Author Katharine McGee had a clever idea for this book, imagining that George Washington did NOT decline to be made king after the American Revolution but instead founded an American dynasty. Fast forward to today, where we have the House… Read More ›
Random House Children’s Books
Full Disclosure
Simone Garcia-Hampton is a seventeen-year-old HIV-positive girl attending a private Catholic high school–her second private Catholic high school, that is, after being “outed” by someone she thought was her best friend at the first school. Bullying and intimidation have caused… Read More ›
Jackpot: All Bets Are Off
Seventeen-year-old Rico Danger is of exotic mixed parentage. She is, by her classmates’ evaluation, a stunning beauty, though she is unaware of it. Her clothes come from thrift shops. She has no friends and keeps to herself to hide her… Read More ›
Two Can Keep a Secret
Twins Ellery and Ezra Corcoran are relocating temporarily to live with their grandmother in small, picture-perfect Echo Ridge, Vermont, while their mother, Sadie, completes a four-month drug rehabilitation program in California. Ellery is particularly interested in Echo Ridge because she… Read More ›
Odd One Out
Courtney (“Coop”) is a heterosexual high school junior who lives with his widowed mother. Next door is his best friend Jupiter (“Jupe”), a girl living with her two dads–her biological dad and a step-dad who left a wife and children… Read More ›
The Guggenheim Mystery
This book is the second in a pair featuring Ted Spark, an almost-13-year-old on the autism spectrum. As in the preceding book, THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY, he joins with his sister Kat and cousin Salim in a suspenseful plot featuring… Read More ›
The Season of Styx Malone
Caleb Franklin and his older brother Bobby Gene are watching the last few weeks of summer disappear before school starts, spending time in what has in the past been idyllic pursuits in the surrounding woods and fields. Caleb, though, is… Read More ›
The Perfect Secret
This book is a sequel to one called THE PERFECT SCORE, which I had not read. It does make reference to events in the earlier book, so read that one first if you want a fuller experience (though it is… Read More ›
Watch You Burn
When seven-year-old Jenny Breland goes on her very first sleepover at a friend’s house, a catastrophic fire in the middle of the night destroys the house and everyone but her in it. Though the fire is declared of unknown origin,… Read More ›
Counting to Perfect
Julia is a 17-year-old who, wild about her boyfriend Carter, gets pregnant by him. Her family supports her in keeping the child, finishing high school, and planning to continue her education at a local community college. Carter proposes marriage but… Read More ›
Before You Buy YA 