Readings for Speakers & Events

A family makes preparations, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the angel who will come up the mountain bringing a new baby.

Untamable. Damaged. Angry. Once full of promise and life, now lost in the shadows of resentment and detachment, this is Dream of Night's story--and it is also Shiloh's. One is a thoroughbred racehorse, the other an eleven-year-old foster child. Starved to the bone, Dream of Night is still a very powerful animal, kicking, bucking, screaming to show his strength. Shiloh has been starved in other ways--starved of affection, starved of stability and she lashes out too...with sarcasm. This injured and abused racehorse has a lot in common with punky Shiloh and by chance they both find themselves under the care of Jessalyn DiLima--a last stop for each before the state takes more drastic measures--sending the girl to a "residential facility" and the horse to a vet...for euthanizing. Jess is giving them a second chance, a last chance--but she fosters animals and children like this for a reason--she's a little broken, too. And she knows what it's like to have lost nearly everything she loves. As the horse warms up to the girl and the girl lets her guard down for the horse, the three of them become an unlikely family. They recognize their similarities in order to heal their pasts, but not before one last tragedy threatens to take it all away.

New York Times bestseller David Arnold's most ambitious novel to date; Station Eleven meets The 5th Wave in a genre-smashing story of survival, hope, and love amid a ravaged earth. When a deadly Fly Flu sweeps the globe, it leaves a shell of the world that once was. Among the survivors are eighteen-year-old Nico and her dog, on a voyage devised by Nico's father to find a mythical portal; a young artist named Kit, raised in an old abandoned cinema; and the enigmatic Deliverer, who lives Life after Life in an attempt to put the world back together. As swarms of infected Flies roam the earth, these few survivors navigate the woods of post-apocalyptic New England, meeting others along the way, each on their own quest to find life and love in a world gone dark. The Electric Kingdom is a sweeping exploration of art, storytelling, eternal life, and above all, a testament to the notion that even in an exterminated world, one person might find beauty in another.

In this lyrical coming-of-age story about family, sisterhood, music, race, and identity, Mariama J. Lockington draws on some of the emotional truths from her own experiences growing up with an adoptive white family. I am a girl but most days I feel like a question mark. Makeda June Kirkland is eleven years old, adopted, and black. Her parents and big sister are white, and even though she loves her family very much, Makeda often feels left out. When Makeda's family moves from Maryland to New Mexico, she leaves behind her best friend, Lena-- the only other adopted black girl she knows-- for a new life. In New Mexico, everything is different. At home, Makeda's sister is too cool to hang out with her anymore and at school, she can't seem to find one real friend. Through it all, Makeda can't help but wonder: What would it feel like to grow up with a family that looks like me? Through singing, dreaming, and writing secret messages back and forth with Lena, Makeda might just carve a small place for herself in the world. For Black Girls Like Me is for anyone who has ever asked themselves: How do you figure out where you are going if you don't know where you came from?

Jack has a grumpy grandpa, and he calls him that, even though he's not supposed to. But it's true. Grandpa is grumpy--and a little scary, too. He has hair where other people do not have hair, and his teeth don't stay in his mouth. You'd have to be crazy to live with Grandpa . . . or as brave as a lion tamer, like Jack's aunt and uncle. But the truth is, Grandpa didn't always have hair and teeth in weird places. In fact, Grandpa wasn't even always grumpy. A book that closes the generation gap one little bit, Grumpy Grandpa captures childhood and grandpa-hood with humor, hyperbole, and heart

At almost-thirteen, Junebug has never felt right except as stagehand at her father's summer theater, but after her parents separate and an irritating intern takes over her responsibilities, she discovers how hard life can be without a script to follo

From the author of the critically acclaimed novel For Black Girls Like Me, Mariama J. Lockington, comes a coming-of-age story surrounding the losses that threaten to break us and the friendships that make us whole again. Thirteen-year-old Andi feels stranded after the loss of her mother, the artist who swept color onto Andi's blank canvas. When she is accepted to a music camp, Andi finds herself struggling to play her trumpet like she used to before her whole world changed. Meanwhile, Zora, a returning camper, is exhausted trying to please her parents, who are determined to make her a flute prodigy, even though she secretly has a dancer's heart. At Harmony Music Camp, Zora and Andi are the only two Black girls in a sea of mostly white faces. In kayaks and creaky cabins, the two begin to connect, unraveling their loss, insecurities, and hopes for the future. And as they struggle to figure out who they really are, they may just come to realize who they really need: each other. In the Key of Us is a lyrical ode to music camp, the rush of first love, and the power of one life-changing summer.

