After Marcus Cornelius Primus’s father is murdered and his mother kidnapped and enslaved, Marcus is forced to fight as a gladiator, enduring years of brutal training while he secretly plots to avenge his father’s death and rescue his mother.
Intermediate (ages 9-14)
Material appropriate for intermediate age groups
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll & Mademoiselle Odile (A Shadow Sisters Novel)
In this prequel to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” set in 1870s Paris during the Prussian siege, an orphaned sixteen-year-old girl whose knowledge of witchcraft includes transformation spells meets a young medical doctor from London.
Michael at the Invasion of France 1943
When the Nazis invade Paris, Michael, a thirteen-year- old French-American, wants to be a part of the Resistance. Starting small, vandalizing Nazi propaganda and refusing to hail Hitler, Michael works his way into the full-blown Resistance, escorting American aviators to safe zones and delivering important spy documents. But when an injured pilot needs help to escape France, will Michael be brave enough to complete the mission? With historical notes, time lines, and maps to augment the page-turning action, it’s easy to see why School Library Journal says Boys of Wartime “will appeal to history buffs and reluctant readers alike.”
The Katerina Trilogy Vol. I: The Gathering Storm
St. Petersburg, Russia, 1888. As she attends a whirl of glittering balls, royal debutante Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg, tries to hide a dark secret: she can raise the dead. No one knows. Not her family. Not the girls at her finishing school. Not the tsar or anyone in her aristocratic circle. Katerina considers her talent a curse, not a gift. But when she uses her special skill to protect a member of the Imperial Family, she finds herself caught in a web of intrigue. An evil presence is growing within Europe’s royal bloodlines-and those aligned with the darkness threaten to topple the tsar. Suddenly Katerina’s strength as a necromancer attracts attention from unwelcome sources . . . including two young men-George Alexandrovich, the tsar’s standoffish middle son, who needs Katerina’s help to safeguard Russia, even if he’s repelled by her secret, and the dashing Prince Danilo, heir to the throne of Montenegro, to whom Katerina feels inexplicably drawn. The time has come for Katerina to embrace her power, but which side will she choose-and to whom will she give her heart?
Sardine in Outer Space 2
The red-headed space heroine is back! This time, the evil Supermuscleman has developed a device for controlling children-a brainwashing machine! It’s up to Sardine, Little Louie, and Captain Yellow Shoulder to keep him from using it. This installment of twelve more stories is filled with even more strange creatures-including a space Santa Claus, pesky flies that plant annoying music in their victims’ ears, intergalactic yogurt thieves, and little monster carpet salesmen who live on a fully-carpeted comet.
Teens in Russia
The Russian Federation has been an independent country since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. For Russian teenagers, this change has presented many opportunities. At school, teens are learning about a history that the communist government tried to hide. In their free time, they are learning to express themselves in ways their parents were not allowed. Teens in Russia is part of Global Connections, a series that uncovers the challenges, pastimes, and customs of teens around the world.
Puppet
A heartbreaking episode in history, explained through the story of a young servant girl in the late 1800s. The year is 1882. A young servant girl named Esther disappears from a small Hungarian village. Several Jewish men from the village of Tisza Eszvar face the ‘blood libel’ — the centuries-old calumny that Jews murder Christian children for their blood. A fourteen-year-old Jewish boy named Morris Scharf becomes the star witness of corrupt authorities who coerce him into testifying against his fellow Jews, including his own father, at the trial.
This powerful fictionalized account of one of the last blood libel trial in Europe is told through the eyes of Julie, a friend of the murdered Esther, and a servant at the jail where Morris is imprisoned. Julie is no stranger to suffering herself. An abused child, when her mother dies her alcoholic father separates her from her beloved baby sister. Julie and Morris, bound by the tragedy of the times, become unlikely allies. The novel is based upon a real court case that took place in Hungary in 1883. In Hungary today, the name Morris Scharf has become synonymous with “traitor.”
Beneath A Meth Moon
Laurel Daneau has moved on to a new life, in a new town, but inside she’s still reeling from the loss of her beloved mother and grandmother after Hurricane Katrina washed away their home. Laurel’s new life is going well, with a new best friend, a place on the cheerleading squad and T-Boom, co-captain of the basketball team, for a boyfriend. Yet Laurel is haunted by voices and memories from her past.
When T-Boom introduces Laurel to meth, she immediately falls under its spell, loving the way it erases, even if only briefly, her past. But as she becomes alienated from her friends and family, she becomes a shell of her former self, and longs to be whole again. With help from an artist named Moses and her friend Kaylee, she’s able to begin to rewrite her story and start to move on from her addiction.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 3
The Wild Book
Fefa struggles with words. She has word blindness, or dyslexia, and the doctor says she will never read or write. Every time she tries, the letters jumble and spill off the page, leaping and hopping away like bullfrogs. How will she ever understand them? But her mother has an idea. She gives Fefa a blank book filled with clean white pages. “Think of it as a garden,” she says. Soon Fefa starts to sprinkle words across the pages of her wild book. She lets her words sprout like seedlings, shaky at first, then growing stronger and surer with each new day. And when her family is threatened, it is what Fefa has learned from her wild book that saves them.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 3
The Great Wall Of Lucy Wu
Eleven-year-old aspiring basketball star and interior designer Lucy Wu is excited about finally having her own bedroom, until she learns that her great-aunt is coming to visit and Lucy will have to share a room with her for several months, shattering her plans for a perfect sixth-grade year.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 3