Urban Schools

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.

On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers?

In a world where dark faeries have stepped in to save the planet from humanity's mistakes, 17-year-old December Thorne is nothing but a shadow. Shunned by her peers, bullied at school, and paid a little too much attention by her sleazy foster father, she lives in constant fear and perpetual solitude. Until the day everything changes. Offered a scholarship to the prestigious Oberon Academy, December finds herself living in a whole new world.

Dark magic has infiltrated the school of necessary magic. Spies stalk the halls. Traitors whisper lies to impressionable freshmen and devious wizards distract with charming smiles. If Alison and her friends can’t see past the friendly masks of their fellow students to the dark purpose they hide, it’s not just the school that will be destroyed. But the forces of evil should have kept one thing in mind before targeting Alison Brownstone.

“Thompson-Hernández's portrayal of Compton's black cowboys broadens our perception of Compton's young black residents, and connects the Compton Cowboys to the historical legacy of African Americans in the west. An eye-opening, moving book.”— Margot Lee Shetterly, New York...

It's the final year for most of the Defenders at the School of Roots and Vines. It's hard to imagine that Sophie is beginning her senior year and planning her wedding to Marcus the following summer. The group still needs to find their 6th Defender in order to save Thicket Hall and prevent the Serpent from being unleashed.

Dark magic is bent on destroying the school. A Drow princess is gaining powers faster than she knows what to do with them. Her best friend, a Jasper Elf, can’t remember who she is, and her boyfriend turns into a wolf at night and runs with his pack. By day, they’re trying out for the school play, worrying about who’s going to the fall dance, and oh yeah, are excited about Halloween when the dead can finally talk to the living again. Just your typical teenager in America when magic returns.

After Raine discovers that she has magic, she attends a school to help her develop it. But when evil forces threaten her, she must take on the danger to restore balance.

When Ziv is recruited by the secret society known as The Sect, he finds himself cast into a perilous journey of identity, love, and hope. As a conduit, Ziv possess the ability to see creatures of the night: demons. The Sect trains him along, with two other trainees, to be a warrior of light.

Amanda Clarke thinks of herself as perfectly ordinary in every way. Just a small-town girl who serves breakfast all day in a little diner nestled next to the highway, nothing but dairy farms for miles around. She fits in there. But then an old woman she never met dies, and Amanda was named in her will.

Unsettling Choice traces the contestations that surfaced when, in the wake of the 2007-2009 Great Recession, public schools navigated austerity by expanding choice-based programs. Ujju Aggarwal argues that this strategy mobilized mechanisms rooted in market logics to recruit families with economic capital on their side, solidifying a public sphere that increasingly resembled the private.

Sophie Briggs has made it to her junior year at the School of Roots and Vines, but it isn't all fun and games for the Defenders. Change is coming. Some good and some . . . not so much. Friends are breaking up—will Sophie have to take sides? Sophie and Marcus are struggling, too. Marcus is pushing Sophie and the rest of the gang away, worried that being a Templeton will put them all at risk. He thinks he needs to do this by himself. Does he have to go it alone?

Sophie Briggs will have to fight her way out this time but without her elemental gift of life. It's the spring semester of Year Two at the famous School of Roots and Vines. The National Elemental Skills Trials are coming up, and Sophie and her friends are called to represent the school in faraway Colorado. Dark forces and powerful, all-too-familiar enemies are out to kidnap Sophie and steal her elemental powers. They'll stop at nothing to get their revenge.

The first semester of sophomore year at the famous School of Roots and Vines has begun for life Elemental Sophie Briggs and her friends. Although Year Two brings a whirlwind of change, some things feel straight out of a not-so-ancient past. Sophie and Marcus become Combat Mentors, giving them more time together. Until Marcus's secret internship makes him miss more and more school. Something strange is happening, and things point directly at the ESCB—and Marcus.

Laylea has been hiding her entire life. She's never been to school. She's never had a friend her own age. She's never known anyone else like her. All that is about to change. In a world hidden from humans and wyrdos alike, shifters are still recovering from a vicious plot to destroy them all. They have two laws they live by now: 1) Hide. 2) Protect the children at all costs. Laylea has just broken rule number one. But she's only 14. So, they're sending her to school. Where she's going to learn.... Any place can be a prison.

Arriving in the passage is a frightful, uncertain experience where unknowns abound. It is a strange place, and many are alarmed at the things they learn. Dissension between organizational members and allegiants keep them apart. Corilan and Swain work to find ways to smooth the friction while Jacob works on his own solutions. They can't succeed in Organic Earth if they don't unite.

A week after her mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett is delivered to her new school, Drearcliff Grange in Somerset. Although it looks like a regular boarding school, Amy learns that Drearcliff girls are special, the daughters of criminal masterminds, outlaw scientists and master magicians.

Just as hapless med student Giovanni begins gearing up for the Boards, a supernatural crises sweeps the campus. Vampires have taken over the local coffee shops, and nobody can get any studying done! It’s up to Giovanni and his werewolf buddies to save finals in spite of rabid clowns, invading rats, and the very real fear of looking stupid in front of a girl!

Most kids at the Colorado branch of Mythos Academy know me as Rory Forseti, the daughter of Reaper assassins. Secretly, I'm a member of Team Midgard, a group of students and adults tasked with stopping Covington, the evil leader of the Reapers of Chaos. For me, the mission is a deeply personal one, since Covington is also the man who murdered my parents. When my friends and I get a lead on a powerful artifact that Covington wants to steal, we think we finally have a chance to thwart the Reapers and stop them for good.

Deep in the woods sits an unassuming house, one not noticed by those who pass it by, but inside exists those the world has forgotten: the Unnaturals, children born with magic from an ancient source, who also possess supernatural powers that make them dangerous to the outside world. Outcasts, misunderstood, they are taken in by Miss Crabtree, the loving headmistress of the school. Here, at the School for Unnaturals, they learn to control their gifts and learn the art of spellbinding under her care.