River Readers

Bri wants to be a rapper. Growing up in Garden Heights, the daughter of the legendary underground rapper, Lawless, Bri has a lot to prove. Her daddy was murdered, a victim of gang violence, and her mama lost it after she lost him. Driven by her grief into drug addiction, Bri and her brother, Trey, lived with their grandparents for a time. Jay, Bri's mom, fought hard to win her kids back but the struggle is still real, they are all fighting just to exist. Then the other shoe drops and Jay gets fired from her job. Bri want her rapping to save them.

Candice finds a letter in her grandmother's things. The letter leads to a treasure hunt through the history of Lambert, South Carolina and what happened to the Washington family in the 1950s. Candice is helped along the way by her new friend Brandon as they discover the dark history of racism in their town. 

After Viji and Rukku escape their abusive father, they find themselves struggling to survive under an abandoned bridge in Chennai, India. They bond with two boys also on the bridge and together they eek out an existence pilfering the trash pits in and around the city.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping young-adult novel about one girl's struggle for justice.

Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed. -Fantastic Fiction

Jasmine and Chelsea go to a progressive high school in New York City where they study social justice. They are growing tired of the hypocrisy and double standards they see within their school that is supposed to be a model of inclusivity and intersectionality. When the after school clubs they are required to be a part of tries to pigeon hole them into the stereotypes the school supposedly doesn't adhere to, the girls respond by forming their own club to promote feminism, equality and justice.

I wanted to like this book. It just didn't work for me.

*Starred Review* Award-winning Virginia-based journalist Macy, author of best-sellers Factory Man (2014) and Truevine (2016), carefully constructs the through line from the midnineties introduction of the prescription painkiller OxyContin to the current U.S. opioid crisis: 300,000 deaths over the last 15 years, with that number predicted to double in the next 5. Its addictiveness initially far underreported, Oxy was outrageously marketed to doctors and overprescribed to patients, who quickly couldn't do without it.

Mia, a young Chinese immigrant, ran the front desk of the hotel her parents managed. Having immigrated from China, Mia's family was having a hard time adjusting to life in America. They were struggling to survive and were easy prey for those who would take advantage of the desperation of the immigrants who came to America with little money or knowledge of how to avoid such predators.

I really enjoyed parts of this book but I thought it was a little helter skelter and could have used more organization of topics. A few parts made me a little uncomfortable but I think that says more about me generationally than the book. And I am 100% sure that’s the point the author is trying to make.
 

Junger asks why have PTSD steadily risen among soldiers returning from war over the last century, when casualties have declined. He makes a compelling argument that it due to the lack of tribal cohesiveness

Don Brown does a good job showing the horrors of the Syrian war. The art in this graphic novel is sparse but effective in that it accurately displays the trauma the Syrian people face on a daily basis in both their own country and the countries they have fled too. Brown includes snippets from actual refugees about their experiences. Definitely a worthwhile story to tell about a current political situation that doesn't seem to be ending any time soon.

Michael Wolff told us about it, Omarosa flaunted it, and now veteran White House watcher Woodward pounds it home. The wheels have come off the White House bus. Of course, anyone with access to a TV set or a news feed is already aware of the book's juiciest bits: General John Kelly calling President Trump an idiot, or Trump lawyer John Dowd telling his client that a sit-down with Robert Mueller would lead to an orange jumpsuit. It requires the book as a whole, however, to really convey what a dysfunctional environment the Trump landscape has become.

*Starred Review* Following up her hit Small Great Things (2016), Picoult delivers another riveting yarn about a hot-button issue this time, it's abortion rights, with a unique narrative format: the story is told backward chronologically over the hours of a tense hostage situation in a women's clinic.

Merci Suarez attends Seaward Pines Academy on scholarship. She may not have the fancy houses, cars or go on exotic vacations like the other students at her school but she has her family. Merci, her parents and brother live in one of three houses in a row. The others are occupied by her aunt and twin cousins and her grandparents. They all pitch in and help one another and have each other's backs. When Lolo, Merci's grandfather, starts acting strange and having a lot of mishaps, the family tries to avoid facing the truth.

Candice was spending a few months in her grandmother's home town of Lambert, South Carolina. She was going there with her mom while their house in Atlanta was being renovated for sale. A lot had been going on in Candice's life. Her parents were divorcing and she had lost her grandmother to a heart attack. Candice did not want to go to Lambert and be uprooted from her friends and father. Yet, there was an even bigger reason. Her grandmother had been fired from her job as city administrator for digging up the tennis courts for no apparent reason and then left town in shame.

This book is set in India just prior to the exit of British rule in 1947. Nisha is a twelve year old who's deceased mother was Muslim and her father is Hindu. With the exit of the British, the religious factions are quarreling over representation and who will settle well. It is decided that they will partition India with the Muslims in part and the Hindu's in the other part. Thus is born India and Pakistan. Nisha's family, who practice Hinduism, will need to leave and travel to the "new India" in order to be safe.