Shelter Mountain by Robyn Carr (2007)

For the second time in a year a woman arrives in the small town of Virgin River trying to escape her past.John "Preacher" Middleton is about to close the bar when a young woman and her three-year-old son come in out of the wet October night. A marine who has seen his share of pain, Preacher knows a crisis when he sees one--the woman is covered in bruises. He wants to protect them, and he wants to punish whoever did this to her, but he knows immediately that this inclination to protect is something much more. Paige Lassiter has stirred up emotions in this gentle giant of a man-emotions that he has never allowed himself to feel.But when Paige's ex-husband turns up in Virgin River, Preacher knows his own future hangs in the balance. And if there's one thing the marines' motto of Semper Fidelis--always faithful--has taught him, it's that some things are worth fighting for.

Content-Based Readers Fiction Fluent by National Geographic Learning (2006)

Quantico by Greg Bear (2005)

The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem has been blown to bits by extremists, and, in retaliation, thousands have died in another major attack on the United States. Now the FBI has been dispatched to deal with a new menace. A plague targeted to ethnic groups—Jews or Muslims or both—has the potential to wipe out entire populations. But the FBI itself is under political assault. There's a good chance agents William Griffin, Fouad Al-Husam, and Jane Rowland will be part of the last class at Quantico. As the young agents hunt a brilliant homegrown terrorist, they join forces with veteran bio-terror expert Rebecca Rose. But the plot they uncover—and the man they chase—prove to be far more complex than anyone expects.

Fool of Quality by Henry Brooke (2019)

How do dinosaurs eat their food? by Jane Yolen (2005)

Just like kids, dinosaurs have a difficult time learning to behave at the table. However, with a little help from Mom and Dad, these young dinosaurs eat everything before them with smiles and goodwill. With playful read-aloud verse and amusing pictures.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner (2009)

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his first name. His memory is blank. But he's not alone. When the lift's doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by kids who welcome him to the Glade--a large, open expanse surrounded by stone walls. Just like Thomas, the Gladers don't know why or how they got to the Glade. All they know is that every morning the stone doors to the maze that surrounds them have opened. Every night they've closed tight. And every 30 days a new boy has been delivered in the lift. Thomas was expected. But the next day, a girl is sent up--the first girl to ever arrive in the Glade. And more surprising yet is the message she delivers. Thomas might be more important than he could ever guess. If only he could unlock the dark secrets buried within his mind. From the Hardcover edition.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005)

A new novel by the author of Everything Is Illuminated introduces Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center bombing who searches the city for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind. Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination. Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff (2016)

"In a world where the suns almost never set, a woman gains entry to a school of infamous assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers that destroyed her family. Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father's failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she wanders a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and its thugs. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the hearth of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined. Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic-the Red Church. Deadly trials await her within the Church's halls: blades and poisons, treachery and death. If she survives to initiation, she'll be inducted among the chosen of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and be one step closer to the only thing she desires. Revenge. Nevernight will come on the heels of Kristoff's latest YA book, a collaboration with Amie Kaufman from Knopf Books for Young Readers, Illuminae. Knopf is planning a major publicity blitz and featuring Illuminae as its lead title for Fall, on sale October 20th. The marketing and publicity campaign include a multi-city USA tour in the fall, major outreach at consumer and industry events, a national paid advertising campaign, and extensive publicity outreach"--

Plague Ship by Clive Cussler (2008)

For four novels, Clive Cussler has charted the exploits ofthe Oregon, a covert ship completely dilapidated on theoutside but, on the inside, packed with sophisticatedweaponry and intelligence-gathering equipment. Captained bythe rakish, one-legged Juan Cabrillo and manned by a crew offormer military and spy personnel, it is a private enterprise,available for any government agency that can afford it—and now Cussler sends the Oregon on its most extraordinarymission yet.The crew has just completed a top secret mission againstIran in the Persian Gulf, when they come across a cruise shipadrift in the sea. Hundreds of bodies litter its deck, and asCabrillo tries to determine what happened, explosions rack thelength of the ship. Barely able to escape with his own life andthat of the liner's sole survivor, Cabrillo finds himself plungedinto a mystery as intricate—and as perilous—as any he hasever known, and pitted against a cult with monstrously lethalplans for the human race . . . plans he may already be too late tostop.Plague Ship is a high-stakes, high-seas journey that provesonce again that Cussler is "just about the best storyteller in thebusiness" (New York Post).

Beren and Lúthien by J.R.R. Tolkien (2017)

The New York Times Bestseller J.R.R. Tolkien's Beren And Lúthien is one of the three 'Great Tales' of the Elder Days. The epic tale of Beren and Lúthien became an essential element in the evolution of The Silmarillion, the myths and legends of Tolkien's First Age of the World. Always key to the story is the fate that shadowed their love: Beren was a mortal man, Lúthien an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, imposed on Beren an impossible task before he might wed Lúthien: to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, of a Silmaril. Painstakingly restored from Tolkien's manuscripts and presented for the first time as a continuous and standalone story, Beren and Lúthien reunites fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, along with the rich landscape and creatures unique to Tolkien's Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien tells the story in his father's own words by giving its original form as well as prose and verse passages from later texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed. "A good introduction to LOTR fans nervous about taking on The Silmarillion, and also gives longtime fans a fascinating look at the Tolkiens' myth-making process."—EntertainmentWeekly.com "With eloquence and diligence and care, the son reconstructs and retraces the father's journey, pursuing the tale through draft after draft as Tolkien pursued his vision of Middle-earth."—NPR.org

Ark Angel by Anthony Horowitz (2005)

The sniper's bullet nearly killed him. But Alex Rider managed to survive...just in time for more trouble to come his way. When kidnappers attempt to snatch a fellow patient from the exclusive hospital where Alex is recovering, he knows he has to stop him. But the boy he saves is no ordinary patient: He is the son of Nikolai Drevin, one of the richest men in the world. The eccentric billionaire has been targeted by Force Three, a group of eco-terrorists who claim his project Ark Angel—the first luxury hotel in outer space—is a danger to the environment. Soon Alex discovers that Force Three will stop at nothing to destroy Ark Angel, even if it means sending four hundred tons of molten glass and steel hurtling down to Earth and killing millions...unless Alex can stop them.

