Twelve-year-old Nettie’s sheltered and privileged life changes after her beloved tutor mysteriously disappears and Nettie, aided by the son of a household employee, begins to learn the truth about her father, whose wealth began with trafficking in illegal aliens.
Ten stories that follow themes of life changes includes a girl discovery a painful secret about an older brother, a girl who falls in love with an older man, a character who realizes human potential, and more. By the author of The Leaving.
Marty Black has retreated from a difficult family situation into the area she can best control, her own appetites. She may not be able to control her parents’ behavior, but she can decide what she will and will not eat. Eventually, she stops eating altogether. Marty is close to death when she finally asks for help and finds herself in a psychiatric institution. But recognizing her need for help is only the first tenuous step on a long road to recovery. Marty’s ability to find a way to live, despite the powerful lure of anorexia, is the core of this novel.
In the quiet of Hog’s Hollow, each member of the River family pursues a dream. Old Man River sets out to build a fallout shelter in case the war in Vietnam “brings the end of everything;” his wife Flo, who collects Gone with the Wind dolls, attempts to pen her own Southern saga; Beau, their older son, suffers from “space fever” and aspires to be an astronaut. As for Danny, the younger River boy, well, he just dreams of having a dog. Then in the spring of 1965 tragedy befalls the Rivers–a tragedy that makes the Old Man wish he’d never started building the shelter, stops Flo from finishing her bestseller, and leaves Beau grounded rather than airborne. But the tragedy does finally bring a dog into Danny’s life. And not just any old dog. Danny comes to believe that the mixed-breed stray embodies the spirit of someone he dearly loves. He won’t allow anyone to separate him from the dog, not even after it bites the neighborhood bully and the police are sent to take it away. Together Danny and his dog run off, heading toward Cape Caneveral, where the Gemini missions blast off from, and where dreams come true.
Shortlisted for Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book of the Year Award 2007 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award nominee 2007 Saskatchewan Young Readers’ Choice Willow Awards nominee Canadian Children’s Book Centre Our Choice Starred Selection White Pine nominee, 2007 McNally Robinson announced that Wild Orchid was one of the top five best selling books in Saskatechewan in 2006. Taylor Jane Simon is 18 years old and spending the summer with her mother in Prince Albert National Park. The holiday has been planned so Taylor’s mother can spend time with her latest boyfriend, Danny, and work in the pizza restaurant near the park that Danny runs. Taylor would just as soon stay at home in Saskatoon, but because she suffers from an autistic condition called Asperger’s Syndrome, she can’t stay on her own. Taylor’s mother encourages her daughter to explore the park’s possibilities on her own. For Taylor, whose life experience has been seriously limited, this means facing the test of meeting new people who work in the park’s nature center – and facing it alone. Summer also holds out the possibility of finding her own boyfriend, though Taylor isn’t quite sure what that may involve. What she discovers will change her life forever. Written as an epistolary novel, Wild Orchid is frank but optimistic, literal yet innocent. A courageous wit attends Taylor’s gradual emergence as her own person, and the reader will find the exploration of Taylor’s mind a revealing and heartwarming encounter.
After Odella’s mother leaves her, her sisters, and their father in Manitoba and moves to Iceland with another man, she then dies there, and the family finally learns some of the many secrets that have haunted them for two generations.
In 1989, when fifteen-year-old Jude’s mother wins a Fulbright fellowship to study art in Czechoslovakia, the family postpones a planned move to Utah to join her, but the political situation and the move itself are too much for Jude, who is overwhelmed by a previously undiagnosed psychological disorder.
Justin Case is convinced fate has in for him. And he’s right. After finding his younger brother teetering on the edge of his balcony, 15-year-old David Case realizes the fragility of life and senses impending doom. Without looking back, he changes his name to Justin and assumes a new identity, new clothing and new friends, and dares to fall in love with the seductive Agnes Day. With his imaginary dog Boy in tow, Justin struggles to fit into his new role and above all, to survive in a world where tragedy is around every corner. He’s got to be prepared, just in case.
Pilot-in-training Matt Cruse and Kate de Vries, expert on high-altitude life-forms, are invited aboard the Starclimber, a vessel that literally climbs its way into the cosmos. Before they even set foot aboard the ship, catastrophe strikes: Kate announces she is engaged—and not to Matt. Despite this bombshell, Matt and Kate embark on their journey into space, but soon the ship is surrounded by strange and unsettling life-forms, and the crew is forced to combat devastating mechanical failure. For Matt, Kate, and the entire crew of the Starclimber, what began as an exciting race to the stars has now turned into a battle to save their lives. Award-winning and bestselling author Kenneth Oppel brings us back to a rich world of flight and fantasy in this breathtaking new sequel to Airborn and Skybreaker.
The author of So Far from the Bamboo Grove continues her semi-autobiographical fiction, describing the hardships, poverty, tragedies, and struggles of life for her and her two older brother and sister, living in post-World War II (1947) Japan.