Murder

Kiss of Death

Scarlett thought Dan McAndrew’s murder was long behind her, but when she and her classmates arrive in Edinburgh for a weeklong field trip, she’s startled to be joined by her old St. Tabby’s cohorts–and enemies–who are visiting the area on a field trip as well. Even more startling, Callum, Dan’s surviving twin, is in the area–and his cold treatment leaves Scarlett wondering what’s changed, especially when a series of attacks makes her believe that someone’s out to get her for her past mistakes. Would Callum ever hurt her, though? And what’s Scarlett to make of her conflicting feelings for Callum, now that Jase isn’t around? Even more upsetting, why is her most trusted confidante, Taylor, acting distant and dismissive?

Jasper Jones

Charlie Bucktin, a bookish thirteen year old, is startled one summer night by an urgent knock on his bedroom window. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in their small mining town, and he has come to ask for Charlie’s help. Terribly afraid but desperate to impress, Charlie follows him into the night.Jasper takes him to his secret glade, where Charlie witnesses Jasper’s horrible discovery. With his secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion. He locks horns with his tempestuous mother, falls nervously in love, and battles to keep a lid on his zealous best friend. In the simmering summer where everything changes, Charlie learns why the truth of things is so hard to know, and even harder to hold in his heart.

Death Cloud

It is the summer of 1868, and Sherlock Holmes is fourteen. On break from boarding school, he is staying with eccentric strangers—his uncle and aunt—in their vast house in Hampshire. When two local people die from symptoms that resemble the plague, Holmes begins to investigate what really killed them, helped by his new tutor, an American named Amyus Crowe. So begins Sherlock’s true education in detection, as he discovers the dastardly crimes of a brilliantly sinister villain of exquisitely malign intent.  

The Killer’s Tears

On the afternoon when Angel Allegria arrives at the Poloverdos’ farmhouse, he kills the farmer and his wife. But he spares their child, Paolo, a young boy who will claim this as the day on which he was born. Together the killer and the boy begin a new life on this remote and rugged stretch of land in Chile. Then Luis Secunda, a well-to-do and educated fellow from the city descends upon them. Paolo is caught in the paternal rivalry between the two men. But life resumes its course, until circumstances force the three to leave the farm. In doing so, Angel and Luis confront their pasts as well as their inevitable destinies; destinies that profoundly shape Paolo’s own future.

Hamlet

The Dane as never seen before — in a daring, dazzling, sexy prose retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy by best-selling author John Marsden.Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, but Hamlet can’t be sure what’s causing the stench. His rage at his mother’s infidelities — together with his greed for the sensual Ophelia and his dead father’s call to revenge a “murder most foul” — have his mind in chaos, and he wants to scatter his traitorous uncle’s insides across the fields. But was it really his father’s ghost that night on the ramparts, or a hell-fiend sent to trick him? “Action is hot,” he tells Ophelia, who lives shut up in a tower with her longings and lust. “Action is courage, and reflection is cowardly. Picking up the knife has the colors of truth. As soon as I hesitate. . . .” In this dark, erotically charged, beautifully crafted novel, John Marsden brings one of Shakespeare’s most riveting characters to full-blooded life in a narrative of intense psychological complexity.

Angel’s Gate

When a gold digger is murdered in Kimmy’s small Australian town, one of the man’s wild children comes to live in Kimmy’s home, and the two children build a friendship that will change them both.

Puppet

The year is 1882. A young servant girl named Esther disappears from a small Hungarian village. Several Jewish men from the village of Tisza Eszvar face the ‘blood libel’ — the centuries-old belief that Jews murder Christian children for their blood. A fourteen-year-old Jewish boy named Morris Scharf becomes the star witness of corrupt authorities who coerce him into testifying against his fellow Jews, including his own father, at the trial.

This fictionalized account of one of the last blood libel trial in Europe is told through the eyes of Julie, a friend of the murdered Esther, and a servant at the jail where Morris is imprisoned. Julie is no stranger to suffering herself: abused by her alcoholic father and separated from her beloved baby sister, she is as bound up in the tragedy of the times as is Morris. The book is based upon a real court case that took place in Hungary in 1883. In Hungary today, the name Morris Scharf has become synonymous with “traitor.”

Basilisk

This evocative story of greed, power, and deception sweeps from the underground cave network of the Combers, living like spiders among the endless tunnels and ropes, to the beautiful city inhabited by Abovers. When a young man named Rej discovers the body of a murdered Abover in the combes, their worlds begin to draw closer. He swears vengeance for the murdered man and takes a great risk in going above. There he is placed in the care of Donna, a beautiful young woman trapped in her life as a worker. Food and clothing are rationed, while slaves and workers are forced to live in meager barracks. But Rej and Donna have more in common than a miserable existence; they have weirdly identical dreams of dragons flying in a clear blue sky. They are even more surprised to learn that the city’s cruel leader, the Arkel, is determined to find a way to bring just such dreams to life in order to literally scare the population to death. The connection Rej and Donna make leads them on a dramatic adventure to save their loved ones from the Arkel’s terrifying plans. N. M. Browne has created an unforgettable world in this richly layered narrative.

The Boy In The Burning House

Two years after his father’s mysterious disappearance, Jim Hawkins is coping — barely. Underneath, he’s frozen in uncertainty and grief. What did happen to his father? Is he dead or just gone? Then Jim meets Ruth Rose. Moody, provocative, she’s the bad-girl stepdaughter of Father Fisher, Jim’s father’s childhood friend and the town pastor, and she shocks Jim out of his stupor when she tells him her stepfather is a murderer. “Don’t you want to know who he murdered?” she asks. Jim doesn’t. Ruth Rose is clearly crazy — a sixteen-year-old misfit. Yet something about her fierce conviction pierces Jim’s shell. He begins to burn with a desire for the truth, until it becomes clear that it may be more unsettling than he can bear. What is the real meaning of the strange prayers Father Fisher intones behind the door of his private sanctuary? Why does Ruth Rose suddenly disappear? And what really happened thirty years ago when a boy died in a burning house?