Hope Was Here

Every Breedlove is a lawyer or soon will be, except Ivy Breedlove, who wants to be a historian, and her supposedly crazy Aunt Josephine who disappeared years ago. When Ivy’s Great Aunt Tib’s eyesight begins to fail, the responsibility of researching and writing the family history falls on Ivy, a task that she relishes. After learning that her Aunt Josephine is still alive, Ivy wants to find her. Relying on the expert skills of a wilderness guide named Mountain Mama, Ivy is led to Josephine’s log cabin in a remote area of the Adirondacks where she meets and gets to know her aunt while interviewing her for the family history. 

Jenna is happy with her job at Gladstone Shoes, although she doesn’t understand why Mrs. Gladstone hires a man that she caught shoplifting to help around the store. This is a sequel to Bauer’s earlier Rules of the Road (1998), but readers need not read the books in order.

Banesville, located in the heart of the apple-growing area of upstate New York, is no longer the idyllic small town it once was. There are rumors of ghosts, of an abandoned house being haunted, and of people dying in suspicious ways. The townsfolk are beginning to live in fear. All of this is inflamed by the unscrupulous editor of the local newspaper. Hildy Biddle and the staff of the high school newspaper, The Core, must unveil the corruption that has infiltrated their town before it’s too late. 

Meet Jenna Boller, star employee at Gladstone Shoe Store in Chicago. Standing a gawky 5’11” at 16 years old, Jenna is the kind of girl most likely to stand out in the crowd — for all the wrong reasons. But that doesn’t stop Madeline Gladstone, the president of Gladstone’s Shoes, from hiring Jenna to drive her cross country in a last ditch effort to stop Elden Gladstone from taking over his mother’s company and turning a quality business into a shop-and-schlock empire. Now Jenna Boller shoe salesperson is about to become a shoe-store spy as she joins her crusty old employer for an eye-opening adventure that will teach them both the rules of the road — and the rules of life. (from Penguin.com)

This is a story about a teenager and her vegetable, about having a gigantic dream and trying to fulfill it, about people we love not always understanding our passions, about being ourselves when most of the world says to conform. It’s about the power of grandmothers, the magic of seeds, the triumph of agriculture, and a towering dad who learns who his daughter really is. (from Joanbauer.com)

Sam Benton has always been the tallest student in his class. In fourth grade, Jeremy Liggins began calling him Tree, the nickname stuck, and now that is what everyone calls him. Because of his height, Tree has endured much teasing from classmates. But seventh grade is the hardest. (from Joanbauer.com)