Uncommon Criminals

Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life: Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she’s simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That’s why Kat isn’t surprised when she’s asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners. There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn’t been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long — and in Kat’s world, history almost always repeats itself.

After

A year after Lacey Mann’s father dies, her family continues its downward spiral. Her older brother drinks, her younger brother shuts down, and her mother becomes a workaholic. To counteract, Lacey earns good grades and helps her best friend weather typical high-school dramas. Enter new student Sam Stone, who asks Lacey out. Unfortunately, Lacey cannot tolerate another person, even cute Sam, who has “heard about her dad” and “knows how she feels.” Consumed with guilt and disgusted by insincere classmates, Lacey begins a support group for students who have lost a parent.
Grades 7-10

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

Twelve-year-old CeeCee is in trouble. For years she’s been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille— the crown-wearing, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town. Though it’s 1967 and they live in Ohio, Camille believes it’s 1951 and she’s just been crowned the Vidalia Onion Queen of Georgia.

Unless

Unless is the story Reta Winters tells us as she endures the breakaway of Norah, her eldest daughter, from family, boyfriend, girlfriends and university. Every day Norah sits cross-legged on the northeast corner of Bloor and Bathurst, a begging bowl on her lap and a cardboard sign on her chest. GOODNESS, it says. Norah's defection from a normal life is an inexplicable mystery arising from the totally unlikely context of a loving family: Tom, the doctor father; Reta, the writer, translator, housewife mother; two younger sisters, Natalie and Christine; a treasured old dog, Pet; and their rambling old home on the outskirts of Orangetown, an hour's drive from Toronto.

Tales of the Bark Lodges

Twelve traditional animal tales that preserve elements of Wyandot culture.