The Heartbeats of Wing Jones

The Heartbeats of Wing Jones
Author: Katherine Webber
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2017-03-14
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 039955503X

Jandy Nelson meets Friday Night Lights in this sweeping, warm, arrestingly original novel about family, poverty, and hope. Wing Jones, like everyone else in her town, has worshipped her older brother, Marcus, for as long as she can remember. Good-looking, popular, and the star of the football team, Marcus is everything his sister is not. Until the night everything changes when Marcus, drunk at the wheel after a party, kills two people and barely survives himself. With Marcus now in a coma, Wing is crushed, confused, and angry. She is tormented at school for Marcus’s mistake, haunted at home by her mother and grandmothers’ grief. In addition to all this, Wing is scared that the bank is going to repossess her home because her family can’t afford Marcus’s mounting medical bills. Every night, unable to sleep, Wing finds herself sneaking out to go to the school’s empty track. When Aaron, Marcus’s best friend, sees her running one night, he recognizes that her speed, skill, and agility could get her spot on the track team. And better still, an opportunity at a coveted sponsorship from a major athletic gear company. Wing can’t pass up the opportunity to train with her longtime crush and to help her struggling family, but can she handle being thrust out of Marcus’s shadow and into the spotlight? "The swiftly paced story will quickly sweep up readers...[a] well-crafted, inspirational debut with plenty of heart, hope, and determination." —Booklist "A story showing how hope and love can blossom in the midst of chaos." —Publishers Weekly

Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Author: Katherine Webber
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1338578790

A grieving girl. An unexpected boy. A perfect love story . . . until it isn't perfect at all. Sometimes a broken heart is all you need to set you free...Reiko loves the endless sky and electric colors of the Californian desert. It is a refuge from an increasingly claustrophobic life of family pressures and her own secrets. Then she meets Seth, a boy who shares a love of the desert and her yearning for a different kind of life. But Reiko and Seth both want something the other can't give them. As summer ends, things begin to fall apart. But the end of love can sometimes be the beginning of you...

This Story Is a Lie

This Story Is a Lie
Author: Tom Pollock
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2018-08-07
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1616959126

A YA thriller described as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time meets John le Carré, about a teen math prodigy with an extreme anxiety disorder who finds himself caught in a web of lies and conspiracies after an assassination attempt on his mother. Seventeen-year-old Peter Blankman is a math genius. He also suffers from devastating panic attacks. Pete gets through each day with the help of his mother—a famous scientist—and his beloved twin sister, Bel. But when his mom is nearly assassinated in front of his eyes and Bel disappears, Pete finds himself on the run. Dragged into a world where state and family secrets intertwine, Pete must use his extraordinary analytical skills to find his missing sister and track down the people who attacked his mother. But his greatest battle will be with the enemy inside: the constant terror that threatens to overwhelm him. Weaving between Pete’s past and present, This Story Is a Lie is a testimony from a protagonist who is brilliant, broken and trying to be brave.

The Inconceivable Life of Quinn

The Inconceivable Life of Quinn
Author: Marianna Baer
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1683350642

A compelling YA story with a magical realism twist about a girl whose pregnancy shocks everyone . . . most of all her Quinn Cutler is sixteen, the daughter of a candidate for congress in Brooklyn, and a student at a private school in Park Slope. She’s also pregnant, a situation made infinitely more shocking by the fact that she has no memory of actually having sex. Scared and confused, Quinn struggles to piece together what might have happened: An unlikely accident while she and her boyfriend were fooling around? A rape that she’s repressing from trauma? Before she’s had any revelations, the situation becomes public, putting her most intimate life up for scrutiny and ridicule, and jeopardizing her father’s political career. Religious fanatics begin gathering at the Cutlers’ house, believing she’s pregnant with the next Messiah. As things spiral out of control through a frenzy of brutal online gossip and rumor, the clues that Quinn uncovers reveal more about her childhood and her family than about the pregnancy itself. She starts to realize that much of her life is built on secrets and lies—strange, possibly supernatural ones that her father is desperate to keep concealed. And uncovering the mysterious secrets is the only way she’ll learn the truth about her pregnancy, and the only way she’ll discover why, despite all evidence and logic, a deep down part of her believes the truth isn’t an ugly one. Might she, in fact, be a virgin?

A God in Ruins

A God in Ruins
Author: Kate Atkinson
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 503
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 031634155X

This stunning companion to Kate Atkinson's #1 bestseller Life After Life, "one of the best novels I've read this century" (Gillian Flynn), follows Ursula's brother Teddy as he navigates an unknown future after a perilous war. "He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future." Kate Atkinson's dazzling Life After Life explored the possibility of infinite chances and the power of choices, following Ursula Todd as she lived through the turbulent events of the last century over and over again. A God in Ruins tells the dramatic story of the 20th Century through Ursula's beloved younger brother Teddy -- would-be poet, heroic pilot, husband, father, and grandfather -- as he navigates the perils and progress of a rapidly changing world. After all that Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge is living in a future he never expected to have. An ingenious and moving exploration of one ordinary man's path through extraordinary times, A God in Ruins proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the finest novelists of our age.

