After the death of the old man to whom young star pitcher House Jackson has been reading, House uncovers some secrets which may allow the annual Fourth of July baseball game to proceed, despite the county's anniversary pageant.
Ruby Lavender has fun with her grandmother Miss Eula as they rescue chickens, paint a house pink and run their own secret post office. But what can Ruby dowhen Eula goes away?
Comfort Snowberger is well acquainted with death since her family runs the funeral parlor in their small southern town, but even so the ten-year-old is unprepared for the series of heart-wrenching events that begins on the first day of Easter vacation with the sudden death of her beloved great-uncle Edisto.
The story of a formative year in 12-year-old Franny Chapman's life, and the life of a nation facing the threat of nuclear war. Franny Chapman just wants some peace. But that's hard to get when her best friend is feuding with her, her sister has disappeared, and her uncle is fighting an old war in his head. Her saintly younger brother is no help, and the cute boy across the street only complicates things. Worst of all, everyone is walking around just waiting for a bomb to fall. It's 1962, and it seems that the whole country is living in fear. When President Kennedy goes on television to say that Russia is sending nuclear missiles to Cuba, it only gets worse. Franny doesn't know how to deal with what's going on in the world -- no more than she knows how to deal with what's going on with her family and friends. But somehow she's got to make it through. Featuring a captivating story interspersed with footage from 1962, award-winning author Deborah Wiles has created a documentary novel that will put you right alongside Franny as she navigates a dangerous time in both her history and our history.
Two-time National Book Award finalist Deborah Wiles introduces us to the Cakes, a family of traveling bakers, who've just arrived in Wiles's legendary Aurora County, Mississippi. Emma Lane Cake has five brothers, four dogs, and a family that can't stay put. The Cake family travels from place to place, setting up bakeries in communities that need them. Then, just when Emma feels settled in with new friends... they move again. Now the Cakes have come to Aurora County, and Emma has vowed that this time she is NOT going to get attached to ANYONE or ANYTHING. Why bother, if her father's only going to uproot her again? But fate has different plans. As does Ruby Lavender, who is going to show Emma Lane Cake a thing or two about making friendship last.
*A 2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST* It's 1964, and Sunny's town is being invaded. Or at least that's what the adults of Greenwood, Mississippi, are saying. All Sunny knows is that people from up north are coming to help people register to vote. They're calling it Freedom Summer.Meanwhile, Sunny can't help but feel like her house is being invaded, too. She has a new stepmother, a new brother, and a new sister crowding her life, giving her little room to breathe. And things get even trickier when Sunny and her brother are caught sneaking into the local swimming pool -- where they bump into a mystery boy whose life is going to become tangled up in theirs.As she did in her groundbreaking documentary novel COUNTDOWN, award-winning author Deborah Wiles uses stories and images to tell the riveting story of a certain time and place -- and of kids who, in a world where everyone is choosing sides, must figure out how to stand up for themselves and fight for what's right.
From two-time National Book Award finalist Deborah Wiles, a masterpiece exploration of one of the darkest moments in our history, when American troops killed four American students protesting the Vietnam War. May 4, 1970. Kent State University. As protestors roil the campus, National Guardsmen are called in. In the chaos of what happens next, shots are fired and four students are killed. To this day, there is still argument of what happened and why. Told in multiple voices from a number of vantage points -- protestor, Guardsman, townie, student -- Deborah Wiles's Kent State gives a moving, terrifying, galvanizing picture of what happened that weekend in Ohio . . . an event that, even 50 years later, still resonates deeply.
From two-time National Book Award finalist Deborah Wiles, the remarkable story of two cousins who must take a road trip across America in 1969 in order to let a teen know he's been drafted to fight in Vietnam. Full of photos, music, and figures of the time, this is the masterful story of what it's like to be young and American in troubled times. It's 1969.Molly is a girl who's not sure she can feel anything anymore, because life sometimes hurts way too much. Her brother Barry ran away after having a fight with their father over the war in Vietnam. Now Barry's been drafted into that war - and Molly's mother tells her she has to travel across the country in an old schoolbus to find Barry and bring him home.Norman is Molly's slightly older cousin, who drives the old schoolbus. He's a drummer who wants to find his own music out in the world - because then he might not be the "normal Norman" that he fears he's become. He's not sure about this trip across the country . . . but his own mother makes it clear he doesn't have a choice.Molly and Norman get on the bus - and end up seeing a lot more of America that they'd ever imagined. From protests and parades to roaring races and rock n' roll, the cousins make their way to Barry in San Francisco, not really knowing what they'll find when they get there.As she did in her other epic novels Countdown and Revolution, two-time National Book Award finalist Deborah Wiles takes the pulse of an era . . . and finds the multitude of heartbeats that lie beneath it.
This is a story about love, but not the kind of love you think. You'll see... In the lush and magical Pacific Northwest live two best friends who grew up like sisters: charismatic, mercurial, and beautiful Aurora, and the devoted, watchful narrator. Each of them is incomplete without the other. But their unbreakable bond is challenged when a mysterious and gifted musician named Jack comes between them. His music is like nothing I have ever heard. It is like the ocean surging, the wind that blows across the open water, the far call of gulls. Suddenly, each girl must decide what matters most: friendship, or love. What both girls don't know is that the stakes are even higher than either of them could have imagined. They're not the only ones who have noticed Jack's gift; his music has awakened an ancient evil—and a world both above and below which may not be mythical at all. We have paved over the ancient world but that does not mean we have erased it. The real and the mystical; the romantic and the heartbreaking all begin to swirl together in All Our Pretty Songs, Sarah McCarry's brilliant debut, carrying the two on journey that is both enthralling and terrifying. And it's up to the narrator to protect the people she loves—if she can.
Cork O’Connor returns for “hold-your-breath suspense” (Booklist, starred review) in the thirteenth novel in the New York Times bestselling mystery series. During a blizzard one bitter winter night, just days before Christmas, the car belonging to the wife of a retired local judge is discovered abandoned on a rural county road in Tamarack County. After days of fruitless searching, there is little hope that she’ll be found alive, if she’s found at all. Cork O’Connor, the ex-sheriff of Tamarack County, notices small things about the woman’s disappearance that disturb him. When the beloved pet dog of a friend is brutally killed and beheaded, he begins to see a startling pattern in these and other recent dark occurrences in the area. And after his own son is brutally attacked and nearly killed, Cork understands that someone is spinning a deadly web in Tamarack County. At its center is a murder more than twenty years old, for which an innocent man may have been convicted. Cork remembers the case only too well. He was the deputy in charge of the investigation that sent the man to prison. With the darkest days of the year at hand, the storms of winter continue to isolate Tamarack County. Somewhere behind the blind of all that darkness and drifting snow, a vengeful force is at work. And Cork has only hours to stop it before his family and friends pay the ultimate price for the sins of others.