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2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize Longlist
2024 Reading Challenge: Read a book with a friend or book club
Book Picks—September 2023
More Lists...
2024 Reading Challenge: Read a book with a friend or book club
Book Picks—September 2023
More Lists...
Description
"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and...
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English
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"Ray McMillian loves playing the violin more than anything, and nothing will stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician. Not his mother, who thinks he should get a real job, not the fact that he can't afford a high-caliber violin, not the racism inherent in the classical music world. And when he makes the startling discovery that his great-grandfather's fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, his star begins to rise....
Author
Language
English
Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • One of New York Magazine's "23 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2024" • One of VOGUE's Best Books of the Year So Far • One of ELLE's Best (and Most Anticipated) Fiction Books of 2024 • One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of Kirkus's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of Lilith Magazine's "21 Books We Want to Read in 2024"
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"In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence to the only place they have left: her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house for her grandmother--only to be lynched, days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis, by his all-white police squad. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Beth Kramer is a "townie" who returns to her sophomore year after having endured a year of tension with her roommate, Sarah. But Sarah Brunson knows there's more to that story. Amanda Priya "Spence" Spencer is the privileged daughter of NYC elites, who is reeling from the realization that her family name shielded her from the same fate as Sarah. Ramin Golafshar arrives at Chandler as a transfer student to escape the dangers of being gay in Iran,...
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Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 3.4 - AR Pts: 10
Language
English
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Description
If there's one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it's that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad's in prison. Life's not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav's got everything under control. Until he finds out he's a father....
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English
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2023 Reading Challenge November Bonus Category: Indigenous Authors
August Book Picks
November Bonus Category: Books by Indigenous Authors
Readalikes for 'Tommy Orange'
August Book Picks
November Bonus Category: Books by Indigenous Authors
Readalikes for 'Tommy Orange'
Description
"A moving and deeply engaging debut novel about a young Native American man finding strength in his familial identity, from a stellar new voice in fiction. Told in a series of voices, Calling for a Blanket Dance takes us into the life of Ever Geimausaddle through the multigenerational perspectives of his family as they face myriad obstacles. His father’s injury at the hands of corrupt police, his mother's struggle to hold on to her job and care...
Author
Language
English
Description
It's 2008, and the rise of Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He's eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to, and abandoned, when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she'd never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past. Returning...
9) Memory piece
Author
Language
English
Description
"Three Asian American teenagers meet in the New York suburbs in the 1980s. Drawn together by their shared sense of alienation from their conventionally domestic immigrant families, each wants to live a meaningful life. They envision a future defined by freedom and creativity, but on the brink of adulthood in New York City, their fortunes quickly diverge. Giselle Chin is a performance artist, pushing the boundaries of the form while socializing with...
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"It's just weeks after the historic Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher, newly single and desperately lonely, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame. So when he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington, D.C., he can't help but see it as a second chance. Now thirty-five, the men...
Author
Language
English
Description
"More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vänna: a teenage...
12) Wonder
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 4.8 - AR Pts: 11
Language
English
Appears on these lists
NYT - Children’s Chapter Books
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade E-Book
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade E-Book
NYT - Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover
Description
Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.
13) ONE BLOOD
Author
Language
English
Description
"Join New York Times bestselling author Denene Millner as she explores the lives of three generations of women tied together by love, hope, dreams, ambition...and family secrets in this epic novel. Meet Grace: raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, post-segregation Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she loses her grandmother. Shellshocked, she is shipped up North to live with her formidably ambitious Aunt Hattie--a woman who firmly...
14) Salt the water
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
A confrontation with a teacher and a family crisis force high school senior Cerulean Gene to drop out of twelfth grade and derails their dreams of moving cross-country and living off the grid.
16) All my rage
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.2 - AR Pts: 12
Language
English
Description
Lahore, Pakistan. Then. Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start. Juniper, California. Now. Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else...
17) Open secrets
Author
Series
Publisher
James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
"The #MeToo movement has revealed the prevalence of sexual assault in society, especially as committed by powerful men. But it is an issue that also affects the lives of teen girls. This book tells the story of seventeenyear-old Ana Santos, who has ambitions to make it big in music and signs a contract with the owner of a music café without knowing there are sexual strings attached. It looks at the darker side of the music industry, including sexual...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Told from alternating perspectives, an evocative and riveting novel about the lifelong bond between two women, one Black and one white, whose friendship is indelibly altered by a tragic event--a powerful and poignant exploration of race in America today and its devastating impact on ordinary lives. Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions....
20) Melissa
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5 - AR Pts: 4
Language
English
Description
"When people look at George, they think they see a boy. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl. George thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web. George really, really, REALLY wants to play Charlotte. But the teacher says she can't even try out for the part ... because she's a boy. With the help of her best friend, Kelly, George comes up with a plan....
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