Family

The Silver Kiss

Zoe is wary when, in the dead of night, the beautiful yet frightening Simon comes to her house.  Simon seems to understand the pain of loneliness and death and Zoe's brooding thoughts of her dying mother.



Simon is one of the undead, a vampire, seeking revenge for the gruesome death of his mother three hundred years before.  Does Simon dare ask Zoe to help free him from this lifeless chase and its insufferable loneliness?

Jacob Have I Loved

I was proud of my sister, but that year, something began to rankle beneath the pride.

Louise has had enough of her twin sister. Caroline is beautiful. Caroline is talented. Caroline is better. Growing up on the small island of Rass in Chesapeake Bay, Caroline seems to do nothing but take from Louise: their parents' love, Louise's chances for an education, her dreams for the future. They have spent their lives entwined -- sleeping in the same room, eating at the same table, learning in the same classroom -- and yet somehow nothing can bring them together. Louise's only hope lies in seeking a place for herself beyond the stretch of Rass's shores and her sister's shadow. What will it take for her to break free?

Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind (Border Trilogy)

"This first novel is, on several counts, one of the most exciting YA books

to appear recently. Staples is so steeped in her story and its Pakistani

setting that the use of a first-person voice for a desert child rings

authentic--the voice is clear, consistent, and convincing. Shabanu and her

sister are to marry brothers as soon as they all come of age. But she will

eventually lose her betrothed and be promised to a wealthy landowner to settle

a feud. The richness and tragedy of a whole culture are reflected in the fate

of this girl's family. Through an involving plot Staples has given readers

insight into lives totally different from their own, but into emotions

resoundingly familiar."--(starred) Bulletin, Center for Children's Books.

Dicey's Song (The Tillerman Series #2)

A NEWBERRY MEDAL WINNER
Keeping her family together is what thirteen-year-old Dicey does best. But now that all four Tillerman children have found a new home with their grandmother, Dicey has to learn the hard lesson of letting go. Dicey's got other problems than finding her new role in the family: she's bored with everyone and everything at school and doesn't think anyone can tell her anything she wants to know. But slowly, Dicey discovers that everyone has something to teach, and life is a lesson that doesn't get easier . . .

At the beginning of summer, Momma had abandoned them and them later been traced to an asylum where she lay unrecognizing, unknowing. So Dicey Tillerman, her brothers James and Sammy, and her sister Maybeth had spent the summer on their own on a long and difficult journey to find a home with the grandmother they'd never met before. Now that they'd moved in with Gram, their troubles, Dicey hoped, would be over. Dicey had watched over the younger kids and brought them through--now she wanted to be just a little bit selfish, to refinish the old sailboat she'd found in Gram's barn, to earn a little spending money, to adjust to Gram and to her new life in the Chesapeake Bay country that had once been her momma's childhood home. Yet even with the building of new ties and a new life, old problems and sorrows did not go away by themselves. None of the Tillermans, and especially not Dicey, could forget about Momma. Nor could Dicey easily relinquish her need to watch and worry over the three younger children. Though she felt a growing bond with feisty, seemingly eccentric Gram, who talked of reaching out...and letting go, it took a crisis to help Dicey understand what such things might mean. This story is a sequel to "Homecoming."

Kinship

In Spite Fences, Pert Wilson was the loyal friend who helped Maggie Pugh stand up for her beliefs. Now Maggie has moved away from Kinship, Georgia, and 15-year-old Pert is aching for something more than the tiny community she's always known. Her circle of trailer park neighbors and her supportive mother and older brother aren't enough for Pert; she is lonesome for the father she has never met. But when Pert's Daddy suddenly returns to Kinship and sets her neighborhood spinning, Pert is forced to reassess her concepts of home, loyalty, family, and kin.

Autumn Journey

Bowman's Store: A Journey to Myself

In this book, a consummate storyteller unfolds his most personal and poignant story: his own. Bowman's Store traces the journey of writer Joseph “Sonny” Bruchac from a childhood filled with an abundance of both love and secrecy, to the dawning of his career as one of the best-known authors and storytellers of Native American history and lore. Compelling, lyrical, and deeply moving, Bruchac's memoir tells how he came to fully understand, and eventually claim, his Abenaki heritage, despite his grandparents' unspoken pact never to discuss Grandpa's Indian blood. Through experiences both painful and hilarious, Sonny finds himself drawn to all things Indian long before he learns of his grandfather's hidden Abenaki roots. Bowman's Store beautifully weaves themes from Bruchac's intimate knowledge of Native American cultures with vivid autobiographical scenes to create a touching story about self-discovery.

The Cuckoo's Child

Mia Veery wants her family to behave like the families she reads about. They would never include a mother who flies airplanes and trades one husband for another. Or older sisters who dress all in black and read French novels. Or a father who moves his family from Ohio to live in Lebanon, where even the tangy air tastes foreign.

Every day in Beirut, Mia wishes she could live the way kids are living in America in 1962, eating hot dogs, drinking real milk, maybe watching Bonanza on TV. Then her wish comes true, but in a way she'd never intended.

Mia is sent back to the United States, to Tennessee, to stay with an aunt she's never met. During a summer spent longing for her parents and trying to find her place in her new surroundings, Mia figures out a few truths about families and all that they can and cannot be.

Mia Veery is fierce, funny, and finally, indomitable. Her story marks the extraordinary debut of a talented writer.

Jubilee Journey

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4

Teen angst has never been such serious business--or this much fun! In his secret diary, British teen Adrian Mole excruciatingly details every morsel of his turbulent adolescence. Mixed in with daily reports about the zit sprouting on his chin are heartrending passages about his parents' chaotic marriage. Adrian sees all, and he has something to say about everything. Delightfully self-centered, Adrian is the sort of teen who could rule a much better world--if only his crazy relatives and classmates would get out of his way. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole is a riot, and--although written more than 15 years ago--there is something deliciously timeless about Adrian's angst.

Sue Townsend's hilarious, heartrending memoir of a Briitish teenager named Adrian Mole became the biggest surprise bestseller in publishing history when it first appeared in 1982. After several years on the bestseller lists, a hit musical, a TV series, an five million sold -- Adrian is still going strong!