Code Name Verity

Code Name Verity
Elizabeth Wein
Fiction W43c

*2013 Printz Award Honor Book*

Oct. 11th, 1943
A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. 

Its pilot and passenger are best friends. 

One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun.

When "Verity" is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.

They'll get the truth out of her. But it won't be what they expect.

As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?

In Darkness

In Darkness
Nick Lake
Fiction L148i

Shorty is a Haitian boy trapped in the rubble of a hospital when an earthquake shatters the world around him. Surrounded by lifeless bodies and growing desperately weak from lack of food and water, death seems imminent. Yet as Shorty waits for a rescue that may never come, he becomes aware of another presence, one reaching out to him across two hundred years of history. It is a man named Toussaint l'Ouverture -- the Haitian slave turned revolutionary leader whose life was marred by violence and whose own end came in darkness. As Shorty slips in and out of consciousness, scenes from his life and Toussaint's play back and entwine. And though separated by centuries, what this modern boy from the slums and the visionary black leader have in common will leave readers shivering long after the last page is turned.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Fiction Sa166a 

*Printz Award*

*Stonewall Award*

*Pura Belpré Award*

"I found myself whispering, 'Do you think we'll ever discover the secrets of the universe?'

I was surprised to hear Susie's Voice answering my question. 'That would be a beautiful thing, wouldn't it, Ari?'

'Yeah,' I whispered. 'Really Beautiful'

'Do you think, Ari, that love has anything to do with the secrets of the Universe?'"

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.