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The Outlaw Varjak Paw
S. F. Said, Dave McKean
Synopsis: Having saved the city cats from a fate worse than death, Varjak Paw finds himself the leader of a new gang. But will the pressure take its toll on this brave but sometimes naive cat? Soon the city erupts in an all-out gang war as the evil Sally Bones attempts to control all cats. Horrified and outnumbered, Varjak and the others must fight for their freedom or die trying.
Publication Date: 01/10/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fantasy
Crushed
Laura McNeal, Tom McNeal
Synopsis: Audrey and her best friends Lea and C.C. have just arrived at Jemison High from the one-room private school where they spent grades six through ten, where they performed Gilbert and Sullivan musicals, where they adored Edith Wharton. They’re a nerdy little trio, so everyone is shocked when the handsome new guy, Wickham Hill, asks Audrey out.
Audrey is soon so smitten that she hardly pays any mind to the vicious underground newspaper at school–or to that strange lurking guy in World Cultures. Before long, it seems everyone at Jemison High is worried about getting crushed–by friends, by enemies, by a mysterious reporter.


From the Hardcover edition.
Publication Date: 01/10/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Chick Lit
Now Starring Vivien Leigh Reid
Sandy Rideout, Yvonne Collins
Synopsis: Moments after arriving in L.A., Vivien Leigh Reid is already questioning her decision to spend another summer with her mother, actress Annika Anderson. Last summer's "family reunion" on a film set in Ireland may have turned out okay, but Annika is still a grade-A diva.
Living in L.A. does have its upside. Leigh is taking classes at one of the city's best acting schools, and she scores a role on a hot TV soap, Diamond Heights. Better yet, her cute Irish boyfriend is coming to visit. But Leigh soon finds that dealing with Annika is easy compared to navigating the shark-infested waters of Hollywood, where even a taste of fame quickly turns a girl's head.
Publication Date: 01/10/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Chick Lit
Return to Quag Keep
Jean Rabe, Andre Norton
Synopsis: Many people might not know that Andre Norton wrote the first novel based in the Dungeons and Dragons Universe. That book was Quag Keep. Now Andre with role-playing icon Jean Rabe has returned to tell a new tale of those magically transported gamers in the fantasy realm that has become all too real for them.
In The Return to Quag Keep these brave adventurers try to unlock the secrets of this magical world and maybe even return home to ours. Filled with classic dungeon crawls, mysterious wizards, and attacking dragons The Return to Quag Keep is a must for all role-playing fans as well as seminal Andre Norton fans.

Publication Date: 01/10/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Science Fiction
Small Steps
Louis Sachar
Synopsis: Two years after being released from Camp Green Lake, Armpit is home in Austin, Texas, trying to turn his life around. But it’s hard when you have a record, and everyone expects the worst from you. The only person who believes in him is Ginny, his 10-year old disabled neighbor. Together, they are learning to take small steps. And he seems to be on the right path, until X-Ray, a buddy from Camp Green Lake, comes up with a get-rich-quick scheme. This leads to a chance encounter with teen pop sensation, Kaira DeLeon, and suddenly his life spins out of control, with only one thing for certain. He’ll never be the same again.

In his first major novel since Holes, critically acclaimed novelist Louis Sachar uses his signature wit combined with a unique blend of adventure and deeply felt characters to explore issues of race, the nature of celebrity, the invisible connections that determine a person’s life, and what it takes to stay on course. Doing the right thing is never a wrong choice–but a small step in the right direction.
Publication Date: 01/10/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Things You Either Hate or Love
Synopsis: Fired from the bakery after a bread-throwing incident, Georgia desperately tries to raise money to go to the Natural Affinity concert and drool over the lead singer, while dealing with her weight, slipping grades, a non-existent boyfriend, and the growing distance between her and her best friend.
Publication Date: 01/01/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
French Kiss
Aimee Friedman
Synopsis: Get your drama on as the girls from the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, SOUTH BEACH, strut back into the limelight in another sizzling spring break tale of romance, friendship, and crushes gone bad.

Two beautiful girls. One sexy city.
Endless opportunities for l'amour.

When ALEXA ST. LAURENT falls in love, she falls hard. Can she keep her cool after meeting a French guy who's too good to be true and too hard to resist?

For HOLLY JACOBSON, being in love with her boyfriend, Tyler, is as natural as breathing. But there's no denying that Alexa's Parisian cousin Pierre takes Holly's breath away....

On a whirlwind rendezvous in Paris, the City of Love, Alexa and Holly are about to discover that everything sounds sexier in French.

Publication Date: 01/01/06
Age Level: Mature Young Adult
Genre: Fiction
Scary Beautiful
Niki Burnham
Synopsis: Chloe Rand's life is great.

She has a serious boyfriend, she's about to start her junior year of high school, and she has a tight group of girlfriends. But when her boyfriend moves across the country and decides the long-distance-relationship thing just isn't for him, Chloe's devastated. Worse, she soon learns that when you're the prettiest girl in school and totally unattached, everyone starts treating you differently. Girls don't trust you, guys aren't sure what to make of you, and everyone assumes you're either spoiled, dumb, or both.

Chloe realizes that she's been living the last few years in a bubble and decides to do something about it. But when she falls for Billy, a total geek, will it make her situation better...or worse?

Scary Beautiful
A Romantic Comedy for every girl who has fallen for the wrong guy
Publication Date: 01/01/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Side Effects
Amy Goldman Koss
Synopsis:
Publication Date: 11/02/24
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
The Softwire
P. J. Haarsma
Synopsis:
Publication Date: 11/02/24
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Glass Houses
Rachel Caine
Synopsis: College freshman Claire Danvers has had enough of her nightmarish dorm situation, where the popular girls never let her forget just where she ranks in the school's social scene: somewhere less than zero.

