Central Kansas Library System

Unable to celebrate the holidays in the wake of his older brother's death in a gang-related shooting, Lolly Rachpaul struggles to avoid being forced into a gang himself while constructing a fantastically creative LEGO city at the Harlem community center. Where I live, it's all about borders. And territories. And crews. When you're a little kid in Harlem, you can pretty much go anywhere and do anything as long as you're careful. But when you start...

Nineteen-year-old orphan Signa Farrow confronts Death--and her own deathly powers--when she investigates the mysterious murder of a relative at the Thorn Grove estate. Signa has been raised by a string of guardians, each more interested in her wealth than her well-being-- and each meeting an untimely end. Her remaining relatives are the Hawthornes, an eccentric family living at Thorn Grove, an estate both glittering and gloomy. Its patriarch mourns...

"When the ancient Tablet of Destinies falls into the wrong hands, it is up to Sikander Aziz and his friends to save humanity from having its future erased by two fearsome Mesopotamian gods"--

With insight and a light touch, best-selling, Newbery Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt tells two poignant, linked stories: that of a grieving girl and a boy trying to escape his violent past. Following the death of her closest friend in summer 1968, Meryl Lee Kowalski goes off to St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls, where she struggles to navigate the venerable boarding school's traditions and a social structure heavily weighted toward students...

The people of fourteenth-century Florence, Italy, starving after years of bad weather and natural disasters, now face the Black Plague but twelve-year-old Maria is determined to survive. Includes historical note, glossary, and discussion questions.

Three years after his father's death by suicide, twelve-year-old Drew embarks on a journey toward understanding, forgiveness, and hope.

"Glorieta Magdalena Davis Espinosa is happy that Papi married Alice. She's happy that he can smile again after years of mourning Mama. But the urn containing Mama's ashes disappeared into a drawer the day Alice moved in. If everything about Glorieta's life is going to change, then she wants one thing to go her way: She wants to hear stories about her mama when the family gathers on the last night of los Dias de los Muertos. And that can only happen...

After his pet rabbit dies, Josh feels sad and does not want to own another pet until an elderly neighbor's cat goes missing.

Thirteen-year-old Zinnia Taylor uncovers family secrets and self truths while clearing a mysterious settler trail that begins on her family's farm in Kentucky.

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last - the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge - and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods. Disturbed by a...