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The Probability of Everything
By Sarah Everett. 2023
“One of the best books I have read this year (maybe ever).” —Colby Sharp, Nerdy Book ClubNPR Books We Love…
2023 | Publishers Weekly Best of 2023 | Winner of the Governor General's Literary Awards for Young People's LiteratureA heart-wrenching middle grade debut about Kemi, an aspiring scientist who loves statistics and facts, as she navigates grief and loss at a moment when life as she knows it changes forever.Eleven-year-old Kemi Carter loves scientific facts, specifically probability. It's how she understands the world and her place in it. Kemi knows her odds of being born were 1 in 5.5 trillion and that the odds of her having the best family ever were even lower. Yet somehow, Kemi lucked out.But everything Kemi thought she knew changes when she sees an asteroid hover in the sky, casting a purple haze over her world. Amplus-68 has an 84.7% chance of colliding with earth in four days, and with that collision, Kemi’s life as she knows it will end.But over the course of the four days, even facts don’t feel true to Kemi anymore. The new town she moved to that was supposed to be “better for her family” isn’t very welcoming. And Amplus-68 is taking over her life, but others are still going to school and eating at their favorite diner like nothing has changed. Is Kemi the only one who feels like the world is ending?With the days numbered, Kemi decides to put together a time capsule that will capture her family’s truth: how creative her mother is, how inquisitive her little sister can be, and how much Kemi's whole world revolves around her father. But no time capsule can change the truth behind all of it, that Kemi must face the most inevitable and hardest part of life: saying goodbye."My heart hurt as I raced through the last chapters of this unique book that shines a light on family, friends, grief, and love." —Lisa Yee, author of Maizy Chen's Last ChanceBivouac
By Kwame Dawes. 2019
The death of a Jamaican man's father raises questions about the father's political endeavors, and about the plight of 1980s…
Jamaica. Kwame Dawes has been named a 2019 Windham-Campbell Prize Recipient in poetry "Few other novels encapsAll aboard the schooltrain: a little story from the Great Migration
By Glenda Armand. 2023
El crossover: Crossover (spanish Edition), A Newbery Award Winner (Crossover series #01)
By Kwame Alexander. 2019
"Twin fourteen-year-old basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court, as their father…
ignores his declining health. Told in hip-hop style verse." -- Provided by NLSOn a scale of 1 to 10
By Ceylan Scott. 2019
Lime Grove is home to a number of teenagers with a variety of problems: anorexia, bipolar disorder, behavior issues. Tamar…
will come to know them all very well. But there's one question she can't...won't answer: What happened to her friend Iris? As Tamar's emotional angst becomes more and more clear to her, she'll have to figure out a path to forgiveness. UnratedHadriana in All My Dreams
By René Depestre. 2017
Included in "10 Best New Books to Read This May," Chicago Review of Books."Originally published in 1988 and written by…
one of Haiti’s seminal authors, still with us at age 90, this vibrant, erotically charged work shows how humans counter fear—particularly the fear of death—in varied more or less magical ways, even as it paints a fresh and enticing picture of Haitian culture. . .Luscious and affirmative reading, this is work both the serious-minded and the lighthearted can enjoy."—Library Journal, Starred review"Depestre presents a rich and nuanced exploration of large and significant themes expertly couched in one fantastical, expertly translated tale."—Booklist, Starred review"One-of-a-kind...[A] ribald, free-wheeling magical-realist novel, first published in 1988 and newly, engagingly translated by Glover. . .An icon of Haitian literature serves up a hotblooded, rib-ticking, warmhearted mélange of ghost story, cultural inquiry, folk art, and véritable l'amour."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred review"The sights and sounds of Haiti’s vibrant carnival season invigorate this tale of vodou and Haitian culture. . .The truth of Hadriana’s fate proves more poignant than horrifying, but in Depestre’s hands, this incident is a touchstone of a culture in which distinctions between the empirical and spiritual are obscured, and whose traditional celebrations and beliefs introduce an element of the mythic into the everyday. Eroticism and humor course through his narrative. Depestre’s intimacy with his subject matter and his familiarity with the people he portrays—the story is set in his hometown, at the time when he was 12 years old—give readers an insider’s look at Jacmelian culture."