Showing 1–50 of 83 books
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10th Grade: A Novel
What Jeremy Reskin lacks in grammatical skill he more than makes up for in self-reflection in this record of the events of his sophomore year, which reveals his fascination with new-girl-in-town Renee Shopmaker, his changing relationships with his family, and his attempts to sort out the nature of friendship.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2003
- ISBN: 9780375505843
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An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962
When James Meredith became the first black man to enter the University of Mississippi, he forced America to face the contradiction of second-class citizenship for multitudes of its black citizens, not with speeches, boycotts, or sit-ins, but on a battlefield. Doyle takes teens to two of those battlefields: a cerebral one where Meredith, President John Kennedy, and Governor Barnett grapple over politics; and a physical one, where federal troops and local mobs converge on the university campus.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2002
- ISBN: 9780385499699
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Anansi Boys
After Fat Charlie Nancy's father drops dead on a karaoke stage, Charlie meets Spider, a brother he never knew he had and isn't sure he wants.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2006
- ISBN: 9780060515195
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As Simple As Snow
After his girlfriend mysteriously disappears, high-school student Cayne looks for clues in Anna's cryptic behavior during their five months together.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2006
- ISBN: 9780147515810
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Big Girl Small
With a singing voice that can shake an auditorium, Judy should be the star of Darcy Academy, the local performing arts high school. So why is a girl this promising hiding out in a seedy motel room on the edge of town? A scathingly funny and moving book about dreams and reality, at once light on its feet and profound.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2012
- ISBN: 9780374112578
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Bingo's Run: A Novel
The ultimate hustler, Bingo uses his brains and charm to run drugs in a Kenyan slum, but after witnessing a murder he finds himself an art dealer, an adoptee, and someone caught in a dangerous moral dilemma.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2015
- ISBN: 9781400068838
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Black Swan Green
In the British village of Black Swan Green, 13-year-old Jason survives ghost sightings, bullies, a first kiss, and his parents divorce.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2007
- ISBN: 9781400063796
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The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To
Fifteen-year-old Darren, a social misfit who spends his time at school trying not to be noticed while drawing characters for a planned film series and book tie-ins, befriends Eric, another outcast who reveals that he never sleeps.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2011
- ISBN: 9780307474612
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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
An enterprising teenager in Malawi builds a windmill from scraps he finds around his village and brings electricity, and a future, to his family- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2010
- ISBN: 9780061730320
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The Bride's Farewell
On the morning of her wedding, Pell Ridley creeps out of bed in the dark, kisses her sisters goodbye and flees - determined to escape a future that offers nothing but hard work and sorrow.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2010
- ISBN: 9780141323404
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Caring is Creepy
While trying to survive a long boring summer in rural Georgia, Lynn befriends a lonely soldier online. When they meet face to face, tables are turned as Lynn tries to exert power in her out-of-control life. Dangerous, amusing, role-bending, and definitely creepy!- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2013
- ISBN: 9781569479773
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Caucasia
Questions about integration, intermarriage, identity, and the status of mixed-race children bubble beneath the surface of this dramatically rich, heartrending novel set in the 1970s. When her white mother, a civil rights activist, goes into hiding, Birdie, the lighter-skinned of two daughters, goes with her. The traumatic leave-taking not only separates Birdie from her beloved older sister but also loosens her grasp on her mixed-race heritage, a legacy that turns out to be increasingly important to her as she enters her teens.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 1999
- ISBN: 9781573227162
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Color of the Sea
Raised in the samurai tradition, a teenager struggles to live within this code, even as he decides to fight for the U.S. after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2007
- ISBN: 9780307386076
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Crow Lake
Now a successful zoology professor, Kate recalls her parents' death and being brought up and sustained by her older brothers, especially Matt with whom she shares a love of the wonders of nature. An affecting novel about hardship, tragedy, choices, and family relationships.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2003
- ISBN: 9780385336116
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic, fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother -
The Death of Bees
With their parents dead and buried in the backyard, Scottish teens Marnie and Nelly are finally free from a childhood wracked with abuse. If only the neighbor's dog would quit digging in the garden.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2014
- ISBN: 9780062209849
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Diamond Dogs
