Explore New York! Authors R

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.

Explore New York! Authors N-O-P-Q

Nelson, Vaunda Micheaux. No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller. 2012.
The owner of Harlem’s National Memorial African Bookstore, Lewis Michaux, was passionate about knowledge. His bookstore became a legendary influence on people worldwide.
2013 Coretta Scott King Honor

New York Times Company. Sultans of Swat: The Four Great Sluggers of the New York Yankees. 2006.
Traces the careers of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle from the perspective of their love of the game and their significant contributions to the Yankee’s history and tradition.

Ockler, Sarah. Bittersweet. 2014.
Hudson Avery gave up a promising career in figure skating after her parents divorced. Now she spends her time baking cupcakes and helping out in her mother’s upstate New York diner, but when she gets a chance at a scholarship and starts coaching the boys’ hockey team, she realizes that she is not through with skating after all.

Pfeffer, Susan Beth. The Dead and the Gone. 2010.
After a meteor hits the moon and sets off a series of horrific climate changes, seventeen-year-old Alex Morales must take care of his sisters alone in the chaos of New York City.

Preston, Caroline. The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: a novel in pictures. 2011.
For her graduation from high school in 1920, Frankie Pratt receives a scrapbook and her father’s old Corona typewriter. Through a kaleidoscopic array of vintage postcards, letters, magazine ads, ticket stubs, catalog pages, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, fashion spreads, menus, and more, we meet and follow Frankie on her journey in search of success and love.
2012 Alex Award

Quinonez, Ernesto. Bodega Dreams: a novel. 2000.
The book features a cast of memorable characters, including dim-witted Neno, who can’t complete a sentence without quoting a song lyric; the drug runner and possible hit man, Sapo, who would rather be flying a kite from the top of the tenement; and cameo appearances by real artists and poets. But at the heart of everything is Willie Bodega, a former Young Lord who has become the biggest drug lord of them all.

 

Explore New York! Authors M

Mack, Tracy. Birdland. 2003.
Thirteen-year-old Jed spends Christmas break working on a school project filming a documentary about his East Village, New York City, neighborhood, where he is continually reminded of his older brother, Zeke, a promising poet who died the summer before.

Manzano, Sonia. The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano. 2012.
In New York City’s Spanish Harlem in 1969, fourteen-year-old Evelyn is trying to spread her wings and break free from her conservative family. When her activist grandmother comes to stay, she finds life getting more complicated and dangerous.
2013 Pura Belpré Award

Marshall, Paule. Brown Girl, Brownstones. 2009.
This book centers on the daughter of Barbadian immigrants living in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Selina Boyce is caught in the middle of her parents’ differing views of her future. Her mom wants Selina to get an American education, while her dad dreams of returning to Barbados. Along with her parental woes, the heroine must deal with the poverty and racism that surrounds her.

Marsico, Katie. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: Its Legacy of Labor Rights. 2010.
New York City’s garment district was at its heyday during the Industrial Revolution. Then, tragedy struck in 1911, when hundreds of laborers – mostly women – died, primarily because of their crowded and unsafe work environment. Afterward, a trial helped bring about changes for children, women, and laborers everywhere.

McCann, Jim. Mind the Gap Volume 1: Intimate Strangers TP. 2012.
This graphic novel is a mystery taking place in New York City with a paranormal twist. Elle, in a spirit form detached from her comatose body, must not only unravel the mystery of her attacker’s identity and motive, but her entire life as well. Who can she trust, in both this world and in the gap she exists that lies between life and death?

McCreight, Kimberly. Reconstructing Amelia. 2013.
In this mystery/thriller, Kate tries to prove that her fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, didn’t jump from the roof of her prestigious Brooklyn private school. The story is told in alternating voices, Kate’s and Amelia’s, as well as through text messages, Facebook updates, and blog posts revealing that the teen was involved with a secret club.
2013 School Library Journal Best Books Adult Books for Teens

McCulloch, Derek. Gone to Amerikay. 2012.
In this graphic novel, Ciara O’Dwyer is a young woman raising a daughter alone in the Five Points slums of 1870; Johnny McCormack is a struggling actor drawn to the nascent folk music movement in 1960 Greenwich Village; and Lewis Healy is a successful Irishman who’s come to present-day Manhattan on his wife’s anniversary-present promise to reveal a secret.

