All Books
Speak Easy
Barry Gibbons
Synopsis: Public speaking is something that many people struggle with and yet these days not only do lots of people want to be able to speak better in front of an audience, often their careers depend on it. In Speak easy, Fortune magazine's ''Turnaround Champ'' Barry Gibbons, draws on his vast experience of speaking in public to help you make your dread of delivering speeches a thing of the past. Who knows, you might even start to enjoy it! Barry is the first one to admit that he's made a mistake or two along the way but these have helped him develop some brilliant ideas to avoid falling into the same trap twice.
Publication Date: 03/31/06
Age Level: Any Age
Genre: Educational
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck, Robert DeMott
Synopsis: The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Robert Demott.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Publication Date: 03/28/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Historical Fiction
Becoming Chloe
Catherine Ryan Hyde
Synopsis: Meet Jordy. He’s on his own in New York City. Nobody to depend on; nobody depending on him. And it’s been working fine.
Until this girl comes along. She’s 18 and blond and pretty–her world should be perfect. But she’s seen things no one should ever see in their whole life–the kind of things that break a person. She doesn’t seem broken, though. She seems . . . innocent. Like she doesn’t know a whole lot. Only sometimes she does.
The one thing she knows for sure is that the world is an ugly place. Now her life may depend on Jordy proving her wrong. So they hit the road to discover the truth–and there’s no going back from what they find out.
This deeply felt, redemptive novel reveals both the dark corners and hidden joys of life’s journey–and the remarkable resilience of the human soul.
Publication Date: 03/28/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Sword of Straw
Amanda Hemingway
Synopsis: Embark upon a quest rife with magic, wonder, and forces as dark as midnight. . . .

Parallel universes and grave danger are nothing new to Nathan Ward. During his last mission, he risked life and limb to retrieve the Grail for safekeeping. But Nathan’s adventures are just beginning. Lately his dreams have been transporting him to a desolate city whose people have fled—save for a sickly king and his daughter, Princess Nell. In their decaying hilltop castle, they live in the shadow of a terrifying curse inflicted by a sword that holds within its gleaming metal an ancient demon conjured by the universe’s most powerful wizard. It is a sword that brings death to anyone who dares to draw it from its sheath.

But the king is dying, and the legend claims that only a stranger can save him . . . and that this stranger alone is destined to awake—and defeat—the dark evil in the sword. But who among mortals and spirits could ever imagine that a boy materializing into alternate worlds still dressed in his pajamas could be the chosen one . . . the one entrusted with the long-lost plan to retrieve the Grail relics and save a dying cosmos?
Publication Date: 03/28/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fantasy
The One Left Behind
Willo Davis Roberts
Synopsis: When she is left alone in her family house on Lake Michigan, eleven-year-old Mandy is left to deal with her feelings of loss over the death of her beloved twin sister, yet when two boys stumble into her life and tell her that they are running away from men looking to do them harm, Mandy must muster the courage and wisdom to figure out what to do to help them all.
Publication Date: 03/21/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Time's Memory
Julius Lester
Synopsis: Amma is the creator god, the master of life and death, and he is worried. His people have always known how to take care of the spirits of the dead – the nyama – so that they don’t become destructive forces among the living. But amid the chaos of the African slave trade and the brutality of American slavery, too many of his people are dying and their souls are being ignored in this new land. Amma sends a young man, Ekundayo, to a plantation in Virginia where he becomes a slave on the eve of the Civil War. Amma hopes that Ekundayo will be able to find a way to bring peace to the nyama before it is too late. But Ekundayo can see only sorrow in this land – sorrow in the ownership of people, in the slaves who have been separated from their children and spouses, in the restless spirits of the dead, and in his own forbidden relationship with his master’s daughter.
How Ekundayo finds a way to bring peace to both the dead and the living makes this an unforgettable journey into the slave experience and Julius Lester’s most powerful work to date. Time's Memory is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Publication Date: 03/21/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Historical Fiction
Follow the Blue
Brigid Lowry
Synopsis:

Life isn't neat and tidy. It's like a whole lot of balls of brightly colored wool thrown in a basket, with stray beginnings and endings and possibilities everywhere. Let's follow the blue.

