Book picks similar to
Madison Morgan: When Dogs Blog by Pam Torres


middle-grade
first-reads
giveaway-books
coming-of-age

Exit Strategy


Douglas Rushkoff - 2001
    Like Joseph, Jamie Cohen is betrayed by his compadres but unexpectedly finds himself at the right hand of power. He helps a huge venture capitalist build pyramids - except these are investment pyramids based on technology idols. An additional narrative conceit is this: 200 years later, anthropologists find the virtual manuscript of Exit Strategy and begin annotating the text. Hundreds of readers have already contributed footnotes for the book – they are charming, wacky, compelling and Rushkoff has selected one hundred of his favorites for inclusion.

Elsewhere, California


Dana Johnson - 2012
    As a young girl, she and her family escape the violent streets of Los Angeles to a more gentrified existence in suburban West Covina. This average life, filled with school, trips to 7-Eleven to gawk at Tiger Beat magazine, and family outings to Dodger Stadium, is soon interrupted by a past she cannot escape, personified in the guise of her violent cousin Keith.When Keith moves in with her family, he triggers a series of events that will follow Avery throughout her life: to her studies at USC, to her burgeoning career as a painter and artist, and into her relationship with a wealthy Italian who sequesters her in his glass-walled house in the Hollywood Hills. The past will intrude upon Avery’s first gallery show, proving her mother’s adage: Every goodbye aint gone. The dual-narrative of Elsewhere, California illustrates the complicated history of African Americans across the rolling basin of Los Angeles.

Gronk Volume 1


Katie Cook - 2015
    and not a very good one. Gronk tells the tale of a young monster who has turned her back on monsterdom (mostly because no one found her scary) and has become fascinated with humans. She moves in with her human friend Dale and her pets Kitty and Harli, a 160 lb. Newfoundland Dale wants to declare as a dependent to the IRS. Enjoy the first installment from this popular kids webcomic in a wonderful, full-color collection!

Fashion Academy


Sheryl Berk - 2015
    (Their motto, "We are SEW FAB"). But when her daring fashion and stellar grades turn the Fab A-listers green with envy, Mickey discovers that standing out doesn't always make it easy to fit in. So when friendly classmate JC comes up with a plan to help Mickey fit in, she decides to take the ultimate fashion risk-ditch her personal style for good.One mega makeover later, pink-haired Mickey Williams mysteriously disappears, and the trendy, blonde "Kenzie Wills" shows up on the FAB scene, blending with the other students in a way Mickey never could. But when Mickey starts to lose herself to "Kenzie," she's not sure that fitting in is worth cutting herself down to size...

Owl Bat Bat Owl


Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick - 2017
    A mother owl and her three little owlets live happily on their branch. That is, until the bat family moves in. The newfound neighbors (owls up top, bats hanging below) can t help but feel a little wary of one another. But babies are curious little creatures, and that curiosity, along with a wild, stormy night, might just bring these two families together. With subtly and hilariously shifting facial expressions and gestures, Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick brings her accessible graphic style to a warm and ingenious wordless tale that is sure to bring smiles to readers of all ages."

Beautiful Disaster


Laura Spinella - 2010
    Mia Wells's eco-friendly career goals are about to become a reality-but her life-altering moment is interrupted when an unexpected call ushers in her tremulous past. A man who's never left Mia's memory: Flynn, the enigmatic, passionate man whose disappearance broke her heart, has mysteriously resurfaced.Now back in her life and in the hospital, Flynn is gravely injured. Mia keeps a bedside vigil-terrified that he will die, awestruck at the prospect of his survival. In a story filled with sweetness and suspense, Mia's what-ifs are endless. And Flynn's return ignites an achingly powerful tale about the most enduring love, one that is greater than honor, or friendship, or the passing of time.

Just Like Other Daughters


Colleen Faulkner - 2013
    Days later, when tests confirmed what Alicia already knew--that Chloe had Down syndrome--she didn't falter. Her ex-husband wanted a child who would grow to be a scholar. For Alicia, it's enough that Chloe just is.Now twenty-five, Chloe is sweet, funny, and content. Alicia brings her to adult daycare while she teaches at a local college. One day Chloe arrives home thrumming with excitement, and says the words Alicia never anticipated. She has met someone--a young man named Thomas. Within days, Chloe and Thomas, also mentally challenged, declare themselves in love.Alicia strives to see past her misgivings to the new possibilities opening up for her daughter. Shouldn't Chloe have the same right to love as anyone else? But there is no way to prepare for the relationship unfolding, or for the moments of heartbreak and joy ahead.With grace and warmth, Colleen Faulkner tells an unflinching yet heartrending story of mothers and daughters, and of the risks we all take, both in loving and in letting go.

