All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg

Two years after being airlifted out of Vietnam in 1975, Matt Pin is haunted by the terrible secret he left behind and, now, in a loving adoptive home in the United States, a series of profound events forces him to confront his past.

Matt must go through tremendous termoil to find where he truely belongs. He must rediscover what it means to be a little boy. What it means to be himself. He will go head to head with veterans who fought for his freedom, and bullies who lost their family members. But yet, he never gives up. Ever.

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

"Artemis Fowl is great…a new thriller fairy tale that will grab your interest, no matter your age." -- The New York Post
Twelve-year-old Artemis is a millionaire, a genius and above all, a criminal mastermind. But Artemis doesn't know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These aren't the fairies of bedtime stories -- they're dangerous! Full of unexpected twists and turns, Artemis Fowl is a riveting, magical adventure.
 
From a strikingly original voice in fiction comes the story of Artemis Fowl, a very unusual hero. Artemis combines the astuteness of Sherlock Holmes with the sangfroid of James Bond and the attitude of Attila the Hun. But even Artemis doesn't know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of LEPrecon Unit. These aren't the fairies of bedtime stories. These fairies are armed and they're dangerous. Artemis thinks he's got them just where he wants them, but then they stop playing by the rules...

Full of unexpected twists and turns, ARTEMIS FOWL opens up a riveting world of magic, mystery, and humor.

From the Publisher (Listening Library)

North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley

"Adventure in life is good; consistency in coffee is even better."

Terra Cooper doesn't have much adventure in her life. Nor does she have a very good coffee selection. That's because Terra lives in a small, middle-of-nowhere town in Washington. But that doesn't mean her life isn't exciting! Everyone knows Terra. The girl with the flawed face. The girl with so much potential. The girl with a controlling father.

After her mother sneaks her off to Seattle for another hopeless operation on her face, they find something more than just a big bill that does absolutely nothing to help her self-confidence issues. They find Jacob.

Jacob helps Terra discover who she really is, and who she was always meant to be.

But this is more than that. We, as readers, discover ourselves also. For we are all, just a little north of beautiful.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

While reading Wintergirls, I had a very intense feeling. A very complex emotion that is difficult to describe. It felt like I was in the shoes of Lia herself. Lia's addiction to restraint from eating was more than an intense plot idea formulated to entrance readers. It was a powerful tool to help readers look into the eyes of a teenager who constantly feels she isn't good enough.

Cassie, Lia's best friend, was the one who got Lia in the mess. The adults in Lia's life tried to get her to distance herself from Cassie, seeing that she was a bad influence. This only drove the teens closer together. It was only after Cassie choked to death on her own vomit after a drinking overdose, that Lia's parents got what they wanted.

Or so they thought.

"I showed her how I'd been making tiny cuts in my skin to let the badness and the pain leak out. They were shallow at first, and short, like claw marks made by a desperate cat that wanted to hide under the front porch. Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care."

As Cassie 'visited' Lia in her dreams, she drove her, literally, to the brink. To the point where she was willing to kill herself, in any way possible, to get away from Cassie. Which only made her problems worse.

Laurie Halse Anderson does it again with this horrific insider look into the mind of a teenage girl with a disasterous eating disorder.

Hazel by Julie Hearn

Sweet but dull - that's how life has always been for Hazel Louise Mull-Dare. With money pouring in from the family's Caribbean sugar plantation, a father who spoils her rotten, and no pressure to excel in anything whatsoever, her future is looking as prim and proper as one of her hats. But on the day of the Epsom Derby - June 4th, 1913 - everything changes. A woman in a dark coat steps out in front of the King's horse, dying days later from her injuries.

Who was she and why did she do it? Hazel is determined to find out. But finding out leads her into worse trouble than she could ever have imagined. It leads to banishment. To secrets that have festered, and a shame that lingers on. To madness and misunderstanding in the place where sugar cane grows. Sweet but dull - that's how life used to be for Hazel Louise Mull-Dare. Not any more.

Ivy by Julie Hearn

The only beautiful thing in Ivy's drab life is her glorious red hair. At a young age, her locks made her the target of Carroty Kate, a 'skinner'. She recruited Ivy to help her coax wealthy children away from their nannies so that she could strip them of their clothes - clothes worth a fortune in the markets of Petticoat Lane. It is years before Ivy escapes and finds her way back to her in-laws. Once there, she finds respite in laudanum. But before she can settle into a stupor and forget the terrible things she has done, Ivy is spotted by a wealthy pre-Raphaelite painter.

Oscar Fosdick needs a muse (until now he has had to use his domineering mother as a model, something not conducive to producing his best work, he finds). To him, Ivy is perfect, a stunner. Realising quickly that this painter has more money than sense, Ivy's in-laws order her to sit for him, and to do anything else he demands. But not everyone is happy. Oscar's mother is determined to get rid of Ivy. Oscar's famous neighbour is determined to paint her. Carroty Kate is determined to find her, and Ivy herself is determined to escape . . .

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.

We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.

Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn

Science, spiritualism, history, and romance intertwine in Suzanne Weyn's newest novel. Four sisters and their mother make their way from a spiritualist town in New York to London, becoming acquainted with journalist W. T. Stead, scientist Nikola Tesla, and industrialist John Jacob Astor. When they all find themselves on the Titanic, one of Tesla's inventions dooms them...and one could save them.

After an adventure of a lifetime, these sister's know the true meaning of Family. For those who survive.

The Crossroads by Chris Grabenstien

Zack has been plucked up from the place he was raised to move out to a little town in the middle of nowhere with his dad and new stepmother; Julie. After meeting the town crazy, Zack and Julie investigate a bus accident that occured over 50 years prior. Finding that not everything adds up, they dig deeper. Which was their first mistake.

In a story of ghosts, mystery, and adventure, a boy and his stepmother redefine normal in a town that hasn't seen change for over a hundred years.

Award-winning thriller author Chris Grabenstein fills his first book for younger readers with the same humorous and spine-tingling storytelling that has made him a fast favorite with adults.

Emergency Post

Tonight, at Midnight, the final installment of the Harry Potter Phenomenon will be released into theaters. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two, the 8th movie in the series.

Ever since the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in US), was published on June 30th, 1997, the series has been an epic hit. All 7 books where bestsellers, and as a result, all previous 7 movies have been too.

As the minutes count down, crowds start to gather around the theaters, children catch up on the series, Fanfictioners are going wild, and the Press is on edge.

They all know one thing: This is going to be amazing.

"It has been extraordinarily fun, and now the decade-long saga has reached its grand finale. The best has been saved for the last."

USA TODAY

"'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2' is the last, and one of the best, in the film series with the veteran cast and creative team back with a thrilling and satisfying finish."

LA Times

"This entire movie is dark, gloomy and filled with shadows. So it should be. That makes it particularly inappropriate for the additional dimness of 3-D. There are a few shots that benefit from 3-D (I like the unfolding of the little magical globe) but none that require it. Avoid the surcharge and see the film in proper 2-D with brighter color."

Chigago Sun Times 

And so it Ends... Let us just hope that it lives up to our hopes. If it doesn't, there will be hell to pay.