Please cut and paste your project into the blog. Feel free to comment on other people's projects if you liked or didn't like that book. I'm sure Mrs. Owen would love to hear your comments.
Tough Cookie Pressy Diane Mott Davidson is unique among the many mystery authors. Her expertise in cooking and suspenseful detail is sandwiched into a captivating novel, Tough Cookie. The protagonist Goldy has a catering business that was shut down due to a poor draining system. Luckily, Goldy's friend Eileen was able to come across a cooking show on PBS. Unfortunately with the costs of renovating her business, Goldy and her husband Tom have to sell his historic skis. Goldy's ex agrees to buy the skis, but she knew that Tom would not approve. Therefore Goldy agrees to meet him at his studio. What could go wrong? Everything! After patiently waiting, Doug never showed up. Goldy was now a prime suspect in the murder of Doug Portman. Goldy needs to whip up a recipe and fast before this event ends her career for good. The New York Times best selling author has been known for her unique blend of murder and food, a recipe for another best seller. These themes both curve the appetite and stimulate the senses. I recommend this to anyone who likes reading.
In Speak, Melinda Sordino is a teenager returns to school after traumatic summer. She returns to school where she has no one due to the fact she busted a party, but not for the reason everyone thinks, but because she was getting raped. She loses all her friends because she ruined the party and hasn’t told anyone about her horrific experience. Melinda is eventually forced to come clean and speak the truth about her experience. For the first time Melinda understands what it feels like to stand up for herself. Melinda reveals a true in which a lot teenager can relate to. Melinda finds her strength when she is forced to go through another traumatic experience and then finds it in her to stop it. Award Winning Author, Laurie Halse Anderson writes Speak an inspirational story to all teenagers that shows how girls can defend themselves. Anderson wrote the novel based an experience she had and had to speak about it. Speak influences so many to speak up and be who they are. Henderson received an award for the ALA Best book for Young Adults and was on the New York Times best seller list. Speak is also now a Showtime movie. Speak is also taught around the nation for Young Adult Fiction and will keep you wanting more.
Set during the hippie counterculture of the late 1960’s, Go Ask Alice is the riveting personal account of a troubled teenage girl drawn into the dangerous world of drugs and addiction. Go Ask Alice is the real-life diary of an insecure teenager who struggles with her self-esteem, self-image, and strong dependence on men. Alice’s world is turned upside down when her family moves to a brand new town and she finds herself ostracized and isolated at school. Alice constantly worries about sex and what others think about her, never truly discovering exactly who she is in her adolescence. Since she finds it extremely difficult to open up to her friends and family about her problems, Alice keeps her thoughts and emotions bottled up inside. Ultimately, Alice turns to drugs to take her personal pain away, and experiments with LSD, marijuana, and speed to be accepted in the “in crowd.” Soon, Alice abuses drugs as a powerful escape from her insecurities and becomes addicted to the wonderful high that the drugs give her. In her effort to find someone who truly understands her, Alice shuns her family and friends, believing that her pet “Diary” is the only one who she can express her true feelings to. Winner of the ALA Best Book for Young Adults and Christopher Award, Go Ask Alice is the provocative, compelling story of Alice, a girl spiraling into the deep, dark world of addiction as a result of her inner personal demons and difficulties maintaining stability in her life.
From the New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, Laurie Halse Anderson, comes a remarkable story about a young teenager named Melinda Sordino who is raped at a summer party and is forced to call the cops. When all of her friends shut her out for calling the cops that one night, she is forced into a life of solitude. Wanting to escape, but finding the emotional wear of it to stressful, she tries everything in her power to forget about that night. But how can she when everyone else won’t? Adapted into a film in 2004, translated into Chinese and Dutch, and receiving a Platinum award for selling over a million copies Anderson amazes us once again.
In The Pact, the main characters Emily and Chris are life long friends. They have been neighbors since before they were even born and were best friends up until recently when they started dating. As time goes on Emily and Chris decide to make a pact, a suicide pact. Then one night both Emily’s and Chris’s parents get the phone call that every parent dreads, a frantic midnight call from the hospital. Their plan did not go according to plan, and Emily was found dead while Chris was severely injured. He tells police that it was a suicide pact and he had planned on killing himself after Emily. Chris is then accused of killing Emily because of the evidence, a young girl dead, a gun, and a surviving witness. Chris’s family knows that he is innocent, but Emily’s mother is convinced he did it; she doesn’t understand why Emily would kill herself as Chris explains it. The once very close neighbors and family friends are driven apart by tragedy that is affecting both families deeply. Will the investigations lead them further apart, or closer? Will Chris be proclaimed guilty or innocent? And what drove these two seemingly content teenagers to the end? This is a thrilling drama that will keep you reading till the very end while exploring stressful teen relationships and life altering decisions. "From all angles, this is an outstanding story… a wake-up call and an unforgettable experience." —The Concord Monitor
The Washington Post is about to embark on a story that would change history. All the President’s Men, written by Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, follows the story of how the Washington Post broke the Watergate scandal. It all started June 17, 1978 when five men were arrested for breaking into the Watergate office building of the Democratic National Committee. Woodward and Bernstein, who had never worked together, knew there where was more to the story. What they found eventually led to the resignation of President Nixon in one of the biggest political scandals in American history. Through meticulous investigative journalism, detailed notes, careful writing, and the ultimate source “Deep Throat,” the reporters unraveled a story of corruption, scandal, and plain dirty politics. All the President’s Men is the bestselling book written about (and by) Woodward and Bernstein’s Pulitzer Prize winning articles on the Watergate scandal. This book has been made into a 1976, Academy Award Winning film with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman playing Woodward and Bernstein, respectively.