Beasts and Children


Amy Parker - 2016
    Wry and sharp, dark and subversive, they keep watch as these characters make the choices that will change the course of their lives and run into each other in surprising, unforgettable ways.The Bowmans are declining Texas gentry, heirs to an airline fortune, surrounded by a patriarch's stuffed trophies and lost dreams. They will each be haunted by the past as they strive to escape its force. The Fosters are diplomats’ kids who might as well be orphans. Jill and Maizie grow up privileged amid poverty, powerless to change the lives of those around them and uncertain whether they have the power to change their own. The Guzmans have moved between Colombia and the United States for two generations, each seeking opportunity for the next, only to find that the American dream can be as crushing as it is elusive.Amy Parker's debut collection considers--with an unfailingly observant eye--our failures and our successes, our fractures and our connections, our impact and our evanescence. She marks herself a worthy heir to the long tradition of smart women casting cool and careful glances at the American middle class.

Upside-Down Magic


Sarah Mlynowski - 2015
    Nory Horace is nine years old. She's resourceful, she's brave, she likes peanut butter cookies. Also, she's able to transform into many different animals. Unfortunately, Nory's shape-shifting talent is a bit wonky. And when she flunks out of her own father's magic academy, Nory's forced to enter public school, where she meets a group of kids whose magic is, well, different. This new, offbeat series from hit authors Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, and Emily Jenkins chronicles the misadventures of Nory and her oddball friends, who prove that upside-down magic definitely beats right side up.

The Ruby of the Sea


Peggy Lampman - 2020
    The 19th Century lighthouse that she, her parents and two sisters call home also has a troubled past, carrying the frightening myth that eerily mirrors the mystery of her younger sister today. Should Linnea run while she can? The women must decide to what extremes they are willing to go to protect their secrets. Ignore the brutality behind the retrieval of spoils from a fatal shipwreck in 1857? Defy a 2017 hurricane threatening to pummel their town? And when their world is upended, do the women have the strength to move forward?

Wild on My Mind


Laurel Kerr - 2018
    The worst part? He doesn't seem to remember the trouble he caused her.As a single father and owner of a cash-strapped zoo, Bowie struggles to balance budgets while raising his pre-teen daughter and a host of rascally animals. He considers himself lucky when Katie agrees to lend her talents to a publicity campaign in support of the zoo's animal rehabilitation programs―until he learns just what she's planning...This time, Katie is determined to resist Bowie's charm. But a lovelorn camel, a matchmaking honey badger, and a nursemaid capybara have different plans. Can they and the rest of the zoo's menagerie help Bowie break through the barriers surrounding Katie's heart?

Useless Bay


M.J. Beaufrand - 2016
    Pixie and her brothers have always been bigger and stronger than their neighbors, as if they had been birthed from the island itself. Together, they serve as an unofficial search-and-rescue team, saving tourists and locals alike from the sometimes brutal forces of wind and sea. But when a young boy goes missing, Pixie instead finds the dead body of someone else in Useless Bay—and realizes that something sinister is rising from the water.

Dancing With Lies


Summer Cooper - 2021
    until he appeared.Lincoln-the swim team captain turned tech billionaire.Gorgeous, clean-shaven, and... oh so vanilla. There's no space for him in this dark world of hers.Especially if she wants to leave the past where it belongs and her secrets hidden.DANCING WITH LIES is a full-length novel containing mature language and adult scenes. It's the first book in the Barre To Bar series.

Watched


Marina Budhos - 2016
     Naeem is far from the “model teen.” Moving fast in his immigrant neighborhood in Queens is the only way he can outrun the eyes of his hardworking Bangladeshi parents and their gossipy neighbors. Even worse, they’re not the only ones watching. Cameras on poles. Mosques infiltrated. Everyone knows: Be careful what you say and who you say it to. Anyone might be a watcher. Naeem thinks he can charm his way through anything, until his mistakes catch up with him and the cops offer a dark deal. Naeem sees a way to be a hero—a protector—like the guys in his brother’s comic books. Yet what is a hero? What is a traitor? And where does Naeem belong?  Acclaimed author Marina Budhos delivers a riveting story that’s as vivid and involving as today’s headlines.

Heroic Measures


Jill Ciment - 2009
    about real estate, dog love, and a city on alert. A gasoline tanker truck is “stuck” in the Midtown Tunnel. New Yorkers are panicked... Is this the next big attack? Alex, an artist, and Ruth, a former schoolteacher with an FBI file as thick as a dictionary, must get their beloved dachshund, whose back legs have suddenly become paralyzed, to the animal hospital sixty blocks north. But the streets of Manhattan are welded with traffic. Their dog, Dorothy, twelve-years-old and gray-faced, is the emotional center of Alex and Ruth's forty-five-year-long childless marriage. Using a cutting board as a stretcher, they ferry the dog uptown.This is also the weekend that Alex and Ruth must sell their apartment. While house hunters traipse through it during their open house, husband and wife wait by the phone to hear from the animal hospital. During the course of forty-eight hours, as the missing truck driver terrorizes the city, the price of their apartment becomes a barometer for collective hope and despair, as the real estate market spikes and troughs with every breaking news story. In shifting points of view—Alex’s, Ruth’s, and the little dog’s—man, woman, and one small tenacious beast try to make sense of the cacophony of rumors, opinions, and innuendos coming from news anchors, cable TV pundits, pollsters, bomb experts, hostages, witnesses, real estate agents, house hunters, bargain seekers, howling dogs, veterinarians, nurses, and cab drivers. A moving, deftly told novel of ultrahigh-urban anxiety.