Fifteen-year-old Bec has always been the good girl. Growing up with an eccentric celebrity chef mother and a father who suffers from depression, Bec is used to taking care of her two younger siblings and being labeled "the sensible one." But when Bec's parents decide to take a six-week tour of the U.S., she decides that she is sick of being responsible and is ready for some adventures of her own. She meets a new friend named Jaz, dyes her hair, wins money, throws her first party, and then there's the boy thing...
In this intoxicating novel by award-winning author and poet Brigid Lowry, Bec realizes that maybe she isn't so ordinary after all―and that sometimes it doesn't hurt to, as her mother would say, "lighten up and enjoy the ride."

Publication Date: 03/21/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Year the Gypsies Came
Synopsis: Set in apartheid South Africa, this powerful and lyrically written novel is Linzi Glass's debut.

As twelve-year-old Emily Iris explains it, her mother and father have always been eager to take in travelers and vagabonds, relying on the presence of outsiders to ease the tension between them. Emily has her gentle older sister, Sarah, and Buza, the old Zulu nightwatchman, for company and comfort. But her parents' continuing discontent leads them to welcome some peculiar strangers.

One spring, a family of wanderers--a wildlife photographer, his wife, and two boys--comes to stay, and their strange, compelling, and dangerous presence will leave the Iris family infinitely changed.



Publication Date: 03/21/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Dreams and Visions
Helen S. Weiss, M. Jerry Weiss
Synopsis: Let your imagination soar and take flight with these fourteen original tales of fantasy and science fiction by a distinguished line-up of award-winning children's and young adult authors.

Joan Bauer gives us Chloe, a fantasy writer trying to tell a new story--but her characters won't cooperate.
Suzanne Fisher Staples introduces us to the powers of djinn in her magical tale set in Pakistan.
Charles de Lint offers a romantic tale set during the Summer of Love in his mythical city of Newford.
A witch's son seeks revenge in a chilling murder mystery by Michael O. Tunnell.
Craig and Jessica, two high school runners, star in this story of transformation by Rich Wallace.
Patrice Kindl's mysterious Mrs. Duck moves into the boring town of Refreshing Acres--and nothing is ever the same again.
In S.L. Rottman's action-packed tale, the world is on fire, and it's a race to the water's edge.
David Lubar thrills us with his story of Deborah, an aspiring magician.
Mel Glenn shares a conversation between Ryan and an Angel in the afterlife.
Jessie's encounter with a toad changes her life in this uplifting tale by Nancy Springer.
A soldier meets the ghost of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, in John Ritter's thought-provoking story.
An oracle makes an unsettling prediction in Sharon Dennis Wyeth's tale.
Neal Shusterman introduces us to a young thief who holds the fate of the universe in his hands.
Tamora Pierce's story takes us to the land of Hartunjar, where women are subservient to men--but not for long…
Publication Date: 03/21/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Anthology
So Super Stylish
Rose Wilkins
Synopsis: Excited about her new, laid back school, Octavia feels that her life may be taking a turn for the better and more normal, but when the paparazzi start following her again and the scandal of her celebrity mother resurfaces, Octavia loses faith in ever having a simple life or finding a sweet boy to call her own.
Publication Date: 03/16/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Counting on Grace
Elizabeth Winthrop
Synopsis: 1910. Pownal, Vermont. At 12, Grace and her best friend Arthur must leave school and go to work as a “doffers” on their mothers’ looms in the mill. Grace’s mother is the best worker, fast and powerful, and Grace desperately wants to help her. But she’s left handed and doffing is a right-handed job. Grace’s every mistake costs her mother, and the family. She only feels capable on Sundays, when she and Arthur receive special lessons from their teacher. Together they write a secret letter to the Child Labor Board about underage children working in Pownal. A few weeks later a man with a camera shows up. It is the famous reformer Lewis Hine, undercover, collecting evidence for the Child Labor Board. Grace’s brief acquaintance with Hine and the photos he takes of her are a gift that changes her sense of herself, her future, and her family’s future.
Publication Date: 03/14/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Nonfiction
Shooting Stars Everywhere
Martina Wildner
Synopsis: The first anonymous letter arrives on July 23rd, Victor’s 13th birthday. Which is good, because it gives him something to write about in the journal his father gave him as a present. Soon Victor is writing down everything that happens as he tries to solve the mystery of the letters, conquer his fear of jumping off the high diving board at the pool, and figure out what is going on between his divorced parents.
Things change when he meets D, however. A good diver and an assertive detective, she helps Victor to stop writing his life and start living it.
Publication Date: 03/14/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Mystery
The Last Universe
William Sleator
Synopsis: Sleator is at his sci-fi best with this quantum thriller, now available in paperback

