Young Adult (ages 14-18)

Material appropriate for young adults

Kit’s Wilderness

“It was very deep, Kit. Very dark. And every one of us was scared of it. As a lad I’d wake up trembling, knowing that as a Watson born in Stoneygate I’d soon be following my ancestors into the pit,” so Kit’s grandfather tells him.The Watson family moves to Stoneygate, an old coal-mining town, to care for Kit’s recently widowed grandfather. When Kit meets John Askew, another boy whose family had both worked and died in the mines, Askew invites Kit to join him to play a game called Death. As Kit’s grandfather provides stories of the mine’s past and the history of the Watson family, the boys search the mines to find the childhood ghosts of their long-gone ancestors. Written in haunting prose and lyrical language, Kit’s Wilderness explores the bonds of family from one generation to the next, and how from the depths of darkness, meaning and beauty can be revealed.

Wendy

In early twentieth-century London, before Wendy encounters Peter Pan, she is not the perfect girl her parents would like her to be. Intrepid, outspoken, and willful, she’s always getting into trouble. One evening, confined to the nursery by her horrible nanny, she sneaks out to spy on her parents’ glamorous parties. She sees her father kiss another woman and finds herself pulled into an adult world of mysteries and lies. What Wendy sees changes her life forever and triggers a series of confusing adventures as she tries to solve the mysteries that lie at the heart of her family. This compelling story re-creates the lifestyle of the privileged classes of the early twentieth century in the world that shaped Wendy’s life before she met Peter Pan.

Mariah Mundi: The Midas Box

The Prince Regent is no ordinary hotel—powered entirely by steam, run by an eccentric inventor who doesn’t believe in sleep, it’s a place full of shadowy characters and dangerous secrets. Mariah has just started working there as a magician’s assistant, and when he and his coworker Sacha unwittingly learn more than they were meant to know, they suddenly find themselves pawns in an evil plot so full of twists and turns that even the labyrinth of hidden tunnels and caverns beneath the hotel can’t contain it. As they struggle to unravel the mystery and stay alive in the process, encountering secret rooms, enchanted objects and vicious mythical creatures, they question whom to trust. All the adults—even the ones offering help—seem to be hiding something. After all, Mariah only got his job because his predecessor vanished one night—and, as Mariah is fast realizing, not all magic tricks are illusions.

Tonight, by Sea

Seek life. Chache Lavi. That’s what Paulie’s uncle says they must do. But to seek life, Paulie and her family have to leave Haiti-the only home that Paulie has ever known. Since forever, Paulie has run in and out of the little houses nestled under the palms, smelling cocoa-bread and playing on the beach with her best friend Karyl. But now the little houses are gone. Their wood has been made into boats-boats used to escape Haiti.Paulie wants to stay and fight-to change Haiti into a better place to live. She wants to talk to the reporters and bravely tell the truth, like Karyl’s brother, Jean-Desir. But the macoutes come with their guns and knives to stop them. And they do something so terrible that Paulie must face the truth: before the soldiers come back, they must all leave-tonight, by sea.

Wildly Romantic: The English Romantic Poets: The Mad, the Bad, and the Dangerous

Meet the rebellious young poets who brought about a literary revolution. Rock stars may think they invented sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but the Romantic poets truly created the mold. In the early 1800s, poetry could land a person in jail. Those who tried to change the world through their poems risked notoriety—or courted it. Among the most subversive were a group of young writers known as the Romantics: Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Cole-ridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats. These rebels believed poetry should express strong feelings in ordinary language, and their words changed literature forever.

Mystery of the Ancient Maya

Explores the advanced civilization and unsolved mysteries of the Maya who reigned for over 2000 years and then disappeared.

The Shadow Speaker

Niger, West Africa, 2070: After fifteen-year old Ejii witnesses her father’s beheading, her world shatters. In an era of mind-blowing technology and seductive magic, Ejii embarks on a mystical journey to track down her father’s killer. With a newfound friend by her side, Ejii comes face to face with an earth turned inside out–and with her own magical powers. But Ejii soon discovers that her travels across the sands of the Sahara have a greater purpose. Her people need to be protected from a force seeking to annihilate them. And Ejii may be just the hero to do it. This futuristic, fantastical adventure heralds a bright new talent on the YA fantasy scene.

Walk the Dark Streets

A girl’s escape from Nazi Germany.The city Eva Bentheim once adored is no longer familiar. A swastika is emblazoned on the flag atop the City Hall. Teachers, family, and friends are beginning to disappear. Her father seems gone in a different way; he has become ill, fragile, and despondent as the Nazis gain power. When things get worse, Eva’s mother desperately tries to obtain the proper papers for her family to leave the country. Then a horrible night of roundups occurs and Eva’s father is taken away. A nocturnal search begins for someone who can help release him from the city jail. Eva’s boyfriend, Arno, may have a way to save her father from deportation, but it soon becomes clear that their struggles have just begun. Exquisitely felt and written, Walk the Dark Streets resonates with the indomitability of the human spirit even as a loving family’s attempts to stay together grow more and more hopeless.

Baer’s previous novel, A Frost in the Night, relates earlier episodes in the lives of the family in Walk the Dark Streets.

A Thief in the House of Memory

Six years ago, when Declan Steeple was 10 and his sister was just a baby, his mother, Lindy, disappeared, searching for something better than the dusty family estate with its generations of clutter and memory. Now the Steeples live in a modern split-level down the hill from the Big House, but the mansion is still there, filled with a past that hides secrets. When a local man is found dead in the house, memories of Lindy and her unhappiness living there suddenly become a pressing weight on Dec, compounded by the fact that he and his sister were the ones to discover the body. The teen feels lost and suspicious; his father seems to be hiding something and Dec realizes how much has never been discussed.