Racculia, Kate. Bellweather Rhapsody. 2014.
A high school music festival goes awry when a young prodigy disappears from the most infamous room in the Bellweather Hotel in a town in New York State.
2015 Alex Award Winner
Raphael, Marie. Streets of Gold: a novel. 2001.
After fleeing Poland and conscription in the Russian czar’s army, Stefan and his sister Marisia begin a new life in America on the Lower East Side of New York City at the turn of the century.
Revai, Cheri. Haunted Northern New York: True, Chilling Tales of Ghosts in the North Country. 2002.
This work presents a collection of ghostly stories and strange phenomena of Upstate New York, including haunted cemeteries, Ruby’s castle in Watertown, and many more.
Reynolds, Jason. When I Was the Greatest. 2014.
Ali lives in Bed-Stuy, a Brooklyn neighborhood known for guns and drugs, but he and his sister, Jazz, and their neighbors, Needles and Noodles, stay out of trouble until they go to the wrong party, where one gets badly hurt and another leaves with a target on his back.
2015 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Winner
Rosoff, Meg. Picture Me Gone. 2013.
Mila travels with her father to upstate New York to visit friends and family, looking for clues to the whereabouts of her father’s best friend, who has gone missing.
Rostan, Andrew, Kate Kasenow, and Dave Valeza. An Elegy for Amelia Johnson. 2010.
In her thirty years on earth, Amelia Johnson has touched many lives with her compassion, intelligence, and spirit. Now, at the end of a year-long battle with cancer, she asks her two closest friends to take her final messages to the people around New York State who have touched her life the most.
Rifka Brunt, Carol. Tell the Wolves I’m Home. 2012.
This book takes place in 1987 New York, following fourteen-year-old June Elbus and her uncle, the renowned painted Finn Weiss. June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies of a mysterious illness, June’s world is turned upside down.
2013 Alex Award
Rudetsky, Seth. Seth’s Broadway Diary, Volume 1. 2014.
Seth Rudetsky has worked as the music director and/or pianist for some of Broadway’s biggest stars. He spent years as a pianist on Broadway playing such shows as Les Miz, The Producers, and Ragtime, and currently divides his time between being the afternoon deejay on the SiriusXM Broadway challen/host of “Seth Speaks” and touring North America doing his show Deconstructing Broadway.