Neil is a 17-year-old bully who has an abusive, demanding father. While driving drunk, he hits and kills a pedestrian and hides the body in the trunk of his father's car. His father, who is sheriff, chooses to ignore the crime.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2001
- ISBN: 9780312848798
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The Dive from Clausen's Pier
A reckless attempt to impress Carrie, Mike's dive off Clausen's pier rendered him paralyzed. Now Carrie finds herself torn between the loyalty she's expected to feel toward Mike and her need to transform herself. She takes a dive of her own––into adulthood––when she escapes to New York.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2003
- ISBN: 9780375727139
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Donorboy
When her lesbian mothers are killed in an accident, 14-year-old Rosalind meets and moves in with her young sperm donor father. With humor and empathy, the author tells a moving story of strangers creating a family.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2005
- ISBN: 9781400062775
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Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
The predominantly African-American characters in this debut collection of short fiction struggle to maintain their sense of self while confronting unexpected life events.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2004
- ISBN: 9781573222341
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The Fall of Rome
The author of an award-winning young adult novel Another Way to Dance(1998) delves deeply into the social and emotional elements that unite and divide us. Issues of race, identity, and integrity are intensely explored through a tragic human triangle comprised of the lone African American instructor at an exclusive, boys boarding school in Connecticut; a promising African American student from New York City; and a white divorcee.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2003
- ISBN: 9780684865003
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Finding Nouf
After a 16-year-old girl from a wealthy Saudi family is found dead in the middle of the desert, a devout Muslim guide and a young medical examiner seek to unravel the mystery while facing the sanctions of Middle Eastern society.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2009
- ISBN: 9780618873883
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The Floor of the Sky
Toby, 72, is about to lose the family ranch when Lila, her pregnant granddaughter comes for the summer. Lila uncovers family secrets while trying to decide whether to keep her baby.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2007
- ISBN: 9780803276314
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Gabriel's Story
Upset when he has to leave Baltimore to join his mother and her new husband on a Kansas farm, 15-yearold African American Gabriel and his new friend, James, run away from their homes to join a group of mostly white cowboys herding cattle to Texas. Too late, they realize that their cowboy comrades are their worst enemies. A graphic, richly poetic view of frontier life during Reconstruction.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2002
- ISBN: 9780385498142
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Genghis: Birth of an Empire
Temujin, the abandoned son of a khan, survives the harsh Asian tundra to become one of the world's greatest military leaders in this absorbing historical tale.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2008
- ISBN: 9780385339513
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Getting In
Boylan takes wicked aim at the college mystique, bringing together three adults and four high-school seniors for a whirlwind tour of swanky eastern colleges that turns into a journey of self-discovery none of them will ever forget. Long-kept secrets, betrayals, and complex relationships between teens and between teens and their parents mark this raucous, sexy, and also moving novel that gives new meaning to going off to college and coming of age.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 1999
- ISBN: 9780446674171
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The Girl with a Pearl Earring
Have you ever thought about the story behind a person in a painting? Griet is the name of the girl with a pearl earring painted by Vermeer, a famous Dutch artist. As the story unfolds, she is only sixteen and a servant in the household of the painter himself.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2001
- ISBN: 9780525945277
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Girlchild
With only a worn copy of the Girl Scout Handbook for reference, resourceful and tenacious Rory Hendrix must navigate the depressing landscape of a 1970s trailer park where she suffers abuse at the hands of a neighbor and neglect from her mother.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2013
- ISBN: 9780374162573
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The God of Animals
After her older sister elopes, 12-year-old Alice is left behind on the family's rundown Colorado horse farm to cope with her distant parents and the unsolved murder of a classmate. -
Golden Boy: A Novel
Max, an intersex teen, is confused about who he is and who he is meant to be. After one shattering night, he is faced with a choice that no boy should ever have to make.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2014
- ISBN: 9781476705804
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The Good Soldiers
In the tradition of "Black Hawk Down," The Good Soldiers takes an unforgettable look at the heroes and the ruined soldiers fighting in the Iraq War- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2010
- ISBN: 9780374165734
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The Good Thief
In this suspenseful and unpredictable adventure, Ren, a one-handed eighteenth-century orphan, becomes apprenticed to a con man. Surprisingly, Ren seems born to it.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2009
- ISBN: 9780385337458
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The House of Tomorrow
Homeschooled teenager Sebastian Prendergast is forced by his grandmother's stroke to venture out of his geodesic dome habitat and befriends a chain-smoking teen who introduces him to pop culture through the punk band they form together.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2011
