River Readers

Caroline Murphy lives on Water Island in the US Virgin Islands. She takes a speedboat to St. Thomas every day for school. Life is not all together pleasant for Caroline though. Her mother has left her and her father and her half-sister from her father's affair has moved nearby. Caroline is treated badly in school by her classmates and her teacher. She has no friends and believes no one loves her. Then she meets Kalinda Frances and falls in love. Even though love between two women is frowned upon in her country and by her religion, she still wants to explore her feelings for Kalinda.

Fumio Sasaki has moved from living a maximist lifestyle to a minimalist one. He has relieved himself of most of his possessions. In the process, he has found more time for himself, for other people, and for doing things he enjoys. He talks about how having so much stuff was a burden and how removing the stuff from his home and life released the burden and freed him. Sasaki is what I would call an extreme minimalist. He has very few possessions and that works for him. I want to be a minimalist, but I think I want to be a a bit less than Sasaki.

New York Times best-selling Harper's two earlier novels were both constructed around the harsher extremes of the Australian outback, and in this one we experience the isolated and inhospitable desert in Queensland. It is a brutal existence for the ranchers who live and work there, in relentless heat, hours away from any vestige of civilization. When the sun-baked body of Cam Bright, experienced at desert survival, is found by his brothers adjacent to a lone headstone in the middle of nowhere, marking the stockman's grave, they are hard pressed to find an explanation.

Twins born on the Summerbourne estate never survive, at least according to local lore, until the births of Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother, Danny. However, just a few hours after giving birth to the twins, their mother, Ruth, commits suicide by throwing herself from the estate's high cliffs and perishing amidst the rocks and ocean spray below. Twenty-five years later, Seraphine begins searching for the truth of that mysterious day, beginning with the family's au pair, Laura, who fled Summerbourne on the same day of Seraphine and Danny's birth and their mother's death.

Sixth grader Alec can't put a good book down.

In James Patterson's new stand-alone thriller, one secret can bring down a government when the president's affair to remember becomes a nightmare he wishes he could forget.

Lida thought she was safe. Her neighbors wearing the yellow star were all taken away, but Lida is not Jewish. She will be fine, won't she?

But she cannot escape the horrors of World War II.

Lida's parents are ripped away from her and she is separated from her beloved sister, Larissa. The Nazis take Lida to a brutal work camp, where she and other Ukrainian children are forced into backbreaking labor. Starving and terrified, Lida bonds with her fellow prisoners, but none of them know if they'll live to see tomorrow.

Alice is angry at having to move to Rainbow, Georgia - a too small, too hot, dried-up place she's sure will never feel like home. Then she gets put in charge of walking her elderly neighbor's dog. But Clarence won't budge without Miss Millie, so Alice and Miss Millie walk him together.

Sebastian is getting ready for his last year at soccer camp when he finds out his ex-best friend, Emir, is also attending. He doesn't know exactly what went wrong with Emir. When they were small, they were inseparable. That changed after Emir had to go back to England so his family could care for his ailing grandmother. When he returned, things were differently and they never really talked again. Emir seemed angry and unapproachable. Now with him attending soccer camp, Sebastian worried what it would be like. Would Emir fit in with his other friends or would he remain aloof and angry?

Dany loved sixth grade but when she goes into seventh grade her friends are in other classes. She finds herself lonely, bullied and unable to break through the cliques and find new friends. She inherits her great-aunt's old notebook and discovers that the things she draws in it come to life. She begins to use its magical powers to alter her situation and as usually happens when magic is involved, things go awry.

I thought the artwork was very good but the story was disjunct and not cohesive. I didn't enjoy this graphic as much as I thought I would.

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.

Olive has lots of friends and fits in almost anywhere with any group of kids. She felt confident about her friends and her place in school. That all changed when the school put on a talent show, and Olive was left without anyone to perform with.

This cute graphic novel tells the story of finding your place in your world and the importance of being yourself.

The Bird King takes place during the end of the reign of the last sultan of Granada. The story centers on a concubine named Fatima and her beloved friend, Hassan. Hassan has a magical skill that enables him to draw maps of places he's never seen and alter the reality of those places. His gift is coveted because of its importance in times of war and retreat. On the edge of losing his kingdom, the sultan hands Hassan over to the Inquisitors who have come to negotiate the transition of power to Spain.

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.

In "Elevation," Stephen King presents the story of Scott Carey a man who discovers an odd condition as he grows lighter, despite not losing any weight. Scott seeks to do a little elevation of his own in helping his neighbors to be accepted in the community, and tries to use his condition to put a crazy scheme into action before it's too late. The second story, "Laurie," available on the audio version only, is about a widower who is presented a dog he doesn't want, but finds that he really needs.