McNeal, Laura and Tom McNeal. Zipped. 2003.
At the end of their sophomore year in a small town high school outside Syracuse, New York, the lives of four teenagers are woven together as they start a tough new job, face family problems, deal with changing friendships, and find love.

Medina, Meg. Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. 2014.
Piddy Sanchez’s life is turned upside down when she finds out that Yaqui Delgado wants to kick her ass. While struggling to deal with the threat on her own, Piddy explores her identity, her culture, and the role of others in her life. A powerful story about bullying and resilience, set in a Queens school.
2014 Pura Belpré Author Award Winner

Mercer, Paul and Vicki Weiss, for the Friends of the New York State Library. The New York State Capital and the Great Fire of 1911. 2011.
In the early morning hours of March 29, 1911, a fire broke out in the New York State Capital at Albany. Within the building lay the entire collection of the New York State Library, almost completely reduced to ashes. The authors have included recently discovered photographs documenting the original construction of the building, beginning in 1867, as well as eyewitness accounts of its destruction.

Miller, Barnabas. Rock God: The Legend of B.J. Levine. 2012.
After moving to New York City, thirteen-year-old B.J. Levine decides he’s going to become the next big rock star, despite his lack of musical talent.

Monir, Alexandra. Timekeeper. 2013.
Philip Walker is a new student at Michele Windsor’s high school and he seems to be the love she lost when they said goodbye during her time travels. He does not remember her or the Philip Walker of 1910. Michele must thwart her nemesis and deal with Philip’s reappearance in this sequel to Timeless.

Monir, Alexandra. Timeless. 2012.
When tragedy strikes Michele Windsor’s world, she is forced to uproot her life and move across the country to New York City, to live with her wealthy, aristocratic grandparents. There, she discovers a diary that sends her back to the year 1910.

Montalvan, Luis Carlos with Bret Witter. Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him. 2011.
The story of how two wounded warriors, one soldier and one golden retriever, who had given so much and suffered the consequences, found salvation in each other. It is a story about war and peace, injury and recovery, psychological wounds and spiritual restoration.

Moriarty, Chris. The Watcher in the Shadows. 2013.
In early 20th-century New York, as thirteen-year-old Sacha Kessler, the Inquisitor’s apprentice, faces enemies old and new that threaten him and his family, he changes his mind about learning magic.

Myers, Walter Dean. Darius & Twig. 2013.
Darius and Twig are an unlikely pair: Darius is a writer whose only escape is his alter ego, a peregrine falcon named Fury, and Twig is a middle-distance runner striving for athletic success. But they are drawn together in the struggle to overcome the obstacles that Harlem life throws at them.
2014 Coretta Scott King Honor Book
2014 Notable Children’s Book

Myers, Walter Dean. Game. 2008.
If Harlem high school senior Drew Lawson is going to realize his dream of playing college, then professional, basketball, he will have to improve at being coached and being a team player, especially after a new – white – student threatens to take the scouts’ attention away from him.

Myers, Walter Dean. Lockdown. 2010.
Reese needs to stay on track to get early release from the Progress juvenile detention facility in the Bronx.
2011 Coretta Scott King Author Honor
2015 YALSA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults Top Ten

Myers, Walter Dean. 145th Street: Short Stories. 2000.
Myers uses ten short stories to create snapshots of a pulsing, vibrant community with diverse ethnic threads.
2001 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults

 

Explore New York! Authors H-L

Hallenbeck, Bruce. Monsters of New York: Mysterious Creatures in the Empire State. 2013.
From the Adirondacks and the Catskills to the depths of Lake Champlain and the shores of Montauk, Monsters of New York takes the reader on a journey covering bizarre beasts of the Empire State.

Haring Fabend, Firth. New Netherland in a Nutshell. 2012.
The story of New Netherland is told in a highly readable fashion; from the exploration of Henry Hudson in 1609 to the final transfer of the Dutch colony to the English in 1674. The work introduces the multicultural makeup of the population and the influence of distinctive Dutch traits such as tolerance, free trade, and social mobility, all of which persisted long after New Netherland became New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and parts of Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

Hauser, Brook. The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens. 2012.
Freelance writer Hauser tracks the staff and students at the International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, New York, providing their personal histories as well as their day-to-day experiences.
2012 Alex Award

Helprin, Mark. Winter’s Tale. 2008.
This is a sweeping epic of New York City and the Hudson Valley covering the entire 20th century, and told through the story of Peter Lake, an orphan, burglar, mechanic and romantic hero. An unforgettable blend of history, realism and fantasy.

