Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe Award winner In this “taut, eloquent first novel” (Booklist, starred review), a young Black boy wrestles with conflicting notions of revolution and family loyalty as he becomes involved with the Black Panthers in 1968 Chicago. The Time: 1968 The Place: Chicago For thirteen-year-old Sam, it’s not easy being the son of known civil rights activist Roland Childs. Especially when his older (and best friend), Stick, begins to drift away from him for no apparent reason. And then it happens: Sam finds something that changes everything forever. Sam has always had faith in his father, but when he finds literature about the Black Panthers under Stick’s bed, he’s not sure who to believe: his father or his best friend. Suddenly, nothing feels certain anymore. Sam wants to believe that his father is right: You can effect change without using violence. But as time goes on, Sam grows weary of standing by and watching as his friends and family suffer at the hands of racism in their own community. Sam beings to explore the Panthers with Stick, but soon he’s involved in something far more serious—and more dangerous—than he could have ever predicted. Sam is faced with a difficult decision. Will he follow his father or his brother? His mind or his heart? The rock or the river?

Come to the riverbank with Adrian Smith and cast a line on the wild side. 'Beautifully written account' Dave Simpson, The Guardian 'Writes beautifully' The Sun Welcome to the world of Adrian Smith, playing his Jackson guitar onstage to millions - while behind the scenes he explores far-flung rivers, seas and lakes, waterways and weirs, in a fearless quest for fishing nirvana. Hooked on the angling adrenaline rush since first catching perch from East London canals on outings with his father, Adrian grew up to be in one of Rock's most iconic bands. On tour, his gear went with him. The fish got bigger. The adventures more extreme. In Monsters of River and Rock you'll hear about his first sturgeon: a whopping 100-pounder from the roaring rapids of Canada's Fraser River that nearly wiped him out mid-Maiden tour. Then there's the close shave with a shark off the Virgin Islands whilst wading waist-deep for bonefish. Not to mention an enviable list of specimen coarse fish from the UK.

Told in a series of vignettes from multiple viewpoints, Kekla Magoon's Light It Up is a powerful, layered story about injustice and strength—as well as an incredible follow-up to the highly acclaimed novel How It Went Down. A girl walks home from school. She's tall for her age. She's wearing her winter coat. Her headphones are in. She's hurrying. She never makes it home. In the aftermath, while law enforcement tries to justify the response, one fact remains: a police officer has shot and killed a thirteen-year-old girl. The community is thrown into upheaval, leading to unrest, a growing movement to protest the senseless taking of Black lives, and the arrival of white supremacist counter demonstrators. This title has Common Core connections.

"After two years of waiting to adopt--slogging through paperwork and bouncing between hope and despair--a miracle finally happened for Vanessa McGrady. Her sweet baby, Grace, was a dream come true. Then Vanessa made a highly uncommon gesture: when Grace's biological parents became homeless, Vanessa invited them to stay. Without a blueprint for navigating the practical basics of an open adoption or any discussion of expectations or boundaries, the unusual living arrangement became a bottomless well of conflicting emotions and increasingly difficult decisions complicated by missed opportunities, regret, social chaos, and broken hearts"--

A young black girl disappears from Cincinnati's West End. No witnesses, no leads. Tow days later, a white girl the same age is snatched from Hyde Park Square. Cincinnati's mayor receives a letter brutally stating: "Find the black girl and we'll return the white girl." The fuse lit, two female detectives race to uncover the kidnappers. Hope dwindles as time accumulates, and passes, without resolution. Cincinnati PD and the FBI form an uneasy alliance while battling the city's racial stereotypes and stigmas. In the latest thriller from Rock Neelly, author of the Purple Heart Detective Agency and the Prince of the Border, readers ride shotgun through the Queen City in police patrol cars, searching recently vacated safe rooms, questioning sorrowful family members, grilling drug lords, looking for anonymous white vans and dark motives. Each detective is tough on her own, combining to make a ferocious duo, but will that be enough...and in time. Weaving together race, law enforcement, family ties, buried history, and life along the banks of the Ohio River, readers will face their own assumptions as they see suspicions reflected on the page. Written with complicated realistic characters, River of Tears makes us think about missing girls used as pawns - and what we would do if we had to find them? "In Neelly's taut new thriller, racism and civil unrest ratchet up the tensions on the mean streets of Cincinnati where Detectives Madison Jane Monroe and Rosie Coleman hustle to catch a kidnapper before it's too late." - Cedric Rose, Mercantile Library.

River on the Rocks is a story told in the tradition of Bill Byrne's Tale Of The Elk, and may be seen as a modern-day counterpart of that classic.The first recorded white settler on Birch was English Bill Dodrill, an occasional companion of Daniel Boone. English Bill came to the upper part of the river near Boggs in 1799 when that area was still a wilderness. Truth to tell, there aren't many more people living on Birch now than was the case, say, one hundred years ago.The title of this book reflects the geologic gift that makes West Virginia's Birch River unique: its large collection of rocks on an eight mile stretch in Nicholas and Braxton Counties. To celebrate this uniqueness, a number of rocks were "weighed," and the largest topped the scales at two thousand and twenty five tons!River birches, with their crinkly and peeling bark, are found all along the stream, particularly on lower Birch where they form a canopy. It must have been that way two hundred and seven years ago when those eighteenth century surveyors gave the river its fitting name.J.M. Hutchinson, an early Nicholas County historian, wrote that "in the records of a survey of 100,000 acres made by Tabithia McKinley in 1794, they called the river Birch, and it has since gone by that name."