Adventure and Magic

Sparkers

by Eleanor Glewwe

Marah Levi is a promising violinist who excels at school and can read more languages than most librarians.  Even so, she has little hope of a bright future: she is a sparker, a member of the oppressed lower class in a society run by magicians.

Then a mysterious disease hits the city of Ashara, turning its victims' eyes dark before ultimately killing them.  As Marah watches those whom she loves most fall ill, she finds an unlikely friend, Azairah, a wealthy magician boy.

Together they pursue a cure in secret, but more people are dying every day, and time is running out!

Then Marah and Azariah make a shocking discovery that changes everything they knew about magic 

and their home, Ashara.

Gripping Historical Fiction!

Mending Horses

by M.P. Barker

 In 1830s New England, Irish immigrant Daniel, formerly indentured as a servant, gains his freedom only to be accused of stealing his former master's horse, a rumor that quickly escalates to include mass murder and leads to his near lynching. 

After his rescue, the teen travels to a nearby town and falls in with his old friend Stocking, now accompanied by 12-year-old Billy. Soon Daniel discovers that Billy, who Stocking rescued from a drunken, ne'er-do-well of a father, is actually a girl in disguise. The three travel and work odd jobs until they find a place in a traveling circus, where Daniel's skills with horses and ponies, whose anatomical and behavioral scars he can mend, prove to be quite a boon. 

Meanwhile, obstinate and headstrong Billy learns tragic news about the family she has left behind.  - BookList Review

Call # YA  BARKER, M.P.

Winning What You Want May Cost Everything You Love

The Winner's Curse

Book #1 Winner's Trilogy

by Marie Rutkoski

As a general’s daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, seventeen-year-old Kestrel has two choices: she can join the military or get married. 

But Kestrel has other intentions. 

One day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in a young slave up for auction. Arin’s eyes seem to defy everything and everyone. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him—with unexpected consequences.

 It’s not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin. But he, too, has a secret, and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for a fellow human is much higher than she ever could have imagined.

Call # YA RUTKOSKI, MARIE

A Boy with a Golden Arm...

The Pitcher

by William Hazelgrove

13 year-old Ricky Hernandez has a 75 mph pitch and dreams of making the freshman baseball team.  His first step toward a professional career. 

He's dyslexic, of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, and is ceaselessly taunted by his peers, led by a kid named Eric with an inside track to making the team. 

While most of Ricky's teammates can afford sports camp and private lessons, Ricky and his mother are broke due to his abusive father's lack of financial support and his mother's mounting medical bills. Despite her deteriorating health, 

she has loads of attitude, brains, and charm.

 She single-handedly persuades their neighbor, "The Pitcher," who played in the World Series, to set aside his beer, leave his garage, and coach Ricky.

Call # YA HAZELGROVE, WILLIAM

Ready for an Intense Survival Story?

The Living 

by Matt De La Pena

 Shy Espinoza's summer gig working on a luxury cruise ship is not going as planned. On his first voyage, he witnesses a suicide up-close and personal; now he's having nightmares, and a mysterious man  wants to know what the dead man told Shy before went into into the ocean. 

Back in California, Shy's nephew has been diagnosed with the mysterious, border-jumping disease that killed his grandmother. 

Then, in the wake of a massive environmental catastrophe, Shy struggles to survive in a waterlogged life raft with Addie, a spoiled rich girl. 

What follows only deepens the mystery about the events battering Shy's life!

It's Here!!

What if your whole world was a lie?

What if a single revelation -- like a single choice -- changed everything?

What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?

 The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered--fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal.

 So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she's known,

 Tris is ready. 

But will she be prepared to face impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice and love?

Call # YA ROTH, VERONICA

Series Finale

The conclusion to the "Life As We Knew It" series

Four years ago, a meteor crashed into the moon, altering the Earth's gravity; the world is an ever-bleaker place.

 Seventeen-year-old Jon Evans, the younger brother of Miranda, lives with his stepmother and half brother in an enclave called Sexton.

After countless natural disasters and proliferating disease, humanity is now plagued by rigidly cruel class stratification, in which a person is either a respected "claver" or a disdained "grub," a system so ingrained that Jon struggles to understand whether or not he thinks it is right.

Jon is aware that, in this new safe-town in which he lives, a missed goal, a careless word, even falling in love, can jeopardize his life and even Miranda's life, though she lives outside the walls of Sexton.

Can Jon risk doing what is right in a world

 gone so terribly wrong?

Call #  YA PFEFFER, SUSAN BETH 

Pretty Girls = Mean Girls?

Faye:  "Girls who are pretty have a way of looking down their perfect noses at anyone they feel isn't worthy of sharing the air with them. They have a way of making regular girls like me feel inferior for not winning the gene pool lottery. Tormenting them is my way of getting even.

"Everyone knows that pretty equals mean, and Evelyn Ryder used to be a beautiful movie star--never mind that it was practically a lifetime ago. There's no time limit on mean. So if you think I feel guilty about mugging her, think again."

In 1984, 14-year-old Faye lives with her volatile and overworked mother (an immigrant from the Caribbean island of Dominica) near Prospect Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., where nice and not-so-nice neighborhoods rub shoulders. 

Faye and two of her friends occasionally mug "pretty, stuck-up girls with loads of extra cash in their pockets," seeing it as a way to put them in their place.

But when they rob Evelyn, an 80-year-old former film star, and injure her, Faye decides that she's gone too far.

Faye and Evelyn, both lonely in their own ways, develop an unexpected friendship, connecting over Evelyn's secrets and regrets, and the drama Faye endures with friends and at home. 

Call # YA BLYTHE, CAROLITA

OMG! It's SOOO unfair!

On her 18th birthday, spoiled party girl Lexington Larrabee learns that her days of making tabloid headlines may be at an end when her ever-absent father decides she must learn some values by working a different, low-wage job every week for a year or forfeit her multimillion-dollar trust fund.

 Does Lexi learn a lesson?