Burlington Public Library

With insight and a light touch, best-selling, Newbery Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt tells two poignant, linked stories: that of a grieving girl and a boy trying to escape his violent past. Following the death of her closest friend in summer 1968, Meryl Lee Kowalski goes off to St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls, where she struggles to navigate the venerable boarding school's traditions and a social structure heavily weighted toward students...

"True to its name, the sleepy town of Shy in Avon-upon-Kynt is a place where nothing much happens. And for eighteen years, Emmaline Watkins has feared that her future held just that: nothing. But when the head of the most admired fashion house in the country opens her prestigious design competition to girls from outside the stylish capital city, Emmy's dreams seem closer than they ever have before. As the first 'country girl' to compete, Emmy knows...

In the late eighteenth-century, Sido, the twelve-year-old daughter of a self-indulgent marquis, and Yann, a fourteen-year-old Gypsy orphan raised to perform in a magic show, face a common enemy at the start of the French Revolution.

When Persians invade Sparta while thirteen-year-old Lysander is training to be a soldier, he finds his loyalties are divided between Spartan honor and the Helot slaves with whom he lived most of his life.