Material appropriate for young adults
Written in Arabic. 14 secrets are shared by a mother and her daughter with each secret told in a short story. Each secret is told twice, switching between the mother’s and daughter’s voices in a feminine revelation. They both share their thoughts about some daily life event that every mother and daughter goes through. The secrets they share are from the heart of the Saudi society.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 3.
Mama Nsoso knows her chicks need a warm new house, but each day when they set out to collect sticks and mud she is distracted by good things to eat, while Little Chick stays busy gathering the building materials himself.
What if you awakened one day and realized your parents were part of unspeakable evil? Do you turn away from them and therefore yourself? The unique coming of age story of Liesel and her preoccupation with finding her neighbor’s son is extremely eventful and takes the reader from postwar Germany to England, Africa and the United States. It explores interconnectedness between victim and perpetrator and touches on universal themes of family, forgiveness, guilt and justice. This candid account of a family’s history combined with a flawed protagonist’s sexual history will strike deep emotional responses in a thoughtful reader.
Black, white, and everything in between . . . Through poems, interviews, and short essays, a group of young people describe being biracial, multiracial, or of mixed race. These poignant firsthand accounts reflect the unique and varied voices of the writers, whose backgrounds range from Caribbean, Vietnamese, and Latin American to Native American, Spanish, and Irish, among others. With devastating honesty, these youth tell what it’s been like to make their way in the world with their roots in many places and in many cultures. Themes include navigating mixed-race relationships, dealing with prejudice and the assumptions people make based on appearances, and working through identity confusion to arrive at a strong and positive sense of self. Includes a section with suggestions for parents and caregivers who are raising children of mixed race.
Set in the year 2021, this fantastic YA novel explores the tension between a young woman’s future building infrastructure for Augmented Reality, and the commitment she makes to her dying grandmother to honour ancient Chinese magic. The Geomancer’s Compass imagines a world in the near future while exploring the Chinese immigrant experience and the expanding, elastic and shifting nature of reality.
In England, a beautiful, manipulative teenaged girl affiliated with a group of political anarchists seduces both seventeen-year-old Jamie and his older brother, a wounded veteran of the war in Afghanistan.
After her near-fatal run-in with the Jack the Ripper copycat, Rory Devereaux has been living in Bristol under the close watch of her parents. So when her therapist suddenly suggests she return to Wexford, Rory jumps at the chance to get back to her friends. But Rory’s brush with the Ripper touched her more than she thought possible: she’s become a human terminus, with the power to eliminate ghosts on contact. She soon finds out that the Shades—the city’s secret ghost-fighting police—are responsible for her return. The Ripper may be gone, but now there is a string of new inexplicable deaths threatening London. Rory has evidence that the deaths are no coincidence. Something much more sinister is going on, and now she must convince the squad to listen to her before it’s too late. In this follow-up to the Edgar Award-nominated THE NAME OF THE STAR, Maureen Johnson adds another layer of spectacularly gruesome details to the streets of London that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.
Is it possible to fall in love with someone you’ve never met? Imogen Summers thinks so because it’s happened to her. Immy is a normal eighteen-year-old, with a normal life, a normal family, and a normal boyfriend. But when she finds herself falling for a girl on an Internet message board, a girl she knows only as the mysterious Fickle, her so-called normal life is suddenly turned on its head. As her relationship with Fickle develops into more than just friendship, Immy finds another message board friend, the sweet and lovely Freddie, the perfect person to confide in. But can Freddie stay out of it when she starts to fall for Immy herself? Things are about to get complicated…
Life’s hard for Lia. When Lia wins $8 million in the lottery, suddenly everything is different. However new problems begin for Lia. Resentful girls at school set up a “We Hate Lia” Facebook group . . . with fans in the thousands. Her friend Shazia won’t have anything to do with Lia’s fortune, believing gambling to be immoral. The mother of her other best friend, Jack, is threatening to sue Lia. Raf’s behavior is getting stranger, and Lia wonders whether there’s something to the rumors that he’s . . . potentially paranormal. And when her sister, Natasha, goes missing, Lia begins to wonder if a millionaire lifestyle is all it’s cracked up to be. Will Lia’s fortune create more problems than it solves?