Book Genre: Contemporary

Valkyrie (Valley) White is 15. She believes the government killed her family. She has a bomb strapped to her chest. This tension filled book puts you into Valley's mind, giving you a glimpse of how a 15 year old girl can end up a suicide bomber. She grew up in isolation, totally off the grid,...

Fifteen Alexie classics and fifteen new short stories, some a page long.  One reviewer describes him as rowdy.  Yes. 

If you ever wondered about what goes on behind the scenes of the contemporary art world, you may enjoy this ethnographic romp.  Thornton's research, compiled through interviews between 2004-2007, provides glimpses of a day in the life of artists and people who make art...

Enticed by a help wanted sign, an out-of-work 21st century man enters an antiquarian bookstore and gets caught up in the puzzle of a lifetime. Set in San Francisco and New York, this upbeat book is a perfect blending of old and new and a read that technophiles and bibliophiles will find...

This is an excellent book to encourage dialogic reading with children; there is very limited text and intricate pictures to spur the story along.  It spreads the message about being good to the environment by thinking about the many alternative ways we can get from point A to point B....

Who knew snarky insights into another's dieting world could be so funny.  Mere mortals were first introduced to Simon Doonan via his memoir, Beautiful People, which was adapted for television and aired on the BBC. The 20 year gig at Barney's earned him some recognition too. Doonan...

This is the second installment in Deborah Harkness' Discovery of Witches series.  Some series books fall flat on the second, but I felt that her use of time travel in this book kept it interesting and fresh.

The story follows Matthew and Diana through time and space as they...

Colby is 16, and she's known a lot of loss in her life. Her mother died a few years ago, and her dad is home from his cross country trucking job only a few times a month. Her girlfriend dumped her for a guy. She's not doing well in school. Can anything in her life go right? Searching for cans...

Butter is so obese that he doesn't even get teased at school any more--he is invisible. He has an online relationship with Anna, who has no idea who he really is, a few friends from FitFab, where he goes every summer, and his saxophone, which he turns to for comfort and to feel good at something...

James Stark's life is hell, well ok, James Stark's life is IN Hell, that is until he wakes up in an LA alley on Christmas day, which is a sort of hell all of its own... Stark (aka Sandman Slim) sets out to mete out justice on the people who sent him to hell in the first place, his friends....

I was really moved by this fascinating book. Following the harrowing life of Lin, an escaped Austrailian convict, into Bombay a city where he can get lost we are transported to another world. Not only is Bombay a foreign city different from my American upbringing in everyway this book takes...