When she goes looking for "something beautiful" in her city neighborhood, a young girl finds beauty in many different forms.

The city of Lehigh, West Virginia, faces the insidious threat of a sadistic cult bent on eliminating all "unpretty" things in the world. A bomb goes off at the Conklin Art Gallery, killing eight people associated with a unique Michelangelo exhibit being shown there. The only person who may have seen the bomber is Hummingbird Collins, an aspiring artist who works down the street from the gallery. But she soon starts receiving ominous cassette recordings of a rambling madman who reveals his plan to rid the world of "unpretty" things. This madman -- known only as Number 26 -- leads a cult known as the Michelangelus Movement, which has kidnapped and tortured people for use in their bizarre artistic experiments over the past dozen years. When Hummingbird breaks her frightened silence, she enlists the help of Detective Buck Barnes, her brother, and an old family friend, Ready Robinson, a former pro-football player who entered the priesthood after ending his NFL career. But when Hummingbird is abducted by the cult, her friends must discover where she's been taken before she becomes another addition to the leader's horrific replication of Michelangelo's masterpiece -- Last Judgment.

In 9 stories and 15 poems, Sharon G. Flake provides insight into the minds of a diverse group adolescent African American males. here's Tow-Kaye, getting married at age 16 to love of his life, who's pregnant. He knows it's the right thing to do, but he's scared to death. James writes in his diary about his twin brother's terrible secret, which threatens to pull James down, too. Tyler explains what it's like to be a player with the ladies. In a letter to his uncle, La'Ron confesses that he's infected with HIV. Eric takes us on a tour of North Philly on the Fourth of July, when the heat could make a guy go crazy. Still, he loves his hood. These and other unforgettable characters come to life in this collection of urban male voices. Sharon's G. Flake's talent for telling it like it is will leave readers thinking differently, feeling deeply, and definitely wanting more.

In her own singularly beautiful style, Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech intricately weaves together two tales, one funny, one bittersweet, to create a heartwarming, compelling, and utterly moving story of love, loss, and the complexity of human emotion. Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle, proud of her country roots and the "Indian-ness in her blood," travels from Ohio to Idaho with her eccentric grandparents. Along the way, she tells them of the story of Phoebe Winterbottom, who received mysterious messages, who met a "potential lunatic," and whose mother disappeared. As Sal entertains her grandparents with Phoebe's outrageous story, her own story begins to unfold—the story of a thirteen-year-old girl whose only wish is to be reunited with her missing mother.

Copyright date 2006, published as #5 in the Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs series.

Globe and Mail bestseller, The Boat People is an extraordinary novel about a group of refugees who survive a perilous ocean voyage only to face the threat of deportation amid accusations of terrorism When a rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches Vancouver's shores, the young father thinks he and his six-year-old son can finally start a new life. Instead, the group is thrown into a detention processing center, with government officials and news headlines speculating that among the "boat people" are members of a separatist militant organization responsible for countless suicide attacks—and that these terrorists now pose a threat to Canada's national security. As the refugees become subject to heavy interrogation, Mahindan begins to fear that a desperate act taken in Sri Lanka to fund their escape may now jeopardize his and his son's chance for asylum. Told through the alternating perspectives of Mahindan; his lawyer, Priya, a second-generation Sri Lankan Canadian who reluctantly represents the refugees; and Grace, a third-generation Japanese Canadian adjudicator who must decide Mahindan's fate as evidence mounts against him, The Boat People is a spellbinding and timely novel that provokes a deeply compassionate lens through which to view the current refugee crisis.