A Time to Kill by John Grisham is a novel that distributes strength and integrity. Upon this being Grisham’s first aspiring novel that took him three years to complete; it is based on a true event that he not only witnessed, but left him with questions he chose to answer himself through this intense piece of writing. The novel begins with the brutal raping of a young ten year old black girl by two white men. Following the rape the young girl is placed in intensive care from broken bones and other various injuries. Filled with strong rage and pulsing anger, the father of the young girl, Carl Lee Hailey, goes to court in search of justice for his daughter. Following the next couple days Hailey finds himself lingering the court house alone when he stumbles upon the two rednecks that raped his young daughter. Hailey then takes the matter into his own hands with impulse and murders the two white men. This is where the tables turn. Hailey is now being prosecuted for the murder of two white men and is not left with a lot of promising hope of being left free. With the understanding of killing two men Hailey hires himself the most respectable lawyer he knew, Jake Brigance, to help him be left free by a town that’s majority is white. As the case continues and their lives keep rolling more and more issues begin to appear. Obstacles are forced to be dodged and the KKK has now become involved. As this novel portrays lives of ongoing deception, discrimination, and continuous impulse this is sure to leave anyone on the edge of their seats. In the end, will Brigance help find Hailey and his daughter justice? Will this white town cross racial lines in search for what’s right? Will a black man be justified for the raping of his young black daughter? That’s for the book to know and you to find out.
Speak is a 1999 National Book Award Finalist, a 2000 Printz Honor Book, and an Edgar Allan Poe Award Finalist. Anderson captures the struggle Melinda has and her descriptive writing helps readers grasp the courage it took Melinda to overcome her deepest fears.
Starting school as an outcast, Melinda Sordino breaks up an end of summer party just two weeks before school. Melinda knows everyone in the school by their cliques; the only problem is that she doesn’t belong to any of them after what she did. She is even shunned by her closes friends from middle school. Melinda finds shelter in an unused maintenance closet and in an art class. She didn’t bust the party out of spite or stupidity, although that’s what everyone thinks. No one cares to know the real reason, and even if they did she wouldn’t be able to tell them. Once a happy outgoing girl now depressed and trapped, Melinda barely speaks. Her parents can’t understand what she’s going through and they think it’s a phase. They also try tough love which only pushes her farther away. Only her art teacher Mr. Freeman realizes the talent, and creativeness this troubled girl has. Mr. Freeman is the only person that does enough to encourage Melinda and really see’s her true struggle to fit in. Melinda fears that her best friend may be in some trouble she finally speaks out. Melinda’s sarcasm and courage makes her a memorable character whose conquest to overcome something she never thought she would have to go through will enthuse and give power to readers.
“In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. You can bake scones and get a tooth filled by a dentist. You can fold laundry for a family of five…”
On March 6, 2007, the quiet town of Sterling, New Hampshire is shaken by a terrible tragedy. Peter Houghton, a student who has been picked on and bullied since he could remember, finally snaps. Before lunch, the halls of Sterling High are splattered with blood and the floors are covered with bodies. Peter Houghton is charged with numerous counts of first degree murder and the only person who can help him is his attorney, Jordan. However, Josie Cormier, Peter’s ex-best friend is the number one eye witness and perhaps the only one who can tell what truly happened on March 6. However, she claims that she does not remember what happened. The question is: does she not remember or does she not want to remember what happened (before and after the shooting)? Because it could reveal something about herself that she has been pretending does not exist. Nineteen minutes makes us question: do we ever really know someone and do we ever really know ourselves? Nineteen Minutes became Jodi Picoult’s first #1 debut best seller on the New York Times Best Seller’s List. It was released to book stores across the nation on March 6, 2007, a little over a month before the Virginia Tech shootings. Days before the Virginia Tech tragedy, was the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. With more and more talk about shootings at schools, Nineteen Minutes became a popular read for people young and old.
“Or, in nineteen minutes, as Peter Houghton knows…you can bring the world to a screeching halt.”
“Next to the catalogue was a special craft knife with the word EXACTO on the handle. It was sleek, like a fountain pen, with a thin triangular blade at the tip...I touched the blade to a piece of ribbon draped across the table, and pressed ever so slightly. The ribbon unfurled into two pieces and slipped to the floor without a sound. Then I placed the blade next to the skin on my palm.” Callie, a fifteen year old girl, is sent to Sea Pines, a rehabilitation center, or “Sick Minds” as all the girls there call it, when her parents uncovered that she was cutting herself. She has taken her own vow of silence and refuses to talk to anyone, including her roommate and therapist. All of the girls in the group have different issues from self obsessed eating disorders to self inflicting pain, and yet Callie, although unwilling at first, captivated by the girls and their stories, and is pulled to the group. Callie receives a phone call form her mother and is forced to make a decision which ultimately effects whether or not she will continue treatment at Sea Pines. This gripping novel tells the story of one girl’s fight to find her voice and finally face the family trauma that was behind the pain she inflicted on herself, and with the help of her therapist, find ways to move on in her life. “‘But Callie,’ you say. ‘If we work hard, you’ll find something much better to take the place of whatever you give up. I promise.’”
