Material appropriate for young adults
Faten’s happy life in her village comes to an abrupt end when her father arranges for her to work as a servant for a wealthy Beirut family with two spoiled daughters. What does a bright, ambitious seventeen-year-old do when she is suddenly deprived of her friends, family, education and freedom? Could the mysterious, wealthy young man who lives in the next apartment building help?
See the review at WOW Review, Volume VI, Issue 3
Traces the efforts of Dr. Paul Farmer to transform healthcare on a global scale, documenting his visits to some of the world’s most impoverished regions and the unconventional methods that enabled him to improve and save lives.
It’s New Zealand, 1914, and the biggest war has just broken out in Europe. William eagerly enlists for the army but his younger brother, Edmund, is a conscientious objector and refuses to fight. While William trains to be a soldier, Edmund is arrested. Both brothers will end up on the bloody battlefields of France, but their journeys there are very different. And what they experience at the front line will challenge the beliefs that led them there.
School is out forever, and Tiff is hoping her job at the local paper will lead to something more… But ‘The Shark’ soon puts her straight on what it takes to become a hard-nosed reporter like him. At home, Reggie – the only grandad she’s ever known – has quit the smokes and diagnosed himself as cactus. Then her best friend, Kayla, hits her with some big news. And into all this stumbles Davey, the first boy who really wants to know her. Tiff is smart with words and rarely does tears, but in one short week she discovers that words don’t always get you there and don’t let you say all the stuff from deep in your heart. A funny, poignant, heartwarming story of first love, first job, friends, family and the inevitability of change in the first summer out of school.
Featured in Volume VI, Issue 2 of WOW Review.
Thrown hard on the bottom boards, I stared up at distorted mouths, faces so red I could feel their heat. They stank of rage and of something else; several frothed at the mouth; their howls drowned the clatter and shriek of gulls swerving and tilting above the mast. Banishment is the cruellest punishment, and Selene is being driven out unjustly by her own people. Set in a New Zealand both recognisable and strangely different, CALLING THE GODS is a novel for older readers, a story of violence, love, and courage, of leadership and betrayal, of the extraordinary human ability to adapt and survive, a tale of a young woman’s heroic persistence against impossible odds.
Featured in Volume VI, Issue 2 of WOW Review.
Another terrifying sci-fi page-turner from the author of The Tomorrow Code!Las Vegas is gone—destroyed in a terrorist attack. Black Hawk helicopters patrol the skies over New York City. And immersive online gaming is the most dangerous street drug around. In this dystopic near-future, technology has leapt forward once again, and neuro-headsets have replaced computer keyboards. Just slip on a headset, and it’s the Internet at the speed of thought.For teen hacker Sam Wilson, a headset is a must. But as he becomes familiar with the new technology, he has a terrifying realization. If anything on his computer is vulnerable to a hack, what happens when his mind is linked to the system? Could consciousness itself be hijacked? Before he realizes what’s happened, Sam’s incursion against the world’s largest telecommunications company leads him to the heart of the nation’s cyberdefense network and brings him face to face with a terrifying and unforeseen threat.Brian Falkner, author of The Tomorrow Code, has created an action-packed and thought-provoking science fiction adventure in which a brilliant young computer hacker fights to prevent the human race from being deleted.Fans of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and M. T. Anderson’s Feed will love this high-octane techno thriller.
When sixteen-year-old Canny of the Pacific island, Southland, sets out on a trip with her stepbrother and his girlfriend, she finds herself drawn into enchanting Zarene Valley where the mysterious but dark seventeen-year-old Ghislain helps her to figure out her origins.
“What do you want from me?” he asks. What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him. More. Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn’t a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs is back in town, moody stares and all. In this absorbing story by Melina Marchetta, nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor tries to work out the connection between her mother dumping her, Hannah finding her then and her sudden departure now, a mysterious stranger who once whispered something in her ear, a boy in her dreams, five kids who lived on Jellicoe Road eighteen years ago, and the maddening and magnetic Jonah Griggs, who knows her better than she thinks he does. If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future.
To rescue her homeland from tyranny, Neryn must seek out the powerful Guardians to complete her training as a Caller.
Performing community service for pulling a stupid prank against a rival high school, soccer star Tom tutors a Somali refugee with soccer dreams of his own.