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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. 

“Rotten English” spans the globe to offer an overview of the best non-standard English writing of the past two centuries, with a focus on the most recent decades. The book collects the poetry, essays, short stories, and novels of the best in global vernacular writing from Mark Twain to Junot Diaz.

Wong writes poems of realization and identity. Whether the words are about customs or careers, they provide a sense of who the author has become because of her pride in her blood-lines.

Fifteen-year old DeAndre lives in the projects of West Baltimore, and his parents, Fran and Gary, battle severe drug addiction. This book asks difficult questions: What happens when parents don’t parent? What is the community’s role? Simon and Burns went on to create the TV series “The Wire,” continuing their examination of life in Baltimore.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants yearly scramble across the U.S.-Mexican border and into an area of the Arizona desert known as the Devil’s Highway. Many do not make it out alive. This is the human story of those border crossings told with facts, anger, and poetry.

While studying migratory birds on the remote Farallones Islands, 30 miles off the coast of San Francisco, biologists noticed red blotches in the surrounding waters. These sightings evolve into a full blown scientific study of great white sharks revealing unknown secrets of this prehistoric beast.

Young Neftali cannot resist the power of words and the world around him. Whether he is studying the iridescent wings of beetle or imagining the story of a lone boot left in the mud, there is no limit to where his imagination and words will take him. Neftali grows up to become one of the world’s most beloved poets: Chile’s Nobel-winning laureate Pablo Neruda. Through this stunning novel, Pam Muñoz Ryan imagines poet’s childhood and triumph in overcoming a tyrannical father to believe in his own voice and words.

The tale of a young Irish-American who aspires to be a reporter, while supporting his widowed mother and siblings by selling newspapers. From the My Name is America series.

This collection of more than 100 poems that honestly and artfully confront topics ranging from poverty and motherhood to Van Gogh and Mandela is presented in Tupac Shakur’s own handwriting on one side of the page, with a typed version on the opposite side. 

Rowan has too many secrets to write down in the pages of a diary. Now the kids at school say Rowan’s too different to spend time with. He’s not the right kind of girl, and he’s not the right kind of boy. His mom ignores him. And at night, his dad hurts him in ways he’s not ready to talk about yet. But Rowan discovers another way to share his secrets: letters. Letters he attaches to balloons and releases into the universe, hoping someone new will read them and understand. But when he befriends a classmate who knows what it’s like to be lonely and scared, even at home, Rowan realizes that there might already be a person he can trust right by his side. 

In this classic, chilling tale from one of our country’s greatest masters of terror, our narrator thinks he has gotten away with murder…but the victim’s heart may yet do him in.

A thoroughly researched, fictionalized account of the life of Emily Dickinson as a young girl. While most obviously useful for school support, the book will also appeal to budding writers and those who enjoy a strong heroine.

Did you ever wonder what an author was thinking when they wrote their book? Explore the quirky back-stories of the world’s most famous 50 books.