Hermes, Will. Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever. 2011.
Discusses the music scene in the 1970s and how it changed music for today.

Hopkinson, Deborah. Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York, 1880-1915. 2003.
Photographs and text document the experiences of five individuals from Belarus, Italy, Lithuania, and Romania, who came to live in the Lower East Side of New York City as children or young adults at the turn of the 20th century.

House, Kirk W. The 1972 Flood in New York’s Southern Tier. 2012.
Presents vintage photographs, with explanatory captions, examining the history of the 1972 flood in New York’s Southern Tier.

Hughes, Langston. Vintage Hughes. 2004.
This compilation includes excerpts and poems from the work of Langston Hughes.

Jacobson, Sidney, and Ernie Colón. The 9/11 Report. 2006.
An illustrated version of the 9/11 Report based on the report issued by the Federal Government after 9/11.

Jacobson, Sidney and Ernie Colón. After 9/11: America’s War on Terror (2001- ). 2008.
A pair of best-selling graphic novel artists explore the post-September 11th world in an illustrated work that depicts critical events, responses, and the consequences of the War on Terror.

Kazimiroff, Theodore. The Last Algonquin. 1997.
As recently as 1924, a lone Algonquin Indian lived quietly in Pelham Bay Park, a wild and isolated corner of New York City. Many years later, as an old man, he entrusted his legacy to the young Boy Scout who became his only friend, and here that young boy’s son passes it on to us.

Kim, Susan, Laurence Klavan, and Pascal Dizin. City of Spies. 2010.
Evelyn, who usually entertains herself with a pencil and a piece of paper, makes a new friend and leaves her artwork behind to look for real spies. When the pair discovers an actual mystery, Evelyn wonders if she will end up in an adventure similar to the comics she writes.

Klass, David. Grandmaster. 2014.
Freshman Daniel is a pretty average rookie on a high-school chess team made up of mostly attractive overachievers. So, he’s surprised to be invited to a father-son tournament, until he discovers that his father was a teenager grandmaster.

Kwok, Jean. Girl in Translation. 2010.
Kim Chang and her mother move to Brooklyn from Hong Kong after Kim’s father dies. Kim goes to school during the day, and then joins her mother working in a sweatshop owned by her bitter older sister. Kim excels, winning a scholarship to a private school, and falls in love with a boy who also helps his mother fill the sweatshop quotas.

Legrand, Claire. Winterspell. 2014.
To find her abducted father and keep her sister safe from the lecherous politicians of 1899 New York City, Clara must journey to the wintry kingdom of Cane, where Anise, queen of the faeries, has ousted the royal family in favor of her own totalitarian, anti-human regime.

Levithan, David. The Lover’s Dictionary. 2011.
A modern love story told through a series of dictionary-style entries is a sequence of intimate windows into the large and small events that shape the course of a romantic relationship set in New York City.
2012 Alex Award

Lewis, Stewart. You Have Seven Messages. 2011.
Luna’s mother died a year ago when she was hit by a car on the busy streets of New York City’s East Village. Devastated by the sudden death of her mother, it takes Luna a full year to finally begin to clean out her mother’s office. When she does, she finds seven voice mails on her mother’s cell phone that reveal her mother’s death was not what it originally seemed.

Lyga, Barry. Game. 2013.
After solving a deadly case in the small town of Lobo’s Nod, Jazz, the son of history’s most infamous serial murderer, travels to New York to help the police track down the Hat-Dog Killer.

 

New Book Friday: July 2015

July, July! Kick off this gloriously hot and lazy month with 60 new books – nonfiction, fiction, graphic novels, all sorts of awesome stuff. Remember, if you haven’t, sign up and participate in the Teen Summer Reading Club at the library!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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Explore New York! Authors F-G

Farnsworth, Cheri. Haunted Hudson Valley: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of New York’s Sleepy Hollow Country. 2010.
Contains accounts of paranormal activity in and around New York’s Hudson River Valley, including hauntings, ghosts, and UFOs.

