Fiction

Avi

Wolf Rider

Avi

Andy Zadinski receives a phone call which everyone wants to dismiss as a Friday-night crank.  Andy is driven to prove the “wolf” real.  To do so, he sets in motion a series of tension-filled events that can well lead him to the very catastrophe he is trying to avoid.

Fiction

Baldwin

If Beale Street Could Talk

Baldwin

Like the blues—sweet, sad, and full of truth—this work of fiction rocks us with powerful emotions.  Fonny, a talented young artist, finds himself unjustly arrested and locked in New York’s infamous Tombs.  His Girlfriend is determined to free him and to have his baby in this starkly realistic tale.

Fiction

Benchley

Only Earth and Sky Last Forever

Benchley

A powerful story that shows how the tragic Battle of the Little Bighorn changed the world for Dark Elk, a young man of courage caught up in the destiny of his people.

Fiction

Childress

A Hero Ain’t Nothing But a Sandwich

Childress

This hard-hitting novel is funny and honest, earthy and tough.  Benjie’s wry humor and courage, his cocksure surface and the vulnerability beneath make it impossible not to care about him.  Unflinchingly confronting a difficult subject, this book offers no easy solutions.

Fiction

Cormier

Fade

Cormier

The fade is a power inherited by one boy in each generation of the Moreaux family.  Frightened and thrilled, Paul explores the possibilities his power has given him, but he sees things it is better not to see and learns things it is better not to know.

Fiction

Crichton

Jurassic Park

Crichton

An account of the attempt, through a hair-raising 24 hours on a remote island, to avert a global emergency—a crisis triggered by today’s rush to commercialize genetic engineering.

Fiction

Crutcher

Running Loose

Crutcher

This is the story about that time in a boy’s life when he is suddenly expected to act like a man—to be accountable for the things he does, and react reasonably to the craziness around him.  The main character’s road to manhood has become cluttered with seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Fiction

Duncan

Killing Mr. Griffin

Duncan

A teenager casually suggests playing a cruel trick on the English teacher, but did he intend it to end with murder?

Fiction

Gaines

A Gathering of Old Men

Gaines

A group of old black men take responsibility for the murder of a white man on a Louisiana plantation.

Fiction

Hinton

Rumble Fish

Hinton

Rusty-James is the number-one tough guy among the kids who hang out and shoot pool at Benny’s.  He wants most of all to be just like his older brother, the Motorcycle Boy.  But Rusty-James’ lack of direction, his longing for the days of the street gangs and his blind drive to be like his brother eat away at his world until it all comes apart in an explosive chain of events.

Fiction

Houston

The White Dawn

Houston

In 1896, three survivors of a shipwrecked whaleboat must adjust to Arctic culture after Eskimos rescue them.

Fiction

Irwin

So Long at the Fair

Irwin

Without sermonizing or sentimentality and with the knowledge that a single suicide leaves many victims, this unusual book handles a serious and all-too-common problem with the same balance of humor, sensitivity, and understanding that distinguishes all of Hadley Irwin’s writing.

Fiction

Kerr

Fell

Kerr

John Fell is a typical high school boy in New York, when his parents send him off to be a preppie at the Gardner School, with its mysterious club, Sevens, in the sinister campus tower.  This is a suspense story and a love story.  The first in a series.

Fiction

Lipsyte

The Contender

Lipsyte

Alfred Brooks was part of the murky dropout world of junkies and petty thieves.  He lived in Harlem, Where staying away from Whitey was the first rule of any street gang.  Any member who broke this code could expect the worst the gang could give.  Alfred Brooks wanted to make it straight—but he had a conflict.  He wanted to stay alive as well…

Fiction

Marshall

Walkabout

Marshall

A story of the chance meeting between a couple of stranded, proper Australian school children and an Aborigine youth in the Outback of Australia.

SC

Mohr

El Bronx Remembered

Mohr

A collection of twelve short stories about growing up in the South Bronx between 1946 and 1956.

Fiction

Myer

Fallen Angels

Myer

Richie Perry, Lobel, Johnson, Brunner and Peewee are all in Vietnam.  They came there for different reasons, but now they share a single dream—getting out alive.

Fiction

Naylor

The Year of the Gopher

Naylor

George decides, against his parent’s wishes, that he is not going to college at all—at least not right after high school.  So while all his friends are planning their college careers, George is looking for a job.  While working as a bicycle messenger, he learns a lot about girls and sees his family through new eyes.  The discovery of what he is really good at, finally puts him on the road to his real future.

Fiction

Paulsen

Hatchet

Paulsen

After a plane crash, 13-year old Brian spends 54 days surviving in the wilderness with the aid of a hatchet given to him by his mother.

Fiction

Salassi

Jimmy D. Sidewinder and Me

Salassi

Told in the form of twenty-five letters to a judge, the book is about a 15-year-old con artist Dumas Monk, who shoots pool, plays poker, and eventually has to kill a man in self-defense.

Fiction

White

Deathwatch

White

Madec was not the kind of man Ben would ordinarily have chosen as a companion for a quiet hunting trip.  He was a cold man who liked to hurt things.  But Ben needed money to pay for another semester at college, and Ben agreed to be hired as a guide to hunt bighorn sheep in the desert mountains.  It was a mistake that nearly costs Ben his life.

301.45

Thomas

Down These Mean Streets

Thomas

A potent, at times harrowing, look at life in Harlem through the eyes of a Puerto Rican male.  His downward spiral from the barrio to Sing Sing is keenly and wisely described, as is his redemption, one found through suffering, endurance, and desire for understanding.

325

Light

To the Promised Land

Light

A book of photos taken along the U.S./Mexican border with oral histories recorded by Samuel Orozco, an essay by Mary Jo McConchey, and an introduction by Richard Rodriguez.

921

Rodriguez

Hunger of Memory

Rodriguez

Rodriguez’s moving, controversial account of being caught between the worlds of the Chicano and mainstream America.

940.53

Adler

We Remember the Holocaust

Adler

Gives a chronology of the Holocaust with oral testimonies from those who experience it firsthand.

972.2

Urrea

Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border

Urrea

Powerful, point blank look at the poor’s struggle to survive in the garbage dumps of Tijuana.

979

Ashabranner

The Vanishing Border: A Photographic Journey Along Our Frontier with Mexico

Ashabranner

A compelling combination of statistics (over 400,000 illegal immigrants are apprehended every year in the San Diego sector along, and although immigration officers there estimate that 4,000,000 more escape capture), interviews, and personal experience.