Michael Mackenzie is an ordinary kid in the beginning of the summer. His seventeenth birthday becomes one of the most talked about parties of the summer. But Michael will remember it for a completely different reason. He and his friend Joe go into his backyard to shoot of the gun Michael inherited from his grandfather. It’s only one bullet – but that’s all it takes to change Michael’s life. The bullet travels an area of over four miles before piercing the forehead of Charlie Ward, who is sitting on the roof of his house, patching a hole. When Michael hears about the death, he knows he is responsible. His life begins to fall apart around him as he struggles to deal with the fact that he accidentally killed a man, and the guilt begins to tear him apart at the seams.
At the same time Jenna, Charlie Ward’s fifteen year old daughter, must try to re-sort her life into some kind of order. She goes from a regular teenage girl to a young woman burdened with the grief of watching her father die. But those aren’t the only things tormenting her life. She also has to figure out why she no longer feels comfortable around her long-time crush and current boyfriend, and why the lifeguard from pool, a boy named Michael, keeps appearing around her house – and in her dreams.
Winner pf the 1999 Texas Lone Star Reading List and 1998 ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Swallowing Stones is the gripping tale of what happens in one moment of careless fun, and how even the most innocent of acts can start a domino effect and change many lives – forever.
The Pulitzer Prize winning play by Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire is truly a timeless classic. The play is set in the late 40’s right after World War II in the working class area of New Orleans. The southern beauty, Blanche DuBois, loses everything and in desperation goes to reside with her sister Stella Kowalski. What she finds out about her sisters living situation stuns her. She is also very critical of her sister’s choice of husband and the two do not get along what so ever. Even though Blanche is broke she continues to act as though she is high class and pities herself almost too much. Her character is very shallow and neurotic, just trying to find an escape from her grim reality. The character of Stanley Kowalski is a tough, poker playing, scotch drinking, sex symbol and sees right through Blanche's innocent act even if his wife doesn't. Stanley is determined to uncover the truth about Blanche's misery and what really happened to the DuBoise mansion in Mississippi. He can tell that something is up when she brings all of her expensive furs, jewelry, and clothing that she claims are gifts from "admirers". He feels Blanche has cheated his wife out of inheritance and therefore has cheated him too since "under Louisiana's Napoleonic code what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband."
This play has been recreated into a prize winning film and translated into many other languages across the world. Marlon Brando was shot to fame in his spectacular role of Stanley and is now considered one of the greatest actors of all time. A Streetcar Named Desire is definitely a “must read”.
Go Ask Alice, a book written in 1971 by an anonymous author follows a young girl through her teenage years. However, the story isn’t your typical coming-of-age book, but a personal encounter with drugs, addiction, and personal struggle to break the habit. The mind-boggling tale will blow any reader away with horrific stories of illicit drug use and terrible decisions made by the main character “Alice.” Year after year, stories of family members, friends, co-workers, and classmates, are all told about the lives lost to drugs. This story is a firsthand look at the pain that drugs can cause not only an addict but the people around them as well. Go Ask Alice, preaches good morals. Stay clean, go to school, love your family and friends, and most importantly make good decisions and have respect for yourself. Go Ask Alice is the best-selling, first person account of teenage drug addiction. For thirty-five years Go Ask Alice has stunned readers across the nation. Experience the ride with Alice and see for yourself.
Harvard Professor Robert Langdon was only in Paris for another boring presentation on religious symbology, but in the middle of the night he is called to the Louvre Museum by the French Police. After being rushed out of his hotel room, he is told by the Chief of Police, Bezu Fache, that he is there to assist them in a murder case by helping them interpret some of the symbols left behind on the dead body of the Louvre's curator, Jacques Sauniere. Langdon must try to solve the murder of Mr. Sauniere with the help of his niece Sophie, while trying to prove his own innocence in the case and stop an unknown man from ruining a secret kept by the Priory of Scion for over half a millennium. The Da Vinci Code has sold over 60 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 44 languages. The Da Vinci Code was on the New York Times' Best Seller list for over two years, from its release in 2003 to October 29 of 2005.
The Pelican Brief is a novel by outstanding novelist John Grisham, reigned by Publishers Weekly as “the best-selling author of the 90’s.” Two Supreme Court Justices, Rosenburg and Jensen, receive many death threats and are ultimately assassinated by a vicious, ruthless and paid killer. Rosenburg and Jenson don’t all the FBI to protect them, and pay the ultimate price. Darby Shaw, an attractive second year law student at Tulane University is fascinated by this case, and sets out to solve the “who did it” mystery. She writes up a 13 page brief that ultimately reaches the President of the United States of America. She speculated that Victor Mattiece was the assassin. He is a big-time oil tycoon wanting to drill in Louisiana swamp land which is a key habitat for endangered Pelicans. The two Supreme Justices were both environmentalists. Darby, with the help of a Washington Post reporter, set out to prove that Darby is in fact right. The story quickly twists and turns into an explosive and shocking end.
A geisha is an artist, trained and skilled at entertaining men in music, dance, and clever conversation. But the life of a geisha is difficult, and the path to becoming a geisha, treacherous and slippery. Seductive, steeped in history and lyrical Japanese metaphors, Arthur Golding’s debut novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, spins a tale of one girl’s journey to becoming a geisha while remaining true to herself and her illicit love for a man.
