Seventeen-year-old Margot Nielsen lives with one crazy mother in a sparsely-furnished upstairs apartment over an abandoned storefront in tiny Calhoun, Nebraska. Life is dreary. She has no friends and her relationship with her mother is fraught with emotional booby-traps that… Read More ›
Library Collection Development
Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From
Right in the middle of Miss Deborah’s passing out female condoms during a presentation in the Making Proud Choices class at the high school Liliana Cruz attends, Vice-Principal Seaver pulls Liliana out for a conference in his office. There he… Read More ›
Not So Pure and Simple
High-school junior Del Rainey can’t get back from family vacation fast enough, having heard from his best friend Qwan that Kiera Westing is now a free woman since she broke up with her boyfriend Colossus. Del has been secretly in… Read More ›
The Black Kids
Set in Los Angeles in the year 1992–the year LA erupted into violence after the brutal beating of Rodney King by four LAPD officers–this story traces the evolution of senior Ashley Bennett, her friends, and her family as they confront… Read More ›
They Wish They Were Us
Jill is a high school senior enjoying exclusive membership in a small group of eight who rule a secretive club called the Players at her private prep school. (Well, it used to be eight, except one was killed some months… Read More ›
The Mall
Set in New Jersey in 1991, this novel’s action is almost entirely confined to the local mall. This is a clever idea, and the author surprisingly is able to realize it nicely. Cassie Worthy is a new high school graduate… Read More ›
I Killed Zoe Spanos
Anna Cicconi is a new high school graduate filling the summer before college matriculation by working as a nanny in the Hamptons. Her mom is generally caring but works two jobs and so doesn’t have a whole lotta time and… Read More ›
Conjure Women
Rue and her mother May Belle are newly-freed residents of a southern plantation immediately following the Civil War. The big plantation home has been burned to the ground, their master shot himself, the northern armies have come rampaging through, and… Read More ›
Straight On Till Morning: A Twisted Tale
It has been four years since Wendy Darling has had any contact with Never Land. At that time her dog Nana snagged Peter Pan’s shadow away from him as he and Tinker Bell listened in at her upstairs bedroom window… Read More ›
Agnes at the End of the World
Agnes is a teenager living with her younger sister Beth and other even-younger siblings in a crowded mobile home in Red Creek, a fundamentalist Christian settlement in the desert Southwest modeled somewhat after that described in Carolyn Jessop’s memoir ESCAPED…. Read More ›