- ISBN: 9780399156090
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Imani All Mine
This deceptively simple first-person novel takes readers into the heart and mind of 15-year-old Tasha, whose love for her baby, Imani, is as plain as her fear of the rapist who fathered the child. In the stark language of a tough urban neighborhood, Tasha comes alive on the page as she struggles to reconcile her love and hope for her daughter with the violence that resulted in Imani's conception. A sad though ultimately hopeful novel, compelling from its very first page.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2000
- ISBN: 9780395838082
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In Zanesville
Along with her best friend, the fourteen-year-old narrator navigates a 1970s American girlhood, including challenges from popular girls and the first hints of womanhood.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2012
- ISBN: 9780316084475
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The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko
He has no arms or legs. She has blood that is betraying her. They are the smartest people in the children's hospital and the only ones who understand, and they take “star-crossed lovers” to a whole new level.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2017
- ISBN: 9781250081865
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Kit's Law
Kit lives in a ramshackle cottage with her mentally challenged mother, Josie, the town tramp, and her loving, protective grandmother, Lizzy. When Lizzy dies, Kit fights to keep her mother out of an asylum, but Josie's wild ways make it difficult. Speculations about the identity of Kit's father and Kit's first love add more texture to this earthy but charming first novel, which is set in Newfoundland.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2002
- ISBN: 9780618109272
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The Kite Runner
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day -
Last Days of Summer
A boy describes growing up Jewish in a mainly Catholic neighborhood in 1930s Brooklyn. The story is told in letters to a celebrated baseball player with whom the boy has struck up a correspondence.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 1999
- ISBN: 9780380976454
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Leave Myself Behind
Secrets of the present and past complicate 17-year-old Nick's life when he falls in love with the boy next door. A psychologically complex and emotionally satisfying debut novel.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2004
- ISBN: 9780758203489
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The Lock Artist
Traumatized at the age of eight and pushed into a life of crime by reason of his unforgiveable talent--lock picking--Michael sees his chance to escape, and with one desperate gamble risks everything to come back home to the only person he ever loved, and to unlock the secret that has kept him silent for so long.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2011
- ISBN: 9780312380427
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Maisie Dobbs
In post World War I London, Maisie Dobbs takes her first case as a private investigator and experiences flashbacks to her modest upbringing and doomed wartime romance. This unique historical mystery is the first in a proposed series.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2004
- ISBN: 9781616954079
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The Man Who Ate the 747
Unbeknownst to Wally Chubb he is going for a record. He will be the only person who ever ate a 747 airplane by grinding it into paste and using it like ketchup on his food. But Wally doesn't want the record--this amazing feat is an act of love!- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2001
- ISBN: 9780553801828
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Midnight at the Dragon Café
After leaving China with her mother, Su-Jen enjoys her comfortable new life in Canada, but dark secrets threaten her family's stability.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2006
- ISBN: 1582431892
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Mister Pip
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, on which survival is a daily struggle, eccentric Mr. Watts, the only white man left after the other teachers flee, spends his day reading to the local children from Charles Dickens's classic Great Expectations. -
Motherland
Fifteen-year-old Maya must reconcile her Indian heritage with her life as a modern American teen when she goes to spend the summer with her grandmother in India. An accident and an unexpected illness are the catalysts for the revelation of a family secret that gives Maya a profoundly different view of her mother--and ultimately herself.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2002
- ISBN: 9781439558041
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My Abandonment
In the tradition of Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild," Rock's "My Abandonment," inspired by a true story and told through the startlingly sincere voice of his young protagonist, offers a riveting and unsettling account of a girl and her father who live off the grid.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2010
- ISBN: 9780151014149
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My Jim
Sadie Watson's love and courage carry through the cruelties of slavery into life as a free woman.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2006
- ISBN: 9781400054015
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My Sister's Keeper
Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Kate begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body.- Realistic Fiction
- Alex Awards 2005, Teens' Top Ten 2005
- ISBN: 9780743454520
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The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens
Freelance writer Hauser tracks the staff and students at the International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, N.Y., providing their personal histories as well as their day-to-day experiences.