Check out some of the latest books to make their way to Puyallup Public Library!
MAY 2008
The Death of Jayson Porter by Jaime Adoff – 16-year-old Jayson Porter wants to believe things will get better. But the harsh realities of his life never seem to change. Living in the inland-Florida projects with his abusive mother, he tries unsuccessfully to fit in at school, while struggling to maintain a relationship with his drug-addicted father. As the pressure mounts, there’s only one thing Jayson feels he has control over – the choice of whether to live or die.
Hush by Donna Jo Napoli – Melkorka is a princess of a magnificent kingdom in medieval Ireland – but all of this is lost the day she is kidnapped and taken aboard a marauding slave ship. Thrown into a world that she has never known, alongside people that her former country’s laws regarded as less than human, Mel is forced to learn quickly how to survive. When she takes a vow of silence in order to protect her identity, her captors fear that Mel is actually a witch. Will Melkorka’s hush give her power to endure captivity?
APRIL 2008
Airman by Eoin Colfer – Born in a hot-air balloon at the Paris World’s Fair in 1878, Conor Broekhart is destined to fly. Until the 1890s, he lives an idyllic life on the Saltee Islands off the Irish Coast, with Princess Isabella as his best friend; Good King Nick like a father to him; and a science tutor, Victor Vigny, who shares his obsession with making a flying machine. Everything changes when Conor witnesses Marshall Bonvilain murder the king with Victor’s pistol, and he is labeled a traitor and thrown into prison, which is a brutal hell of nightmarish torture where inmates must mine for diamonds under impossible conditions, and he must plan an escape if he is to survive.
First Shot by Walter Sorrells – David Crandall feels useless. Though he comes from one of Maine’s great families, he is convinced that he doesn’t have what it takes to live up to its powerful longstanding reputation. His stern and demanding father is headmaster at The Arsenal, a prestigious academy that David happens to attend, and his life is a constant challenge. David struggles with his fear that his father has murdered his mother, while also longing to earn top honors as the school’s best target shooter. With the arrival of Misty, a stunning new girl who is an even better shooter than he, he finds the strength to go beyond the surface of his beliefs to solve the dark mysteries surrounding his family.
This is What I Did by Ann Dee Ellis – “That’s when I got up and walked out. I just walked out.
“I didn’t stop in the waiting room either. I didn’t stop in the hall. I didn’t stop down in the lobby. I didn’t even stop at the car. I just kept going. But soon I was running. I sort of ran up the hill.
“A hill.
“I didn’t know where I was exactly except that we were by the university, but it didn’t matter. I ran up a hill and there was a construction site there and a bunch of guys jackhammering.
“I ran past them.
“I felt stupid for all of them to see me running but I didn’t stop.
“I kept running and panting and almost dying until I passed them and got to the base of the mountain. I can’t really describe where I was or what it was like because I didn’t know and I was about to pass out.
“All I know was that all of a sudden I was at the base of the mountains where the trails start and I sat down by a tree where no one was around and no one could see me from the road.
“I sat down and then
I yelled.”
Something terrible happened last year. It involved Logan, his friend Zyler, Zyler’s physically abusive father, and a girl named Cami. Whatever it was that happened, Logan didn’t do anything to stop it. He and his family have moved away, started a new life, but it seems like the past won’t leave Logan alone. Find out what happened to Logan in This is What I Did.
MARCH 2008
Derby Girl by Shauna Cross – Meet Bliss Cavendar, an indie-rock-loving misfit stuck in the tiny town of Bodeen, Texas. Her pageant-addicted mother expects her to compete for the coveted Miss Bluebonnet crown, but Bliss would rather feast on roaches than be subjected to such rhinestone tyranny. Bliss’s escape? Roller Derby.
The Luxe by Anna Godbersen – Pretty girls in pretty dresses, partying until dawn. Irresistible boys with sly smiles and dangerous intentions. White lies, dark secrets, and scandalous hookups. This is Manhattan, 1899.
Mistik Lake by Martha Brooks – Odella is haunted by family secrets. Why doesn’t her great-aunt Gloria come to visit anymore? Why does her mother, Sally, drink so much? Sally’s tragic car accident on a frozen lake in the winter of her own sixteenth year seems to have cast a spell over her life that no one can break. Odella tries to hold her family together, but when her mother runs off, she’s overwhelmed and confused. How can you claim to love your family, only to walk out the door and never come back?
Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil by Jeff Smith – When young orphan Billy Batson follows a mysterious stranger onto the subway, he never imagines he’s entering a strange world of powerful wizards, talking tigers, kid-eating monsters, giant robots, political intrigue, and mysterious villains. But Billy encounters all that and more when the wizard gives him a magic word that transforms him into the world’s mightiest mortal!
The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray – The third book in the Gemma Doyle trilogy. At Spence Academy, sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle continues preparing for her London debut while struggling to determine how best to use magic to resolve a power struggle in the enchanted world of the realms, and to protect her own world and loved ones.
TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY by Jay Asher – When high school student Clay Jenkins plays the cassette tapes he received in a mysterious package, he’s surprised to hear the voice of dead classment Hannah Baker. He’s one of thirteen people who receive Hannah’s story, which details the circumstances that led to her suicide. Clay spends the rest of the day and long into the night listening to Hannah’s voice and going to the locations she wants him to visit.
