Book list After running away from a group home, 17-year-old Kidd Ellison sets up camp at a beach, where he is put to work by Mr. Red, an aging surfer who runs a maintenance shop. Hardworking and handsome, if somewhat slow, Kidd begins to make friends with some of the camp's teens, especially Olivia, a blond beauty who wears a ski cap that covers part of her face regardless of the weather. Then Devon, Kidd's former best friend and nemesis, finds Kidd and threatens...More

Publishers Weekly In this Caldecott winner, Grandpa relives his vaudeville days for an adoring audience--his grandchildren. Ages 3-7. (Feb.)

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Publishers Weekly Like most popular historians, Philbrick (Mayflower) writes about discrete events, not large developments. And he's good at it, even if the larger context is rarely considered and critical analysis gives way to story and celebration. Here, his focus is on events that began with the humiliations of the British at Lexington and Concord and ended with the siege of Boston, the American victory at Bunker Hill in 1775, and the departure in 1776 ...More

Publishers Weekly Through narrative that has the flavor of stream-of-consciousness writing but is more controlled and poetic, Perkins (All Alone in the Universe) captures the wistful romantic yearnings of three friends on the brink of adolescence. There's Debbie, who makes a wish that "something different would happen. Something good. To me." There's Hector, who hears a guitarist and quite suddenly feels inspired to learn how to play the instrument. Then ther...More

Library Journal This second novel by Hamilton (The Book of Ruth, LJ 11/1/88) is a stunning exploration of how one careless moment can cause irrevocable and devastating change. Alice Goodwin is caring for her best friend's children when two-year-old Lizzy Collins wanders to the pond on the Goodwin farm and drowns. The consequences of this tragedy reverberate through a small Wisconsin community, which never accepted Howard and Alice Goodwin. Theresa Col...More

Book list *Starred Review* Egan is a writer of cunning subtlety, embedding within the risky endeavors of seductively complicated characters a curious bending of time and escalation of technology's covert impact. Following her diabolically clever The Keep (2006), Egan tracks the members of a San Francisco punk band and their hangers-on over the decades as they wander out into the wider, bewildering world. Kleptomaniac Sasha survives the underworld of N...More

Book list *Starred Review* To say that a book makes you yawn well, it's usually not a compliment. But in the case of bedtime books, it's high praise and well deserved by this engaging picture book. As the sun sets on a construction site, five big, tough trucks settle in for the night. After placing one last beam, hardworking Crane Truck folds his boom, grins sleepily, and tucks himself in for the night. Cement Mixer takes a bath before pulling up ...More

Library Journal Maron returns to fictional Colleton County, North Carolina, the setting of The Bootlegger's Daughter (Mysterious, 1992). After someone murders one of Deborah Knott's childhood friends, and then another, suspicion falls on Deborah's father. A winning tale of closeted skeletons and family feuds.

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Library Journal Forty years after a horrific event experienced by a group of high school seniors, the now middle-aged participants individually review what happened. In 1960, under the spell of a charismatic, slightly older man who claimed special powers, the teens had been led to share what may have been a delusion or an actual, spectacular murder. The author's well-recognized skill in building suspense and subtly revealing aspects of character...More

Publishers Weekly In a highly original and literary approach to crime fiction, Spanish writer Somoza's gripping English-language debut interweaves text from an ancient Greek manuscript with an account of the growing anxieties of its modern translator. In the Greek text, Heracles Pontor, Decipherer of Enigmas, is called upon to solve the grisly killings of young men at Plato's Academy of Philosophy. Athenian tutor Diagoras, a sort of Watson...More

School Library Journal Gr 1-3-A stellar introduction to the Underground Railroad, narrated by a group of slaves. Readers experience the fugitives' escape, their long nighttime journey punctuated by meetings with friends and enemies, and their final glorious arrival in a place of freedom. Evans boils the raw emotion of the experience down to the most compressed statements, both mirroring the minimal opportunities for expression during the secret ...More

School Library Journal PreS-Gr 1?Fretting over headlines in the newspapers he's delivering, Henry almost runs over a sparrow on the sidewalk. There's a flash of light, and suddenly, like his comic-strip hero Falconman, the boy is swooping through the skies fighting evil?or, at least, collaring a scary dog, rescuing a cat from a bully's clutches, and repeatedly snatching the temporarily flightless sparrow out of danger in the nick of time. Like...More

Library Journal The prolific Parker is back with his ninth thriller (after Red Light), and it's a dark, sexy gem. Joe, known as the "acid baby" after his natural father disfigured his face for life with battery acid, was rescued from an orphanage by Will Trona, a powerful and charismatic Orange County, CA, supervisor. Joe idolizes his adoptive father, follows his footsteps into law enforcement, and serves him faithfully until Will is gunned ...More

