The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger describes two days in a sixteen-year-old teenager named Holden Caufield. But Holden Caufield does not live a normal teenage life as he does not have a healthy relationship with his parents or with anyone for that matter. As a result, he is an outcast with no desire to succeed in his education, causing him to get expelled from prep school and journey hopelessly across New York.
The Glass Castle is a memoir by journalist Jeannette Walls about her family and childhood. Her parents rejected societal norms, which was often detrimental to the Walls children but also beneficial in its own ways. Jeannett’s father was a genius who helped accelerate the education of his children, but also an alcoholic without any money management skills and constantly on the run from the bill collectors.
The Giver by Lois Lowry tells the story of Jonas, a boy who lives in a utopian society called the Community where “Sameness” is implemented in order to keep everything fair and prevent sadness. Concepts like color are gone in order to create equality. At the Ceremony of Twelve, where a child’s role in the Community is assigned, Jonas is chosen to receive special training from the Giver, who holds the only memories of the past.
Hoot is about a boy named Roy. His family has lived all over the country and they have recently moved from Montana to Florida. He is not too happy about this at first, but one day, things start to get a little interesting. On the bus ride to Trace Middle School, he sees a running boy-except, he is running the wrong way, without his stuff, and without any shoes.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides follows Theo, a psychotherapist who is trying to uncover the truth behind why Alicia kills her husband and never says a word again. Through tons of investigating and talking sessions, will Theo get Alicia to speak and will the truth of what happened to Alicia's husband be revealed? This jaw dropping, page turning, heat pounding book will make you never want to put it down. The way the words flew off the page was incredible.
The Martian is a sci-fi novel by Andy Weir about a man stranded on Mars after a NASA mission goes astray. He’s an engineer and botanist, left behind with random equipment on a planet where stepping out of his enclosure means near-immediate death. Obviously, he’d like to avoid that future and instead hang on to life until he can be rescued by the next Mars mission (not for a few years). To reach this goal, he needs to figure out how to have a continuous supply of oxygen, water, food, heat, and shelter.
Summary: A bitter, practical man called Ove lives in a small row house in Sweden. One day, his new neighbors move in and knock over his mailbox, irritating him. Over the next three weeks, Ove repeatedly tries to commit suicide so he can join his dead wife Sonja, but is always somehow interrupted or stopped.
Wilder Girls, the debut novel of Rory Power, is the horror story of best friends Hetty, Byatt, and Reese. They have been stuck in Raxter, the island in which their school for girls is on, for eighteen months, quarantined and away from the world because of the Tox, the deadly disease that has claimed the lives of teachers and students alike. The Tox, though, gives surprising but strange abilities to the girls that do survive it, as well as gruesome liabilities. Double heartbeats, gills, second spines.
Lord of the Flies is a psychological novel by William Golding and stars a group of British boys who crash-landed on an uninhabited island. These boys, ranging from ages 7 to 12, are just normal children who start to panic when they realize that they are the only survivors, and no adults are there to protect them. However, everyone soon realizes their newfound independence and are excited to use it.
Mare Barrow is a 17-year-old girl who lives in a kingdom where people are separated into two different social classes based on the color of their blood. People with silver blood are supernatural, and have superpowers, and they’re also rich and live good lives, while people with red blood have to live in poverty because they don’t have any special superpowers. Mare has red blood, so she lives in poverty. To help her family, she steals by pickpocketing from Silvers and the people in her village.
