River Readers

Merci lives in the Suarez compound, a group of three houses her family occupies. She lives with her parents and brother and next door to her grandparents and aunt and cousins. They are a poor but extremely close family. Merci has been assigned to be a Sunshine Buddy to new student Michael at school. She doesn't like the assignment and doesn't make a lot of effort. Mean girl Edna likes Michael and makes things difficult for Merci. Her grandpa Lolo is also having memory issues and causing problems at home. 

Mia is a recent immigrant from China. She and her parents came to America for a better life, but haven't really found it. They are working as hotel managers for Mr. Yao. It seemed like a good deal at the time. They live in the hotel for free and get a cut of all the people staying there. Unfortunately, Mr. Yao is not the most honest of bosses and Mia's family doesn't make much. What they do find is a community of people who stay in the hotel. The "weeklies" become like family and they discover they can let Chinese immigrants who need a hand stay for a night for free. 

Arthur is spending the summer in NYC while his mom is working there. So far his summer has been uneventful. He misses his friends from Georgia and can't seem to break through to make any new friends. Then he unexpectedly meets Ben at the post office. Ben is mailing a box of items to his ex-boyfriend and is caught up in the drama of it. Consequently, they leave without exchanging numbers. Will they meet again? Will the universe draw them together?

The Dunbar brothers were a force of nature. They lived alone with a menagerie of animals, their mother dead, their father AWOL. They fought to survive, they fought each other and they fought their memories. Clay was different somehow. He was just as tough on the outside but had a softer inside, he felt everyone's pain. This book is about Clay's story but is told by the oldest brother Matthew, and it begins with the return of their father after many years of leaving the boys to fend for themselves.

When a BIG, lovable, does-it-her-way dog wiggles her way into the heart of a loudmouth pipsqueak of a boy, wonderful things happen that help him become a bigger, better person.

In an enthralling new historical novel from national best-selling author Kate Quinn, two women - a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947 - are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption.

Charlotte and Ben are both outsider kids without a lot of friends or social outlets. Charlotte's father has just had a heart attack and is in the hospital. Ben's parents have told him they are getting divorced and dad is moving out. Both are lonely and ostracized at school. They meet and connect online through a scrabble game.

This was a really interesting collection of African American women biographies. They are each one page with an illustration. I was not a huge fan of the illustrations since they were all basically the same woman with different clothes. I wanted a bit more variety in the illustrations. The biographical information was good though.

Cassidy's parents write about ghosts and the paranormal, but do they really believe? Cassidy does. She almost drowned and was saved by Jacob, who is now her best friend. Only thing is...Jacob is a ghost. After her experience Cassidy can now see beyond the veil and is contacted by local ghosts. She photographs them, or attempts to. 

Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, the Discworld's greatest witches, are back for an innocent night at the opera. Naturally there's going to be trouble, but at the same time there'll be a good evening's entertainment with murders that you can really hum to.
-- From Goodreads

Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps—gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren’t surprised. After all, it wasn’t the first time that someone had slipped away and left Finn and Sean O’Sullivan on their own. Just a few years before, their mother had high-tailed it to Oregon for a brand new guy, a brand new life. That’s just how things go, the people said. Who are you going to blame?

For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.

The “dean of Cold War historians” (The New York Times) now presents the definitive account of the global confrontation that dominated the last half of the twentieth century. Drawing on newly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players, John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but why—from the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reagan and Gorbachev.

For a thousand years, the people of Alera have united against the aggressive and threatening races that inhabit the world, using their unique bond with the furies - elementals of earth, air, fire, water, and metal.

But now, Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, grows old and lacks an heir. Ambitious High Lords plot and maneuver to place their Houses in positions of power, and a war of succession looms on the horizon.

It is Earth year 2213—but, of course, there is no Earth anymore. Not since it was burned to a cinder by the sun, which has mysteriously begun the process of going supernova. The human race has fled to Mars, but this was only a temporary solution while we prepare for a second trip: a one-hundred-fifty-year journey to a distant star, our best guess at where we might find a new home.