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The Second Life of Linus Hoppe
Catherine Temerson, Anne-Laure Bondoux
Synopsis: After intentionally getting himself expelled from Realm One, Linus Hoppe believed he would experience more of real life. But life in inferior Realm Two is a nightmare. For months Linus has been imprisoned in a factory, where he toils on an assembly line. At night, he’s so tired that he no longer dreams of a future, of the destiny he wanted to create for himself. As for his family and friends, he fears he’ll never see them again. He especially misses Chem and Yosh, his co-conspirators in fooling the Great Processor. What made them think they could change society’s rigid hierarchy? Ready to give up, Linus must somehow regain hope and the will to fight for his freedom.
Publication Date: 10/11/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fantasy
The Perfect Distance
Kim Ablon Whitney
Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old Francie Martinez rides with one of the best equitation trainers in the country, and works as a groom to pay her way. She’s dreamed of winning the Maclay finals, and now that it’s her last year to compete the pressure is really on. But just when Francie needs to focus more than ever, everything turns upside down, and soon she’s not so sure if winning is really all that important, much less the point.
In this fast-paced coming-of-age story, brimming with fascinating details about the competitive horse world, Kim Ablon Whitney has drawn on her own experiences to create a backdrop perfect for Francie’s story as she tries to figure out who she wants to be and what really matters in life.
Publication Date: 10/11/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Sports
Sign of the Crescent
Debbie Federici
Synopsis: Teenagers are mysteriously disappearing in Tucson, Arizona, and other cities. One night, seventeen-year-old Taryn nearly becomes one of them when a revolting, unearthly creature attacks her. The touch of a Zumar warrior should render her unconscious, but Taryn has the strength to fight until a young man with a sword comes to her rescue.

This is how Taryn, an orphan with Ménière's disease, meets Erick, a Haro Knight from another world. His job is fighting the Zumar who are kidnapping and enslaving oldworlders (Earth people). It is forbidden for Erick to socialize with oldworlders, but he can't ignore the strong attraction between them . . . and Taryn seems different from other Earth people. When she's abducted by the Zumar and taken to their evil sorcerer leader, Taryn is confronted with shocking truths that explain her strange dreams and special powers.

Publication Date: 10/08/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
M or F
Chris Tebbetts, Lisa Papademetriou
Synopsis: When Marcus, her best friend who is gay, encourages her to talk online to Jeffrey, the boy on whom she has a crush, Frannie asks for his help, and as Marcus begins chatting with Jeffrey, he discovers that Jeffrey is falling for him, not Frannie.
Publication Date: 10/06/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Romance
Lord Loss
Darren Shan
Synopsis: Grubbs Grady has stiff red hair and is a little big for his age, which means he can get into R-rated movies. He hates history and loves bacon, rats, and playing tricks on his squeamish older sister. When he opts out of a family weekend trip, he never guesses that he is about to take a terrifying journey into darkness. Hungry demons and howling werewolves haunt his waking nightmares... and threaten his life.
Publication Date: 10/05/05
Age Level: Mature Young Adult
Genre: Adventure
Inventing Ott - The Legacy of Arthur C. Guyton
Synopsis: ATTENTION young readers...Have you ever dreamed of becoming a doctor or a scientist? Perhaps you fantasize about being a teacher of an inventor. Did you ever wonder what it was like to be a soldier, a sailor, a carpenter, a writer, or a ham radio operator? Inventing Ott is the story of a Mississippi boy who grew up to become all of the above and more. It is the story of how young "Ott" Guyton became the legendary Doctor Arthur C. Guyton: Chairman of The Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine, Father of Modern Cardiovascular Physiology, sole writer of many editions of one of the best-selling textbooks of all time, inventor of the electric wheelchair, dear friend of William Faulkner, and father of ten doctors. But most importantly, it is the story of how a young boy's curiosity and love of learning turned into a lifetime of accomplishments.

The book is written for young readers (ages 10-14) and offers inspiration and direction for their young minds.

Publication Date: 10/05/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Nonfiction
Moccasin Thunder:American Indian Stories for Today
Synopsis:

The ten stories that make up this collection are raw, original, and fresh. Although they are all about American Indians, they are as different from one another as they are from anything you've read before.

A supermarket checkout line, a rowboat on a freezing lake at dawn, a drunken dance in the gym, an ice hockey game on public-access TV. These are some of the backgrounds against which ten outstanding authors have created their memorable characters. Their work -- both poignant and funny, sarcastic and serious -- reminds us that the American Indian story is far from over -- it's being written every day.