In this gothic, sci-fi thriller from a master storyteller, Susan and her wheelchair-bound brother, Gary, discover a mysterious maze in the vast gardens of their isolated home. Planted by a scientist uncle who disappeared long ago, the maze offers seemingly endless routes and choices. The teenagers discover that each turn they take alters their world in some way. Sickly Gary sees a chance to change his fate; Susan sees that they may both be lost forever. Sleator keeps readers guessing right up to the shocking ending.

Praise for The Last Universe

"Sleator is a master of suspenseful science fiction and that mastery is evident here...entirely shocking." - School Library Journal

"Science fiction fans, science nerds, and random readers alike will appreciate this latest offering." - Voya

"Sleator has fashioned a perfect 'what if' story." - Kliatt

"Will keep readers turning the pages until the very end." - Kirkus
Publication Date: 03/07/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Adventure
Poison Ivy
Amy Goldman Koss
Synopsis:

"IwithVY: I told Ms. Gold about how The Evil Three have been after me, feeding off me since fourth grade.


MARCO: It isn't a very pretty story, so if you're looking for 'nice,' you better ask someone else.


ANN: We just have to come up wiht some witnesses for our side. Think! Does anyone owe you any favors?


BRYCE: I figure, Dude, why not make a little spare change on the side? A buck a bet. All's I has to do was explain that liable was civil for guilty, and they swarmed like flies."



Eight first-person narrators give different versions of the same event. Lessons about the inner workings of the judicial system pale beside the insights into human nature. With pathos and a great deal of humor, Amy Goldman Koss keeps you turning pages.



Publication Date: 03/07/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
First Impressions
Marilyn Sachs
Synopsis: " I read on. And then it happens. On page 89. Mary is humiliated, and I know I have to step in. There she is, in an ill-fitting, wine-colored gown that doesn't do anything for her mousy complexion, gathering up her music, when I pass by, and spill my glass of punch right on her dress. I turn, and there is Kevin, dressed in a scarlet coat and all the rest of the uniform of a British Soldier, circa 1811. 'What are you doing here?' I ask. 'Well, this is the part I'm up to in the book.'"

The smart middle child in a blue-collar family identifies with Mary, the middle child in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. When Alice enters Mary's world and makes changes in both their lives, she learns that first impressions aren't always right.
Publication Date: 03/07/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
As  Simple As Snow
Gregory Galloway
Synopsis: "Anna Cayne had moved here in August, just before our sophomore year in high school, but by February she had, one by one, killed everyone in town."

Anna—who prefers to be called Anastasia—is a slightly spooky and complicated high school girl with a penchant for riddles, Houdini tricks, and ghost stories. She spends much of her time writing obituaries for every living person in town. She is unlike anyone the narrator has ever known, and they make an unlikely, though happy, pair.

Then a week before Valentine's Day, Anna disappears, leaving behind only a dress placed neatly near a hole in the frozen river, and a string of unanswered questions. Desperate to find her, or at least to comprehend what happened and why, the narrator begins to reconstruct the past five months. And soon the fragments of curious events, intimate conversations, secrets, and peculiar letters (and the anonymous messages that continue to arrive) coalesce into haunting and surprising revelations that may implicate friends, relatives, and even Anna herself.

Publication Date: 03/07/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Mystery

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