Finney, Jack. Time and Again. 1995.
This novel is about an experiment that causes 20th century illustrator Si Morley to step out of the Dakota apartment building into the streets of 1882 New York.

Fredericks, Mariah. The Girl in the Park. 2012.
When the body of Wendy Gellar is found in Central Park one Sunday morning, everyone is quick to blame Wendy’s notorious partying habits. Everyone, that is, except her old friend, Rain, who takes it upon herself to find out what really led to the death of her friend.

Friedman, Aimee. The Year My Sister Got Lucky. 2008.
When Katie and Michaela Wilder move from New York City to upstate rural New York, Katie has a hard time fitting in – and getting accustomed to local culture, like friendly neighbors and cows that need to be milked. Michaela, though, becomes the town’s social belle, loving her new life and her new country friends. Can they ever be as close as they once were?

Gansworth, Eric. If I Ever Get Out of Here. 2013.
Set in 1975, this coming of age story explores the cross-cultural friendship of Lewis Blake, a Native American teen living on the Tuscarora Reservation in Western New York, and George Haddonfield, a military kid from a nearby Air Force base.

Gillies, Isabel. Starry Night. 2014.
Fifteen-year-old Wren and her three lifelong best friends are celebrating the opening of a major exhibit curated by her father at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when Wren finds first love with her brother’s new friend, Nolan. The relationship transforms her and her life.

Godbersen, Anna. The Luxe. 2008.
In Manhattan in 1899, five teens of different social classes lead dangerously scandalous lives, despite the strict rules of society and the best-laid plans of parents and others.

Greene, Meg. Elena Kagan. 2014.
This biography of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan covers her growing up in New York City to her roles at the White House and more.

Gregory, Kristiana. Stalked. 2011.
When Rikke Svendsen, a fifteen-year-old Danish servant, arrives at Ellis Island in 1912, she realizes that a fellow passenger is stalking her. In the chaos of immigration and trying to flee from him, she is unable to meet her family in Racine, Wisconsin, and ends up stranded in New York City.

Grimes, Nikki. Bronx Masquerade. 2002.
While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high school read aloud poems they’ve written, revealing their innermost thoughts and fears to their formerly clueless classmates.
2003 Coretta Scott King Author Award
2003 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults

Gruber, Ruth. Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America. 2000.
Gruber, a journalist during World War II, accompanied 1,000 refugees from Nazi-controlled Europe who came to Oswego, New York, as guests of the United States government.

Explore New York! Authors C-E

Carter, Graydon and David Friend (Eds.). Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers and Swells: The Best of Early Vanity Fair. 2014.
Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter introduces these fabulous pieces written between 1913 and 1936, when the magazine published a murderers’ row of the world’s leading literary lights. Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers and Swells features great writers on great topics, including F. Scott Fitzgerald on what a magazine should be, Clarence Darrow on equality, D.H. Lawrence on women, e.e. cummings on Calvin Coolidge, John Maynard Keynes on the collapse in money value, Dorothy Parker on a host of topics ranging from why she hates actresses to why she hasn’t married … and more!

Cataneo, D.M. Eggplant Alley. 2013.
Living in the Bronx in 1970, thirteen-year-old Nicky must cope with personal and societal upheavals.

Carvell, Marlene. Who Will Tell My Brother? 2004.
During his lonely crusade to remove offensive mascots from his high school, a Native American teenager learns more about his heritage, his ancestors, and his place in the world.

Capo, Fran. It Happened in New York City: Remarkable Events that Shaped History. 2010.
This book contains accounts of notable people and events in the history of New York City, including Jenny Lind’s first concerts in 1850, the 1906 trial of Harry Thaw for the murder of architect Stanford White (called the Trial of the Century!), and the demolition of the Pennsylvania Station in 1963.

Castle, Jennifer. You Look Different in Real Life. 2013.
Five kids in upstate New York have been the subject of documentaries recording their lives every five years. Now as teens, they spend a weekend together to try and figure out their lives.