Publication Date: 10/04/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Anthology
Totally Joe
James Howe
Synopsis: Meet Joe Bunch. Lovable misfit and celebrity wannabe from Paintbrush Falls, New York. Like his longtime best friends Addie, Skeezie, and Bobby, Joe's been called names all his life. So when he's given the assignment to write his alphabiography -- the story of his life from A to Z -- Joe has his doubts. This whole thing could be serious ammunition for bullying if it falls into the wrong hands.
But Joe discovers there's more to the assignment -- and his life -- than meets the eye. Especially when he gets to the letter C, which stands for Colin Briggs, the coolest guy in the seventh grade (seriously) -- and Joe's secret boyfriend.
By the time Joe gets to the letter Z, he's pretty much bared his soul about everything. And Joe's okay with that because he likes who he is. He's Totally Joe, and that's the best thing for him to be.
Here is an exuberant, funny, totally original story of one boy's coming out -- and coming-of-age.
Publication Date: 10/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Romance
Out Of Time
John Marsden
Synopsis: An exciting time travel adventure from the author of the hugely popular Tomorrow series for teens!
James reads by his open bedroom window at night. Other lives and other worlds beckon. One of these worlds is conjured by old Mr Woodford, a physicist who looks more like an accountant and who constructs a strange black box.
One day when James slips into the laboratory, he makes a dreadful discovery and learns to master a great power.
Who is the little boy in Mexico who scratches pictures of aeroplanes in the dust? How will the girl caught in a wartime bomb blast be reunited with her parents? And why does James sit alone in his island of silence?
Publication Date: 10/01/05
Age Level: Any Age
Genre: Adventure
The Green Futures of Tycho
William Sleator
Synopsis: When eleven-year-old Tycho discovers that the mysterious egg-shaped object he dug up in his garden is a time travel device, he can’t resist using his newfound power. Soon he is jumping back and forth in time, mostly to play tricks on his bossy older brothers and sister. But every time he uses the device, he notices that things are different when he gets back—and the futures he visits are getting darker and scarier. Then Tycho comes face-to-face with the most terrible thing of all: his grown-up self. Can Tycho prevent the terrible future he sees from coming true?
Publication Date: 10/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Spacer and Rat
Margaret Bechard
Synopsis: Jack knows who belongs out in the Black. And who doesn't -- until Kit comes walking into the pub and changes everything he believes about the Black, about the people who live there, about what it takes to be a human being. Margaret Bechard set out to write an adventure story with laser guns ad spaceships. Then, she says, "there was a big step and a long fall off a cliff while I realized that my characters didn't want to do the stuff I had in my mind; they had plans of their own." The result: a fast-paced space adventure and a short story about human feeling and growing up -- science fiction for those who love SF; riveting fiction for those who don't.

Publication Date: 10/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
The Telling Pool
David Clement-Davies
Synopsis: A thrilling new fantasy from the author of the cult favorites Fire Bringer and The Sight.

From the author known for his popular, "intricately crafted" novels, as praised by The Boston Globe, comes a new tale set against the backdrop of Richard the Lionheart's Crusade to Jerusalem. The Telling Pool's richly atmospheric tale draws on Authurian legend and pagan belief, following the fate of young Rhodri Falcon and his crusader father as they become entangled in the war of a king and the machinations of a seductive sorceress who literally steals men's hearts. Its up to Rhodri to defeat the sorceress and save his father before all is forever lost. As Rhodri discovers the evils of war fought in the name of religion with enemies who will stop at nothing to defeat him, he must dig deep within to discover the hero who will save his father and lead himself toward the man he will become.

Expertly told, The Telling Pool transports young readers to the days of the Crusades, magic sorcery and the land where legends were formed. In the best-selling tradition of his previous books, Clement-Davies introduces readers a new character, Rhodri Falcon, who will forge ahead, determined to find good and in a land of evil.
Publication Date: 10/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
May Bird and the Ever After
Jodi Lynn Anderson, Leonid Gore
Synopsis: Most people aren't very comfortable in the woods, but the woods of Briery Swamp fit May Bird like a fuzzy mitten. There, she is safe from school and the taunts and teases of kids who don't understand her. Hidden in the trees, May is a warrior princess, and her cat, Somber Kitty, is her brave guardian.

Then May falls into the lake.

When she crawls out, May finds herself in a world that most certainly does not feel like a fuzzy mitten. In fact it is a place few living people have ever seen. Here, towns glow blue beneath zipping stars and the people -- people? -- walk through walls. Here the Book of the Dead holds the answers to everything in the universe. And here, if May is discovered, the horrifyingly evil Bo Cleevil will turn her into nothing.

May Bird must get out.

Fast.

Within these pages, Jodi Lynn Anderson shares with us the beginning of May Bird's daring journey into the Ever After, a haunting place where true friends -- and one terrible foe -- await her on every corner.
Publication Date: 10/01/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fantasy
Seventeen
Shan Serafin
Synopsis: The ultimatum: Show me a reason to live or I kill myself in seven days. When seventeen-year-old Sophia dares life to prove to her she should stay alive, her suffering is at its climax, her predicament at its worst, and her adolescence at its crescendo. Sophia is taking summer courses at a New York City college between her junior and senior years of high school, lured to the program by Shauna, her best friend from California. Constantly reminded of her own perceived lack of beauty and brains, haunted by pangs of worthlessness, and noticed only by her lanky friend J.P., Sophia begs life for a single decent reason to stick around. Days slip by and she continues her silent countdown until the greatest hope she can find becomes the deepest threat imaginable. As she makes her final attempt to confront life among adults, this bold adolescent and feisty storyteller shreds the hypocrisy and inequities of the adult world she yearns to inhabit.
Publication Date: 10/01/05
Age Level: Mature Young Adult
Genre: Fiction
The Wreath
Chloe Howard, Chris Howard
Synopsis: The Wreath is a story of betrayal and the struggle for control over the forces of magic and scientific knowledge. Kassandra's a bookish teenager with an extreme fear of water. She comes from the sea, but she spends most of her life far from it, an exile sent inland to grow up, betrayed by her own family and fated for slavery. She's caught between a murdering king, a governess who's been trying to kill her since she was four, and river witches who spy on her through the plumbing. She's managed to stay alive so far, but on her thirteenth birthday, Kassandra's world tumbles into the abyss. She cries for the first time in her life, and not just a tear. She discovers that her mother and father didn't abandon her, and there's more to her governess than the tyrannical facade.
Publication Date: 09/30/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fantasy
Up and Running
Mark Patinkin
Synopsis: Patinkin shares the gripping story of a young boy's battle with a life-threatening illness and how a community fought to save him.
Publication Date: 09/28/05
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure

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