Outlaw

The children of Britain’s ambassador to Burkina Faso, fifteen-year-old Jake, who loves technology and adventure, and thirteen-year-old Kas, a budding social activist, are abducted and spend time in the Sahara desert with Yakuuba Sor, who some call a terrorist but others consider a modern-day Robin Hood.

Fish in the Sky

Josh Stephenson’s thirteenth year starts with a baffling sequence of events, including an odd gift from his estranged father, the arrival of his flirty seventeen-year-old female cousin, locker-room teasing about certain embarrassing anatomical changes, and wondering if dreams of love can ever come true.

Somebody’s Girl

Martha knows she is adopted, but she’s okay with that, at least until her mother gets pregnant. Suddenly she’s no longer number one. She picks fights with her closest friends and, to make matters worse, she is forced to do a school project about sturgeon with Chance, an oddball boy in her class. When Martha’s birth mother announces that she is getting married and moving away, a lonely and confused Martha realizes that she needs to figure out a way to be a better friend and daughter, and an even better sister.

Out of the Box

Life is smoothest for thirteen-year-old Ellie when she keeps her opinions to herself, gets good grades and speaks carefully when her parents ask her to settle their arguments. She feels guilty that she welcomes the chance to spend the summer in another city with her mother’s older sister, Jeanette. Ellie makes a new friend and learns to play an Argentine instrument called the bandoneón, which she finds in her aunt’s basement. When she goes searching for the bandoneón’s original owner, she discovers a story of political intrigue and family secrets that help her start to figure out where her parents end and she begins.

The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen

Thirteen-year-old Henry’s happy, ordinary life comes to an abrupt halt when his older brother, Jesse, picks up their father’s hunting rifle and leaves the house one morning. What follows shatters Henry’s family, who are forced to resume their lives in a new city, where no one knows their past. When Henry’s therapist suggests he keep a journal, at first he is resistant. But soon he confides in it at all hours of the day and night.

In spite of Henry’s desire to “fly under the radar,” he eventually befriends a number of oddball character, both at school and in his modest apartment building. And even though they know nothing about his past–at least, not yet–they help him navigate the waters of life after “IT.”

One White Dolphin

When a baby albino dolphin caught in old fishing netting washes ashore, Paralympics sailing hopeful Felix and English school girl Kara work with veterinarians and specialists to save and reunite the dolphin with her mother, setting off a chain of events that might just save the reef from the environmental effects of proposed dredging.