Pre-World War II Japan is bustling. The geisha are revered throughout the major cities of Japan including Gion, but Chiyo, a child in a small fishing village, is only introduced to this elegant world after being sold to a geisha house. Immediately, the strange blue-gray color of her eyes draw attention, and invoke jealousy and hostility from a geisha Hastumoto. Hastumoto, clever and sadistic, proceeds to destroy Chiyo’s career as a geisha before it even begins. It is then, that the Chairman enters Chiyo’s life, and her life careens to focus only on becoming his lover. All the steps in her life will lead to him, she decides, and soon becomes the apprentice of the most famous geisha in Gion. Aspiring for greatness and for the attention of the Chairmen, Chiyo feels her life slipping as she attempts to balance the demands of her life as a geisha, and her love for a man she is not allowed to have.
Enrapturing and enchanting, Memoirs of a Geisha is easy to escape into- a different and romantic period in Japanese history.
Trisha McFarland is lost. She is nine years old and on her own. Alone in the woods on the boarder of a Maine-New Hampshire Mountain off the branch of the Appalachian Mountains. Trisha was fed up with the constant arguing between her older brother, Pete, and her recently divorced mother. They never shut up and are always at each other's throats, so she wants to get away. So she wonders off to go to the bathroom by herself. When she tries to find the trail she takes a the wrong shortcut and ends up lost in the wilderness on a path full of terror and fear. When it gets dark out, she remembers she has her walkman radio in her backpack. She is madly in love with Tom Gordon, a closing pitcher on the Boston Red Sox baseball team. She listens to the whole game and it takes her away from the misery of being stranded in the dark woods by herself. Listening to her hero strike out the final batters of the New York Yankee's squad calms her down and gives her courage to survive. Throughout Trisha's time in the woods she imagines Gordon is with her, helping her through every obstacle she faces. The image of Gordon being there protects her from the trail of slaughtered animals and mangles tree's in the dark forest of the Appalachian mountains. Will she make out alive? Will the faith of Red Sox star be enough to keep her trekking in hopes to find her family and continue her life?
From the world renowned Stephen King, comes his newest novel, Dreamcatcher. A group of four friends, Beav, Henry, Pete, and Jonesy, reunite in the woods of Maine to have their hunting trip to forget about their problems in each of their lives. However, when a stranger comes to their place, things that seem impossible will happen. The stranger is mumbling about lights in the sky. But when the man dies unexpectedly, and the four friends find animals with the same symptoms, the friends become even more confused. They are pushed into an unknown world, and they need to stop what is going on, before it is too late.
Critics rave about Dreamcatcher: Prime King at his most engrossing...[he] has lost none of his ability to mine terror from the ordinary.-The Miami Herald Fascinating...A frenzied, multilayered, ever-accelerating nightmare.-The New York Times A tour de force -- has more passages of power and imagination than some writers produce in a lifetime...[An] entertaining must-read.- Chicago Tribune
The story of four friends facing an unknown enemy is the story of the testing of friendship, and figuring out what they are facing. What happened to the stranger that came to their place? Why do the animals have the same symptoms? The four friends might not make it out all alive. What will they do to keep themselves alive? Will they kill each other? What would you do if this happened to you? Read the Dreamcatcher, by the acclaimed best seller Stephen King, and find out.
Stephen King’s book Needful Things starts off as a simple small town story before it slowly turns into a chaotic, vengeful, violence place of mass hysteria and death. It all starts with a store called “Needful Things” that opened up in the town of Castle Rock. The store was very different from you average supermarket and sold you things that you or anyone else just couldn’t believe; it was the thing you wanted most. The strange shopkeeper would always somehow know exactly what this was and would sell it to you for insanely low prices and a harmless little prank to play on someone else. He assured no one would get hurt, and the characters in the novel were always eager to pay off their precious and amazing new item.
This greed and obsessive need to keep this item was what drove them to continue to accept the pranks, even though they weren’t totally harmless every time and usually quite mean. Mr. Gaunt, the shopkeeper, would pick out each prank for the person that would be the most aggravated by such a thing. When the person’s rage grew at the sight of whatever had been destroyed, they found someone to blame. It would always be the one neighbor that got on their nerves constantly, and the other neighbor would be manipulated into turning their anger toward the person angry with them as well.
People were paired off and emotions and loathing grew towards neighbors, formers friends. No one could trust anything about these people anymore and there would always be another prank or two to keep rubbing sandpaper over their open wounds. Mr. Gaunt knew that at one point, someone was going to snap.
Stephen King is a well-known master of the horror genre and this book will have you on your toes as you watch this town’s decent into pure destruction.
Beginning on the night of a military coup in Enugu, Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells the story of fifteen year old Kambili, her quest for freedom from her family, and the struggles she faces during the coup. Her father, a perfectionist, beats Kambili and her brother for doing even the slightest of things wrong. As the regime goes on, her father’s newspaper begins to get questioned by the new government, forcing continuous stress upon him and the family. When her father beats her mother so badly that she has a miscarriage, Kambili becomes even more afraid of him. On a visit to her Aunty, Kambili is thrust into a whole new world in which she can openly speak and not face the wrath of her father. Returning home, Kambili returns to heightened tensions between her family and tensions rising within Nigeria as well. Her mother soon becomes desperate and Kambili must find strength within herself to help support her family.
