National Network for Equitable Library Service

Welcome to New York City's Upper East Side, where my friends and I live, go to school, play, and sleep-sometimes with each other. S is back from boarding school, and if we aren't careful, she's going to win over our teachers, wear that dress we couldn't fit into, steal our boyfriends' hearts, and basically ruin our lives in a major way. I'll be watching.

At an after-school program, a teacher named Stephen and a group of kids push together tables piled high with books so they can reimagine Don Quixote, the story of an idealistic dreamer from Spain who traveled around trying to right the world's wrongs, as the story of a group of modern-day kids from immigrant families in Brooklyn. The stories the kids write in class become a musical play, expressing the plight of today's immigrants and using Quixote as inspiration. And Sarah Sierra, once very shy, soon will play the leading role as Kid Quixote.

Abby Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She made a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life.

Every great city has a soul. But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs in the halls of power, threatening to destroy New York and her six newborn avatars unless five residents can stop it for good.

France 1945. MPs, Sergeant Jack Reilly and his partner Sergeant Frank Contini, find themselves closing in on a gang of thieves who have been pilfering military goods for the black market. In the course of arresting the villains, Jack is forced to kill one of the criminals. This man happened to be one of two brothers, high ranking members of the Corse Unione, the French mafia. The surviving brother, Guy LeRouche, is tried and convicted with a sentence of death. However, during the trial LeRouche threatens to exact his revenge on Jack and Frank for his brother's death.

Seventeen-year-old Nova Abbott grew up dancing barefoot in the backyard with her aunt Ivy, whose dreams of becoming a professional ballerina were cut short by cystic fibrosis. Nova is invited to attend a prestigious ballet school's summer intensive program. She is a bit overwhelmed by New York City: the bustle of people, the talent of the other dancers, the demands of the instructors and being separated from her beloved aunt, whose health is deteriorating rapidly.

Two years ago, Billie Tarrow's husband left her for another woman. Shamed and divorced, Billie retreated to her family home in Port Townsend, far from her old life in New York. After a near-death encounter, Billie decides to return to the city that took everything from her. But sometimes in the midst of heartache, hope suffocates the pain. Satcher Gable has carried a torch for Billie for ten years. When she suddenly returns to New York a single woman, he can't believe his good fortune. But convincing her to walk away from her heartache is proving more difficult than Satcher anticipated.

Ruby has always been Ruby Chertok: future classical pianist and daughter of renowned composer Martin Chertok. But after her horrendous audition for the prestigious music school where her father is on faculty, it's clear that music has publicly dumped her. Now Ruby is suddenly just...Ruby. And who is that again? All she knows is that she wants away from the world of classical music for good. Oscar is a wunderkind, a musical genius. Just ask any of the 1.8 million people who've watched him conduct on YouTube-or hey, just ask Oscar.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, sixteen-year-old Kyle Donohue watches the first twin tower come down from the window of Stuyvesant High School. Moments later, terrified and fleeing home to safety across the Brooklyn Bridge, he stumbles across a girl perched in the shadows, covered in ash, and wearing a pair of costume wings. With his mother and sister in California and unable to reach his father, and NYC detective likely on his way to the disaster, Kyle makes the split-second decision to bring the girl home.

Lane Sanders and her fiery boss, Mayor Fiorello "Fio" La Guardia, have managed to contain the explosive underground conspiracies of New York's most sinister schemers. But after a seemingly harmless pinball racket claims the life of a trusted ally, a new ringleader signals the rebirth of an all-too-familiar crime network at home and across the pond. Spurred on by the possibility of a violent syndicate spreading like wildfire through Europe, Lane sets sail for London-the city where her parents began the undercover work that led to their tragic undoing.