National Network for Equitable Library Service

Assistant coach of the girl’s basketball team. Sounds like an easy gig for sixteen-year-old Salvador “Slam” Amaro. Show up, run a few drills and pad his resume so he can win a spot on the Ontario Under 17 men’s team. But Slam hasn’t bargained on the girls’ head coach and the star point guard going missing. With the girls facing playoff elimination, Slam has to solve the mystery of their disappearance and take over as head coach of the team while battling some tough competitors for his own place on the Ontario squad.

Kelly Paddik is locked up. Sent to a secure facility because she is a “danger to herself,” all Kelly wants is to escape. But she has been running from everybody since her father abused her and her mother stood by and let it happen. It is only when she meets Chris that she begins to realize she is running from herself, and that if she wants control over her own life, she will first have to gain some self-respect.

Maddy doesn't find it easy adjusting to grade nine. The friendships and loyalties she took for granted in middle school are being challenged, and there's so much more competition on her track team now. When Maddy stumbles across a friend being bullied behind the school after a track practice, she suspects something nasty is going on. So when Coach announces one of the team members has been robbed, she realizes the two incidents must be connected. Everyone on the track and field team is under suspicion. How can the team function with so much uneasiness among its members?

Rowan is the sole survivor when his entire family is struck down by the plague. Alone and grief-stricken, Rowan ekes out a living by playing music on his button box in the small towns and villages of Prosper. He lives and travels in his family's old caravan, half starved and in despair. One day, he finds he has competition: a young man playing a violin. Rather than make an adversary, Rowan suggests they travel and play together, but he regrets his offer when he finds out that Samik is from the Tarzine Lands, beyond the volcanoes, and is being pursued by a vengeful warlord.

When the daughter of the most powerful Mafia don in New York goes missing, the don’s right-hand man comes to Gulliver Dowd for help. Problem is, the right-hand man and Dowd despise each other. Plus, the don knows who murdered Dowd’s sister, Keisha, but refuses to share that knowledge with Gulliver. Still, Dowd makes a devil’s deal and hunts for the girl. Old secrets and lies boil to the surface, threatening to destroy the lives of everyone involved. But who has the girl? An eccentric art professor, or one of the don’s many enemies?

Justine McKeen is back, and she’s on a deadline. With only days left before Earth Day, Justine enlists the help of her classmates to count flower buds, frogs, spiders and ants in their natural habitat as part of an environmental science project. But there’s a species right in her own classroom that she’ll have to tackle first: a class bully. Savannah Blue, aka the Queen of Mean, criticizes Justine’s secondhand clothes and calls being green a waste of time. Their teacher, Mrs. Howie, gives the girls a new assignment for Earth Day.

Dian has been coming to the Dominican Republic with her doctor parents for years. Now that she's 14, she had wanted to stay home in Canada, but instead she is helping her parents set up their clinic and looking forward to hanging out with her Dominican friend Aracely. When fourteen-year-old Aracely makes a shocking announcement, she is engaged to be married, Dian struggles to accept that Aracely has the right to choose her own destiny, even if it is very different from what Dian would choose for her.

Everyone expected Leon Kline, anchor for the 4x100 sprint relay, to secure Gilburn High's spot in the record books. But a freak accident on the final stretch changes everything. Suddenly his future is gone. No more running, no scholarship, no college. But then he meets sassy and straight-talking Casey De Vries, and life doesn't look quite so bleak. She even gets him running again. He can't sprint anymore, but he can handle longer distances. As he gets to know Casey better, he realizes that something is not quite right. How can he help her if she won't tell him what’s going on?

Rooster Cobb is in trouble, with his school, with his mother, with his girlfriend. He smokes too much and he hates his stepfather. In fact, he might not graduate from high school. But he just doesn't seem to care. That is until the guidance counselor and the principal come up with a plan to get Rooster through grade twelve, out of their lives forever and possibly on the right track with his life.

Johnny Maverick has come up with an idea to win a fundraising contest for the Howling Timberwolves hockey team. It seems fun, until a girl visits Howling and starts to win challenges against Johnny. The entire town finds it funny; even worse, his friends Tom and Stu like what's happening.