Good Books

The honest and compelling story of a young girl's newfound independence, from her entrance into a new country to her frightening involvement in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911.

Bobby is your classic urban teenaged boy -- impulsive, eager, restless. On his sixteenth birthday he gets some news from his girlfriend, Nia, that changes his life forever. She's pregnant. Bobby's going to be a father. Suddenly things like school and house parties and hanging with friends no longer seem important as they're replaced by visits to Nia's obstetrician and a social worker who says that the only way for Nia and Bobby to lead a normal life is to put their baby up for adoption.

With powerful language and keen insight, Johnson looks at the male side of teen pregnancy as she delves into one young man's struggle to figure out what "the right thing" is and then to do it. No matter what the cost.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling story of two brothers who leave Cuba for New York in the late 1940s and experience a few years of fame as the Mambo Kings. The world of Cuban émigrés in post-war New York is vividly evoked in this melancholy, but beautiful novel.

Can honesty be the worst policy?

Bernadette Terrell has always known the right thing to do. Not the most popular girl in school, her focus has always been on academic, not social, success. When her favorite teacher names her to Wickham High School's state championship quiz bowl team, she believes that she has reached the pinnacle of her high school academic career. However, her elation quickly fades as she begins to suspect that perhaps someone cheated to get Wickham into the contest and is cheating still.

In her search for answers, Bernadette must contend with a situation that isn't black and white, where a community's hope, hard work, and pride are on the line. Is a team -- and a school -- implicated by one person's behavior?

Cappo's blend of suspense and humor makes Cheating Lessons a riveting story about right and wrong -- and the downside of trust.

Kate Sterling has lost four years of her life to grief and anger. Zeke Dexter has lost four years of his life as well -- in jail for the accident that killed Kate's mother. Just out of prison, Zeke wants to put the past behind him, but a freak blizzard makes him a prisoner once again -- he of Kate, and Kate of him.

Kate fears she will never be able to overcome the anger that has consumed her since her mother's death. But is Zeke the only one Kate needs to forgive?

When Naomi was a young child living in Vancouver, British Columbia, her mother left to visit relatives in Japan. Soon after, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Naomi's mother was not allowed to return and Naomi's family was "relocated" by the Canadian government. When Obasan begins, Naomi is thirty-five, a woman determined to ignore her past. But the death of the man who helped raise her and her aunt's who refusal to forgive the Canadian government force Naomi to remember. Naomi's initial memories are of a big house with a backyard and a father who loved music, of handcrafted boats and communal baths with her great-aunt. Then the memories shift and she remembers families divided, chicken coops assigned as "houses," parents dying away from their children, and a government that took away rights based on ethnic heritage, not actions. Obasan uses a combination of personal narrative, lyrical outpourings, official letters, and dreams to protest the treatment of Japanese-Canadians duri

Tripped in class, mooned in the hall, cola poured through the slats in his locker, spitballs stuck in his hair--how much more can Paul Richmond take at his super-snobby private school, expensive Gate-Bicknell Christian? Paul is there free because his mom works in the guidance office, but that fact makes him an instant outcast, his only friend a funny-looking, independent girl named Binky. Even worse off is David Blanco, whose mom is a cafeteria lady and whose father is the janitor. The jocks hound him unmercifully, even killing his dog. When Paul goes to David's house to offer sympathy, David rejects him angrily, saying "You'll be next." Binky, too, tries to explain the cruelty of the rich kids who surround them, but Paul yearns to be accepted anyway. So when cool, elegant, and charismatic Charlie Good asks for his help in computer lab, Paul is eager to comply, and later, when Charlie and his henchmen, Meat and St. John, come for him in the night for a game of mailbox baseball,

This novel about a black family living in St. Louis in 1957 centers on Betsey, 13, who is restless, wants to "be somebody" and is being bused to a white school. Her mother and grandmother oppose and her father supports integration. When the father plans to take Betsey and her siblings to demonstrate against a racist hotel, the mother leaves home. PW stated that "by depicting and personalizing the racial tensions of the 1950s through the lives of appealing characters, Shange has produced a memorable, quietly powerful book."

Cabot (The Princess Diaries) presents another teen-pleasing novel and another likable heroine in this story set in Washington, D.C. Feisty, red-haired Samantha, a self-described "urban rebel" who has dyed all of her clothes black, is a 15-year-old middle child, uncomfortably wedged between her popular, cheerleader older sister, Lucy, and her brainy 11-year-old sister, Rebecca. And she has a major crush on Jack, Lucy's nonconformist artist boyfriend, whom she feels is far better suited to her than to her rather vacuous sister. The entertainingly opinionated narrator's wry top-10 lists add considerably to the tale's charm and speedy pacing, among them, the "top ten reasons why I can't stand my sister Lucy" and the "top ten signs that Jack loves me and not my sister Lucy and just hasn't realized it yet." Sam's life suddenly changes dramatically when, while standing on the sidewalk one afternoon, she foils an attempt to assassinate the President. She becomes a national hero overnight

Ashes of Roses

The honest and compelling story of a young girl's newfound independence, from her entrance into a new country to her frightening involvement in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911.