"From the summer of my twelfth year I carry a series of images more vivid and lasting than any others of my boyhood and indelible beyond all attempts the years make to erase or fade them ..." So begins David Hayden' s story of what happened in Montana in 1948. The events of that cataclysmic summer permanently alter twelve-year-old David' s understanding of his family: his father, a small-town sheriff; his remarkably strong mother; David' s uncle Frank,...

Sixteen-year-old Will Heller, a paranoid schizophrenic, boards an uptown B train in search of Emily Wallace, who he believes is the only one who can help him cool down--and save--the world, a journey which causes Will's mother Violet to work with Ali Lateef, a missing person's specialist, to locate her missing son.

"Eli Bell's life is complicated. His father is lost, his mother is in jail, and his stepdad is a heroin dealer. The most steadfast adult in Eli's life is Slim--a notorious felon and national record-holder for successful prison escapes--who watches over Eli and August, his silent genius of an older brother. Exiled far from the rest of the world in Darra, a seedy suburb populated by Polish and Vietnamese refugees, this twelve-year-old boy with an old...

"[A] young boy on a small Scottish island, where everyone knows everything about everyone else, discovers that a secret can be a dangerous thing. Eleven-year-old Michael Murray is the best at two things: hacky sack and keeping secrets. His family thinks he's too young to hear grown-up stuff, but he listens at doors--it's the only way to find out anything. And Michael's heard a secret, one that may explain the bruises on his mother's face. When the...

In the 1870s, Hans Bengler arrives in Cape Town from Sweden, driven by a singular desire: to discover an insect no one has seen before and name it after himself. But then he impulsively adopts a young San orphan, a boy he christens Daniel and brings with him back to Sweden--a quite different specimen than he first contemplated. Daniel is told to call Bengler "Father," taught to knock on doors and bow, and continually struggles to understand this strange...

"Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson wants a home, food on the table, and a high school he can attend for more than part of a year. But as the son of a single father working in warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, Charley's been pretty much on his own. When tragic events leave him homeless weeks after their move to Portland, Oregon, Charley seeks refuge in the tack room of a run-down horse track. Charley's only comforts are his friendship with a...

Penrod tells of a boy growing up in Indianapolis at the turn of the twentieth century. His friends and his dog accompany him on his many jaunts, from the stage as the Child Sir Lancelot, to the playground, to school. They make names for themselves as bad boys who always have the most fun.

"Sandi Ward's shrewdly observed, funny, and wonderfully touching novel tells of a fractured family, a teenage boy, and a remarkable cat whose loyalty knows no bounds . . .A boy and his cat. It's an unconventional friendship, perhaps, but for Charlie and Lily, it works beautifully. It was Charlie who chose Lily from among all the cats in the shelter. He didn't frown, the way other humans did, when he saw her injured back leg, the legacy of a cruel...

A funny, uplifting novel about a boy's journey through New York in the aftermath of September 11th from one of today's most celebrated writers.
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell embarks on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly...

"Alex Woods was struck by a meteorite when he was ten years old, leaving scars that marked him for an extraordinary life. The son of a fortune teller, bookish, and an easy target for bullies, he hasn't had the most conventional childhood. When he meets curmudgeonly widower Mr. Peterson, he finds an unlikely friend. Someone who teaches him that you only get one shot at life. That you have to make it count. So when, aged seventeen, Alex is stopped at...