The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
From the Publisher
* ALA Notable Book *
A stunning collaboration between award-winning and bestselling authors Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin, this middle grade historical adventure follows two siblings at Bletchley Park, the home of WWII codebreakers, as they try to unravel a mystery surrounding their mother's disappearance.
Remember, you are bound by the Official Secrets Act...
Summer, 1940. Nineteen-year-old Jakob Novis and his quirky younger sister, Lizzie, share a love of riddles and puzzles. And now they're living inside of one. The quarrelsome siblings find themselves amid one of the greatest secrets of World War II--Britain's eccentric codebreaking factory at Bletchley Park. As Jakob joins Bletchley's top minds to crack the Nazi's Enigma cipher, fourteen-year-old Lizzie embarks on a mission to solve the mysterious disappearance of their mother.
The Battle of Britain rages and Hitler's invasion creeps closer. And at the same time, baffling messages and codes arrive on their doorstep while a menacing inspector lurks outside the gates of the Bletchley mansion. Are the messages truly for them, or are they a trap? Could the riddles of Enigma and their mother's disappearance be somehow connected? Jakob and Lizzie must find a way to work together as they race to decipher clues that unravel a shocking puzzle that presents the ultimate challenge: How long must a secret be kept?
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Dreamland Burning : a novel by Jennifer Latham
From the Publisher
A compelling dual-narrated tale from Jennifer Latham that questions how far we've come with race relations.
Some bodies won't stay buried.
Some stories need to be told.
When seventeen-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton on her family's property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of painful discoveries about the present and the past.
Nearly one hundred years earlier, a misguided violent encounter propels seventeen-year-old Will Tillman into a racial firestorm. In a country rife with violence against blacks and a hometown segregated by Jim Crow, Will must make hard choices on a painful journey towards self discovery and face his inner demons in order to do what's right the night Tulsa burns.
Through intricately interwoven alternating perspectives, Jennifer Latham's lightning-paced page-turner brings the Tulsa race riot of 1921 to blazing life and raises important questions about the complex state of US race relations--both yesterday and today.
The Institute : a novel by Stephen King
From the Publisher
* A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2019 Selection *
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, the most riveting and unforgettable story of kids confronting evil since It.
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis's parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents--telekinesis and telepathy--who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, "like the roach motel," Kalisha says. "You check in, but you don't check out."
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don't, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King's gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don't always win.
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The Secret History by Donna Tartt
From the Publisher
* One of Time Magazine's 100 Best Mystery & Thriller Books of All Time * One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years *
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
A contemporary literary classic and “an accomplished psychological thriller … absolutely chilling” (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Goldfinch.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
From the Publisher
The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman's act of violence against her husband--and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.
Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.
Alicia's refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.
Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations--a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....
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They Went Left by Monica Hesse
From the Publisher
Germany, 1945. Eighteen-year-old Zofia Lederman is alive, but not whole. Her body is just beginning to heal from the trauma of the Holocaust, her mind is broken, and her life is shattered. She knows that she will never see her beloved parents, grandmother, or aunt again-she watched as they were all sent to the left, to the gas chambers, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only she and her younger brother Abek were sent to the right, and her last words to him were a promise: Abek to Zofia, A to Z. When I find you again, we will fill our alphabet. And we will be whole, and everything will be fine. I promise I will find you.
Desperate to find Abek, fulfill her vow, and rebuild their lives, Zofia's search brings her to their hometown in Poland and then deep into a displaced persons camp in Germany. There, Zofia meets fellow Holocaust survivors, each battling with their painful pasts and working towards different futures. There's Briene, eager to marry her new beau and start a new life; Miriam, searching far and wide for the twin she was separated from at liberation, who was the victim of horrible experiments; and Josef, who picks fights with bullies and refuses to talk about his past, but whose good looks and unexpected honesty draw Zofia in.
The deeper Zofia digs, the more impossible her search seems. How can she find one boy in a sea of the missing? And if she does find him, how can she know that it's her Abek? After surviving unimaginable horrors, Zofia must now delve into a mystery whose answers could break her--or help her rebuild her world.
Thieves' Gambit by Kayvion Lewis
From the Publisher
The Inheritance Games meets Ocean's Eleven in this cinematic heist thriller where a cutthroat competition brings together the world's best thieves and one thief is playing for the highest stakes of all: her mother's life.
At only seventeen years old, Ross Quest is already a master thief, especially adept at escape plans. Until her plan to run away from her legendary family of thieves takes an unexpected turn, leaving her mother's life hanging in the balance.
In a desperate bid, she enters the Thieves' Gambit, a series of dangerous, international heists where killing the competition isn't exactly off limits, but the grand prize is a wish for anything in the world--a wish that could save her mom. When she learns two of her competitors include her childhood nemesis and a handsome, smooth-talking guy who might also want to steal her heart, winning the Gambit becomes trickier than she imagined.
Ross tries her best to stick to the family creed: trust no one whose last name isn't Quest. But with the stakes this high, Ross will have to decide who to con and who to trust before time runs out. After all, only one of them can win.
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
From the Publisher
* A Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of the Century *
The modern, sophisticated suspense novel that became a runaway smash hit on TikTok and introduced the world to a family hiding a jaw-dropping secret.
A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends--the Liars--whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.