Year of Mistaken Discoveries by Eileen Cook
Summary: They say bad things come in threes and Avery is about to find out just how true that statement is. Having her boyfriend break up with her, being turned down for early acceptance at Duke University and the sudden death of her former best friend, Nora, leaves Avery feeling bereft and adrift. Struggling to figure out how to salvage a future Duke acceptance and mourning her friend, Avery uses the fact that she and Nora were both adopted as the basis of her senior class project, searching for her own birth mother and hoping to impress the university with the results. Along the way she...
Read MoreWhat Happened to Serenity? by PJ Sarah Collins
Summary: After the Ecological Revolution, Katherine in her family live in a community where only Father, their leader, is allowed to ask questions. But when Katherine finds out her best friend’s sister has disappeared, the questions she already had increase exponentially in number. Chastised by her community for her curiosity, Katherine is threatened with being assigned manual labour when she is finished school and then is publicly humiliated when her long hair is cut short in front of her classmates. Daunted but compelled to find out the truth, Katherine continues to investigate, each...
Read MoreSiena Summer by Ann Chandler
Summary: Spending her summer in Italy with relatives, Angela is taking a break from her mourning mother after the death of her father and exposing herself to a new way of life. When she has the opportunity to help out a family by exercising their horses, she jumps at the chance. Introduced to a horse she calls Storm who is marked to be destroyed after throwing another rider and stepping on her, Angela quickly realises this horse is scared instead of angry and endeavours to save his life. With a summer romance in the works, a new friend and a community caught up in an upcoming horse race,...
Read MoreSwim the Fly by Don Calame
Summary: Matt, Sean and Cooper are best friends who have a goal for their summer vacation: seeing a woman naked in real life. But when Matt volunteers to rescue his swim team by swimming the butterfly stroke race in competitions in order to impress a girl, his focus shifts. With a body built for freestyle swimming, it’s going to take everything he has to even complete the race let alone place in it. Fortunately Sean and Cooper’s ingenuity when it comes to achieving their summer goal also comes in handy with helping Matt get through the competitions one by one. It’s certain...
Read MoreVictoria by Silvana Goldemberg, translated by Emilie Smith
Summary: With younger twin brothers, Victoria knows living with her aunt and her aunt’s abusive boyfriend after her parents are out of the picture is not ideal, but isn’t sure how support them on her own. When her aunt’s boyfriend makes a pass at her though, Victoria has to choose between taking a risk by leaving home or being raped. Life on the streets of Parana, Argentina isn’t easy, and Victoria encounters several seedy characters dealing with drugs. Still she manages to find a place to live, support, and love, but all is put in danger when those calling the shots...
Read MoreMen of Stone by Gayle Friesen
Summary: Aunt Frieda’s announcement that she’s coming to stay with Ben, his three sisters and his mother takes them all by surprise. It’s been years since Aunt Frieda’s nephew (Ben’s father) died, and no one knows exactly why she would want to visit now. But once they become accustomed to her, Aunt Frieda’s presence and easy nature begins to have subtle and positive effects on all of them. At a time when Ben is questioning what he knows because of his ongoing grief over the death of his father and the threat of physical violence at school, Aunt Frieda...
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