Tough Cookie Pressy
ReplyDeleteDiane Mott Davidson is unique among the many mystery authors. Her expertise in cooking and suspenseful detail is sandwiched into a captivating novel, Tough Cookie. The protagonist Goldy has a catering business that was shut down due to a poor draining system. Luckily, Goldy's friend Eileen was able to come across a cooking show on PBS. Unfortunately with the costs of renovating her business, Goldy and her husband Tom have to sell his historic skis. Goldy's ex agrees to buy the skis, but she knew that Tom would not approve. Therefore Goldy agrees to meet him at his studio. What could go wrong? Everything! After patiently waiting, Doug never showed up. Goldy was now a prime suspect in the murder of Doug Portman. Goldy needs to whip up a recipe and fast before this event ends her career for good. The New York Times best selling author has been known for her unique blend of murder and food, a recipe for another best seller. These themes both curve the appetite and stimulate the senses. I recommend this to anyone who likes reading.
Pressy on Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
ReplyDeleteIn Speak, Melinda Sordino is a teenager returns to school after traumatic summer. She returns to school where she has no one due to the fact she busted a party, but not for the reason everyone thinks, but because she was getting raped. She loses all her friends because she ruined the party and hasn’t told anyone about her horrific experience. Melinda is eventually forced to come clean and speak the truth about her experience. For the first time Melinda understands what it feels like to stand up for herself. Melinda reveals a true in which a lot teenager can relate to. Melinda finds her strength when she is forced to go through another traumatic experience and then finds it in her to stop it.
Award Winning Author, Laurie Halse Anderson writes Speak an inspirational story to all teenagers that shows how girls can defend themselves. Anderson wrote the novel based an experience she had and had to speak about it. Speak influences so many to speak up and be who they are. Henderson received an award for the ALA Best book for Young Adults and was on the New York Times best seller list. Speak is also now a Showtime movie. Speak is also taught around the nation for Young Adult Fiction and will keep you wanting more.
Pressy on Go Ask Alice
ReplyDeleteSet during the hippie counterculture of the
late 1960’s, Go Ask Alice is the riveting personal account of a troubled teenage girl drawn into the dangerous world of drugs and addiction. Go Ask Alice is the real-life diary of an insecure teenager who struggles with her self-esteem, self-image, and strong dependence on men. Alice’s world is turned upside down when her family moves to a brand new town and she finds herself ostracized and isolated at school. Alice constantly worries about sex and what others think about her, never truly discovering exactly who she is in her adolescence. Since she finds it extremely difficult to open up to her friends and family about her problems, Alice keeps her thoughts and emotions bottled up inside. Ultimately, Alice turns to drugs to take her personal pain away, and experiments with LSD, marijuana, and speed to be accepted in the “in crowd.” Soon, Alice abuses drugs as a powerful escape from her insecurities and becomes addicted to the wonderful high that the drugs give her. In her effort to find someone who truly understands her, Alice shuns her family and friends, believing that her pet “Diary” is the only one who she can express her true feelings to. Winner of the ALA Best Book for Young Adults and Christopher Award, Go Ask Alice is the provocative, compelling story of Alice, a girl spiraling into the deep, dark world of addiction as a result of her inner personal demons and difficulties maintaining stability in her life.
From the New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, Laurie Halse Anderson, comes a remarkable story about a young teenager named Melinda Sordino who is raped at a summer party and is forced to call the cops. When all of her friends shut her out for calling the cops that one night, she is forced into a life of solitude. Wanting to escape, but finding the emotional wear of it to stressful, she tries everything in her power to forget about that night. But how can she when everyone else won’t? Adapted into a film in 2004, translated into Chinese and Dutch, and receiving a Platinum award for selling over a million copies Anderson amazes us once again.
ReplyDeletePressy on The Pact by Jodi Picoult
ReplyDeleteIn The Pact, the main characters Emily and Chris are life long friends. They have been neighbors since before they were even born and were best friends up until recently when they started dating. As time goes on Emily and Chris decide to make a pact, a suicide pact.
Then one night both Emily’s and Chris’s parents get the phone call that every parent dreads, a frantic midnight call from the hospital. Their plan did not go according to plan, and Emily was found dead while Chris was severely injured. He tells police that it was a suicide pact and he had planned on killing himself after Emily.
Chris is then accused of killing Emily because of the evidence, a young girl dead, a gun, and a surviving witness. Chris’s family knows that he is innocent, but Emily’s mother is convinced he did it; she doesn’t understand why Emily would kill herself as Chris explains it.
The once very close neighbors and family friends are driven apart by tragedy that is affecting both families deeply. Will the investigations lead them further apart, or closer? Will Chris be proclaimed guilty or innocent? And what drove these two seemingly content teenagers to the end?
This is a thrilling drama that will keep you reading till the very end while exploring stressful teen relationships and life altering decisions. "From all angles, this is an outstanding story… a wake-up call and an unforgettable experience." —The Concord Monitor
All the President's Men
ReplyDeleteThe Washington Post is about to embark on a story that would change history. All the President’s Men, written by Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, follows the story of how the Washington Post broke the Watergate scandal. It all started June 17, 1978 when five men were arrested for breaking into the Watergate office building of the Democratic National Committee. Woodward and Bernstein, who had never worked together, knew there where was more to the story. What they found eventually led to the resignation of President Nixon in one of the biggest political scandals in American history. Through meticulous investigative journalism, detailed notes, careful writing, and the ultimate source “Deep Throat,” the reporters unraveled a story of corruption, scandal, and plain dirty politics.
All the President’s Men is the bestselling book written about (and by) Woodward and Bernstein’s Pulitzer Prize winning articles on the Watergate scandal. This book has been made into a 1976, Academy Award Winning film with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman playing Woodward and Bernstein, respectively.
