Advent CalendarA book suggestion for every

school day of advent

9

15

2

12

13

14

1

7

5

8

6

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

What if you aren’t the Chosen One?The one who’s supposed to fight the

zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the

blue lights and the death?What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally

work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high

school. Again.Because sometimes there are problems

bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the

extraordinary in your ordinary life.Even if your best friend is worshipped by

mountain lions.Award-winning writer Patrick Ness’s bold and

irreverent novel powerfully reminds us that there are many different types of

remarkable.Watch the trailerBack to

calendar

There Will Be Lies by Nick Lake In four hours, Shelby Jane Cooper will be

struck by a car.

Shortly after, she and her mother will leave the hospital and set out on a winding

journey toward the Grand Canyon.

All Shelby knows is that they’re running from dangers only her mother understands.

And the further they travel, the more Shelby questions everything about her past—and

her current reality. Forced to take advantage of the kindness of unsuspecting travelers,

Shelby grapples with what’s real, what isn’t, and who she can trust . . . if anybody.

Award-winning author Nick Lake proves his skills as a master storyteller in this heart-

pounding new novel. This emotionally charged thrill ride leads to a shocking

ending that will have readers flipping back to the beginning.

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin TalleyIn 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on

opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever.

Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-

white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented

daily.Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of

the town's most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept

separate but equal.Forced to work together on a school

project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how

they really feel about one another.

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedwick

A bold, genre-bending epic that chronicles madness, obsession, and creation, from the Paleolithic era through the Witch Hunts and

into the space-bound future.Four linked stories boldly chronicle madness,

obsession, and creation through the ages. Beginning with the cave-drawings of a young

girl on the brink of creating the earliest form of writing, Sedgwick traverses history, plunging

into the seventeenth century witch hunts and a 1920s insane asylum where a mad poet's

obsession with spirals seems to be about to unhinge the world of the doctor trying to save him. Sedgwick moves beyond the boundaries

of historical fiction and into the future in the book's final section, set upon a spaceship

voyaging to settle another world for the first time. Merging Sedgwick's gift for suspense with

science- and historical-fiction, Ghosts of Heaven is a tale is worthy of intense obsession.

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

More Than This by Patrick NessA boy drowns, desperate and alone in his

final moments. He dies.Then he wakes, naked and bruised and

thirsty, but alive.How can this be? And what is this strange

deserted place?As he struggles to understand what is

happening, the boy dares to hope. Might this not be the end? Might there be more

to this life, or perhaps this afterlife?From multi-award-winning Patrick Ness

comes one of the most provocative and moving novels of our time.

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

Arrowhead by Ruth EasthamWhen thirteen-year-old Jack moves to

Norway, he's sure there's no truth in the local myths and legends. But then he

comes face to face with one: the body of a Norse warrior boy, frozen in the ice,

and carrying with him an ancient arrowhead - that contains a terrible

curse.

If Jack's going to survive, he has to overcome both an ancient wrong and a

newly-risen enemy in this thrilling adventure from an award-winning

author.

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

I am Malala by Malala YousafzaiWhen the Taliban took control of the Swat

Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought

for her right to an education.On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was

fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range

while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.

Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a

remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest-ever Nobel Peace

Prize laureate.I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for

girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged

his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

An Eagle in the Snow by Michael MorpurgoThe powerful new novel from the master storyteller - inspired by the true story of one man who might have stopped World

War II.1940. The train is under attacks from

German fighters. In the darkness, sheltering in a railway tunnel, the

stranger in the carriage with Barney and his mother tells them a story to pass the

time.And what a story. The story of a young

man, a young soldier in the trenches of World War I who, on the spur of the

moment, had done what he thought was the right thing.

It turned out to have been the worst mistake he ever could have made – a

mistake he must put right before it is too late…

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

River of Ink by Helen DennisWhen a mystery teenage boy emerges

from the River Thames drenched, distressed and unable to remember

anything about himself, he becomes the focus of worldwide media speculation. Unable to communicate, the River Boy is given paper and a pencil and begins

to scribble. Soon a symbol emerges, but the boy has no idea why he has drawn it even thought it's the only clue to the

mystery of his identity... As the boy begins to build a new life

under a new name, the hunt for his real identity begins.

A hunt which will lead him on a dangerous QUEST that he has only one

year to complete ...

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

Ghosts of Shanghai by Julian SedwickObsessed with martial arts and ghost

stories, Ruby is part of a gang of Chinese and ex-pat children who hide out in ruined

White Cloud Temple. But the world of Shanghai in the late 1920s is driven with

danger: disease, crime, espionage and revolution are sweeping the streets. And

since the death of her younger brother Thomas, Ruby is stalked by another anxiety

and fear. Faced with a series of local hauntings, and armed with a lucky bookshop find - The Almanac of Distant Realms - Ruby

forms the Shanghai Ghost Club to hunt down restless spirits. When best friend Faye is kidnapped by the Green Hand, Ruby must

trust a mysterious stranger - and face her worst fears - in order to save her friends, and her own life. And in the ensuing fight

she will catch a glimpse of the one spirit she has longed to see ...The secrets that Ruby's

father and friends have kept from her are coming back to haunt them all.

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

All the Bright Places by Jennifer NivenTheodore Finch is fascinated by death, and

he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no

matter how small, stops him.Violet Markey lives for the future, counting

the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching

grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of

the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a

project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more

important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny,

live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet

can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows,

Finch’s begins to shrink.

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

The Accident Season by Moira Fowley-Doyle

It's the accident season, the same time every year. Bones break, skin tears,

bruises bloom.The accident season has been part of

seventeen-year-old Cara's life for as long as she can remember. Towards the end

of October, foreshadowed by the deaths of many relatives before them, Cara's family becomes inexplicably accident-

prone. They banish knives to locked drawers, cover sharp table edges with

padding, switch off electrical items - but injuries follow wherever they go, and the

accident season becomes an ever-growing obsession and fear.

But why are they so cursed? And how can they break free?

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

The smell of other people’s housesbonnie-sue hitchcock

In Alaska, 1970, being a teenager here isn’t like being a teenager anywhere else. Ruth has a secret that she can’t hide forever. Dora wonders if she can ever truly escape where she comes from, even when good luck strikes. Alyce is trying to reconcile her desire to dance, with the life she’s always known on her family’s fishing boat. Hank and his brothers decide it’s safer to run away than to stay home—until one of them ends up in terrible danger. Four very different lives are about to become entangled.

Watch the trailerBack to calendar

Happy Christmas!

Curl up with a book over the holidays