Melissa by Alex Gino (2015)

When people look at George, they think they see a boy. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl.George thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web. George really, really, REALLY wants to play Charlotte. But the teacher says she can't even try out for the part . . . because she's a boy. With the help of her best friend, Kelly, George comes up with a plan. Not just so she can be Charlotte -- but so everyone can know who she is, once and for all.

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo (2019)

Nikolai Lantsov has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country’s bloody civil war—and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, the young king must find a way to refill Ravka’s coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army. Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha Squaller, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren’t meant to stay buried—and some wounds aren’t meant to heal.

Numero Zero by Umberto Eco (2013)

"A novel about the murky world of media politics, conspiracy, and murder."-- 1945, Lake Como. Mussolini and his mistress are captured and shot by local partisans. The precise circumstances of Il Duce's death remain controversial. 1992, Milan. Colonna, a depressed hack writer, is offered a fee he can't resist to ghostwrite a book. His subject: a fledgling newspaper, which happens to be financed by a powerful media magnate. As Colonna gets to know the team, he learns of the editor's paranoid theory that Mussolini's corpse was a body double and part of a wider Fascist plot. It's the scoop the newspaper desperately needs, The evidence? He's working on it. It's all here: media hoaxes, Mafiosi, the CIA, the Pentagon, blackmail, love, gossip, and murder. A clash of forces that have shaped Italy since World War II--from Mussolini to Berlusconi. --From book jacket.

The Children Act by Ian McEwan (2014)

London High Court Judge Fiona Maye presides over a sensitive case involving a family of Jehovah's Witnesses who won't allow their seventeen-year-old son to get a lifesaving blood transfusion because it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Meanwhile, Fiona's husband, Jack, has just left home, and she begins to feel the pressures of both resolving the case and saving her crumbling marriage.

Bright shiny morning by James Frey (2008)

One of the most celebrated and controversial authors in America delivers his first novel—a sweeping chronicle of contemporary Los Angeles that is bold, exhilarating, and utterly original.Dozens of characters pass across the reader's sight lines—some never to be seen again—but James Frey lingers on a handful of LA's lost souls and captures the dramatic narrative of their lives: a bright, ambitious young Mexican-American woman who allows her future to be undone by a moment of searing humiliation; a supremely narcissistic action-movie star whose passion for the unattainable object of his affection nearly destroys him; a couple, both nineteen years old, who flee their suffocating hometown and struggle to survive on the fringes of the great city; and an aging Venice Beach alcoholic whose life is turned upside down when a meth-addled teenage girl shows up half-dead outside the restroom he calls home.Throughout this strikingly powerful novel there is the relentless drumbeat of the millions of other stories that, taken as a whole, describe a city, a culture, and an age. A dazzling tour de force, Bright Shiny Morning illuminates the joys, horrors, and unexpected fortunes of life and death in Los Angeles.

Confessions of a murder suspect by James Patterson (2012)

Tandy Angel is, along with her brothers, a suspect in their parents' murder but having grown up under Malcolm and Maud Angel's perfectionist demands, Tandy decides she must clear the family name no matter what.

Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee (2007)

Casey Han's four years at Princeton gave her many things, "But no job and a number of bad habits." Casey's parents, who live in Queens, are Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, desperately trying to hold on to their culture and their identity. Their daughter, on the other hand, has entered into rarified American society via scholarships. But after graduation, Casey sees the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them. As she navigates Manhattan, we see her life and the lives around her, culminating in a portrait of New York City and its world of haves and have-nots. FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES offers up a fresh exploration of the complex layers we inhabit both in society and within ourselves. Inspired by 19th century novels such as Vanity Fair and Middlemarch, Min Jin Lee examines maintaining one's identity within changing communities in what is her remarkably assured debut.

Raven's Gate by Anthony Horowitz (2005)

Sent to live in a foster home in a remote Yorkshire village, Matt, a troubled fourteen-year-old English boy, uncovers an evil plot involving witchcraft and the site of an ancient stone circle.

Cross My Heart by Sandra Brown (2006)

Lacey Kincaid is a classic New York success story. As the owner of Odd Jobs, she's gone from rags to riches…sort of. Because Lacey's harboring a secret: she was born Lillian Dumont, and spent her childhood with a silver spoon in her mouth, until the deaths of her wealthy parents and the evil schemes of an abusive uncle forced her to take drastic measures. She'd never planned to return to her former life or her abandoned identity, but when her childhood sweetheart, Ty, resurfaces and urges her to claim her rightful inheritance, she decides that maybe being the Dumont heiress wouldn't be so bad. Lacey's uncle doesn't see it that way, though, and he's willing to do anything to stop her.Now, it's up to Ty to protect Lacey before that silver spoon becomes a silver bullet. But if they live through this, the future's looking bright for this downtown guy and his brand-new uptown girl!