When Claire heads off-campus, the imposing old house where she finds a room may not be much better. Her new roommates don't show many signs of life. But they'll have Claire's back when the town's deepest secrets come crawling out, hungry for fresh blood.

Watch a Windows Media trailer for this book.

Publication Date: 11/02/24
Age Level: Mature Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
The Dragon's Eye
Dugald A. Steer, Douglas Carrel
Synopsis: "Steer infuses the exciting story with the flavor of a nineteenth-century novel and incorporates dragon lore found in his earlier books. Dragon lovers will be well pleased." —-BOOKLIST

Adventure! Villains! And dragons, dragons, dragons! From the creators of the best-selling Dragonology series, this first volume of the Dragonology Chronicles finds Daniel Cook and his sister, Beatrice, studying with eccentric dragonologist Dr. Ernest Drake. Soon they’re caught up in a race to find the stolen Dragon’s Eye —- a jewel that has the power to reflect the true Dragon Master —- before it is stolen by the evil Ignatius Crook. Working with Dr. Drake (and many friendly dragons), can these young siblings foil Ignatius and recover the Dragon’s Eye?
Publication Date: 11/02/24
Age Level: 8 - 12
Genre: Adventure
Underland
Mary Patterson Thornburg
Synopsis: Pursued by menacing strangers through her small Midwest city, twelve-year-old Alyssha Dodson takes refuge in a mysterious room under a bridge, a place that turns out to be a doorway into another universe. In the country where she then finds herself, Alyssha learns that the pursuit has not ended. A powerful and sinister man, Lord Raf Var Ne, seeks to gain possession of an object she was given years ago by her older brother a few days before he went missing. Told she can't return to her own world, she begins a search for that brother, aided by Lord Raf's charming but impetuous stepson. In the process, the two become involved in a revolutionary conflict. Underland is the story of a girl's coming of age in the midst of an adventure like no other.
Publication Date: 12/28/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
In High Places
Harry Turtledove
Synopsis: In the 21st-century Kingdom of Versailles, the roads are terrible and Paris is a dirty little town. Serfdom and slavery are both common, and no one thinks that's wrong. Why should they? Most people spend their lives doing backbreaking farm work anyway.

But teenaged Khadija, daughter of a prosperous family of Moorish business travellers, is unfazed. That’s because Khadija is really Annette Klein from 21st-century California, and her whole family are secret agents of Crosstime Traffic, trading for commodities to send back to our own timeline. Now it's time for Annette and her family to go home for the start of another school year, so they join a pack train bound for their home base in Marseilles, where the crosstime portal is hidden.

Then bandits attack while they're crossing the Pyrenees. Annette/Khadija is separated from her parents and knocked out, and wakes up to find herself a captive in a caravan of slaves being taken to the markets in the south. She's in a tight spot.

Then the really scary thing happens: her purchasers take her, along with other newly purchased slaves, to an unofficial crosstime portal…leaving open the question of whether Crosstime Traffic will ever be able to recover her!
Publication Date: 12/27/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
The Greenstone Grail
Amanda Hemingway
Synopsis: A desperate mother spirits away her infant son, seemingly drawn (chased, perhaps?) to the small English village of Thornyhill. She ends up on the doorstep of old Bartlemy, a curious man who has lived on the forested land for as long as anyone can remember–and who comes to believe that the child is destined for great things. . . .

While growing up under Bartlemy’s protective eye, Nathan Ward senses something else watching him, a shift of shadows in the surrounding Darkwood. Then pieces of his dreams begin to come to life. A man he saved from the ocean washes ashore on the television news. A greenish stone cup set with jewels that has haunted his visions sounds eerily like one lost by the Thorn family centuries ago–a cup that has recently made its way back into the hands of the village’s last living ancestor.

Yet when Nathan learns the chalice may have come from another world, a land with bloodstained moons and a toxic sun, he knows he is destined to play a part in something beyond his most vivid imagination. But why is the cup here, and what could it possibly want with a teenage boy and a sleepy town of villagers full of tall tales? With the help of his best friend, Hazel, Nathan must figure out why he’s been chosen–and for what purpose. Even if it means traveling deeper each night into dreams, into lands, into legends that both terrify and mesmerize him.

The Greenthorn Grail is the first novel of a thrilling new trilogy, tracing a boy’s journey–a quest rife with magic, wonder, and forces as dark as midnight.



From the Hardcover edition.
Publication Date: 12/27/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fantasy
When the Beast Ravens
E. Rose Sabin
Synopsis: The thrilling conclusion to the award-winning fantasy trilogy that began with A School for Sorcery...
As Gray Becq is about to discover, there are fates worse than death. It has been a full year since his escape from the Dire Realm. A year since a fellow student--having used his powers of sorcery to league himself with dark forces--betrayed him. Locked him away in a world beyond time, a world of unspeakable evil and unbearable tortures. Had it not been for Tria Tesserell and her extraordinary powers, he surely would have died. Now he almost wishes he had.
For no sooner has Becq adjusted himself to the familiar surroundings of The Lesley Simonton School for the Magically Gifted than a series of horrible accidents occur. Suspicion falls on Gray. Could he have brought a demon back with him from the Dire Realm? To find the truth, Gray will have to confront the most powerful demon he has ever faced: the demon that lies within.
Publication Date: 12/27/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Series

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