislature for his freedom. Clarkson's extensive research adds depth to this fast paced story.
Publication Date: 01/25/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
The White Tyger
Paul Park
Synopsis: This is a truly magical tale, full of strangeness, terrors and wonders. Many girls daydream that they are really a princess adopted by commoners. In the case of teenager Miranda Popescu, this is literally true. Because she is at the fulcrum of a deadly political battle between conjurers in an alternate world where "Roumania" is a leading European power, Miranda was hidden by her aunt in our world, where she was adopted and raised in a quiet Massachusetts college town.
The narrative is split between our world and the people in Roumania working to protect or to capture Miranda: her Aunt Aegypta Schenck versus the mad Baroness Ceaucescu in Bucharest, and the sinister alchemist, the Elector of Ratisbon, who holds her true mother prisoner in Germany. This is the story of how Miranda -- with her two best friends, Peter and Andromeda -- is brought back to her home reality. Each of them is changed in the process and all will have much to learn about their true identities and the strange world they find themselves in.
This story is a triumph of contemporary fantasy.
Publication Date: 01/23/07
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure

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