Recently in Recommendations Category
The Angel Experiment and others in the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson (Genetically modified kids who can fly struggle to understand their own origins and purpose.)
Bone by Jeff Smith (a graphic novel adventure series)
Framed and others in the Traces series by Malcolm Rose (In a futuristic London, sixteen-year-old forensic investigator Luke Harding and his robotic assistant, Malc, investigate murder cases).
Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick (two boys with physical and learning disabilities form a unique friendship).
The Giver by Lois Lowry (Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.)
All of the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling (The young wizard and his friends triumph over evil.)
The King's Arrow by Michael Cadnum (In England's New Forest on August 2, 1100, eighteen-year-old Simon Foldre, squire to the Anglo-Norman nobleman Walter Tirel, finds his future irrevocably altered when he witnesses the possible murder of King William II.)
The Lightning Thief and others in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series by Rick Riordan (After learning that he is the son of a mortal woman and Poseidon, Percy is sent to a summer camp for demigods like himself, and reluctantly joins a quest to prevent a war between the gods.)
The Merchant of Death and others in the Pendragon series by D. J. McHale (Suburban jock Bobby Pendragon discovers parallel universes and gets hero training while being swept into an amazing 5-year quest to save the universe from ultimate evil.)
SilverFin and others in the Young Bond series by Charles Higson (This prequel series to the adventures of James Bond, 007, introduces the teen-aged James when he's just started boarding school in England and becomes involved in his first adventures.)
Son of the Mob and all other young adult books by Gordon Korman (Seventeen-year-old Vince's life is constantly complicated by the fact that he is the son of a powerful Mafia boss, a relationship that threatens to destroy his romance with the daughter of an FBI agent.)
Finally, here are some inspiring non-fiction titles:
Gifted Hands by Ben Carson (Carson's odyssey from his childhood in inner-city Detroit to his position as director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital at age 33 provides a role model for anyone who attempts the seemingly impossible.)
We Beat the Streets by Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, & Rameck Hunt (Making a pact to stick together through the rough times in their impoverished Newark neighborhood, three boys found the strength and determination to work through their difficulties in order to make their dreams come true by completing high school, getting through college, and attending medical school together.)
Are you in the mood for a good baseball book? Try H. G. Bissinger's Three Nights in August: strategy, heartbreak, and joy, inside the mind of a manager. This book has received great reviews. "A Pulitzer Prize-winning author captures baseball's strategic and emotional essences through a point-blank account of one three-game series viewed through the keen eyes of legendary manager Tony La Russa. Drawing on unprecedented access to La Russa and his team, Bissinger brings the same revelatory intimacy to major-league baseball that he did to high school football in his classic besteller, Friday Night Lights. Three Nights in August shows thrillingly that human nature -- not statistics -- can often dictate the outcome of a ballgame. We watch from the dugout as the St. Louis Cardinals battle their archrival Chicago Cubs for first place, and we uncover delicious surprises about the psychology of the clutch, the eccentricities of pitchers, the rise of video, and the complex art of retaliation when a batter is hit by a pitch." -- publisher's description.
You can always count on John Feinstein for entertaining sports writing, and he has just published Tales from Q school : inside golf's fifth major. "It is the tournament that separates champions from mortals. It is the starting point for the careers of future legends and can be the final stop on the down escalator for fading stars. The annual PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament is one of the most grueling competitions in any sport. Every fall, veterans and talented hopefuls sweat through six rounds of hell at Q school, as the tournament is universally known, to get a shot at the PGA Tour, vying for the 30 slots available. The grim reality: If you don't make it through Q school, you're not on the PGA tour. John Feinstein tells the story of the players who compete for these coveted positions in the 2005 Q school. With arresting accounts from the players, established winners, rising stars, the defeated, and the endlessly hopeful, America's favorite sportswriter unearths the inside story behind the PGA Tour's brutal all-or-nothing competition." -- publisher's description.
You have required summer reading for English class, but summer is also a great time to read books that you never have time to read during the school year. Here are some suggestions: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. How can you let the summer go by and not find out the fate of the characters that you've grown up with? What's not to like about such mindless & fun reading? Even though it doesn't come out until July 21, there will be plenty of time to read it before school starts.
The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien "The first complete book by Tolkien in three decades, this book reunites fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, dragons and Dwarves, Eagles and Orcs. This stirring narrative will return fans to the rich landscape and characters unique to Tolkien." -Publisher's description. Tolkien's son Christopher compiled various pieces from his father's unpublished works to create this book. If you're a fantasy fan, you can't miss this one.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky This is one of those classic books to read as a challenge to yourself. It's long, but it's truly a great book. It will definitely give you something to write about on a college admissions essay, or impress admissions interviewers if they ask you what you've been reading in your free time! I encourage you to give it a try. Here's a summary of the book: "Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880), is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved. Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoevsky's exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature of guilt, the disastrous consequences of rationalism. The novel is also richly comic: the Russian Orthodox Church, the legal system, and even the author's most cherished causes and beliefs are presented with a note of irreverence, so that orthodoxy and radicalism, sanity and madness, love and hatred, right and wrong are no longer mutually exclusive."--Publisher's description.
