Thursday, November 3, 2016

October/November 2016

The Raven King
by Maggie Stiefvater

All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love's death. She doesn't believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem, but as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.  This is the conclusion of the best selling Raven Cycle books.






The Hired Girls
by Laura Amy Schlitz

Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself--because maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream of--a woman with a future.


Irmina
by Barbara Yelin

In the mid-1930s, Irmina, an ambitious young German, travels to London. There she meets Howard Green, one of the first black students at Oxford. Like Irmina, Howard is looking for an independent existence-and a love affair blossoms between the two outsiders. But the relationship comes to an abrupt end when Irmina, constrained by the political situation in Hitler's Germany, has to return to Berlin. Political events accelerate, and her letters to Howard are returned unopened. It will be 30 years until she receives another. Based on a true story, this moving and perceptive graphic novel conjures the oppressive atmosphere of wartime Germany and reflects on the passive complicity of its people with sympathy and intelligence.



Black Flowers, White Lies
by Yvonne Ventresca

Her father died before she was born, but Ella Benton knows they have a supernatural connection. Since her mother discourages these beliefs, Ella keeps her cemetery visits secret. But she may not be the only one with secrets. Ella's mother might be lying about how Dad died sixteen years ago. Newfound evidence points to his death in a psychiatric hospital, not as a result of a tragic car accident as her mother always claimed. After a lifetime of just the two of them, Mom suddenly feels like a stranger.  When a hand print much like the one Ella left on her father's tombstone mysteriously appears on the bathroom mirror, at first she wonders if Dad is warning her of danger as he did once before. If it's not a warning, could her new too-good-to-be-true boyfriend be responsible for the strange occurrences? Or maybe it's the grieving building superintendent whose dead daughter strongly resembles Ella? As the unexplained events become more frequent and more sinister, Ella becomes terrified about who or what might harm her. Soon the evidence points to someone else entirely: Ella herself. What if, like her father, she's suffering from a breakdown? In this second novel from award-winning author Yvonne Ventresca, Ella desperately needs to find answers, no matter how disturbing the truth might be.


Ashes
by Laurie Halse Anderson

A conclusion to the trilogy that began with Chains, a National Book Award Finalist, follows the Valley Forge escape of Isabel and Curzon, who endeavor to rescue Isabel's enslaved younger sister while outmaneuvering the ruthless Bellingham. As the Revolutionary War rages on, Isabel and Curzon are reported as runaways, and the awful Bellingham is determined to track them down. With purpose and faith, Isabel and Curzon march on, fiercely determined to find Isabel's little sister Ruth, who is enslaved in a Southern state.

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