A Time to Kill by John Grisham is a novel that distributes strength and integrity. Upon this being Grisham’s first aspiring novel that took him three years to complete; it is based on a true event that he not only witnessed, but left him with questions he chose to answer himself through this intense piece of writing.
ReplyDeleteThe novel begins with the brutal raping of a young ten year old black girl by two white men. Following the rape the young girl is placed in intensive care from broken bones and other various injuries. Filled with strong rage and pulsing anger, the father of the young girl, Carl Lee Hailey, goes to court in search of justice for his daughter. Following the next couple days Hailey finds himself lingering the court house alone when he stumbles upon the two rednecks that raped his young daughter. Hailey then takes the matter into his own hands with impulse and murders the two white men. This is where the tables turn. Hailey is now being prosecuted for the murder of two white men and is not left with a lot of promising hope of being left free. With the understanding of killing two men Hailey hires himself the most respectable lawyer he knew, Jake Brigance, to help him be left free by a town that’s majority is white.
As the case continues and their lives keep rolling more and more issues begin to appear. Obstacles are forced to be dodged and the KKK has now become involved. As this novel portrays lives of ongoing deception, discrimination, and continuous impulse this is sure to leave anyone on the edge of their seats. In the end, will Brigance help find Hailey and his daughter justice? Will this white town cross racial lines in search for what’s right? Will a black man be justified for the raping of his young black daughter? That’s for the book to know and you to find out.
Speak is a 1999 National Book Award Finalist, a 2000 Printz Honor Book, and an Edgar Allan Poe Award Finalist. Anderson captures the struggle Melinda has and her descriptive writing helps readers grasp the courage it took Melinda to overcome her deepest fears.
ReplyDeleteStarting school as an outcast, Melinda Sordino breaks up an end of summer party just two weeks before school. Melinda knows everyone in the school by their cliques; the only problem is that she doesn’t belong to any of them after what she did. She is even shunned by her closes friends from middle school. Melinda finds shelter in an unused maintenance closet and in an art class. She didn’t bust the party out of spite or stupidity, although that’s what everyone thinks. No one cares to know the real reason, and even if they did she wouldn’t be able to tell them. Once a happy outgoing girl now depressed and trapped, Melinda barely speaks. Her parents can’t understand what she’s going through and they think it’s a phase. They also try tough love which only pushes her farther away. Only her art teacher Mr. Freeman realizes the talent, and creativeness this troubled girl has. Mr. Freeman is the only person that does enough to encourage Melinda and really see’s her true struggle to fit in. Melinda fears that her best friend may be in some trouble she finally speaks out. Melinda’s sarcasm and courage makes her a memorable character whose conquest to overcome something she never thought she would have to go through will enthuse and give power to readers.
“In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. You can bake scones and get a tooth filled by a dentist. You can fold laundry for a family of five…”
ReplyDeleteOn March 6, 2007, the quiet town of Sterling, New Hampshire is shaken by a terrible tragedy. Peter Houghton, a student who has been picked on and bullied since he could remember, finally snaps. Before lunch, the halls of Sterling High are splattered with blood and the floors are covered with bodies. Peter Houghton is charged with numerous counts of first degree murder and the only person who can help him is his attorney, Jordan. However, Josie Cormier, Peter’s ex-best friend is the number one eye witness and perhaps the only one who can tell what truly happened on March 6. However, she claims that she does not remember what happened. The question is: does she not remember or does she not want to remember what happened (before and after the shooting)? Because it could reveal something about herself that she has been pretending does not exist. Nineteen minutes makes us question: do we ever really know someone and do we ever really know ourselves?
Nineteen Minutes became Jodi Picoult’s first #1 debut best seller on the New York Times Best Seller’s List. It was released to book stores across the nation on March 6, 2007, a little over a month before the Virginia Tech shootings. Days before the Virginia Tech tragedy, was the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. With more and more talk about shootings at schools, Nineteen Minutes became a popular read for people young and old.
“Or, in nineteen minutes, as Peter Houghton knows…you can bring the world to a screeching halt.”
Cut By: Patricia McCormick
ReplyDelete“Next to the catalogue was a special craft knife with the word EXACTO on the handle. It was sleek, like a fountain pen, with a thin triangular blade at the tip...I touched the blade to a piece of ribbon draped across the table, and pressed ever so slightly. The ribbon unfurled into two pieces and slipped to the floor without a sound. Then I placed the blade next to the skin on my palm.”
Callie, a fifteen year old girl, is sent to Sea Pines, a rehabilitation center, or “Sick Minds” as all the girls there call it, when her parents uncovered that she was cutting herself. She has taken her own vow of silence and refuses to talk to anyone, including her roommate and therapist.
All of the girls in the group have different issues from self obsessed eating disorders to self inflicting pain, and yet Callie, although unwilling at first, captivated by the girls and their stories, and is pulled to the group.
Callie receives a phone call form her mother and is forced to make a decision which ultimately effects whether or not she will continue treatment at Sea Pines.
This gripping novel tells the story of one girl’s fight to find her voice and finally face the family trauma that was behind the pain she inflicted on herself, and with the help of her therapist, find ways to move on in her life.
“‘But Callie,’ you say. ‘If we work hard, you’ll find something much better to take the place of whatever you give up. I promise.’”