Library Journal Walter's newest book (after The Financial Lives of the Poets) will have readers checking out Richard Burton movies and Cinque Terre guidebooks after marveling at his imagination and spot-on characters. It's 1962, and Dee Moray, an American starlet, has just fled the tumultuous Roman set of Cleopatra to hole up in a dilapidated hotel in an obscure Italian seaside village. Pasquale Tursi, the young proprietor of the Hotel Adequate View, is in...More

Publishers Weekly This riveting first novel paints a frighteningly realistic picture of a world war breaking out in the 21st century. Told from the point of view of 15-year-old Manhattan native Daisy, the novel follows her arrival and her stay with cousins on a remote farm in England. Soon after Daisy settles into their farmhouse, her Aunt Penn becomes stranded in Oslo and terrorists invade and occupy England. Daisy's candid, intelligent narrat...More

Library Journal When Tyler was ten years old, he and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, witnessed the night the stars "disappeared," leaving a protective barrier separating Earth from the rest of the universe and slowing the passage of time within the barrier. Jason becomes a scientist devoted to finding a way to break through Earth's artificial shell before the acceleration of time outside the barrier brings about the death of ...More

Publishers Weekly Who better than a husband and wife team to spotlight intriguing partnerships in nature? Among the many relationships Jenkins and Page (How Many Ways Can You Catch a Fly?) explore is that of the upside-down jellyfish and the crab it lives upon. "The jellyfish's stinging tentacles provide protection in return for crab meal leftovers." Jenkins's meticulous cut-paper illustrations, as eye-catching as ever, reveal fasc...More

Library Journal Having caught everyone's attention with his short stories, D!az offers a debut novel starring ghetto geek Oscar, whose family labors under a Fuk# (or curse) that delivers prison, tragic accidents, and, worst of all, bad luck in love. With a national tour. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

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Book list In the third book in Evans' The Walk series, which chronicles a man's journey across the country on foot after the devastating loss of his wife, Alan Christoffersen is forced to face his demons. Picking up where Miles to Go (2011) left off, Alan is confronted by Pamela, the mother of his dead wife, McKale. Pamela left her husband and daughter when McKale was just a child, and Alan wants nothing to do with her. But Pamela refuses to give ...More

Publishers Weekly Readers will cheer for Alex Rider, the 14-year-old hero of British author Horowitz's spy thriller (the first in a projected series). When his guardian and uncle, Ian, is mysteriously killed, Alex discovers that his uncle was not the bank vice-president he purported to be, but rather a spy for the British government. Now the government wants Alex to take over his uncle's mission: investigating Sayle Enterprises, the makers ...More

Publishers Weekly A dark secret keeps Chicago assistant state's attorney Kristen Mayhew as tightly wound as the springy red curls she works to pin down. Meals at the nearby diner, sleepless nights renovating her empty house and days in court where the bad guy more often than not doesn't face justice make up her life-until she finds the bodies of three criminals she failed to convict in the trunk of her car. Each dead body comes accompanied b...More

Book list Gr. 6-12. On a trip to watch the trial of union organizer Big Bill Haywood, 10-year-old Tommy accidentally blows his pro-union uncle's cover and witnesses Uncle Jim's being dragged away and killed. Six years later, when union songwriter Joe Hill, the "voice" of Industrial Workers of the World, is unfairly convicted of murder and set to be executed in front of a firing squad, Tom, now 16 and a singer-songwriter himself, is...More

Publishers Weekly Winner of the 1985 Booker Prize, this novel by a New Zealander of Maori, Scottish and English ancestry focuses on three peopleone Maori, one European and one of mixed bloodwho are locked together in animosity and love. Although Hulme sometimes is sidetracked into self-indulgent verbiage, ``she has abundant, enticing stories to tell of culturally split lives,'' PW found. (October)

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Book list Gr. 3^-6. Using mirrors, lighting, shadows, and simple props, the photographer who gave us the I Spy books and last year's extraordinary A Drop of Water, Booklist 1997 Top of the List for Young Nonfiction, has produced a stunning picture book of optical illusions. With crystal-clear photographs, he creates a series of scenes that fool the eye and the brain. Objects placed on a mirror seem to float in space, a triangle appears to move in thre...More

Book list In reviewing Tales of Burning Love (1996), we observed that "the power of narrative and the salvation of love have always been Erdrich's quintessential themes." Those themes remain crucial to her latest novel, but here they only sporadically shine through a cloudy sky: "History is grief and no passion is complete without its jealous backdrop." In her characteristically swirling narrative style, Erdrich tells the story of ...More