Chance, Megan. An Inconvenient Wife. 2005.
In this gripping account of historical fiction, the author exposes the horrors women faced during the late 19th century in New York when they dared to show passion of any kind or repudiate society’s norms. Lucy Carleton suffers from a common female disorder, “hysteria”: its symptoms are headaches, excitable reactions and feelings of claustrophobia. Her cold-hearted husband, William, determined to find her a cure, brings her to several specialists, who recommend everything from an ovariotomy to several months of confinement in a private asylum.

Chartrand, Rene. Ticonderoga 1758: Montcalms’ Victory Against All Odds. 2000.
In July 1758, the British launched an expedition against the French Fort of Carillon (Ticonderoga). Lord Howe, a popular British leader, was killed before the main battle began; the Black Watch regiments were decimated; the British retreated in near panic and the fort remained in the hands of the French.

Cloonan, Becky. East Coast Rising. Volume 1. 2006.
After a pirate attack leaves him drifting at sea, young Archer joins the notorious Cannonball Joe on the East Coast’s fastest ship and finds himself facing off against the feared pirate Captain Lee and other dangers from the deep.

Cofer, Judith Ortiz. Call Me María. 2004.
Fifteen-year-old María leaves her mother and Puerto Rico to live in New York City with her father. There, though, she feels torn between two cultures. Can she learn to embrace life in the barrio?

Cohn, Rachel and David Levithan. Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares. 2010.
Lily has left a red notebook full of challenges on a New York City bookstore shelf. Dash finds it and the two begin a correspondence through the book, sharing dares and dreams. Will they ever connect in person?

Cook, Kevin. Kitty Genovese: the murder, the bystanders, the crime that changed America. 2014.
Kevin Cook examines the truths and myths surrounding the life and death of Kitty Genovese, a native Brooklynite who was murdered in Kew Gardens in 1964.

Cooney, Caroline B. Code Orange. 2005.
While conducting research for a school paper on smallpox, Mitty finds an envelope containing 100-year-old smallpox scabs. Has he infected himself and all of New York City?

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans.
This exciting adventure story is set during the Seven Year’s War fought between France and England in North America. Hawkeye and his American Indian companions become involved in the bloody war.

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Spy.
Written in 1821, this historical novel is Cooper’s paean to the Revolutionary War. Protagonist Harry Birch finds himself wrongly accused of selling vital information to the British.

Crane, Stephen. Maggie, a Girl of the Streets, and Other Tales of New York.
This is a compilation of thirteen stories set in New York in the late 1800s, including the story of Maggie, a girl of the tenements, whose life turns downward when she becomes involved with a boy named Pete.

Cremer, Andrea R. The Inventor’s Secret. 2014.
In an alternate nineteenth-century America that is still a colony of Britain’s industrial empire, Charlotte and her fellow refugees’ struggle to survive is interrupted by a newcomer with no memory, bearing secrets about a terrible future.

Cremer, Andrea. Invisibility. 2013.
To break his curse of invisibility, a New York City boy is helped by a girl, newly arrived from the Midwest, who is the only one who can see him.

Dabel, Jane I. A Respectable Woman: The Public Roles of African American Women in 19th-Century New York. 2008.
In the nineteenth-century, New York’s free blacks were extremely politically active, lobbying for equal rights at home and an end to southern slavery. As their activism increased, so did discrimination against them. However, the struggle for civil rights did not extend to equal gender roles, and black male leaders encouraged women to remain in the domestic sphere, serving as caretakers, moral educators, and nurses to their families and community.

Davies, Jacqueline. Lost. 2009.
In 1911 New York City, sixteen-year-old Essie Rosenfeld must stop taking care of her irrepressible six-year-old sister when she goes to work at the Triangle Shirt Waist Company, where she befriends a missing heiress who is in hiding from her family and who seems to understand the feelings of heartache and grief that Essie is trying desperately to escape.

Demas, Corinne. Everything I Was. 2011.
When Irene’s father is “downsized,” her family must move from New York City’s Upper West Side to upstate New York. But what Irene is sure will be the most disastrous summer in her life becomes the start of a wonderful new life.

Donnelly, Jennifer. A Northern Light. 2004.
In 1906, sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and fiancé, takes a job at a summer inn where she discovers the truth about the death of a guest. This novel is based on a true story.
2004 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults

Dorfman, Ariel and Joaquín. Burning City. 2005.
Sixteen-year-old Heller Highland, who is living with his grandparents while his parents are away, burns rubber across Manhattan delivering bad news by bicycle, and as a summer heat wave melts the city, he is struck by first love.

