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A gripping, gritty and award-winning coming-of-age novel for young adult readers. When Te Arepa Santos is dragged into the river by a giant eel, something happens that will change the course of his whole life. The boy who struggles to the bank is not the same one who plunged in, moments earlier. He has brushed against the spirit world, and there is a price to be paid; an utu (revenge) to be exacted. Years later, far from the protection of whanau (family) and ancestral land, he finds new enemies. This time, with no one to save him, there is a decision to be made: he can wait on the bank, or leap forward into the river. At the 2013 NZ Post Childrens Book Awards Into the River was judged the Ma...
Which street racer really controls the strip? An award-winning YA novel full of fast cars, burn-offs and an unwritten code of loyalty. 'Thunder Road' . You find it in any city after the cops are in bed. It's where street racers go to test their machines - and their nerve. For me it was ... the steep rising pitch of the turbo, the screaming tyres and curtain of white smoke hanging behind me: all the stuff that spells street racing.' Trace is 19 and has grown out of small-town ways. He's hungry for more. In Auckland he hooks up with Devon, a guy with the Midas touch, who introduces Trace to burn-offs, big city style. Soon everything is smoking. There is a code with drivers: you don't criticise and you don't show fear. When Trace falls for a girl even Devon says is out of his league, loyalties are stretched. Then Devon hits on a scheme for hauling in cash. Soon enough he and Trace find out who really controls the strip. As the underworld closes in, it looks like their friendship is heading for burn-out. Menacing and suspenseful - a gripping novel from a remarkable talent which won the of the NZ Post Children's Book Awards Young Adult Fiction category in 2004.
Meet Jazz and Roxy and their mates, kids living on the edge, in a gritty YA novel by the author of the New Zealand Post Award-winning Thunder Road. In K Road we’re introduced to a scattering of marginalised, demi-underworld characters whose lives connect and collide in a gripping narrative. K Road is peopled by transients, surfies, gang members, street kids, P-heads, kids on the run: an ever-expanding,jostling urban tribe. Dawe’s prose is spare, gritty and gutsy with flashes of poetry and humour. We gain an acute sense of the pressures, fears, betrayals and loyalties inherent in living on the edge of the law, and of the tenuous grip each character has on their own safety and integrity. They’re all there on K Road: Flash, Sonny, Geronimo, Vercoe, Wilson, Jazz, Roxy. But it’s Jazz and Roxy, the 14 and 19-year-ld team on the run, who try to climb out of their savagely cruel and subterranean existence. Their survival ticket is Jazz’s extraordinary musical talent; their love story heart-breaking.
Just as authors create books, books create authors — and these essays by thirty-one writers for young people offer a fascinating glimpse at the books that inspired them the most. What if you could look inside your favorite authors’ heads and see the book that led them to become who they are today? What was the book that made them fall in love, or made them understand something for the first time? What was the book that made them feel challenged in ways they never knew they could be, emotionally, intellectually, or politically? What book made them readers, or made them writers, or made them laugh, think, or cry? Join thirty-one top children’s and young adult authors as they explore the books, stories, and experiences that changed them as readers — for good. Some of the contributors include: Ambelin Kwaymullina Mal Peet Shaun Tan Markus Zusak Randa Abdel-Fattah Alison Croggon Ursula Dubosarsky Simon French Jaclyn Moriarty
"'There are some things you can never share with another human being. Answering to the caul is one of these.' It is said that being born in a caul means that you can never die by drowning. Andrei Reti puts this prophecy to the test, time and time again. But there is a price to be paid for each caul intervention. This is a novel about the the dark side of being special. About the war between fact and coincidence. About the things we can never share"--Back cover.
A Michael L. Printz Honor Book "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion—the worst school disaster in American history—as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people. "[This...
A 2015 Whitney Award Nominee! A powerful story of loss, second chances, and first love, reminiscent of Sarah Dessen and John Green. When Oakley Nelson loses her older brother, Lucas, to cancer, she thinks she’ll never recover. Between her parents’ arguing and the battle she’s fighting with depression, she feels nothing inside but a hollow emptiness. When Mom suggests they spend a few months in California with Aunt Jo, Oakley isn’t sure a change of scenery will alter anything, but she’s willing to give it a try. In California, Oakley discovers a sort of safety and freedom in Aunt Jo’s beach house. Once they’re settled, Mom hands her a notebook full of letters addressed to her—...
They Both Die at the End meets Gravity in this mind-bending sci-fi mystery and tender love story about two boys aboard a spaceship sent on a rescue mission, from two-time National Book Award finalist Eliot Schrefer. Stonewall Honor Award winner! Two boys, alone in space. Sworn enemies sent on the same rescue mission. Ambrose wakes up on the Coordinated Endeavor with no memory of a launch. There’s more that doesn’t add up: evidence indicates strangers have been on board, the ship’s operating system is voiced by his mother, and his handsome, brooding shipmate has barricaded himself away. But nothing will stop Ambrose from making his mission succeed—not when he’s rescuing his own sister. In order to survive the ship’s secrets, Ambrose and Kodiak will need to work together and learn to trust each other . . . especially once they discover what they are truly up against. Love might be the only way to survive. * Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best Books of the Year * A Booklist Editor's Choice of the Year * A BCCB Blue Ribbon Book of the Year * A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults & Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults Book of the Year *
A USA TODAY BESTSELLER! "A powerful debut that proves the threads that interweave our lives can withstand time and any tide, and bind our hearts forever."—Susanna Kearsley, New York Times bestselling author of Belleweather and The Vanished Days A historical novel inspired by true events, Kelli Estes's brilliant and atmospheric debut is a poignant tale of two women determined to do the right thing, highlighting the power of our own stories. The smallest items can hold centuries of secrets... While exploring her aunt's island estate, Inara Erickson is captivated by an elaborately stitched piece of fabric hidden in the house. The truth behind the silk sleeve dated back to 1886, when Mei Lien,...