KDL Recommends

When Helen Hamilton has dreams about three ancient women and tries to kill a student at her high school, she discovers that she is playing out a version of an old tale involving Helen of Troy, the Three Furies, and a mythic battle.

Agreeing to care for the baby that a terminally ill former girlfriend claims is his, recovering alcoholic Noel turns to a loving network of family and friends for help until a social worker attempts to place the baby in a foster home.

Awakened from a cryogenic sleep to win the century-long conflict between the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds, Captain John “Black Jack” Geary discovers that his loyalty is being questioned and suspects he is being deliberately sent on a suicide mission.

The Five Love Languages of Teenagers contains very practical guidance on how to express the teen’s primary love language, how to teach them appropriate responsibility, and how to properly handle both parental and teen anger. It is a tangible resource for stemming the tide of violence, immorality, and despair engulfing many teens today.

Take one thoroughly modern gal with a recessionary income problem, mix with the practices of a culture that has proved to be recession-proof, and what have you got? A financial planner in a straw hat.

Discovering the symbolic meanings of flowers while languishing in the foster-care system, 18-year-old Victoria is hired by a florist when her talent for helping others is discovered, a situation that leads to a romantic prospect and the confrontation of a painful secret from her past.

Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s devastating march through Georgia and the Carolinas during the final years of the Civil War has a profound impact on the outcome of the war.

Rendered the last of his kind after a colleague’s death, 200-year-old werewolf Jake struggles with depression and contemplates suicide until powerful forces that have personal agendas and the power to keep him alive take over his life.

A book for all ages offers a novelization of the movie Where the Wild Things Are, based on the classic children’s book of the same name by Maurice Sendak, in which a boy flees his home only to end up in the land of the Wild Things.

A reunion with two childhood friends draws Kathy and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the English countryside, and a confrontation with the truth about their childhoods.

Ten years after leaving her hometown for college, Arlene Fleet finds she still has not escaped Possett, Alabama, when an old classmate turns up asking questions about a crime Arlene committed in her youth, forcing her into a confrontation with her past.

Embarking on a torrid affair with Dom, a wealthy older man she barely knows, which brings about a new life and a new home in Provence, bookish Eve, as autumn approaches, becomes obsessed with finding out why Dom won’t talk about his previous marriage—and what happened to his beautiful ex-wife.

On the anniversary of the roundup of Jews by the French police in Paris, Julia is asked to write an article on this dark episode and embarks on an investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah.

I recently read and loved Divergent, by Veronica Roth. If you liked The Hunger Games, you’ll love this. It has suspense, adventure, and romance – the perfect trifecta for a successful teen read.
Kris/Comstock Park

Documents the rise of the popular video-game icon as well as the company that created it, offering insight into its creation by an eccentric developer who was regarded as expendable, the Hollywood and courtroom dramas triggered by the character’s success, and Nintendo’s unconventional marketing campaign targeting non-gamer consumers.

A saga of the lives of two families in a small southwestern Ohio town chronicles the town’s political, cultural, and social transformation, between 1868 and 1932, as seen through the eyes of members of the local women’s literary club.

A continuation of “Shanghai Girls” finds a devastated Joy fleeing to China to search for her real father while her mother, Pearl, desperately pursues her, a dual quest marked by their encounters with the nation’s intolerant Communist culture.

In 1936 Berlin, fourteen-year-old Karl Stern, considered Jewish despite a non-religious upbringing, learns to box from the legendary Max Schmeling while struggling with the realities of the Holocaust.

The celebrity cosmetic surgery blogger describes his misfit youth as a nerdy Korean-American student with a misshapen jaw whose life-changing surgery led him to become a successful plastic surgeon.

In a distant future, eighteen-year-old Lugh is kidnapped, and while his twin sister Saba and nine-year-old Emmi are trailing him across bleak Sandsea they are captured, too, and taken to brutal Hopetown, where Saba is forced to be a cage fighter until new friends help plan an escape.