Fiction

The bookshop book cover

The bookshop

Penelope Fitzgerald

FICTION Fitzgerald, Penelope
Fiction, Literary Fiction

In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop the only bookshop in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence s warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn t always a town that wants one.

Anne M's picture

Need a book to put you in the mood for Fall? The Bookshop is a biting, moody little book that takes on the attitudes of the provincial residents of a British coastal town. It is a sad book, but it is also a funny book. And it is a book about books. -Anne M

Ramona and her father book cover

Ramona and her father

Beverly Cleary

jFICTION Cleary, Beverly
Kids, Fiction

The family routine is upset during Ramona's year in second grade when her father unexpectedly loses his job.

Anne W's picture

This whole series is my favorite, but this one edges just slightly above the others in enjoyment. No one captures the spirit and feeling of childhood like Beverly Cleary, and Ramona is a funny, spunky, heroine dealing with school and family stuff. -Anne W

The miscalculations of Lightning Girl book cover

The miscalculations of Lightning Girl

Stacy McAnulty

jFICTION Mcanulty Stacy
Fiction, Kids

A lightning strike made Lucy, twelve, a math genius but, after years of homeschooling, her grandmother enrolls her in middle school and she learns that life is more than numbers.

Anne W's picture

A lightning strike makes 12-year-old Lucy a math genius but when she is forced to go to public middle school after years of home schooling, she learns life is more than numbers. Socially awkward adolescent unwittingly bonds with other misfits and helps dogs at an animal shelter! -Anne W

A case in any case book cover

A case in any case

Ulf Nilsson

jFICTION Nilsson Ulf
Kids, Early Chapter Books, Mystery, Fiction

When Detective Gordon retires and Buffy is left alone at the police station, she hears strange noises and decides to call on Gordon to help her with the mystery.

Anne W's picture

Sweet, gentle, yet hilariously funny Swedish frog detective and his deputy mouse solve sweet, gentle mysteries in the forest. -Anne W

The Westing game book cover

The Westing game

Ellen Raskin

jFICTION Raskin, Ellen
Mystery, Fiction, Kids

The mysterious death of an eccentric millionaire brings together an unlikely assortment of heirs who must uncover the circumstances of his death before they can claim their inheritance.

Anne W's picture

Mystery classic that centers on the death of an eccentric millionaire and the unlikely assortment of wacky characters all competing to solve the puzzle of his death to claim their inheritance. Funny, offbeat, weird, creepy! -Anne W

The view from Saturday book cover

The view from Saturday

E. L Konigsburg

jFICTION Konigsburg, E. L.
Mystery, Fiction, Picture Books

Four students, with their own individual stories, develop a special bond and attract the attention of their teacher, a paraplegic, who choses them to represent their sixth-grade class in the Academic Bowl competition.

Anne W's picture

The stories of four unique students are told and come together at the end, when they develop a special bond with each other and their teacher, who has chosen them to compete in the 6th grade Academic Bowl. Puzzles are woven throughout the narrative! -Anne W

The Watsons go to Birmingham-- 1963 book cover

The Watsons go to Birmingham-- 1963

Christopher Paul Curtis

jFICTION Curtis, Christopher Paul
Fiction, Historical Fiction, Humor, Kids

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Anne W's picture

You will laugh out loud again and again until the end, when you'll cry. A family from Michigan goes to visit relatives down South in Birmingham for the summer. Ten year old Kenny, the protagonist, has a wonderful voice and spirit. -Anne W

Midnight without a moon book cover

Midnight without a moon

Linda Williams Jackson

jFICTION Jackson Linda
Fiction, Historical Fiction, Kids

Rose Lee Carter, a thirteen-year-old African-American girl, dreams of life beyond the Mississippi cotton fields during the summer of 1955, but when Emmett Till is murdered and his killers are unjustly acquitted, Rose is torn between seeking her destiny outside of Mississippi or staying and being a part of an important movement.

Anne W's picture

It's summer in Mississippi in 1955 and one town over from where Rose Lee Carter lives with her grandparents, a boy named Emmett Till is murdered. Unrest begins to build, and Rose Lee is forced to question everything she's ever known and decide whether to join a dangerous movement for change in the South. Complex, multilayered characters dealing with wider social change as well as family events. -Anne W

The giver book cover

The giver

Lois Lowry

YOUNG ADULT FICTION Lowry, Lois
Dystopian, Classics, Kids, Fiction, Science Fiction

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

Anne W's picture

A dystopian classic about a haunting world of total conformity, in which a 12-year-old boy begins slowly to uncover the secrets of the society with no discontent but also no choice or feelings. -Anne W

When you reach me book cover

When you reach me

Rebecca Stead

YOUNG ADULT FICTION Stead, Rebecca
Kids, Fiction, Adventure, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Mystery

As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1980s television game show, "The $20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.

Anne W's picture

Mix of sci-fi, mystery, and historical fiction (set in the 1970s), a middle-school girl must investigate the source of mysterious notes that appear in her personal belongings and, she realizes, predict the future. Time travel! -Anne W