THIS WEEKEND
Saturday, September 15 at 2 PM
SCOTT WESTERFELD
speaking & signing
Impostors
SOON
Sunday, September 23 at 2 PM
NGOZI UKAZU
speaking & signing
Check, Please!: #Hockey
NEW TEEN FICTION
Confessions of a Teenage Leper by Ashley Little
Cheerleading, mean girls, shopping . . . and leprosy? High school is about to get complicated. For fans of Before I Fall and Exit, Pursued By a Bear.
Abby Furlowe has plans. Big plans. She’s hot, she’s popular, she’s a cheerleader, and she’s going to break out of her small Texas town and make it big. Fame and fortune; adoration and accolades. It’ll all be hers. But then she notices some spots on her skin. She writes them off as a rash, but things only get worse. She’s tired all the time, her hands and feet are numb, and her face starts to look like day-old pizza. By the time her seventeenth birthday rolls around, she’s tried every cream and medication the doctors have thrown at her, but nothing works. When she falls doing a routine cheerleading stunt and slips into a coma, her mystery illness goes into overdrive and finally gets diagnosed: Hansen’s Disease, aka leprosy. Abby is sent to a facility to recover and deal with this new reality. Her many misdiagnoses mean that some permanent damage has been done, and all of her plans suddenly come tumbling down. If she can’t even wear high heels anymore, what is the point of living? Cheerleading is out the window, and she might not even make it to prom. PROM! But it’s during this recovery that Abby has to learn to live with something even more difficult than Hansen’s Disease. She’s becoming aware of who she really was before and what her behavior was doing to others; now she’s on the other side of the fence looking in, and she doesn’t like what she sees . . .
Darkly comic but ultimately touching, Confessions of a Teenage Leper is an ugly duckling tale with a surprising twist.
Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman
A mixed race teen struggles to find her way back to her love of music in the wake of her sister’s tragic death in this incisive, lyrical novel that’s perfect for fans of Nicola Yoon and Jennifer Niven, by the author of William C. Morris Award finalist Starfish.
Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea. Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish.
Aching, powerful, and unflinchingly honest, Summer Bird Blue explores big truths about insurmountable grief, unconditional love, and how to forgive even when it feels impossible.
Freak ‘N’ Gorgeous by Sebastian J. Plata
Everyone is ugly sometimes.
In a world not unlike our own, there is a phenomenon called the INEXPLICABLE DEVELOPMENT—a rare occurrence with permanent consequences.
Average-looking, under-the-radar sixteen-year-old Konrad Wolnik’s life is turned upside down when, one morning, he wakes up stunningly attractive. That same day, his classmate, Camilla Hadi, has her own transformation; the lean, pretty athlete is now devastatingly ugly. The teens face the cruel world of high school from very different perspectives. Konrad shoots to the top of the pecking order, Camilla slips into pariah status. But soon the school starts rallying around Camilla, and Konrad’s sudden popularity sours as people blame him for her transformation. And, the truth is, so does she. All he wants is for everyone to like him. All she wants is to destroy his perfect life.
So what if they could use each other for personal gain?
Told in dual POV, Sebastian J. Plata’s debut is a hilarious, scathing look at society’s unrealistic beauty standards and the intense pressures of high school. Perfect for fans of The DUFF and Winger.
NEW TEEN FANTASY
Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower by Christian McKay Heidicker
From the author of Cure for the Common Universe comes a monster-movie-like novel that bravely challenges perceived notions of beauty, identity, and modern voyeurism.
Phoebe Lane is a lightning rod for monsters. She and her mom are forced to flee flesh-eating plants, blobs from outer space, and radioactive ants. They survive thanks to Phoebe’s dad—an invisible titan, whose giant eyes warn them where the next monster attack will take place. All Phoebe wants is to stop running from motel to motel and start living a monster-free life in New York or Paris. But when her mom mysteriously vanishes, Phoebe is left to fend for herself in small-town Pennybrooke. That’s when Phoebe starts to transform . . .
Christian McKay Heidicker returns with a book unlike any other, challenging perceived notions of beauty, identity, and what it means to be a monster.
The Lantern’s Ember by Colleen Houck
A bold and ghostly stand-alone from New York Times bestselling author Colleen Houck, with all the moodiness of Sleepy Hollow and all the romance her fans love.
Welcome to a world where nightmarish creatures reign supreme. Five hundred years ago, Jack made a deal with the devil. It’s difficult for him to remember much about his mortal days. So he focuses on fulfilling his sentence as a Lantern—one of the watchmen who guard the portals to the Otherworld, a realm crawling with every nightmarish creature imaginable. Jack has spent centuries jumping from town to town, ensuring that nary a mortal—or not-so-mortal—soul slips past him. That is, until he meets beautiful Ember O’Dare. Seventeen, stubborn, and a natural-born witch, Ember feels a strong pull to the Otherworld. Undeterred by Jack’s warnings, she crosses into the forbidden plane with the help of a mysterious and debonair vampire—and the chase through a dazzling, dangerous world is on. Jack must do everything in his power to get Ember back where she belongs before both the earthly and unearthly worlds descend into chaos.
