Juvenile Fiction

The Ex Games
Jennifer Echols
Brace yourself for the battle of the exes....Hayden and Nick used to be a hot item, but their brief affair ended with a highly publicized breakup. Now the two are "just friends," excluding the occasional flirtation.When Hayden wins the girls' division of a local snowboarding competition, Nick is unimpressed, claiming that Hayden wouldn't have a chance against a guy. Hayden calls Nick's bluff and challenges him to a head-to-head boarding contest. Their mutual friends quickly take sides, the girls on Hayden's and the boys on Nick's, making for an all-out battle of the sexes. This friendly competition is bound to get heated -- and they might end up igniting some old flames.
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The Taker and the Keeper
Pat Perrin, Wim Coleman
Middle-schoolers Gregory Guest and Yolanda Torres have no intention of becoming heroes overnight. But as the only kids in Bainsboro who see that the world has gone horribly wrong, what choice do they have? Aided by their eccentric science teacher and Gregory's trusty red monocle, Gregory and Yolanda travel into the King Arthur legend to save today's real world from a legendary threat. As they ally themselves with the magician Merlin and his young apprentice to thwart the sorceress Morgan le Fay, these reluctant heroes must set whole worlds right again. The first book in the Red Monocle, The Taker and the Keeper will keep young readers up at night as they get swept away in this tightly-plotted adventure.
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The Hollow
Jessica Verday
When Abbey's best friend, Kristen, vanishes at the bridge near Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, everyone else is all too quick to accept that Kristen is dead…and rumors fly that her death was no accident. Abbey goes through the motions of mourning her best friend, but privately, she refuses to believe that Kristen is really gone. Then she meets Caspian, the gorgeous and mysterious boy who shows up out of nowhere at Kristen's funeral, and keeps reappearing in Abbey's life. Caspian clearly has secrets of his own, but he's the only person who makes Abbey feel normal again...but also special. Just when Abbey starts to feel that she might survive all this, she learns a secret that makes her question everything she thought she knew about her best friend. How could Kristen have kept silent about so much? And could this secret have led to her death? As Abbey struggles to understand Kristen's betrayal, she uncovers a frightening truth that nearly unravels her—one that will challenge her emerging love for Caspian, as well as her own sanity. “Spectacular! The Hollow keeps you reading from beginning to end without coming up for air.” --L.J. Smith, bestselling author of The Vampire Diaries and Night World
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Cat O' Nine Tails
Julia Golding
In this fourth adventure Cat Royal becomes an unlikely recruit in the British Navy, takes passage to America and unravels a fiendish plot to do away with Lord Francis, heir to a dukedom.
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Rebound
Bob Krech
It looked like every black kid in the school was going out for the team. And then me. Pale skin, long nose, sandy brown hair, and a cowlick that won’t stay down. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t being the only white guy.Black kids play basketball. White kids wrestle. That’s the way it is at Franklin High School and especially in Ray Wisniewski’s neighborhood, the tight knit Polish-American town of Greenville, New Jersey. But Ray’s got a passion for basketball, even after the varsity coach cuts him two years in a row. When a new coach comes on the scene, Ray’s luck rebounds, but now he has to deal with Robert, the team’s high scorer, a kid who hates Ray simply because he’s white.As Ray fights to make his way onto the Franklin High Varsity, he finds that things are not as simple as he once thought—that a kind friend can be full of hate. A beautiful girl can be ugly inside. A well-intentioned coach can cause more harm than good. And prejudice can be defined in many ways in a world that isn’t black-and-white.
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The Other Side of Blue
Valerie O. Patterson
Cyan was named after a shade of blue, her artist mother's favorite color. The color of the sea. Since her father's death last year, she’s felt just as mercurial and dark as her namesake, and the distance between Cyan and her mother has grown as wide as an ocean. Now they're returning to the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean, where her father's mysterious accident occurred, and joining them will be Kammi--who may soon become a stepsister. Haunted by the secrets of the past, Cyan will explore all the depths of her blueness this summer, discovering the light, the darkness, and the many shades in between that are within her—and within us all.
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The Georges and the Jewels
Jane Smiley
A Pulitzer Prize winner makes her debut for young readers.Jane Smiley makes her debut for young readers in this stirring novel set on a California horse ranch in the 1960s. Seventh-grader Abby Lovitt has always been more at ease with horses than with people. Her father insists they call all the mares “Jewel” and all the geldings “George” and warns Abby not to get attached: the horses are there to be sold. But with all the stress at school (the Big Four have turned against Abby and her friends) and home (her brother Danny is gone—for good, it seems—and now Daddy won’t speak his name), Abby seeks refuge with the Georges and the Jewels. But there’s one gelding on her family’s farm that gives her no end of trouble: the horse who won’t meet her gaze, the horse who bucks her right off every chance he gets, the horse her father makes her ride and train, every day. She calls him the Ornery George.
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The Pricker Boy
Reade Scott Whinnem
Some stories draw blood. Some truths won’t stay buried.He was human once, or so they say. The son of a fur trapper, he was taunted by his peers and tricked into one of his own father’s traps. By the time anybody found it, the trap’s vicious teeth were empty, pried open and overgrown. It was said the brambles themselves had reached out and taken pity on that boy; that his skin had hardened to bark as thorns grew over every inch of his body.Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t. But anyone who knows anything stays out of the woods beyond the Widow’s Stone.That used to be enough. But this is the summer everything changes, as Stucks Cumberland and his friends find a mysterious package containing mementos of their childhood: baseball cards, a worn paperback, a locket. Offerings left behind in the woods years ago, meant to keep the Pricker Boy at bay. Offerings that have been rejected.
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Voices in the Dark
Catherine Banner
Asking for the truth can be as painful as telling it. . . .Anselm Andros has clearly defined roles in his family and they are roles he plays very well—he is confidante to his mother, Maria. He is the confessor to his stepfather, Leo, a man haunted by the secrets of his past. And Anselm is also the patient, caring brother to his precocious sister, Jasmine. When the political landscape of Malonia starts to shift, this unassuming family begins to unravel. Even though they’ve spent the past fifteen years leading a quiet life, Maria and Leo’s actions are forever linked to the turbulent history of Malonia and its parallel world, modern-day England. With so much uncertainty at home and in his world, it is more important than ever for Anselm to put all the pieces of the past together. He must listen to his own voice and acknowledge his fears and desires—whatever the cost.
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Flash Burnout
L. K. Madigan
Winner of the 2010 William C. Morris Award!Fifteen-year-old Blake has a girlfriend and a friend who’s a girl. One of them loves him; the other one needs him.When he snapped a picture of a street person for his photography homework, Blake never dreamed that the woman in the photo was his friend Marissa’s long-lost meth addicted mom. Blake’s participation in the ensuing drama opens up a world of trouble, both for him and for Marissa. He spends the next few months trying to reconcile the conflicting roles of Boyfriend and Friend. His experiences range from the comic (surviving his dad’s birth control talk) to the tragic (a harrowing after-hours visit to the morgue).In a tangle of life and death, love and loyalty, Blake will emerge with a more sharply defined snapshot of himself.