April 7, 2023
Thirteen-year-old Billy Knight leaves home to “ride the rails” across Canada during the 1930s. His encounters with a wide cast of characters — including fellow drifters and grifters, kid gangs, crooks, idealists, ragtag philosophers and railroad bulls as well as everyday folk simply trying to get by — provide much more than he bargained for. And for the first time, he realizes that riding the rails is not just an adventure. It also speaks to the bravery of those drifting like tumbleweeds across the country and seeking a better life. An adventure both life-changing and unforgettable. It’s the dust-bowl Depression […]
April 7, 2023
This honest, engrossing graphic memoir tells the story of professional athlete and activist Akim Aliu’s incredible life as a hockey prodigy in Canada. Akim Aliu — also known as “Dreamer” — is a Ukrainian-Nigerian-Canadian professional hockey player whose career took him all around the world and who experienced systemic racism at every turn. Dreamer tells Akim’s incredible story, from being the only black child in his Ukrainian community, to his family struggling to make ends meet while living in Toronto, to confronting the racist violence he often experienced both on and off the ice. This is a gut-wrenching and riveting […]
April 7, 2023
Rebecca Strand was just sixteen when she and her father fell to their deaths from the top of the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse in 1839. Just how they fell—or were they pushed?—remains a mystery. And their ghosts haunt the lighthouse to this day. One teen’s summer job scaring tourists with ghost stories takes a terrifying turn when he accidentally summons the spirit of a dead girl—and she has demands. The award-winning author of Airborn delivers a roller-coaster ride of a story about the wakeful and wicked dead. “Rebecca Strand was sixteen the first time she saw her father kill a ghost.” […]
March 3, 2023
Thirteen-year-old Houston Williams is smart. Very smart. So no one is surprised when he earns a scholarship to attend a prestigious NASA space camp. At the training facility he immediately bonds with his new team, including a girl named Teal. He also clashes with a girl on a rival team named Ashley, who matches or beats him in every exercise. The three of them impress the directors so much they are invited to join a top-secret research project that studies how space travel affects people of different ages. But only two of them will actually be going into space. Houston […]
March 3, 2023
From an Edgar Award-winning author, this historical noir novel follows the life-changing summer of 16-year-old Joe Garbe as he discovers queer community in 1930s Chicago and gets caught up in the city’s crooked underbelly. In the summer of 1934, Joe Garbe arrives in Chicago with one goal: Earn enough money to get out of debt and save the family farm. Joe’s cousin sets him up with a hotel job, then proposes a sketchy scheme to make a lot more money fast. While running his con, Joe finds himself splitting time between Eddie, a handsome flirt on a delivery truck, and […]