Book Talks

A street thief and a princess discover they are twins separated at birth-and must switch places to find an all-powerful stone and prevent a deadly war from taking place.

A high school outcast finds herself in charge of the school newspaper and as she navigates the dilemmas, challenges and unintended consequences of journalism, she finds her life--and her convictions--changing in ways she could not have imagined.

Nishat doesn't want to lose her family, but she also doesn't want to hide who she is, and it only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life. Flavia is beautiful and charismatic, and Nishat falls for her instantly.

Tossed out of car onto a remote highway with no memory of the past 24 hours, Donovan causes a fatal accident trying to flag down help and is forced to assume the dead person's identity to prove he is innocent of murder.

Eighteen-year-old Trinity Marrow, who is losing her sight, has a well-kept secret. She can see and talk to the dead and must remain in a compound that is guarded by Wardens who are shape-shifting gargoyles. They must protect her from demons who want to capture her to take on her special powers. However, a new threat arrives, and Trinity joins forces with Zayne, a Warden from another clan, in order to save her family.

In an alternate 1914 Europe, fifteen-year-old Austrian Prince Alek, on the run from the Clanker Powers who are attempting to take over the globe using mechanical machinery, forms an uneasy alliance with Deryn who, disguised as a boy to join the British Air Service, is learning to fly genetically-engineered beasts.

I also read the rest of the trillogy, Goliath and Behemoth!

In this riveting middle-grade adventure, the son of a Mississippi policeman finds a boy living on his own in the wilderness. Twelve-year-old Sam has been given a fishing boat by his father, but he hates fishing. Instead he uses the boat to disappear for hours at a time, exploring the forbidden swampy surroundings of his bayou home. Then he discovers a strange kid named Davey, mysteriously alone, repairing an abandoned cabin deep in the woods. Not fooled by the boy's evasive explanation as to why he's on his own, Sam becomes entangled in his own efforts to help Davey. But this leads him to telling small lies that only get bigger as the danger increases for both boys and hidden truths become harder to conceal.

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,” he said, “where learning is a game.”.

Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym, Truly Devious. It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder!

After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left.

Habâia una vez...There lived a girl named Petra Peäna, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra's world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children--among them Petra and her family--have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet--and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinisterCollective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity's past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard--or purged them altogether. Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, anyhope for our future. Can she make them live again?

On a hot summer night in the late 1980s, in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, a twelve-year-old African-American girl was sitting on a mailbox talking with her friends when she became the innocent victim of gang-related gunfire. Amid public outcry, an immediate manhunt was on to catch the murderer, and a young African-American man was quickly apprehended, charged, and — wrongly — convicted of the crime.

Pair this with Nonfiction title, The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton

Germany, 1945. The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp said the war was over, but nothing feels over to eighteen-year-old Zofia Lederman. Her body has barely begun to heal, her mind feels broken. And her life is completely shattered: Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else—her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja—they went left.

Zofia's last words to her brother were a promise: Abek to Zofia, A to Z. When I find you again, we will fill our alphabet. Now her journey to fulfill that vow takes her through Poland and Germany, and into a displaced persons camp where everyone she meets is trying to piece together a future from a painful past: Miriam, desperately searching for the twin she was separated from after they survived medical experimentation. Breine, a former heiress, who now longs only for a simple wedding with her new fiancé. And Josef, who guards his past behind a wall of secrets, and is beautiful and strange and magnetic all at once.

But the deeper Zofia digs, the more impossible her search seems. How can she find one boy in a sea of the missing? In the rubble of a broken continent, Zofia must delve into a mystery whose answers could break her—or help her rebuild her world.

While true-crime aficionado Ellery and her twin brother are staying with their grandmother in a Vermont community known for murder, a new friend goes missing and Ellery may be next.

Second book in Series

Review from Booklist: Surprising revelations continuously punctuate the second book of the Unearthly series, which circles around Clara’s vision of a funeral. The part-angel Wyoming high school student is still torn between Tucker, a bronco-busting human, and the otherworldly Christian, but Hand has more in mind than just paranormal romance. The exploration of angelic hierarchies fascinates as does the tension built around concepts of free will and divine purpose. Can Clara literally stop an ordained death? Plot points skillfully set up the next book’s action, which should be eagerly anticipated by fans.

Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others.

A driven 17-year-old girl whose family life has fallen apart after the death of her Cuban abuela and the divorce of her parents turns to a kitchen apprenticeship in Lyon, France, as the only means to bring order back to her life.

Claire Kenton believes the world is too dark for magic to be real--since her twin brother was stolen away as a child. Now Claire's desperate search points to London... and a boy who shouldn't exist. Peter Pan is having a beastly time getting back to Neverland. Grounded in London and hunted by his own Lost Boys, Peter searches for the last hope of restoring his crumbling island: a lass with magic in her veins. The girl who fears her own destiny is on a collision course with the boy who never wanted to grow up. The truth behind this fairy tale is about to unravel everything Claire thought she knew about Peter Pan--and herself.

When a tight-knit group of friends discover a trap door in the woods that leads to a completely intact bomb shelter, they vow to keep the place a secret while sharing their individual secrets to build the safest space possible. This was one of my favorites of the summer. It would make a great book club read!

The last living water diviner, 18-year-old Mererid joins forces with her old handler to bring down the very prince who abused them both and, with a ragtag group of allies, sets out to topple a kingdom.

This is a series of 7 books. I read book 2 which was action packed! Here is the book talk about book one: Michael Vey, a fourteen-year old who has Tourette's syndrome and special electric powers, finds there are others like him, and must rely on his powers to save himself and the others from a diabolical group seeking to control them.

An urgent, emotional memoir from one of the longest-serving condemned death row inmates to be found innocent in America.

In a country governed by isolation, fear, and a tyrannical dictator, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer, but he decides to use his position to try to outwit his handler, undermine the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country.

The struggle of three brothers to stay together after their parent's death and their quest for identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society.

Twelve-year-old Maren hesitantly enters summer theater camp and finds clues of a mystery about the camp's founding, linking back to the Lavender Scare in Hollywood. Anyone that loves a good mystery, theater, and Shakespeare, will love this book!

In this Nonfiction book, African teenager William Kamkwamba explored science books in his village library when he was forced to drop out of school, and was able to change his family's life by creating a windmill to pump water for his family's farm.

In this third book in the Charlie Thorne series from bestselling author Stuart Gibbs, Charlie tracks down Cleopatra’s greatest treasure in Egypt.

Nothing ever happens in Filomena Jefferson-Cho's sleepy little suburban town of North Pasadena. The sun shines every day, the grass is always a perfect green, and while her progressive school swears there's no such thing as bullying, she still feels bummed out. But one day, when Filomena is walking home on her own, something strange happens. Filomena is being followed by Jack Stalker, one of the heroes in the Thirteenth Fairy, a series of books she loves about a brave girl and her ragtag group of friends who save their world from an evil enchantress. She must be dreaming, or still reading a book. But Jack is insistent-he's real, the stories are real, and Filomena must come with him at once to help save the kingdom of Westphalia and find the truth behind the fairytales.

When Victoria Cruz wakes up in the psychiatric ward of a Texas hospital after her failed suicide attempt, she still has no desire to live, but as the weeks pass, and she meets Dr. Desai and three of the other patients, she begins to reflect on the reasons why she feels like a loser compared with the rest of her family, and to see a path ahead where she can make a life of her own.

In a world where female sailors are executed, Lane Garrow, who is hiding as a cabin boy, finds her very survival tied to a mysterious prince who could be her downfall, while pirates, betrayal and death threaten those she loves.

A year after the death of her mother in a restaurant shooting, Nora is left struggling to stay alive when a climbing trip with her father goes terribly wrong.

Olivia Prior has grown up at the grim Merilance School for Girls with no no past except for her one treasure, her mother's journal, so when a letter arrives inviting her to come home to ruinous manor, Gallant, she seizes the chance to find out about her family.

Searching for her buried friend after the mines collapse, twelve-year-old Pakistani mica miner Nura finds herself at the Sijj Palace, a luxury hotel for the dangerous and deceitful jinn, where she must discover the truth beneath the glitter or be trapped forever.