The Angels Are Here


Patti Roberts - 2010
    Angels fall... Darkness follows... Is your Guardian Angel from Heaven or Hell? Long ago, in an almost forgotten Realm, a race of fallen Angels called the Grigori clash with a ruling house of Angels - the Bulguardi. Their battle changed events in the Ancient World and the New World forever. A Realm where a year can last centuries and an Ancient magical people still rule, even the immortals face danger. Rising up from their imprisonment underground on Altair, evil has returned and the Grigori are on a destructive path of revenge. When their preferred food source becomes scarce, Earth, a world teaming with humans, becomes their target. Trapped in the middle between the old world and the new, a little girl cursed with horrific visions from the past. From an Ancient world to the new world on Earth, this is a tale of myth and legend, mayhem and magic, birth and death. A tale of families torn apart, souls searching for lost loves, and evil is walking out of the shadows. You can run, but you cannot run forever.Over the centuries, from the time before time, the Grigori were called many things. In Greece, they called them, Vrykolakas. In Romania, Strigoi. In earlier times, there were others. Other blood-sucking demons, that preyed on the innocent. In ancient Babylonia, it was Lilitu and her sistren, who instilled fear among the Babylonians. In the new world, they would go by another name. Vampire.A world that defies logic and reason. A world that may very well be true: Paradox – The Angels Are Here.A story that will indeed leave you asking... Who, When, Where? WHAT! My name is Juliette. Nine hundred years ago, I died. Today, I am alive... This is my story. Paradox - The Angels Are Here

If I Fall, If I Die


Michael Christie - 2015
    And he has certainly never gotten to know anyone other than his mother, a fiercely loving yet wildly eccentric agoraphobe who drowns in panic at the thought of opening the front door. Their little world comprises only the rooms in their home, each named for various exotic locales and filled with Will's art projects. Soon the confines of his world close in on Will. Despite his mother's protestations, Will ventures outside clad in a protective helmet and braces himself for danger. He eventually meets and befriends Jonah, a quiet boy who introduces Will to skateboarding. Will welcomes his new world with enthusiasm, his fears fading and his body hardening with each new bump, scrape, and fall. But life quickly gets complicated. When a local boy goes missing, Will and Jonah want to uncover what happened. They embark on an extraordinary adventure that pulls Will far from the confines of his closed-off world and into the throes of early adulthood and the dangers that everyday life offers. If I Fall, if I Die is a remarkable debut full of dazzling prose, unforgettable characters, and a poignant and heartfelt depiction of coming of age.

The Hurricane


Hugh Howey - 2011
    And replace it with a neighbor he's never met.

Stray Love


Kyo Maclear - 2012
    Abandoned as an infant, Marcel is haunted by vague memories of his bohemian mother, and is desperate to know who his real parents are. When Oliver is promoted to foreign correspondent, he leaves Marcel in the care of his ill-equipped friends, including the beautiful Pippa. The world is being swept by a wave of liberation—coups, revolutions and the end of colonialism. While Oliver rushes toward the action, Marcel is set adrift in swinging London, a city of magic—and a city where he can never quite fit in. Just when it seems they will never be reunited, Marcel is sent to join Oliver in Vietnam. But by the summer of 1963, the war is escalating, and Oliver is finally overwhelmed by his doomed love for Pippa. When Marcel eventually uncovers the shattering truth about his mother, his entire world is rearranged. Now, as his fiftieth birthday approaches, Marcel is asked to take care of his friend’s eleven-year-old daughter, Iris. Prodded by her sharp-eyed company, he reflects on his own bittersweet childhood and the experiences that have shaped his present. Stray Love is beautifully illustrated with original drawings by noted Toronto artist/filmmaker Heather Frise.

West


Carys Davies - 2018
    Written with compassionate tenderness and magical thinking, it explores the courage of conviction, the transformative power of grief, the desire for knowledge and the pull of home, from an exceptionally talented and original British writer. It is a radiant and timeless epic-in-miniature, an eerie, electric monument to possibility.

Drakendochter


Clarice Gargard - 2019
    To paint a good picture of my own history, that of my family and my country, I had to dig deep, also in myself. Not just for an outside world that sees me through a certain lens, but especially for myself and others like me, because we too have sometimes started looking through that one lens. " What if the most important person in your life is not who you think he is? Clarice Gargard knows her father as an idealist who fought for the less fortunate and justice. But gradually she finds out that he worked for years for the gruesome dictator Charles Taylor. How could someone who said they wanted to do so much good work for a tyrant? How can these two sides be combined in a person? What is right and what is wrong? In Drakendochter we travel with Gargard on her quest through conflicts, religion and spirituality and long-lost kingdoms in the war-ridden West African country of Liberia. We follow her life path from Liberia via the United States with the Netherlands as its final destination. Thanks to research into her (family) history, the life of her father and society, she gets to know and understand Liberia, herself and society better.It's a story about family, migration and global politics. And how everything we think, see and do is a matter of perspective. "Clarice Gargard is the voice of the future; committed, funny and cosmopolitan. An intelligent relief in the sometimes stifling Netherlands. " - Karin Amatmoekrim "Clarice is an important and inspiring voice in the polarized social debate." - Murat Isik

The Lesser Bohemians


Eimear McBride - 2016
    She struggles to fit in—she’s young and unexotic, a naive new girl—but soon she forges friendships and finds a place for herself in the big city.Then she meets an attractive older man. He’s an established actor, 20 years older, and the inevitable clamorous relationship that ensues is one that will change her forever.A redemptive, captivating story of passion and innocence set across the bedsits of mid-1990s London, McBride holds new love under her fierce gaze, giving us all a chance to remember what it’s like to fall hard for another.

