The Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky

Description:
Standing on the fringes of life…offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.

This is the story of what it’s like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie’s letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.

About the Author:
Stephen Chbosky grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the University of Southern California’s Filmic Writing Program. His first film, The Four Corners of Nowhere, premiered at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win Best Narrative Feature honors at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. He is the recipient of the Abraham Polonsky Screenwriting Award for his screenplay Everything Divided as well as a participant in the Sundance Institute’s filmmakers’ lab for his current project, Fingernails and Smooth Skin. Chbosky lives in New York.

Children and adults who like to read Harry Potter, Eragon, Cornelia Funke books…will enjoy this book.

The Water Mirror
by Kai Meyer

Kai Meyer is the author of many highly acclaimed and popular books for adults and young adults in his native Germany. The Water Mirror, which was nominated for the German Book Prize and was on many bestseller lists in Germany, has been translated into fourteen languages. Kai Meyer lives in Germany.

Description:
In Venice, magic is not unusual. Merle is apprenticed to a magic mirror maker, and Serafin — a boy who was once a master thief — works for a weaver of magic cloth. Merle and Serafin are used to the mermaids who live in the canals of the city and to the guards who patrol the streets on living stone lions. Merle herself possesses something magical: a mirror whose surface is water. She can reach her whole arm into it and never get wet.

But Venice is under siege by the Egyptian Empire; its terrifying mummy warriors are waiting to strike. All that protects the Venetians is the Flowing Queen. Nobody knows who or what she is — only that her power flows through the canals and keeps the Egyptians at bay.

When Merle and Serafin overhear a plot to capture the Flowing Queen, they are catapulted into desperate danger. They must do everything they can to rescue the Queen and save the city — even if it means getting help from the Ancient Traitor himself.

Ages: 12 and up
Grades: 7 and up

Awards:
New York Public Library “Books for the Teen Age”
School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.  Read a secret here…

PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives
by Frank Warren

Description:
For the Postsecret project, which was started in October 2004, Warren asked people to write a secret they had never told anyone on a handmade postcard and mail it to him. This compilation is astonishing in its honesty and creativity.

A Natural History of the Senses
by Diane Ackerman

Review:
Diane Ackerman’s lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth.

“Delightful . . . gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in.”–The New York Times

Battle Royale
by Koushun Takami

Description:
Battle Royale, a high-octane thriller about senseless youth violence, is one of Japan’s best-selling - and most controversial - novels. As part of a ruthless program by the totalitarian government, ninth-grade students are taken to a small isolated island with a map, food, and various weapons. Forced to wear special collars that explode when they break a rule, they must fight each other for three days until only one “winner” remains. The elimination contest becomes the ultimate in must-see reality television. A Japanese pulp classic available in English for the first time, Battle Royale is a potent allegory of what it means to be young and survive in today’s dog-eat-dog world. The first novel by small-town journalist Koushun Takami, it went on to become an even more notorious film by 70-year-old gangster director Kinji Fukusaku.

Graphic Classics

Description:
Timeless works of literature featuring amazing, one-of-a-kind cover illustrations from some of today’s best graphic artists. These Deluxe Editions also feature French flaps, rough fronts and luxurious packaging. Look for more Deluxe Classics with illustrated covers in the months ahead!

The classic Insight Guides series has, for more than 35 years, provided a full account of the world’s leading travel destinations through expert and informative text and stunning photography. Each title combines three books in one: an ideal travel planner, a practical on-the-spot companion, and a superb visual souvenir of a visit. If you want your vacation to be more than a sightseeing trip you can trust Insight Guides because they provide a complete and honest appraisal.

An ever-increasing range of products from Insight Guides also includes: Insight Pocket Guides, Compact Guides, Shopping Guides, Museums and Galleries Guides, Globes and Atlases, Fleximaps and more.

Berlitz — Helping the world communicate since 1878 — is the world’s largest provider of language training and cultural consulting services, with over 460 locations in 63 countries. Their products have helped millions of children and adults speak new languages.

Berlitz language books and audio products have enabled millions of people to study languages effectively at home, and at their own pace. Berlitz have also produced a very successful range of travel guides for well over 100 destinations, as well as specialist travel books such as the renowned Ocean Cruising and Cruise Ships and Business Travel Guide Europe.

Ludmila’s Broken English
by DBC Pierre

A wild and brilliant tale by the winner of the Man Booker Prize.

Description:
On a Tuesday in terror-struck London, Blair and Bunny Heath become the first adult conjoined twins ever successfully separated. On a Tuesday in the war-torn Caucasus, Ludmila Derev accidentally kills her grandfather. By December, they find themselves trudging together through a snow field, staring down the barrel of a rebel’s gun.

Ludmila sets out on a journey west to save her family from starvation and marauding Gnez troops. Hers is an odyssey of sour wit, even sourer vodka, and a Soviet tractor probably running on goat’s piss. The Heath twins are released from a newly privatized institution rumored to have been founded for an illegitimate royal baby. They are plunged into a round-the-clock world churning with opportunity, rowdy with the chatter of freedom, self-empowerment, and sex. Dangerous cocktails and a Russian Brides Web site throw these unforgettable characters together with explosive results.

DBC Pierre’s second novel confirms his place in the ranks of today’s most audacious and acclaimed novelists. DBC Pierre is the author of Vernon God Little, which won the Man Booker Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award. He lives in County Leitrim, Ireland.

Size 12 Is Not Fat: A Heather Wells Mystery
by Meg Cabot

Description:
The #1 “New York Times” bestselling author strikes gold once more with a new series featuring a pop star-turned-girl detective in a mystery that rocks.

The Gormenghast Novels
by Mervyn Peake

Description:
A doomed lord, an emergent hero, and a dazzling array of bizarre creatures inhabit the magical world of the Gormenghast novels which, along with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, reign as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. At the center of it all is the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, who stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom, unless the conniving Steerpike, who is determined to rise above his menial position and control the House of Groan, has his way.

In these extraordinary novels, Peake has created a world where all is like a dream–lush, fantastical, and vivid. Accompanying the text are Peake’s own drawings, illustrating the whole assembly of strange and marvelous creatures that inhabit Gormenghast.