—Publishers Weekly"For the first time, this slim and beguiling novel about the mysterious death and possible zombification of a young woman on her wedding day has been translated into English...With its lyrical commentary on the origins of myth, this mesmeric and frequently erotic work transcends its focus on a young woman to address the complexities of race, class and religion."—Shelf Awareness for Readers, Starred ReviewWith a foreword by Edwidge Danticat. Translated from the French by Kaiama L. Glover.Hadriana in All My Dreams, winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, takes place primarily during Carnival in 1938 in the Haitian village of Jacmel. A beautiful young French woman, Hadriana, is about to marry a Haitian boy from a prominent family. But on the morning of the wedding, Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion and collapses at the altar. Transformed into a zombie, her wedding becomes her funeral. She is buried by the town, revived by an evil sorcerer, and then disappears into popular legend.Set against a backdrop of magic and eroticism, and recounted with delirious humor, the novel raises universal questions about race and sexuality. The reader comes away enchanted by the marvelous reality of Haiti's Vodou culture and convinced of Depestre's lusty claim that all beings—even the undead ones—have a right to happiness and true love.From the introduction by Edwidge Danticat:Despestre offers us the kind of tale we rarely get in the hundreds of zombie stories featuring Haitians, stories set both inside and outside of Haiti. In Hadriana in All My Dreams we get both langaj—the secret language of Haitian Vodou—as well as the type of descriptive, elegiac, erotic, and satirical language, and the artistic license needed to create this most nuanced and powerful novel.Kaiama L. Glover is an associate professor of French and Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, coeditor of Yale French Studies' Revisiting Marie Vieux-Chauvet: Paradoxes of Postcolonial Feminine (issue no. 128), and translator of Frenkétienne's Ready to Burst and Marie Vieux-Chauvet's Dance on the Volcano. She has received awards from the National EndowmThe long-awaited paperback reissue of the acclaimed Jamaican author's debut novel. The incredible debut novel from 2015 Man Booker Prize…
winner Marlon James Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize "A powerful first novel...Writing with assurance and control, James uses his small-town drama to suggest the larger anguish of a postcolonial society struggling for its own identity." --New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice "A Brief History of Seven Killings might have won the Booker, and Black Leopard, Red Wolf might be the next Game of Thrones, but if you're looking for an entry point into the much-lauded, highly raucous mind of Marlon James, his 2005 debut could actually be the place to start: it's just as powerful and intricately written as James's later works, but it's quite a bit shorter, and easier to carry around with you everywhere you go, something you will surely want to do." --Literary Hub, 10 Debut Novels Nobody Reads Anymore--But Should "Elements coalesce in a Jamaican stew spicier than jerk chicken. First novelist James moves effortlessly between lyrical patois and trenchant observations...It's 150-proof literary rum guaranteed to intoxicate and enchant. Highly recommended." --Library Journal, Starred review "Set in James's native Jamaica, this dynamic, vernacular debut sings of the fierce battle between two flawed preachers...an exciting read." --Publishers Weekly "A mesmerizing treatise on the nature of good and evil, faith and madness, guilt and forgiveness, eloquently captured in a microcosm of society." --Booklist "John Crow's Devil engages the political legacy of Frantz Fanon without sacrificing the power of fiction...There's a temptation to compare John Crow's Devil to novels by Toni Morrison or Earl Lovelace, among others, and there are certainly similarities to those works in this one. There is even an echo of Faulkner in the meticulous, multi-vocal rendering of conflicts entrenched in village life. But more important than any comparison is that James' debut is very much its own book, and stands as tall on its own as it would with any other volume beside it." --Small Spiral Notebook This stunning debut novel tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in 1957. With language as taut as classic works by Cormac McCarthy, and a richness reminiscent of early Toni Morrison, Marlon James reveals his unique narrative command that will firmly establish his place as one of today's freshest, most talented young writers. In the village of Gibbeah--where certain women fly and certain men protect secrets with their lives--magic coexists with religion, and good and evil are never as they seem. In this town, a battle is fought between two men of God. The story begins when a drunkard named Hector Bligh (the "Rum Preacher") is dragged from his pulpit by a man calling himself "Apostle" York. Handsome and brash, York demands a fire-and-brimstone church, but sets in motion a phenomenal and deadly struggle for the soul of Gibbeah itself. John Crow's Devil is a novel about religious mania, redemption, sexual obsession, and the eternal struggle inside all of us between the righteous and the wicked.A Tall History of Sugar