This Is How The Heart Beats

This Is How The Heart Beats
Author: Jake Naughton
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1620974894

Part of a groundbreaking series of photobooks on LGBTQ communities around the world, a moving portrait of a group of queer East Africans who fled their home countries for the United States Same-sex relations are illegal in thirty-eight African countries, often under colonial-era laws. One of the most dangerous countries has been Uganda, which is attempting to pass an Anti-Homosexuality Bill (commonly known as the "Kill the Gays" bill) that seeks to broaden the criminalization of same-sex relations, making it punishable by life imprisonment and, in some instances, death. This Is How the Heart Beats is a portrait by acclaimed photographer Jake Naughton of a group of East Africans who have fled unimaginable abuse in their homeland for the United States. One couple, Sulait and his boyfriend, had been tortured in prison in the months after the anti-homosexuality bill had been proposed and, on their release, had made their way to Kenya, where they were attacked by a mob of machete-wielding men. It was only after years in hiding that many such refugees have been resettled in the United States. With an introduction by journalist Jacob Kushner and a foreword by Ugandan queer activist Ruth Muganzi, This Is How the Heart Beats is a record of LGBTQ forced migration unlike any other, following this community from its darkest moments to an uncertain future. At a time of great uncertainty for both LGBTQ and refugee rights, this work illuminates the stakes for those at the center of a firestorm.

Out of Nowhere

Out of Nowhere
Author: Maria Padian
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2013-02-12
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0375896104

Winner of the Maine Literary Award Called “rich and multidimensional” by School Library Journal in a starred review, Out of Nowhere follows Tom Bouchard: captain and star of the Enniston High School soccer team; boyfriend to one of the prettiest, most popular girls; and third in his class, likely to have his pick of any college (if he ever bothers filling out his applications). But life in his idyllic small Maine town quickly gets turned upside down after the events of 9/11. Enniston has become a “secondary migration” location for Somali refugees seeking a better life after their country is destroyed by war. Tom hasn’t thought much about his Somali classmates until four of them join the soccer team, including Saeed. He comes out of nowhere on the field to make impossible shots, and suddenly the team is winning, dominating even. But when Saeed’s eligibility is questioned and Tom screws up in a big way, he’s left to grapple with a culture he doesn’t understand and take responsibility for his actions. The refugees came out of nowhere and vanish just as quickly. And Tom may find himself going nowhere, too, if he doesn’t start trying to get somewhere.

Cold Falling White

Cold Falling White
Author: Gabrielle Prendergast
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2019-11-19
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 147115808X

The 5th Wave meets Beauty and the Beast in this fast-paced and heart-stopping follow-up to Zero Repeat Forever, which VOYA called “an edge-of-your-seat page-turner.” Xander Liu survived the end of the world—just barely. For more than a year he has outsmarted, hidden from, and otherwise avoided the ruthless alien invaders, the Nahx, dodging the deadly darts that have claimed so many of his friends. When the murder of his friend Raven leaves him in the protective company of August, a rebellious Nahx soldier, Xander is finally able to make his way back to human controlled territory and relative safety. But safety amongst the humans is not what it seems. Nothing is anymore. Raven remembers dying in the arms of August. She remembers the pain, and the way he cried as she faded away. But months later when she wakes up on a wide expanse of snowy sand dunes, shackled to a boy she thought was dead too, she has a lot of questions. What has happened to her and the other reanimated humans gathered on the dunes? What is the meaning of the Nahx ships that hover ominously above them? And most pressing of all, where is August, who promised to keep her safe? In the shadow of an unforgiving Canadian winter, Xander and Raven find themselves on opposite sides of an alien war neither of them signed up for. Left with little choice about their roles in the great battle that now seems inevitable, they search for answers and allies, all while feeling inexorably drawn back the place it seems their respective fates were determined, and to the one who determined them: August.

Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Author: Katherine Webber
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: California, Southern
ISBN: 9781338578775

"Originally published in Great Britain in 2018 by Walker Books Ltd."--Copyright page.

The Revelry

The Revelry
Author: Katherine Webber
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2023-08-01
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1338828533

For fans of Laini Taylor, E. Lockhart, and Holly Black, the chilling story of a girl who goes to a once-a-year-party in the woods... and then must piece together the fantastical things that happened to her after she wakes up with no memory of the night before. Once a year in the woods outside Ember Grove, the Revelry occurs. Everyone knows what it is -- an exclusive, mysterious party in the woods at the school year's end. But nobody really knows what happens there. Because once you attend the Revelry, you are sworn to secrecy... forever. Bitsy Clark knows better than to break the rules around the Revelry. But her best friend, Amy, isn't waiting for an invitation. As the night comes closer, her plan is clear -- she and Bitsy are going to sneak their way in. Bitsy can remember being nervous about this. She can remember going to the woods. But after that: Nothing. She doesn't know what happened to her. All she knows is that her life starts to unravel, while Amy's good fortune grows stronger. Has Bitsy been cursed? And if so, will she be able to discover enough secrets of the Revelry in order to free herself?