River Readers

Claudia’s best friend, Monday, is missing. She hasn’t shown up at school and Claudia hasn’t heard from her since she returned from being away over the summer. No one will listen to Claudia, who insists something is wrong. Is Claudia over reacting or is Monday not the person Claudia thought she was.

Ben De Backer came out as non-binary to their parents they kicked them out of the house. Suddenly homeless, they turned to their sister whom they hadn't seen or talked to in ten years. Their sister and her husband welcomed Ben with open arms. They enrolled them in a new school and an especially charismatic boy named Nathan was chosen to show them around.

Deya is the oldest of her sisters being raised by their strictly traditional, Palestinian grandparents. As Deya nears graduation from high school, her grandparents have amped up the desire to see her married. The constant parade of potential husbands has Deya feeling trapped and hopeless, afraid of the same fate her mother met.

A leading foreign correspondent looks at how social media has transformed the modern battlefield, and how wars are fought

At the advent of the violence in Syria, Jude's parents make the difficult decision to send Jude and her pregnant mother to the United States to stay with her uncle. Jude's older brother has become active in the resistance and won't leave his country and her father couldn't bear to leave his business. It was gut-wrenching to leave part of her family behind and go to a new country, whose language she barely spoke. The struggle to fit in at her new school and make new friends was a difficult one.

This graphic novel takes on a variety of issues that arise in middle school. Body image, mean girls and bullying, honesty and secrets, and first dates. I thought this was an honest look at some of the issues that teen girls experience. It was divided into individual stories and at the end of each story was a sort of summary and fact sheet sometimes in the form of an interview or a letter. I thought it was informative and age appropriate.
 

We Were Witches, at its heart, is about a single mother in the 1980’s trying to make it in the world despite all the obstacles in her way. But it is so, so much more. It is such an anomaly that I can’t explain it or put it into a genre. It is a feminist manifesto, it is a history lesson in the suppression of women. It is mystery and magic and yes, witches. It is brilliant and I loved every minute of it.

Emoni Santiago had a baby her freshman year in high school but that didn't stop her dreams of becoming a chef. Her mother died in childbirth and her father was largely absent so she depended on her grandmother, 'Buelo for help. For the most part, she was doing fine, juggling being a mother, a full-time student and a part-time job. Often her school work suffered and she was beginning to worry about how she was going get into a college, let alone pay for it. Her dream of being a chef only intensified when she enrolled in a cooking class at her school.

It all starts with a ring in a pawn shop -- a ladies West Point ring engraved with SRS. Jack Reacher knows, based on his experience and the year, it is not a thing given up lightly and decides to track the owner. The ex-MP's follows the ring across several states and a variety of unsavory characters as he discovers more about its owner's life. This title in author Lee Child's best-selling series relies less on non-stop action and more on procedure to answer questions, right some wrongs, and eventually leads to a showdown at the midnight line.

We all know about the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, the movement it sparked, and the teens who continue to speak truth to power. But do we really know the young people behind the tweets and interviews? Journalist Cullen (Columbine) tries to answer that question, documenting the impact of the tragedy and pain that swept through the community, as well as the movement that served as a lifeline for all involved.

The bestselling author of American Housewife is back with a fiercely funny collection of essays on marriage and manners, thank-you notes and three-ways, ghosts, gunshots, gynecology, and the Calgon-scented, onion-dipped, monogrammed art of living as a Southern Lady.

Melinda Sordino's first day of high school was nothing like she thought it would be. No one would talk to her or even look her way, including her ex-best friend, Rachel. Just before school started something happened that caused Melinda to become a social pariah but no one knew the truth. She just couldn't speak of the matter. Slowly, it swallowed her voice.

When it is suggested to those who are white that society is racist, the reaction is often some mixture of defensiveness and anger. The reason: white fragility. Racism, argues the author, is not only done by bad people; it is a condition when society is structured to accept a white perspective as the norm. She uses multiple examples and anecdotes to knock down assumptions and objections. This is a powerful book filled with challenging ideas.

This book, claims author Rick Reilly, is not political -- it is about sports and his love of golf, a game of honor. When he read the ludicrous claim that Donald Trump had won 18 club championships, it inspired this book. The president is an excellent golfer and an engaging partner (as Reilly knows first-hand), yet is widely known for cheating and wild claims because "everyone does it" and "it sounds better." Much of Trump's life -- his upbringing, his business dealings, his penchant for lawsuits, and his inability to lose or let go of a grudge -- is examined, using golf as a lens.

Twenty years ago Laurie Halse Anderson’s felt driven by a voice in her head to write a book about a young girl who was raped just before she entered high school. This book was Speak. It sparked much controversy and many conversations about the trauma of rape and rape culture. Through the conversations with survivors after writing Speak and the #metoo movement, Halse Anderson again felt compelled to write Shout. It is a book of free verse poetry that tells the story of her life including the trauma of her rape at thirteen. Classified as a poetic memoir, it is broken into three sections.