School Library Journal PreS-Gr 2—A story of family strength and unity overcoming fences along the Mexican/United States border. Las Posadas (Spanish for inns) is a celebration in Mexico and some Latin American countries that takes place over the nine days before Christmas. The holiday commemorates the search for shelter by Mary and Joseph on the eve of Jesus's birth. On one of those nine days, La Posada Sin Fronteras takes place on the Mexican/U...More

Publishers Weekly Rose and Windy, friends for two weeks every summer in nearby Ontario lake cottages, have hit early adolescence. Rose, a bit older, has knowledge and polish that tubby, still-childish Windy lacks, and Windy sometimes bores her. Yet Windy's instincts are often sound, while Rose is led astray by an infatuation with a local convenience store clerk. As Rose's parents' marriage founders and the taunts of local teens wake her ...More

Book list Gr. 4-6, with interest for older readers. This unusual book shows life on a Virginia plantation in 1859. Beginning after the harvest is in, the narrative describes the preparations for the Christmas season and the celebrations that follow. The differences in resources, lifestyles, and traditions between the plantation owner's family and the slaves provides a continuous contrast. Although the slaves' hardships are evident, they are not se...More

Library Journal A war between two rival civilizations over trading rights to the planet Arachna results in the virtual enslavement of the Qeng Ho by the victorious Emergent culture. As the Spider-folk of Arachna evolve in their customary cyclical pattern, unaware of the threat that lies in their near future, a few Qeng Ho rebels work desperately to free themselves and save Arachna from conquest. This prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep (Tor, 1992) demonstrate...More

Library Journal With her third novel (after the acclaimed Sharp Objects and Dark Places), Flynn cements her place among that elite group of mystery/thriller writers who unfailingly deliver the goods. On the day of her fifth wedding anniversary, Amy Dunne vanishes from her home under suspicious circumstances. Through a narrative that alternates between Amy's diary entries and her husband Nick's real-time experiences in the aftermath of her d...More

Kirkus In this unhurried, kaleidoscopic story, the efforts of Native Americans to save their lands from being taken away by the U.S. government in the early 1950s come intimately, vividly to life.Erdrich's grandfather Patrick Gourneau was part of the first generation born on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. As the chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in the mid-1950s, he had to use all the political savvy he could muster to...More

Choice Sisman's biography of the famous biographer invites comparison with Peter Martin's A Life of James Boswell (CH, Apr'01). Whereas Martin gives roughly equal attention to all the phases of Boswell's life, Sisman dispenses with the years before his meeting with Johnson in a mere 19 pages, and the years he spent with Johnson in another 40. The author devotes the rest of the book to the years during which Boswell wrote Journal of a Tou...More