Juvenile Fiction
A Certain Strain of Peculiar
A teenager journeys from shame to strength when she moves to her grandmother’s farm in a story infused with southern spirit and heart.This is the last time Mary Harold will have a panic attack at school when kids call her "the grossest girl." If Mom won’t move back to Alabama, her thirteen-year-old daughter will just have to drive herself 691 miles to Grandma Ayma’s farmhouse — and a whole new life. With Ayma’s loving support, Mary Harold is soon strong enough to help Bud, the Cherokee farm manager, wrangle the cows, and confident enough to stand up for his daughter, Dixie, a girl with a strain of peculiar that makes her whinny and stamp like a horse to keep the world at bay. Mary Harold still misses her mom, but has started to have dreams of the Black Warrior Forest that are offering clues. As she listens to their message, and to her own heart, she discovers how powerful and surprising the bonds of family can be.
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Natasha Lands Down Under
Katherine McCaughan
Gold Medal Winner of Young Adult -Historical/Cultural section of Moonbeam Children's Book Awards. Natasha's Russian family flees China in 1950 to start a new life in Sydney, Australia. Unable to speak English, Natasha longs for her old life in Shanghai. The problems of life under Japanese occupation and the following civil war seem tame compared to facing her new school with its inexplicable customs, different clothes and hairstyles. Having lost everything to communism, Natasha's family is now accused of being communist. The first turbulent year in Australia strains even strong willed Natasha's confidence, but a catastrophic event makes her realize her own strength and understand her place in her new life.
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From the Publisher
The Circle of Friends: Book 2
L. Diane Wolfe
No awards for second best... A student at Georgia Tech, Sarah Martin is bold, intelligent, and appears destined for a career in biochemistry. But her poor self-image has been masked by behavior unbecoming to a young lady brought up in an affluent Southern family. Estranged from her father, envious of her best friend's perfect life, Sarah feels inadequate and unable to measure up to expectations. When a friendship suddenly turns romantic, Sarah questions herself even more. A future NFL receiver, Matt's joyful spirit and social status appear beyond her reach. Yet beneath his eager smile and playboy antics lies a young man hiding in shadows and desperate to trust again. Faced with challenges, they must help each other come to terms with past disappointments before insecurities and doubt threaten to sabotage their future. Described as "encouragement personified", Wolfe's five-book Southern-based series portrays love and friendship overcoming all obstacles.
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Tales of the Madman Underground
Barnes John
Wednesday, September 5, 1973: The first day of Karl Shoemaker's senior year in stifling Lightsburg, Ohio. For years, Karl's been part of what he calls "the Madman Underground" - a group of kids forced (for no apparent reason) to attend group therapy during school hours. Karl has decided that senior year is going to be different. He is going to get out of the Madman Underground for good. He is going to act - and be - Normal. But Normal, of course, is relative. Karl has five after-school jobs, one dead father, one seriously unhinged drunk mother . . . and a huge attitude. Welcome to a gritty, uncensored rollercoaster ride, narrated by the singular Karl Shoemaker.
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Highway to Hell
Rosemary Clement-Moore
Maggie Quinn was expecting to find plenty of trouble with Lisa over Spring Break. Give a girl a bikini, a beachfront hotel, and an absent boyfriend, and it’s as good as a road map to the dark side. But Maggie doesn’t have to go looking for trouble. Trouble has started looking for her. One dead cow and a punctured gas tank later, she and Lisa are stuck inDulcina, Texas—a town so small that it has an owner. And lately life in this small town hasn’t been all that peaceful. An eerie predator is stalking the ranchland.Everyone in town has a theory, but not even Maggie’s psychic mojo can provide any answers. And the longer the girls are stranded, the more obvious it becomes that something is seriously wrong. Only no one—not even Maggie’s closest ally—wants to admit that they could have been forced on a detour down the highway to hell.
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Surface Tension
Brent Runyon
The cottage on the lake is always the same, but Luke is changing. At thirteen he’s excited. At fourteen he’s cool. At fifteen he’s pissed off. At sixteen he’s in love. Through four summers’ worth of trips to the emergency room, campfires and house fires, parties and feuds with neighbors, Luke is doing his best to navigate life. He makes discoveries, makes mistakes, freaks out, and comes to see things in a new light. Brent Runyon has crafted a remarkable portrait of a boy at four distinct points in his life and literally shows us his coming of age. It’s a story that explores what is ever-changing and what is timeless, and how we are shaped by both the people and places we love.
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Fate
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
For the past two years, Bailey Morgan has lived a double life: high school student by day, ancient mystical being by night. As the third Fate, Bailey literally controls the fate of the world, but as Plain Old Bailey, her life is falling apart. She’s got a tattoo that was supposed to be temporary (but isn’t), friendships that were supposed to last forever (but might not), and no idea what her future holds after high school graduation.Then Bailey meets the rest of the Sidhe, an ancient race defined by their power, beauty, and a sinister habit of getting what they want at any cost. Before Bailey knows it, she’s being drawn into an otherworldly web more complicated than anything she weaves as a mortal Fate.
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Along for the Ride
Sarah Dessen
A New York Times bestsellerUp all night. Nights have always been Auden’s time, her chance to escape everything that’s going on around her. Then she meets Eli, a fellow insomniac, and he becomes her nocturnal tour guide. Now, with an endless supply of summer nights between them, almost anything can happen. . . . “As with all Dessen’s books, [this] is a must-have” —VOYA, starred review Also by Sarah Dessen:DreamlandJust ListenKeeping the MoonLock and KeyThe Moon and MoreSomeone Like YouThat SummerThis LullabyThe Truth About ForeverWhat Happened to Goodbye
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Between Us Baxters
Bethany Hegedus
It's hard to be a "Black Sheep Baxter," at least for 12-year-old Polly. From a poor white family, Polly's best friend, Timbre Ann Biggs, is black, making them the only "salt-and-pepper" friends in town. But in that fall of 1959, life in quiet Holcolm County starts to heat up as one by one, thriving colored businesses burn to the ground. When someone throws a note wrapped around a brick through the window of Biggs Repair, Polly worries that Timber Ann will be blinded by the color of her skin and forget they were ever close. When a tragic fire brings everything to a head, the spotlight falls on Polly's family. Sensitively painting a vivid portrait of the Jim Crow South, Polly's inspiring story captures the defiant spirit of youth in an oppressive small town, just as the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement begin to sprout.
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The Diamonds
Ted Michael
At Long Islands’s private Bennington School, the Diamonds rule supreme. They’re the girls all the boys want to date and all the girls want to be. And fortunately for Marni, she’s right in the middle of them. Best friends with the ringleader, Clarissa, Marni enjoys all the spoils of the ultrapopular: boys, power, and respect. But then Marni gets a little too close to Clarissa’s ex-boyfriend, Anderson.Wrong move. The Diamonds don’t touch each other’s exes. And just like that, Marni is jettisoned from Diamond to lower than Cubic Zirconia.But Marni isn’t about to take her ouster lying down. She has dirt on the Diamonds, and she’s not about to go down without a fight. Everyone knows, the only thing strong enough to cut a Diamond is another Diamond. Ted Michael is a literary agent and first time novelist. He lives in New York, New York.
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