High School Science

All Timberlyn wants is to get out of her small town, where she's branded a freak just because she happens to wear all black and draw gruesome monsters in her notebooks. When a letter arrives saying she's been accepted to the mysterious Ravenwood Academy for the exceptionally Gifted, she jumps at the chance. There's only one problem with Ravenwood: it's run by Alarick Wolf and his brothers, three surly, thuggish, insanely gorgeous guys. Timberlyn's new friends give strict instructions to stay far away from them. Unfortunately, she's not good at taking orders.

How is it that, half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, educational opportunities remain so unequal for black and white students, not to mention poor and wealthy ones? In his important new book, Five Miles Away, a World Apart, James E. Ryan answers this question by tracing the fortunes of two schools in Richmond, Virginia - one in the city and the other in the suburbs. Ryan shows how court rulings in the 1970s, limiting the scope of desegregation, laid the groundwork for the sharp disparities between urban and suburban public schools that persist to this day.

Seventeen-year-old Maya knows everything. When she looks at someone, she instantly knows their history, their private thoughts, their secret desires, their most tragic failures. Combine these private miseries with the general state of the world, and it's easy to see why Maya's power starts to get her down… Which is why she was sent to the Whispering Pines Psychiatric Facility, and also why starting at a new school is going to be such a challenge. Now, faced with Tyler, a cute guy she actually wants to know everything about, Maya realizes that maybe her power isn't so horrible after all.

Eleven-year-old Jane Grandison, tormented by her stutter, sits in the back seat of a car, letter in hand inviting her to live and study at the Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children. Founded in 1890 by Headmistress Sybil Joines, the school - at first glance - is a sanctuary for children seeking to cure their speech impediments. Inspired by her haunted and tragic childhood, the Headmistress has other ideas.

Sixteen-year-old Hal Stevens is a budding historical scholar from a small town in Colorado. A virtual outcast at high school, he has only two friends: Roberto the Biker Witch and Cleo Mallawi. Cleo claims to be the reincarnation of Queen Cleopatra. But when Hal and Roberto find Cleo murdered in the forest near her home, it appears she may have been telling the truth. Her last request sends them journeying to Egypt, where it quickly becomes clear that Cleo has set them on the search of a lifetime: the search for the lost graves of Marc Antony and Cleopatra.

Hope Lancaster is a loner by choice. Born with a disturbingly morbid talent, she prefers to keep people at a distance. Until he shows up. His presence defies everything she's ever known and sparks a curiosity she can't ignore. When death is inevitable, how far will you go to live?

Years ago, a tragic accident robbed me of my mother and emotions. Because I find beauty in darkness and thrive outside social norms, I’ve been labeled a “freak” at school. I know my continued apathy hurts my loved ones, but I’m not about to change. Nothing will ever hurt me again. Then I wake up in an alternate reality...and everything else has changed. Goth is in. I’m considered cool, and my archenemy is the freak. But my real friends won’t talk to me...and the new boy is getting under my skin. As my world spins out of control, I’m desperate to return to normal.

Sixteen-year-old Alison wakes up in a mental institution. As she pieces her memory back together, she realizes she's confessed to murdering Tori Beaugrand, the most perfect girl at school. But the case is a mystery. Tori's body has not been found, and Alison can't explain what happened. One minute she was fighting with Tori. The next moment Tori disintegrated into nothing.

Told with equal parts raw honesty and unbridled compassion, All Day recounts a year in Liza Jessie Peterson's classroom at Island Academy, the high school for inmates detained at New York City's Rikers Island. A poet and an actress who had done occasional workshops at the correctional facility, Peterson was ill prepared for a full-time stint teaching in the GED program for the incarcerated youths.

Fourteen-year-old Nephele used to have friends. Well, she had a friend. That friend made the adjustment to high school easily, leaving Nephele behind in the process. And as Nephele looks ahead, all she can see is three very lonely years. Nephele is also a whip-smart lover of math and science, so she makes a plan. Step one: invent time travel. Step two: go back in time, have a do-over of ninth grade, crack the code on making friends, and become beloved and popular. Does it work? Sort of. Nephele does travel through time, but not the way she planned - she’s created a time loop.

In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that, in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice.

Tessa is a daydreamer, but her dreams get shattered when she discovers that she is a Mage, a forgotten race of people who manipulate energy to create magic. She soon finds herself preparing for a battle that may never happen. With danger everywhere, how will she ever be able to enjoy her senior year of high school? How can she keep her secret from her brother, Bradley, who has been acting weird lately himself?

Anna Shepherd is a straight-A student with a lot going on under the surface: She’s struggling with her mom’s death, total friend drama, and the fallout from wasting her time on a very attractive boy. She’s looking forward to skipping town after graduation - but then a zombie apocalypse majorly disrupts the holidays season. It’s going to be very hard to graduate high school without a brain. To save the day, Anna, her friends, and her frenemies will have to journey straight to the heart of one of the most dangerous places ever known: high school.

Something’s rotten in Apple country! Hildy Biddle is a high school reporter eager to stand up for the truth. She’s just waiting for a chance to prove herself as a journalist, and yearning for a big story. The trouble is, the town’s biggest story stars...a ghost. Not a very easy interview! This ghost has the town in a tizzy, and the local paper is playing up people’s fears with shocking headlines of eerie happenings and ghostly sightings. Hildy’s determined to discover what’s really going on, but her desire to uncover the truth is making some people awfully nervous.

On Lily Sanderson's 18th birthday she'll become just a girl - still a mergirl, true, but signing the renunciation will ink Princess Waterlily of Thalassinia out of existence. That leaves plain old Lily living on land, dating the boy she loves, and trying to master this being-human thing once and for all. Now that Lily and Quince are together, mer bond or not, she's almost content to give up her place in the royal succession of Thalassinia. But just when she thinks she has everything figured out, the waves start to get rough. Lily's father sends a certain whirlpool-stirring cousin to stay with her on land.

He's a vampire bad boy. She's a slayer's daughter who's never been kissed.

When 16-year-old Kyra Agnew wakes up behind a Dumpster at the Gas 'n' Sip, she has no memory of how she got there. With a terrible headache and a major case of déjà vu, she heads home only to discover that five years have passed…yet she hasn't aged a day. Everything else about Kyra's old life is different. Her parents are divorced, her boyfriend, Austin, is in college and dating her best friend, and her dad has changed from an uptight neat-freak to a drunken conspiracy theorist who blames her five-year disappearance on little green men.

Refugee High is a riveting chronicle of the 2017-18 school year at Sullivan High, a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric was at its height in the White House. Even as we follow teachers and administrators grappling with the everyday challenges facing many urban schools, we witness the complicated circumstances and unique education needs of refugee and immigrant children: Alejandro may be deported just days before he is scheduled to graduate; Shahina narrowly escapes an arranged marriage; and Esengo is shot at the beginning of the school year.

Virginia Euwer Wolff takes on the biggest questions about life and love, certainly, but also about girls and women, sacrifice and compassion and has something quite revelatory to say about them in this full house.

Aza Ray is back on Earth. Her boyfriend, Jason, is overjoyed. Her family is healed. She's living a normal life, or as normal as it can be if you've spent the past year dying, waking up on a sky ship, and discovering that your song can change the world. As in, not normal. Part of Aza still yearns for the clouds, no matter how much she loves the people on the ground.