Michael Mackenzie is an ordinary kid in the beginning of the summer. His seventeenth birthday becomes one of the most talked about parties of the summer. But Michael will remember it for a completely different reason. He and his friend Joe go into his backyard to shoot of the gun Michael inherited from his grandfather. It’s only one bullet – but that’s all it takes to change Michael’s life. The bullet travels an area of over four miles before piercing the forehead of Charlie Ward, who is sitting on the roof of his house, patching a hole. When Michael hears about the death, he knows he is responsible. His life begins to fall apart around him as he struggles to deal with the fact that he accidentally killed a man, and the guilt begins to tear him apart at the seams.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time Jenna, Charlie Ward’s fifteen year old daughter, must try to re-sort her life into some kind of order. She goes from a regular teenage girl to a young woman burdened with the grief of watching her father die. But those aren’t the only things tormenting her life. She also has to figure out why she no longer feels comfortable around her long-time crush and current boyfriend, and why the lifeguard from pool, a boy named Michael, keeps appearing around her house – and in her dreams.
Winner pf the 1999 Texas Lone Star Reading List and 1998 ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Swallowing Stones is the gripping tale of what happens in one moment of careless fun, and how even the most innocent of acts can start a domino effect and change many lives – forever.
The Pulitzer Prize winning play by Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire is truly a timeless classic. The play is set in the late 40’s right after World War II in the working class area of New Orleans. The southern beauty, Blanche DuBois, loses everything and in desperation goes to reside with her sister Stella Kowalski. What she finds out about her sisters living situation stuns her. She is also very critical of her sister’s choice of husband and the two do not get along what so ever. Even though Blanche is broke she continues to act as though she is high class and pities herself almost too much. Her character is very shallow and neurotic, just trying to find an escape from her grim reality. The character of Stanley Kowalski is a tough, poker playing, scotch drinking, sex symbol and sees right through Blanche's innocent act even if his wife doesn't. Stanley is determined to uncover the truth about Blanche's misery and what really happened to the DuBoise mansion in Mississippi. He can tell that something is up when she brings all of her expensive furs, jewelry, and clothing that she claims are gifts from "admirers". He feels Blanche has cheated his wife out of inheritance and therefore has cheated him too since "under Louisiana's Napoleonic code what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband."
ReplyDeleteThis play has been recreated into a prize winning film and translated into many other languages across the world. Marlon Brando was shot to fame in his spectacular role of Stanley and is now considered one of the greatest actors of all time. A Streetcar Named Desire is definitely a “must read”.
Go Ask Alice Pressy
ReplyDeleteGo Ask Alice, a book written in 1971 by an anonymous author follows a young girl through her teenage years. However, the story isn’t your typical coming-of-age book, but a personal encounter with drugs, addiction, and personal struggle to break the habit. The mind-boggling tale will blow any reader away with horrific stories of illicit drug use and terrible decisions made by the main character “Alice.” Year after year, stories of family members, friends, co-workers, and classmates, are all told about the lives lost to drugs. This story is a firsthand look at the pain that drugs can cause not only an addict but the people around them as well. Go Ask Alice, preaches good morals. Stay clean, go to school, love your family and friends, and most importantly make good decisions and have respect for yourself. Go Ask Alice is the best-selling, first person account of teenage drug addiction. For thirty-five years Go Ask Alice has stunned readers across the nation. Experience the ride with Alice and see for yourself.
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ReplyDeleteThe Da Vinci Code Precis
ReplyDeleteHarvard Professor Robert Langdon was only in Paris for another boring presentation on religious symbology, but in the middle of the night he is called to the Louvre Museum by the French Police. After being rushed out of his hotel room, he is told by the Chief of Police, Bezu Fache, that he is there to assist them in a murder case by helping them interpret some of the symbols left behind on the dead body of the Louvre's curator, Jacques Sauniere. Langdon must try to solve the murder of Mr. Sauniere with the help of his niece Sophie, while trying to prove his own innocence in the case and stop an unknown man from ruining a secret kept by the Priory of Scion for over half a millennium. The Da Vinci Code has sold over 60 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 44 languages. The Da Vinci Code was on the New York Times' Best Seller list for over two years, from its release in 2003 to October 29 of 2005.
The Pelican Brief is a novel by outstanding novelist John Grisham, reigned by Publishers Weekly as “the best-selling author of the 90’s.” Two Supreme Court Justices, Rosenburg and Jensen, receive many death threats and are ultimately assassinated by a vicious, ruthless and paid killer. Rosenburg and Jenson don’t all the FBI to protect them, and pay the ultimate price. Darby Shaw, an attractive second year law student at Tulane University is fascinated by this case, and sets out to solve the “who did it” mystery. She writes up a 13 page brief that ultimately reaches the President of the United States of America. She speculated that Victor Mattiece was the assassin. He is a big-time oil tycoon wanting to drill in Louisiana swamp land which is a key habitat for endangered Pelicans. The two Supreme Justices were both environmentalists. Darby, with the help of a Washington Post reporter, set out to prove that Darby is in fact right. The story quickly twists and turns into an explosive and shocking end.
ReplyDeleteA geisha is an artist, trained and skilled at entertaining men in music, dance, and clever conversation. But the life of a geisha is difficult, and the path to becoming a geisha, treacherous and slippery. Seductive, steeped in history and lyrical Japanese metaphors, Arthur Golding’s debut novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, spins a tale of one girl’s journey to becoming a geisha while remaining true to herself and her illicit love for a man.