Duble, Kathleen Benner. Quest. 2008.
Relates the events of explorer Henry Hudson’s final voyage from four points of view: that of his seventeen-year-old son aboard the ship, a younger son left in London, a crew member, and a young English woman acting as a spy in Holland.

Edmonds, Walter. Drums Along the Mohawk. 1997.
This is the story of the forgotten pioneers of the Mohawk Valley during the Revolutionary War. Combating hardships almost too great to endure, they helped give America a legend which still stirs the heart. In the midst of love and hate, life and death, danger and disaster, they stuck to the acres which were theirs, and fought a war without ever quite understanding it. An American classic since its original publication in 1936.

Explore New York! Authors A-B

Anderson, Laurie Halse. The Impossible Knife of Memory. 2014.
After five years on the road, Hayley and her father, an ex-soldier suffering from PTSD, try to make a new life in an upstate New York town. But will the past get in the way of their future?
2014 School Library Journal Best Books: Young Adult

Asbury, Herbert. The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld. 1998.
True to the title, the book is a history of crime that permeated the underbelly of New York City and its boroughs in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of these gangs were so vicious they would post signs warning police to stay out of their neighborhoods – or else!

Aptowicz, Cristin O’Keefe. Words in Your Face: a guided tour through twenty years of the New York City poetry slam. 2008.
A history of the New York City Poetry Slam, a performance poetry competition where participants recite their own original work before a panel of five judges selected randomly from the audience.

Auchincloss, Louis. A Voice from Old New York: a memoir of my youth. 2010.
American novelist, historian, lawyer, and essayist Louis Auchincloss reflects on his life, discussing his family, privileged upbringing, relationships, work, and more.

Avi, and Brian Floca. City of Light, City of Dark: a comic book novel. 1995.
Asterel races against time to locate a token which will prevent the Kurbs from freezing New York City.

Barrett, Andrea. The Air We Breathe. 2007.
In the fall of 1916, as U.S. involvement in World War I looms, the Adirondack town of Tamarack Lake houses a public sanitarium and private cure cottages for Tuberculosis patients. Gossip about roommate changes, nurse visits, cliques and romantic connections dominate relations among the sick – mostly poor European immigrants. The timely theme focuses on how the tragedy, betrayal and heartbreak of war extend far beyond the battlefied.

Bat-Ami, Miriam. Two Suns in the Sky. 2001.
In 1944, in Oswego, a teenager named Christine meets and falls in love with Adam, a Yugoslavian Jew living in a refugee camp, despite their parents’ conviction that they do not belong together.
2000 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction
2000 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults

Bauer, Joan. Backwater. 2005.
When Ivy begins to study her family’s history, her discoveries rattle the other members of her New York State clan.

Bauer, Joan. Peeled. 2008.
In an upstate New York farming community, high school reporter Hildy Biddle investigates a series of strange occurrences at a house rumored to be hautned.

Benway, Robin. Going Rogue. 2014.
When Maggie Silver’s parents are falsely accused of stealing priceless gold coins, she must use her safe cracking skills to try to clear their names, with help from the “team” she has formed as an undercover operative in a New York City high school.

Bitton-Jackson, Livia. Hello, America: A Refugee’s Journey from Auschwitz to the New World. 2005.
In the final book of the acclaimed trilogy that includes I Have Lived a Thousand Years and My Bridges of Hope, Elli and her mother leave war-ravaged Europe behind. Arriving in New York in 1951, they seek to preserve their Jewish heritage while embracing the freedom of the new city.

Blackman, Dorothy. New York Patriots. 2007.
In New York Patriots, fifteen patriots are featured in historically true events in New York State during the Revolutionary War. Across the state, each of these courageous actions brought the country closer to the freedom its citizens so earnestly sought.

Blundell, Judy. Strings Attached. 2011.
When she drops out of school and struggles to start a career on Broadway in the fall of 1950, seventeen-year-old Kit Corrigan accepts help from an old family friend, a lawyer said to have ties with the mob, who then asks her to do some favors for him.
2015 YALSA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults

Bogaert, Harmen Meyndertsz van den et al. Journey into Mohawk Country. 2006.
This book is an illustrated version of the journal a young Dutch trader, Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, who journeyd into the land of the Iroquois Indians in 1634, seeking to bolster the Dutch trade in what is now New York State.