Rules for Being a Girl


Candace Bushnell - 2020
    . . .Marin has always been good at navigating these unspoken guidelines. A star student and editor of the school paper, she dreams of getting into Brown University. Marin’s future seems bright―and her young, charismatic English teacher, Mr. Beckett, is always quick to admire her writing and talk books with her.But when “Bex” takes things too far and comes on to Marin, she’s shocked and horrified. Had she somehow led him on? Was it her fault?When Marin works up the courage to tell the administration what happened, no one believes her. She’s forced to face Bex in class every day. Except now, he has an ax to grind.But Marin isn’t about to back down. She uses the school newspaper to fight back and she starts a feminist book club at school. She finds allies in the most unexpected people, like “slutty” Gray Kendall, who she’d always dismissed as just another lacrosse bro. As things heat up at school and in her personal life, Marin must figure out how to take back the power and write her own rules.

Peerless Flats


Esther Freud - 1993
    Ruby's shady past and rockabilly boyfriend indicate to Lisa a life lived to the fullest. But as her family's prospects start to look bleak, Lisa must reinvent herself as the only sane and sensible member of her family. Spare, elegant, and often funny, "Peerless Flats" is an unblinking and moving portrait of a pained adolescence in 1970s London.

The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things


Ann Aguirre - 2015
    If she manages it, people won’t peer beyond the surface, or ask hard questions about her past. She’s learned to substitute causes for relationships, and it’s working just fine… until Shane Cavendish strolls into her math class. He’s a little antisocial, a lot beautiful, and everything she never knew she always wanted.Shane Cavendish just wants to be left alone to play guitar and work on his music. He’s got heartbreak and loneliness in his rearview mirror, and this new school represents his last chance. He doesn’t expect to be happy; he only wants to graduate and move on. He never counted on a girl like Sage.But love doesn’t mend all broken things, and sometimes life has to fall apart before it can be put back together again…

The Boat Runner


Devin Murphy - 2017
    Many of the residents in their small Dutch town have some connection to the Koopman lightbulb factory, and the locals hold the family in high esteem. On days when they aren’t playing with friends, Jacob and Edwin help their Uncle Martin on his fishing boat in the North Sea, where German ships have become a common sight. But conflict still seems unthinkable, even as the boys’ father naively sends his sons to a Hitler Youth Camp in an effort to secure German business for the factory.When war breaks out, Jacob’s world is thrown into chaos. The Boat Runner follows Jacob over the course of four years, through the forests of France, the stormy beaches of England, and deep within the secret missions of the German Navy, where he is confronted with the moral dilemma that will change his life—and his life’s mission—forever. Epic in scope and featuring a thrilling narrative with precise, elegant language, The Boat Runner tells the little-known story of the young Dutch boys who were thrown into the Nazi campaign, as well as the brave boatmen who risked everything to give Jewish refugees safe passage to land abroad. Through one boy’s harrowing tale of personal redemption, here is a novel about the power of people’s stories and voices to shine light through our darkest days, until only love prevails.

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece


Annabel Pitcher - 2011
    He knows he should have—Jasmine cried, Mum cried, Dad still cries. Roger didn't, but then he is just a cat and didn't know Rose that well, really.Everyone kept saying it would get better with time, but that's just one of those lies that grown-ups tell in awkward situations. Five years on, it's worse than ever: Dad drinks, Mum's gone and Jamie's left with questions that he must answer for himself.This is his story, an unflinchingly real yet heart-warming account of a young boy's struggle to make sense of the loss that tore his family apart.

Cue for Treason


Geoffrey Trease - 1940
    As he makes his way to London, he meets Kit, another runaway, and the two decide to stick together. With luck on their side, they find jobs as apprentices to William Shakespeare, but a chance discovery endangers their lives once more. Soon Peter finds himself on an adventure that takes in murderous plots, secrets and even treason, and will test his bravery to its very limits. Set in the turbulent days of Elizabeth I, this classic story of danger and intrigue conjures up a magical world of mystery, twists and turns and thrilling action.

Life by Committee


Corey Ann Haydu - 2014
     Tabitha might be the only girl in the history of the world who actually gets less popular when she gets hot. But her so-called friends say she’s changed, and they’ve dropped her flat. Now Tab has no one to tell about the best and worst thing that has ever happened to her: Joe, who spills his most intimate secrets to her in their nightly online chats. Joe, whose touch is so electric, it makes Tab wonder if she could survive an actual kiss. Joe, who has Tabitha brimming with the restless energy of falling in love. Joe, who is someone else’s boyfriend. Just when Tab is afraid she’ll burst from keeping the secret of Joe inside, she finds Life by Committee. The rules of LBC are simple: tell a secret, receive an assignment. Complete the assignment to keep your secret safe. Tab likes it that the assignments push her to her limits, empowering her to live boldly and go further than she’d ever go on her own. But in the name of truth and bravery, how far is too far to go?

The Beard


Andersen Prunty - 2009
    David Glum decides to quit everything, move back home, and grow a beard before embarking on a surreal cross-country trip that might have something to do with saving the world.