Based on the true story of a boy in Brooklyn who became neighbors and friends with his hero, Jackie Robinson. Stephen Satlow is an eight-year-old boy living in Brooklyn, New York, which means he only cares about one thing-the Dodgers. Steve and his father spend hours reading the sports pages and listening to games on the radio. Aside from an occasional run-in with his teacher, life is pretty simple for Steve. But then Steve hears a rumor that an African American family is moving to his all-Jewish neighborhood. It's 1948 and some of his neighbors are against it. Steve knows this is wrong. His hero, Jackie Robinson, broke the color barrier in baseball the year before. Then it happens--Steve's new neighbor is none other than Jackie Robinson! Steve is beyond excited about living two doors down from the Robinson family. He can't wait to meet Jackie. This is going to be the best baseball season yet! How many kids ever get to become friends with their hero?
Becca McKenzie is just trying to make it through her senior year of high school. She has good friends and a gorgeous boyfriend but Ryan Jackson, the bane of her existence, keeps popping up everywhere. She doesn't care that they were best friends for years. She doesn't care that their moms are close and therefore she hears more about him than she'd ever care to know. She doesn't care that their mutual friend, Jake, keeps pushing for them to all to hang out together, and she especially doesn't care that the rest of the school bows down and worships him. Becca decided years ago that he wasn't worth her time and nothing, NOTHING, is going to change her mind.
Two Doors Down: Sally O'Neill has been cleaning the houses on Marlborough Road for so long that she almost feels like she lives there herself. There's Clare MacDonald with her huge, messy house and free-range children; old Miss Black, with her endless stream of lodgers; and Saffron and Trevor, whose marriage has hit a rough patch. Sally is their confidante and knows all their secrets, hopes and dreams. But Sally herself has a past she won't tell anyone about - a past that is about to catch up with her. Your Cheatin' Heart: When Maggie Lennon leaves Northern Ireland to work for the summer in America, what she finds is the weird and wonderful world of Chattanooga, Tennessee; a job as an all-night DJ; and a best friend who introduces her to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. In no time she's mingling with celebrities and partying with the in crowd. But then the bubble bursts and her life crash lands. Pretty soon Maggie's standing with a gun in her hand, pop star Buford McConnell's girlfriend lying on the floor - and the police are on their way . . .
Becca McKenzie is happy-crazy, ridiculously happy.She might not have figured out what she wants to do with her life, but she has something better-Ryan Jackson-and they couldn't be more in love if they tried. He might have been pissed when she went off to a different college, but they make the long distance work because they're "Becca and Ryan", and nothing is going to break them.Until it does.Until one terrible, unforgettable night away from Ryan. Until too much drinking and one empty bedroom. Until fifteen minutes of hell completely destroys her life and leaves Becca questioning everything she's ever known.Until that night turns into a lie she can't stop-can't control.Until she said no but he didn't listen.
Since moving to a new city, once-adventurous Steph is doing her best to prove to her friends and family back home that her life is as fulfilling and envy-inducing as ever. The truth? She is broke and has found that making new friends isn't as easy as she expected. Eric has lost his way in life since his breakup with perfect Clarissa. Now that all his friends are buying homes, getting married and starting families, Eric is still living in a house share, feeling left behind. Eric and Steph are lonely. They're strangers, but with one connection - they live on the same street, on either side of number 26. Neither Eric nor Steph have met their neighbour at number 26, but both used to take comfort in hearing their neighbour playing piano at the same time every night - it made them feel less alone. Now the music has stopped and number 26 lies silent. Brought together by their mutual concern, Eric and Steph begin to grow closer and it looks like they might discover that the solution to their problems has been just two doors away the whole time.
If anything bad is going to happen, it will inevitably happen to me. If any good man, or man in general really, comes into my life, they will inevitably leave. At least one of those changes when the new neighbor moves in. Who'd have thought so many things could change with one new person on the block? Rose is a single mom, a teacher, a friend. Her ex abandoned her and their two children. He left them nearly homeless and broke. Why should she ever trust another man again? Him leaving opened her eyes to the darkness that had crept into her life, casting light on what she had been blind too. The actions and words he excused away. He wasn't the first man to leave her. Her brother did, her father did, now her husband. Ryan is divorced and freshly retired from the SEALS. He moves to his sister's town in order to get a fresh start, a new chance. He finds more than what he bargained for. He finds the woman he met once. The one who made him want to help people in the long run. He never expected to see her again, he never expected to once again find her half unconscious in a recently smashed car. He never expected to find her a few houses down from him, or that she would be friends with his sister. Or that his best friend was the brother who abandoned them years ago. Everywhere he turned, they were connected somehow. Was all this coincidence or fate? Maybe Walt Disney had it right. It was a small world afterall.
A woman who has sworn off men finds herself tempted by her sexy neighbor down the hall. With the help of her three teenage daughters, he wins her heart. Original.
The story of a federal minister’s remarkable reunion with his birth parents. Robert Tickner had always known he was adopted, but had rarely felt much curiosity about his origins. Born in 1951, he had a happy childhood — raised by his loving adoptive parents, Bert and Gwen Tickner, in the small seaside town of Forster, New South Wales. He grew up to be a cheerful and confident young man with a fierce sense of social justice, and the desire and stamina to make political change. Serving in the Hawke and Keating governments, he held the portfolio of minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs. Among other achievements while in government, he was responsible for initiating the reconciliation process with Indigenous Australians, and he was instrumental in instigating the national inquiry into the stolen generations. During his time on the front bench, Robert’s son was born, and it was his deep sense of connection to this child that moved him at last to turn his attention to the question of his own birth. Although he had some sense of the potentially life-changing course that lay ahead of him, he could not have anticipated learning of the exceptional nature of the woman who had brought him into the world, the deep scars that his forced adoption had left on her, and the astonishing series of coincidences that had already linked their lives. And this was only the first half of a story that was to lead to a reunion with his birth father and siblings. This deeply moving memoir is a testament to the significance of all forms of family in shaping us — and to the potential for love to heal great harm.
“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.