Brashares, Ann. The Here and Now. 2014.
Prenna arrives in New York from 80 years in the future, where a mosquito-borne illness has left the world in ruins. She and her fellow time travelers must follow strict rules to survive in the present day.

Bray, Libba. The Diviners. 2012.
Evie O’Neill is sent from her small town in Ohio to live with her uncle in New York City. But there, the 17-year-old and her uncle get thrust into the investigation of numerous murders. *The sequel, Lair of Dreams is due out in August 2015.

Brezenoff, Steve. Brooklyn, Burning. 2011.
Sixteen-year-old Kid, who lives on the streets of Brooklyn, loves Felix, a guitarist and junkie who disappears, leaving Kid the prime suspect in an arson investigation, but a year later Scout arrives, giving Kid a second chance to be in a band and find true love.

Bronski, Peter. At the Mercy of the Mountains: True Stories of Survival and Tragedy in New York’s Adirondacks. 2008.
Recounts true stories of danger, survival, and tragedy in New York’s Adirondacks Mountains.

Brown, Teri. Born of Illusion. 2013.
Set in 1920s New York City, this is the story of budding magician Anna Van Housen, who may or may not be the daughter of Harry Houdini. She has spent her whole life playing sidekick to her faux-medium mother and trying to hide the fact she actually possesses the very abilities her mother lacks.
2015 YALSA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults

Bruchac, Joseph. Bowman’s Store: A Journey to Myself. 2001.
Bruchac, now a well-known children’s author and storyteller, relates his childhood and high school years living with his grandparents near Saratoga, NY, and his discovers of his Abenaki heritage, which he learns to honor.

Budhos, Marina Tamar. Ask Me No Questions. 2006. Fourteen-year-old Nadira, her sister, and their parents leave Bangladesh for New York City, but the expiration of their visas and the events of September 11, 2001, bring frustration, sorrow, and terror for the whole family.
2007 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults

Buckhanon, Kalisha. Upstate. 2006.
Antonio, initially a teen arrested for murder, and his sweetheart, Natasha, exchange a decade of correspondence. Both from tiny, dark apartments in Harlem, they are passionately in love, but destined to walk very different roads.

 

Required Summer Reading for Cold Spring Harbor Jr/Sr High School

The following books and assignments are for students attending Cold Spring Harbor Junior/Senior High School. If you click on the title, you will be brought to the relevant page in our catalog. If you click on “Assignment” you will be brought to the school’s website.

Because of the high demand for these books during the summer months, we advise you to take out the books and do the relevant assignment as soon as possible. For any students assigned to read Anna Karenina, we recommend you start reading the book immediately!

Incoming 7th Graders:

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry. Be prepared to discuss this book in September.

Incoming 8th Graders:

The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine. Be prepared to discuss this book in September.

English 9:

Read ONE of the three books, and complete the Assignment.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Sold by Patricia McCormick

English 10/10 Honors:

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly. Be prepared to discuss this book in September.

English 11 Regents

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. Be prepared to discuss this book in September.

A.P. Language and Composition (11th Grade)

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien AND selected essays from The Best American Essays of the Century, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. Complete the accompanying written assignment. The essays to be read are listed in the written assignment. Be prepared to discuss both books in September.

Introduction to College English

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Complete the written assignment. Be prepared to discuss this book in September. *Assignment currently not on High School’s website, 6/8/2015

A.P. Literature and Composition

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Norton Critical Edition) and complete the accompanying written assignment. Be prepared to discuss this book in detail in September.

A.P. American History

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Complete assignment.

A.P. World History (9th Grade)

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. Complete assignment.

New Book Friday: June 2015

It’s June! School is ALMOST OVER! CELEBRATE WITH THESE SHINY NEW BOOKS.

Also, if you click on a book cover, you’ll not only get the library record for the book, but for the e-book as well if it’s available. Cool, huh?

     

     

     

     

     

   

     

 

     

 

     

     

     

   

   

     

     

 

   

Don’t forget, our summer reading club starts on Monday, June 29th! Sign up in person at the library!