National Network for Equitable Library Service

The Berrybender's party is moving forward across the Great Plains of the West towards Santa Fe. Tasmin's husband scouts ahead and falls in love with Pomp Charbonneau, who dies at the hand of the ruthless commander of the Spanish troops. A vast cast of characters meet up with the party as they travel, proving that the rolling grassy plains are not as empy as they look.

"A coming-of-age novel about a teenager growing up in the suburbs of Toronto in the 1960s with a father who tortures him psychologically. His world opens up when he realizes he is gay"--Provided by publisher.

Driven by curiosity about her small Carribean island, Myrna secretly excavates the ruins of a former slave plantation. Her investigation into the past will take a deeply personal turn in the present.

Laguna Beach, California, 2010. Reza Courdee, a fourteen-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner. But then he changes again, falling out with the bad boy surfers and in with a group of kids more awake to the world around them, who share his background, and whose ideas fill him with a very different sense of purpose.

Rico and his ex-druggie friend head to the country in search of something better than 1960s New York City but discover that picket-fenced apple-pie people can be just as violent and judgmental as those they left behind.

Just when sixteen-year-old Cameron thinks he's going to straighten out his troubled life, his parents break up and he ends up living on the street with his dog, Ozzie. He meets a girl named Mackenzie, who has been sleeping in a pup tent in the park. With her help, he tries to survive on the street and continue with school, despite the new challenges in his life. Finding a safe place for them to crash at night is difficult, and panhandling for money isn't as easy as it looks.

When Ally's mom dies, Ally is left with no family, no friends and no future. Put into foster care at the age of fifteen, she has less than $200 to her name and nothing left to lose. When Ally meets Tate, a busking fire breather, she starts to see a new life for herself as a street performer. Ally decides to run away from her foster home, but her problems follow her. Hiding her age, sleeping on the streets and avoiding fights with other buskers, Ally discovers that there's more to life as a fire-breathing busker than not getting burned.

Thirteen-year-old Declan lives only for revenge. His mother, father and sister were all killed on the streets of Belfast, and Declan will stop at nothing to settle the score. When he is torn away from his native soil and sent to live with relatives in Canada, he is disgusted by their efforts to welcome him into their lives, and determined to make them regret their hospitality. Can he devise a plan to return to Ireland and rejoin his cause? Or will the strange beauty of his new life and surroundings weaken his resolve?

New Hope Academy, or, as seventeen-year-old Jane Learning likes to call it, No Hope, is a Baptist reform school where Jane is currently being held captive. Of course, smart, sarcastic Jane has no interest in reforming, failing to see any benefit to pretending to play well with others. But then Hannah shows up, a gorgeous bad girl with fiery hair and an even stormier disposition. She shows Jane how to live a full and fulfilling life even when the world tells you you're wrong, and how to believe in a future outside the "prison" walls.