By Curdella Forbes. 2019
A haunting, epic Caribbean love story, reminiscent of García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.WINNER of the 2020 Hurston/Wright…
Legacy Award for Fiction!"A Tall History of Sugar is a gift for grown-up fans of fairy tales and those who love fiction that metes out hard and surprising truths. Forbes's writing combines the gale-force imagination of Margaret Atwood with the lyrical pointillism of Toni Morrison."--New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice"A mesmerizing love story that takes place over 50 years in Jamaica."--Tayari Jones in O, the Oprah MagazineA Tall History of Sugar has been longlisted for the 2020 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature (Fiction shortlist)!"Curdella Forbes's A Tall History of Sugar is the most recent in an impressive new wave of novels by Jamaican writers--from Marlon James's Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings to Kei Miller's Augustown, Marcia Douglas's The Marvelous Equations of the Dread, and Nicole Dennis-Benn's Patsy, among others. Forbes provides an eclectic, feverish vision of Jamaican 'history' from the 1950s to the present glimpsed through the experiences of an abandoned mystic-child named Moshe, whose translucent skin and mismatched eyes defy racial category. Who he is and who he becomes--like the country itself--is a riddle that unfolds in episodic bursts and linguistic flourishes."--Vanity Fair, one of the Best Books of 2019"An epic tale of two soulmates: Moshe Fisher, born with mismatched eyes and pale skin that bruises easily, and Arrienne Christie, 'her skin even at birth the color of the wettest molasses, with a purple tinge under the surface.' Arrienne is his protector at school--and later his lover--but how they eventually wind up together is part of this unconventionally crafted story that spans decades, from the years before Jamaica's independence to the 2010s. Forbes' sentences are the stars here; it's a book that rewards slow, careful reading."--BuzzFeed, included in BuzzFeed's Fall 2019 PreviewA Tall History of Sugar tells the story of Moshe Fisher, a man who was "born without skin," so that no one is able to tell what race he belongs to; and Arrienne Christie, his quixotic soul mate who makes it her duty in life to protect Moshe from the social and emotional consequences of his strange appearance.The narrative begins with Moshe's birth in the late 1950s, four years before Jamaica's independence from colonial rule, and ends in the era of what Forbes calls "the fall of empire," the era of Brexit and Donald Trump. The historical trajectory layers but never overwhelms the scintillating love story as the pair fight to establish their own view of loving, against the moral force of the colonial "plantation" and its legacies that continue to affect their lives and the lives of those around them.Written in lyrical, luminous prose that spans the range of Jamaican Englishes, this remarkable story follows the couple's mysterious love affair from childhood to adulthood, from the haunted environs of rural Jamaica to the city of Kingston, and then to England--another haunted locale in Forbes's rendition.Following on the footsteps of Marlon James's debut novel, John Crow's Devil, which Akashic Books published in 2005, we are delighted to introduce another lion of Jamaican literature with the publication of A Tall History of Sugar.George Washington's socks
By Elvira Woodruff. 1991
Matthew and his friends form an adventure club so they can talk about real adventures from throughout history. But at…
their first meeting, in which they plan to discuss George Washington's crossing of the Delaware, the members suddenly find themselves back in the time of the American Revolution. For grades 4-7The cuckoo's child
By Suzanne Freeman. 1996
Mia Veery did not like living in Beirut; she wanted to come back to the United States and be a…
typical 1962 American teenager in an ordinary family. When her parents disappear at sea, Mia and her two older half sisters go to live with Aunt Kit in Tennessee. There Mia finds being "typical" is not easy. For grades 6-9Bridge to Terabithia: A Newbery Award Winner
By Katherine Paterson. 1977
Jess finds his biggest rival and best friend in Leslie, a girl who moves to his rural Virginia community from…
the city. Together they create Terabithia, a secret kingdom in the woods where they reign supreme--until tragedy strikes. For grades 5-8. Newbery MedalMy One True North: the Top Five Sunday Times bestseller – discover the magic of Milly
By Milly Johnson. 2020
A gorgeous read full of hope, warmth and heartfelt emotion from the Sunday Times bestselling author ?&‘The feeling you get when you read…