ReplyDeletePre-World War II Japan is bustling. The geisha are revered throughout the major cities of Japan including Gion, but Chiyo, a child in a small fishing village, is only introduced to this elegant world after being sold to a geisha house. Immediately, the strange blue-gray color of her eyes draw attention, and invoke jealousy and hostility from a geisha Hastumoto. Hastumoto, clever and sadistic, proceeds to destroy Chiyo’s career as a geisha before it even begins. It is then, that the Chairman enters Chiyo’s life, and her life careens to focus only on becoming his lover. All the steps in her life will lead to him, she decides, and soon becomes the apprentice of the most famous geisha in Gion. Aspiring for greatness and for the attention of the Chairmen, Chiyo feels her life slipping as she attempts to balance the demands of her life as a geisha, and her love for a man she is not allowed to have.
Enrapturing and enchanting, Memoirs of a Geisha is easy to escape into- a different and romantic period in Japanese history.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
ReplyDeleteTrisha McFarland is lost. She is nine years old and on her own. Alone in the woods on the boarder of a Maine-New Hampshire Mountain off the branch of the Appalachian Mountains. Trisha was fed up with the constant arguing between her older brother, Pete, and her recently divorced mother. They never shut up and are always at each other's throats, so she wants to get away. So she wonders off to go to the bathroom by herself. When she tries to find the trail she takes a the wrong shortcut and ends up lost in the wilderness on a path full of terror and fear.
When it gets dark out, she remembers she has her walkman radio in her backpack. She is madly in love with Tom Gordon, a closing pitcher on the Boston Red Sox baseball team. She listens to the whole game and it takes her away from the misery of being stranded in the dark woods by herself. Listening to her hero strike out the final batters of the New York Yankee's squad calms her down and gives her courage to survive. Throughout Trisha's time in the woods she imagines Gordon is with her, helping her through every obstacle she faces. The image of Gordon being there protects her from the trail of slaughtered animals and mangles tree's in the dark forest of the Appalachian mountains. Will she make out alive? Will the faith of Red Sox star be enough to keep her trekking in hopes to find her family and continue her life?
Dreamcatcher by Stephen King
ReplyDeleteFrom the world renowned Stephen King, comes his newest novel, Dreamcatcher. A group of four friends, Beav, Henry, Pete, and Jonesy, reunite in the woods of Maine to have their hunting trip to forget about their problems in each of their lives. However, when a stranger comes to their place, things that seem impossible will happen. The stranger is mumbling about lights in the sky. But when the man dies unexpectedly, and the four friends find animals with the same symptoms, the friends become even more confused. They are pushed into an unknown world, and they need to stop what is going on, before it is too late.
Critics rave about Dreamcatcher: Prime King at his most engrossing...[he] has lost none of his ability to mine terror from the ordinary.-The Miami Herald Fascinating...A frenzied, multilayered, ever-accelerating nightmare.-The New York Times A tour de force -- has more passages of power and imagination than some writers produce in a lifetime...[An] entertaining must-read.- Chicago Tribune
The story of four friends facing an unknown enemy is the story of the testing of friendship, and figuring out what they are facing. What happened to the stranger that came to their place? Why do the animals have the same symptoms? The four friends might not make it out all alive. What will they do to keep themselves alive? Will they kill each other? What would you do if this happened to you? Read the Dreamcatcher, by the acclaimed best seller Stephen King, and find out.
Needful Things Pressy
ReplyDeleteStephen King’s book Needful Things starts off as a simple small town story before it slowly turns into a chaotic, vengeful, violence place of mass hysteria and death. It all starts with a store called “Needful Things” that opened up in the town of Castle Rock. The store was very different from you average supermarket and sold you things that you or anyone else just couldn’t believe; it was the thing you wanted most. The strange shopkeeper would always somehow know exactly what this was and would sell it to you for insanely low prices and a harmless little prank to play on someone else. He assured no one would get hurt, and the characters in the novel were always eager to pay off their precious and amazing new item.
This greed and obsessive need to keep this item was what drove them to continue to accept the pranks, even though they weren’t totally harmless every time and usually quite mean. Mr. Gaunt, the shopkeeper, would pick out each prank for the person that would be the most aggravated by such a thing. When the person’s rage grew at the sight of whatever had been destroyed, they found someone to blame. It would always be the one neighbor that got on their nerves constantly, and the other neighbor would be manipulated into turning their anger toward the person angry with them as well.
People were paired off and emotions and loathing grew towards neighbors, formers friends. No one could trust anything about these people anymore and there would always be another prank or two to keep rubbing sandpaper over their open wounds. Mr. Gaunt knew that at one point, someone was going to snap.
Stephen King is a well-known master of the horror genre and this book will have you on your toes as you watch this town’s decent into pure destruction.
Beginning on the night of a military coup in Enugu, Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells the story of fifteen year old Kambili, her quest for freedom from her family, and the struggles she faces during the coup. Her father, a perfectionist, beats Kambili and her brother for doing even the slightest of things wrong. As the regime goes on, her father’s newspaper begins to get questioned by the new government, forcing continuous stress upon him and the family. When her father beats her mother so badly that she has a miscarriage, Kambili becomes even more afraid of him. On a visit to her Aunty, Kambili is thrust into a whole new world in which she can openly speak and not face the wrath of her father. Returning home, Kambili returns to heightened tensions between her family and tensions rising within Nigeria as well. Her mother soon becomes desperate and Kambili must find strength within herself to help support her family.
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