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Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
10 Most Requested Books of 2023
2024 Reading Challenge: A coming of age story
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Top 10 General Fiction Books of 2023
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...
2) Justin
Author
Series
Blacktop books volume 1
Pub. Date
2016.
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG+ - BL: 4.8 - AR Pts: 2
Language
English
Description
Fifteen-year-old Justin keeps a list of goals stashed under his mattress. Number 1 is "figure out life plans." Number 5 is "earn Zen Master rating in WoW." Number 7 is "play a little basketball every day." Nowhere on that list is "take on the crew from Ghosttown," but that's the type of trouble that always seems to finds him, and he's not the type to back down from a challenge.
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
The inspiration for the film starring Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly, this resonant story of a mother’s unsettling quest to understand her teenage son’s deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, and the explosive link between them remains terrifyingly prescient.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother. And certainly not the mother of a boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker,...
Eva never really wanted to be a mother. And certainly not the mother of a boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker,...
Author
Pub. Date
2016.
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.8 - AR Pts: 15
Language
English
Description
Struggling to come to terms with the worshipped older brother who disappeared seven years earlier, fifteen-year-old Rocky is seduced by a wealthy older girl in the wake of a mysterious double murder that forces the town to confront past misdeeds.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.5 - AR Pts: 8
Language
English
Description
This is the story of Paul, a sophomore at a high school like no other: The cheerleaders ride Harleys, the homecoming queen used to be a guy named Daryl (she now prefers Infinite Darlene and is also the star quarterback), and the gay-straight alliance was formed to help the straight kids learn how to dance.
When Paul meets Noah, he thinks he’s found the one his heart is made for. Until he blows it. The school bookie says the odds are 12-to-1
Author
Language
English
Description
A New York Times Book Review EDITORS' CHOICE.
From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn, comes the vividly told story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. In a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. Through the knitting...
From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn, comes the vividly told story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. In a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. Through the knitting...
8) Back roads
Author
Language
English
Description
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
Funny and heartbreaking, this New York Times bestselling debut perfectly captures the maddening confusion of adolescence and the prickly nature of family with irony and unerring honesty.
Harley Altmyer should be in college having the time of his life. He should be free from the backwards Pennsylvania coal town he calls home, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he’s constantly reminded...
Funny and heartbreaking, this New York Times bestselling debut perfectly captures the maddening confusion of adolescence and the prickly nature of family with irony and unerring honesty.
Harley Altmyer should be in college having the time of his life. He should be free from the backwards Pennsylvania coal town he calls home, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he’s constantly reminded...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.6 - AR Pts: 16
Language
English
Description
When he moves into the garage apartment at his best friend's house, trouble-prone Tim falls unexpectly in love with Alice, his friend's good-girl sister, but unforeseen consequences of Tim's wild days come back to challenge their relationship.
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"How do you stop a murder after it's already happened?"--Page 1 of cover.
"From UK bestselling author Gillian McAllister comes an astonishing, compulsively twisty psychological thriller about a mother who witnesses her teenage son stab a man and then seizes on an unconventional way to try to save him. Can you stop a murder after it's already happened? Late October. After midnight. You're waiting up for your seventeen-year-old son. He's late. As you...
12) Kidnapped
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.6 - AR Pts: 14
Language
English
Description
After being kidnapped by his villainous and miserly uncle, sixteen-year-old David Balfour escapes with the help of Jacobite fugitive Alan Breck and becomes involved in the struggle of Scottish Highlanders against English rule.
13) Canada
Author
Pub. Date
2012
Language
English
Description
After his parents are arrested and imprisoned for robbing a bank, fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons is taken in by Arthur Remlinger who, unbeknownst to Dell, is hiding a dark and violent nature that interferes with Dell's quest to find grace and peace on the prairie of Saskatchewan.
Author
Pub. Date
2011
Language
English
Description
The rigid moral codes held by mid-twentieth-century preacher Samuel Lake are called into question when his twelve-year-old daughter and his neighbors hide a young boy from his abusive father, a man who lashes out at the community when he learns about the deception.
15) Dodger
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7 - AR Pts: 18
Language
English
Description
"In an alternative version of Victorian London, a seventeen-year-old Dodger, a cunning and cheeky street urchin, unexpectedly rises in life when he saves a mysterious girl, meets Charles Dickens, and unintentionally puts a stop to the murders of Sweeny Todd"--
16) Punching the air
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.7 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Description
From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. The story that I thought was my life didn't start on the day I was born. Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a...
Author
Pub. Date
2017.
Language
English
Description
"From the author of the "lyrical and compelling" (USA Today) novel A Good American comes a powerful story of two friends and the unintended consequences of friendship, loss, and hope. For Robert Carter, life in his coastal Maine hometown is comfortably predictable. But in 1976, on his first day of eighth grade, he meets Nathan Tilly, who changes everything. Nathan is confident, fearless, impetuous--and fascinated by kites and flying. Robert and Nathan's...
Author
Series
Miss Peregrine volume 1
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.7 - AR Pts: 13
Language
English
Description
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of peculiar photographs. A horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off teh coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its decaying bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that Miss Peregrine's children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They...
19) Trollhunters
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2015.
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG+ - BL: 6.2 - AR Pts: 13
Language
English
Description
Everything changes for San Bernardino teenage suburbanite Jim Sturges when a 45-year old mystery resurfaces, threatening the lives of everyone in his seemingly sleepy town. Soon Jim has to team up with a band of unlikely (and some un-human) heroes to battle the monsters he never knew existed.
Author
Series
Aristotle and Dante volume 2
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.1 - AR Pts: 15
Language
English
Description
"Aristotle and Dante continue their journey to manhood in this achingly romantic, tender tale set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic in 1980s America. In Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, two boys fell in love. Now they must learn what it means to stay in love -- and to build their relationship in a world that doesn't seem to want them to exist. In their senior year at two different schools, the boys find ways to spend...
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