WINNER OF THE 2014 UK PEOPLE'S BOOK PRIZE My name is Simon Spittle and I think - no, I know, I murdered Miss Belcher. I don't carry a gun. Or a knife. Or even a toothpick, but yesterday, in French, I wished for her to be run over by a bus and, later that very day, she was. A big, red double-decker with yellow wheels and a picture of a clown on the bonnet. A Billy Smart's Circus bus. Simon is very different to Isabella. He is all elbowy and clumsy. She, on the other hand, is elegant and cool. He's the school chess champ and has the IQ of a chemistry professor. She thinks flowers grow better if you feed them Bic Macs and play them Elvis songs. He has a 1/500 scale model of the Starship Enterprise NCC-1701 in his bedroom. She thinks it's a frying pan. Isabella has a secret. Simon, well, he IS the secret... BILLY BOB BUTTONS was shortlisted for the RUBERY BOOK AWARDS and was the winner of THE 2014 UK PEOPLE'S BOOK PRIZE. Comments (Birchwood Primary School) 'This is the best book I have read this year. Amazing!' John, 10 years old. 'Billy Bob Buttons' books keep getting better and better.' Stephen, 11 years old. 'This book is sooooooo funny. I laughed and laughed and laughed.' Sara, 10 years old. 'I Think I Murdered Miss is so good, I skipped Doctor Who to finish it.' Benjamin, 9 years old.

My body is not the body I had before I travelled to China. Teeth now crowd my jaw, I can spot deer from half a mile away, and to me, the tiny feet of mice no longer patter, they boom like trampling elephants. I am changing. A volcano of fury is stirring, trapped only by the thinnest crust of skin and willpower. The spirit of the hamrammr is in my blood... EVIL BECKONS 'A jaw-dropping, cracker of a book.' Eclipse Magazine

A seemingly ordinary village participates in a yearly lottery to determine a sacrificial victim.

Three Newbery Medal winners—Christopher Paul Curtis’s Bud, Not Buddy, Clare Vanderpool’s Moon Over Manifest, and Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me—come together in this collection that’s perfect for catching up on old favorites and discovering new ones. Whether you’re looking for an escape or eager to catch up on some summer reading, the three award-winning titles in this collection will stay with you. Titles featured include: · Bud, Not Buddy: It’s 1936, in Flint, Michigan, and a motherless boy named Bud decides to hit the road to find his father in this Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award-winning classic from Christopher Paul Curtis, author of The Watsons Go To Birmingham—1963. · Moon Over Manifest: Armed only with a few possessions, Abilene Tucker jumps off the train in Manifest, Kansas, aiming to learn about the boy her father once was. What she discovers sends her and some new friends on an honest-to-goodness spy hunt. · When You Reach Me: Shortly after a fall-out with her best friend, sixth grader Miranda starts receiving mysterious notes that seem to predict the future. If that's the case, then Miranda has a big problem—because the notes tell her that someone is going to die, and she might be too late to stop it. Turn to this three-book collection for the classics you remember and the stories you’ll never forget.

Originally published: New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., c1935.

Muriel assumes her family is too poor to hold a Passover Seder this year--but an act of kindness and a mysterious magician change everything. It's the Spring of 1933 in Washington D.C., and the Great Depression is hitting young Muriel's family hard. Her father has lost his job, and her family barely has enough food most days, let alone for a Passover Seder. They don't even have any wine to leave out for the prophet Elijah's ceremonial cup. With no feast to rush home to, Muriel wanders by the Lincoln Memorial, where she encounters a mysterious magician in whose hands juggled eggs become lit candles. After she makes a kind gesture, he encourages her to run home for her Seder, and when she does, she encounters a holiday miracle, a bountiful feast of brisket, soup, and matzah. But who was this mysterious benefactor? When Muriel sees Elijah's ceremonial cup is empty, she has a good idea. This fresh retelling of the classic I.L. Peretz story, best known through Uri Shulevitz's 1973 adaptation The Magician, has been sumptuously illustrated by noted graphic novelist Sean Rubin, who based his art on photographs of D.C. in the 1930s. An author note with information about the holiday is included. An Association of Jewish Libraries Spring Holiday Highlight A Booklist Editors' Choice A CSMCL Best Multicultural Children's Book of the Year

Struggling to hold on to his career while endeavoring to redeem a scandalous past that estranged him from his family, actor Tennyson Hardwick finds himself accused of murder in the aftermath of his strict LAPD captain father's stroke. Reprint.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction Winner of the 2022 Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature A TIME and NPR Best Book of the Year in 2021 This evocative memoir of food and family history is "somehow both mouthwatering and heartbreaking... [and] a potent personal history" (Shelf Awareness). Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details—language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia, a condition that would continue and evolve for the rest of her life. Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter’s search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother’s schizophrenia. In her mother’s final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parent’s childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mother’s multiple voices at the table. And through careful listening over these shared meals, Grace discovered not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her—but also the things that kept her alive. “An exquisite commemoration and a potent reclamation.” —Booklist (starred review) “A wrenching, powerful account of the long-term effects of the immigrant experience.” —Kirkus Reviews

From award-winning author Deborah Heiligman comes Torpedoed, a true account of the attack and sinking of the passenger ship SS City of Benares, which was evacuating children from England during WWII. Amid the constant rain of German bombs and the escalating violence of World War II, British parents by the thousands chose to send their children out of the country: the wealthy, independently; the poor, through a government relocation program called CORB. In September 1940, passenger liner SS City of Benares set sail for Canada with one hundred children on board. When the war ships escorting the Benares departed, a German submarine torpedoed what became known as the Children's Ship. Out of tragedy, ordinary people became heroes. This is their story. This title has Common Core connections.