a Milly Johnson book should be bottled and made available on the NHS&’ Debbie JohnsonLaurie and Pete should never have met. But fate has pushed them together for a reason. Six months ago, on the same night, Laurie and Pete both lost their partners. Struggling to manage the grief, they join the same counselling group – and meet each other. From their sadness, Pete and Laurie find happiness growing and they sense a fresh new beginning. Except, the more they talk, the more they begin to spot the strange parallels in their stories. Then Pete discovers a truth that changes everything. But, as surely as a compass points north, some people cannot be kept apart. My One True North is a story of friendship and what love means, of secrets uncovered, teashops on corners and the northern lights.Praise for My One True North: 'Funny, poignant and so uplifting' Sun 'Reading a Milly Johnson book is like spending time with a best friend - you always end up feeling better about the world. Written with genuine warmth and heart, they're an absolute treat' Lucy Diamond 'A heartfelt novel from one of our favourite authors' Bella 'A heart-warming and engaging read' Woman's Weekly 'Johnson is in a league of her own in the genre…an uplifting story unfolding from hard times, all succinctly nailed with emotional honesty in absorbing prose' The Lady 'A heartfelt and emotional story . . . It's another wonderful feelgood read from a talented author' Daily Express 'Milly Johnson brings her trademark warmth, humour and compassion to this tale of love, fate, second chances and the importance of giving your heart time to heal. The perfect read for a rainy day spent under a blanket' Culturefly, 8 of the Best New Books To Read This March ? 'If your March reading list is all about warmth and cosiness, then Milly Johnson&’s latest novel should be top of your reading pile. From the writer of The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew (which is fabulous, by the way) My One True North is full of the heartfelt optimism we need at this time of year' Yahoo Book of the Month 'A dazzling, contemporary masterpiece, full of heart, soul and humour' Lancashire Evening PostSun & Spoon
By Kevin Henkes. 1997
After the death of his beloved grandmother, ten-year-old Spoon pockets Gram's special deck of solitaire cards as a keepsake. When…
his grandfather becomes nostalgic and searches for the missing cards, Spoon returns the deck in exchange for another memento with a very special meaning. For grades 4-7My Louisiana sky (Major And Mrs Holt's Battlefield Guide To Ser.)
By Kimberly Holt. 1998
Louisiana, 1950s. Twelve-year-old Tiger Ann Parker begins to feel embarrassed in front of the other kids about the "slowness" of…
her parents. Her grandmother is the one who keeps the family intact. After Granny dies, Tiger has a chance to move to the city with her sophisticated aunt, but she is reluctant to abandon the parents who love her. For grades 6-9A pride of African tales
By Donna L Washington. 2004
Six folktales from West Africa. "The Boy Who Wanted the Moon" is a pourquoi tale from the Congo that explains…
why there are monkeys in the world. It tells about "a spoiled child, his doting father, and a great deal of foolishness." For grades 4-7 and older readers. 2004Listen!
By Stephanie S Tolan. 2006
A lonely summer spent regaining use of her injured leg becomes interesting when twelve-year-old Charley adopts a wild dog she…
finds in the woods. While Charley slowly tames the dog, he begins healing her heart, which is full of memories of her dead mother. For grades 4-7. Christopher Medal. 2006Game
By Walter Dean Myers. 2008
Harlem. African American high school senior Drew Lawson aims to go to college and play basketball for the NBA despite…
his mediocre grades. Rivalry begins when Drew's coach favors Tomas, a new white teammate from Prague. For junior and senior high readers. 2008Life as we knew it
By Tony Johnston, Susan Beth Pfeffer, Barry Moser. 2006
Sixteen-year-old Miranda keeps a journal describing her family's struggle to survive after an asteroid hits the Moon and causes disastrous…
climate change on Earth. She records her feelings about losing contact with friends and the outside world, locating food, and keeping hope alive. For junior and senior high readers. 2006Dope sick
By Walter Dean Myers. 2009
Seventeen-year-old Lil J, a suspect in the shooting of an undercover cop, hides in an abandoned crack house. He encounters…
Kelly, a man who is watching clips of Lil J's life on television. Kelly urges Lil J to examine choices he's made. Some strong language. For senior high readers. 2009The song of the whales
By Uri Orlev. 2010
When his family moves to Israel, nine-year-old Michael bonds with his grandfather Raphael, who has strong convictions about being a…
vegetarian, helping others, and knowing the soul's dark secrets. Raphael bestows an unusual gift on Michael, dream sharing. For grades 4-7 and older readers. 2010