Colleen Houck, the New York Times bestselling author of the Tigers Curse series and Reawakened series, breathes new life into classic folklore in this wild, twisting adventure propelled by the spirit of Halloween.
As She Ascends by Jodi Meadows
From the New York Times bestselling coauthor of My Plain Jane comes the second book in a smoldering fantasy trilogy about a girl who must embrace her latent power or lose the dragons she loves. Perfect for fans of Julie Kagawa and Kendare Blake.
Mira the Dragonhearted is on the run with her friends following a fiery escape from the prison where she’d been condemned for speaking out against dragon trafficking. And she wants answers. Has the treaty she’s been defending her whole life truly sold out the Fallen Isles to their enemies? Did her own parents lie to her? Will she lose control of her power and hurt the ones she loves? The only way to find the truth is to go home again, to face the people who betrayed her and the parents she’s not sure she can trust. Home, where she must learn to rise above her fears. Or be consumed.
Rule by Ellen Goodlett
Three girls. Three deadly secrets. Only one can wear the crown. The king is dying, his heir has just been murdered, and rebellion brews in the east. But the kingdom of Kolonya and the outer Reaches has one last option before it descends into leaderless chaos. Or rather, three unexpected options. Zofi has spent her entire life trekking through the outer Reaches with her band of Travelers. She would do anything to protect the band, her family. But no one can ever find out how far she’s already gone. Akeylah was raised in the Eastern Reach, surrounded by whispers of rebellion and abused by her father. Desperate to escape, she makes a decision that threatens the whole kingdom. Ren grew up in Kolonya, serving as a lady’s maid and scheming her way out of the servants’ chambers. But one such plot could get her hung for treason if anyone ever discovers what she’s done. When the king summons the girls, they arrive expecting arrest or even execution. Instead they learn the truth: they are his illegitimate daughters, and one must become his new heir. But someone in Kolonya knows their secrets, and that someone will stop at nothing to keep the sisters from their destiny . . . to rule.
NEW TEEN THRILLER
The Echo Room by Parker Peevyhouse
Parker Peevyhouse’s The Echo Room is a smart, claustrophobic, speculative young adult thriller with an immersive psychological mystery.
The only thing worse than being locked in is facing what you locked out. Rett Ward knows how to hide. He’s had six years of practice at Walling Home, the state-run boarding school where he learned how to keep his head down to survive. But when Rett wakes up locked in a small depot with no memory of how he got there, he can’t hide. Not from the stranger in the next room. Or from the fact that there’s someone else’s blood on his jumpsuit. Worse, every time he tries to escape, he wakes up right back where he started. Same day, same stranger, same bloodstained jumpsuit. As memories start to surface, Rett realizes that the logo on the walls is familiar, the stranger isn’t a stranger, and the blood on his jumpsuit belongs to someone—or something—banging on the door to get in.
“The Echo Room is just brilliant. Incandescent writing, wonderful characters, and a plot full of twists and blinding turns. Peevyhouse is a master storyteller.” —New York Times bestselling author Brittany Cavallaro
I Do Not Trust You by Laura J. Burns & Melinda Metz
With Laura J. Burns and Melinda Metz’s signature plot twists, and uneasy, ever-changing alliances, I Do Not Trust You is a thrilling journey at every turn that asks: What would you do to save the ones you love?
Memphis “M” Engel is stubborn to a fault, graced with an almost absurd knowledge of long lost languages and cultures, and a heck of an opponent in a fight. In short: she’s awesome. Ashwin “Ash” Sood is a little too posh for M’s tastes, a little too good looking, and has way too many secrets. He desperately wants the ancient map M inherited from her archaeologist father, believing it will lead him to a relic with the power to destroy the world. M obviously can’t trust him. Equally desperate to find the relic for reasons of her own, M forms an uneasy partnership with Ash. From the catacombs of Paris, to a sacred forest in Norway, to the ruins of a submerged temple in Egypt, together they crisscross the globe in their search. But through it all, M can never be sure: Is she traveling with a friend or enemy?
GREAT PRE-ORDERS YOU CAN’T MISS
Order a signed edition
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An unforgettable and sweeping family saga from Markus Zusak, the storyteller who gave us the extraordinary bestseller The Book Thief
The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance. At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge—for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle. The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome?
Written in powerfully inventive language and bursting with heart, Bridge of Clay is signature Zusak.
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In his much-anticipated debut novel, Hank Green—cocreator of Crash Course, Vlogbrothers, and SciShow—spins a sweeping, cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight celebrity before realizing she’s part of something bigger, and stranger, than anyone could have possibly imagined.
The Carls just appeared. Roaming through New York City at three a.m., twenty-three-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship—like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor—April and her friend, Andy, make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day, April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world—from Beijing to Buenos Aires—and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight. Seizing the opportunity to make her mark on the world, April now has to deal with the consequences her new particular brand of fame has on her relationships, her safety, and her own identity. And all eyes are on April to figure out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us.
Compulsively entertaining and powerfully relevant. The beginning of an exciting fiction career, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a bold and insightful novel of now.
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