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2024 Reading Challenge: A coming of age story
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2024 Reading Challenge: A coming of age story
November Book Picks
Top 10 General Fiction Books of 2023
Description
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing...
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English
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Description
1932, Minnesota. The Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O'Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent's wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call...
Author
Series
Westcott novels volume 1
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
"Humphrey Wescott, Earl of Riverdale, has died, leaving behind a fortune and a scandalous secret that will forever alter the lives of everyone in his family--including the daughter no one knew he had.... Anna Snow grew up in an orphanage in Bath, knowingnothing of the family she came from. Now she discovers that the late Earl of Riverdale was her father and that she has inherited his fortune. She is also overjoyed to learn she has siblings. However,...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.7 - AR Pts: 16
Language
English
Description
After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship in the Pacific, one solitary lifeboat remains, carrying a hyena, a zebra, a female orangutan, a Bengal tiger, and a 16-year-old Indian boy named Pi. His story is a dazzling work of imagination that will delight and astound listerners in equal measure. It is a triumph of storytelling and a tale that will as one character puts it, make you believe in God.
Author
Language
English
Description
"In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have fallen sick are quarantined into a separate ward to keep the plague at bay. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders, a woman doctor who is a rumored Rebel, and a teenage girl, Bridie, procured by the nuns from their orphanage as an extra set of hands. At first, this Bridie seems unschooled...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.8 - AR Pts: 13
Language
English
Description
This is the epic story of Frankie Presto - the greatest guitar player who ever lived - and the six lives he changed with his six magical blue strings. He makes records. He is adored. But Frankie Presto's gift is also his burden, as he realizes the power of the strings his teacher gave him, and how, through his music, he can actually affect people's lives. At the height of his popularity, tortured by his biggest mistake, he vanishes. His legend grows....
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.4 - AR Pts: 14
Language
English
Formats
Description
Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist, The Good Thief introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Hannah Tinti as one of our most exciting new talents.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • San Francisco...
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • San Francisco...
Author
Language
English
Description
After she and a dozen other children found them being raised by "Father," a cruel man with mysterious powers, Carolyn and her "siblings" begin to think he might be God; so when he dies, they square off against each other to determine who will inherit his library, which they believe holds the power to all Creation.
Author
Series
Mistborn novels volume 1
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.5 - AR Pts: 33
Language
English
Description
Experiencing an epiphany within the most daunting prison of the monstrous Lord Ruler, half-Skaa Kelsier finds himself taking on the powers of a Mistborn, and teams up with ragged orphan Vin in a desperate plot to save their world.
Author
Series
Family upstairs volume 1
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she's been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am. She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London's fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby's...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured vet returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"London, 1887. As the city prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, Veronica Speedwell is marking a milestone of her own. After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry--and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as she is fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a sharpened hatpin with equal aplomb, and with...
Author
Language
English
Description
In the spring of 1885, seventeen-year-old Jessilyn Harney finds herself orphaned and alone on her family's homestead. Desperate to fend off starvation and predatory neighbors, she cuts off her hair, binds her chest, saddles her beloved mare, and sets off across the mountains to find her outlaw brother Noah and bring him home. A talented sharpshooter herself, Jess's quest lands her in the employ of the territory's violent, capricious Governor, whose...
Author
Series
Crooked heart volume 1
Language
English
Description
A precocious orphan evacuee and a debt-ridden widow con artist forge an unlikely alliance and take advantage of unscrupulous money-making opportunities in the bombed suburbs of World War II England.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
1629. A newly orphaned young girl named Mayken is bound for the Dutch East Indies on the Batavia, one of the greatest ships of the Dutch Golden Age. Curious and mischievous, Mayken spends the long journey going on misadventures above and below the deck, searching for a mythical monster. But the true monsters might be closer than she thinks. 1989. A lonely boy named Gil is sent to live off the coast of Western Australia among the seasonal fishing...
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