"Funny, sweet, utterly heart-wrenching." --Entertainment Weekly The New York Times bestseller from the critically acclaimed author of Mosquitoland Victor Benucci and Madeline Falco have a story to tell. It begins with the death of Vic's father. It ends with the murder of Mad's uncle. The Hackensack Police Department would very much like to hear it. But in order to tell their story, Vic and Mad must focus on all the chapters in between.   This is a story about:   1. A coded mission to scatter ashes across New Jersey. 2. The momentous nature of the Palisades in winter. 3. One dormant submarine. 4. Two songs about flowers. 5. Being cool in the traditional sense. 6. Sunsets & ice cream & orchards & graveyards. 7. Simultaneous extreme opposites. 8. A narrow escape from a war-torn country. 9. A story collector. 10. How to listen to someone who does not talk. 11. Falling in love with a painting. 12. Falling in love with a song. 13. Falling in love.

Grab your lantern and follow the remarkable and world-famous Mammoth Cave explorer--and slave--Stephen Bishop as he guides you through the world's largest cave system in this remarkable homage to the resilience of human nature. Welcome to Mammoth Cave. It's 1840 and Stephen Bishop is the perfect guide. By the light of his lantern, the deepest, biggest cave in all of the United States is revealed. Down here, beneath the earth, he's not just an enslaved person. He's a pioneer. He knows the cave's twists and turns. It taught him to not be afraid of the dark. And watching all the visitors write their names on the ceiling? Well, it taught him how to read.

Rival interns with sizzling chemistry in and out of the kitchen? That's a recipe for love. "Sweet and satisfying!"-Jenna Evans Welch, New York Times bestselling author of Love & Gelato This summer, Reese Camden is trading sweet tea and Southern hospitality for cold brew and crisp coastal air. She's landed her dream marketing internship at Friends of Flavor, a wildly popular cooking channel in Seattle. The only problem? Benny Beneventi, the relentlessly charming, backwards-baseball-cap-wearing culinary intern-and her main competition for the fall job. Reese's plan to keep work a No Feelings Zone crumbles like a day-old muffin when she and Benny are thrown together for a video shoot that goes viral, making them the internet's newest ship. Audiences are hungry for more, and their bosses at Friends of Flavor are happy to deliver. Soon Reese and Benny are in an all-out food war, churning homemade ice cream, twisting soft pretzels, breaking eggs in an omelet showdown-while hundreds of thousands of viewers watch. Reese can't deny the chemistry between her and Benny. But the more their rivalry heats up, the harder it is to keep love on the back burner...

"Top-notch" --USA Today "Illuminating" --Washington Post "A breath of fresh air" --Entertainment Weekly "Memorable" --People By the New York Times bestselling author of Kids of Appetite!   After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the "wastelands" of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland.   So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.   Told in an unforgettable, kaleidoscopic voice, Mosquitoland is a modern American odyssey, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.

"As he did in his fantastic debutMosquitoland, David Arnold again shows a knack for getting into the mind of an eccentric teenager in clever, poignant fashion."-USA Today This is Noah Oakman ? sixteen, Bowie believer, concise historian, disillusioned swimmer, son, brother, friend. Then Noah ? gets hypnotized. Now Noah ? sees changes-his mother has a scar on her face that wasn't there before; his old dog, who once walked with a limp, is suddenly lithe; his best friend, a lifelong DC Comics disciple, now rotates in the Marvel universe. Subtle behaviors, bits of history, plans for the future-everything in Noah's world has been rewritten. Everything except his Strange Fascinations . . . A stunning surrealist portrait, The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik is a story about all the ways we hurt our friends without knowing it, and all the ways they stick around to save us.

An exquisitely illustrated paean to everyone who struggles to learn how to read, and to everyone who won't give up on them. Cal is not the readin' type. Living way high up in the Appalachian Mountains, he'd rather help Pap plow or go out after wandering sheep than try some book learning. Nope. Cal does not want to sit stoney-still reading some chicken scratch. But that Book Woman keeps coming just the same. She comes in the rain. She comes in the snow. She comes right up the side of the mountain, and Cal knows that's not easy riding. And all just to lend his sister some books. Why, that woman must be plain foolish--or is she braver than he ever thought? That Book Woman is a rare and moving tale that honors a special part of American history--the Pack Horse Librarians, who helped untold numbers of children see the stories amid the chicken scratch, and thus made them into lifetime readers.

When a devastating sickness spreads through a thoroughbred farm community, a young horse whisperer is determined to find out why all the foals are dying in this tightly woven, tender coming-of-age novel from award-winning author Heather Henson. Twelve-year-old Sky and her father are horse whisperers--their preternatural tenderness and understanding of horses, and Sky's uncanny ability to actually understand what they're saying become their livelihood during the foaling season at multimillion dollar horse farms. They're sought after by the most prestigious farms in the country to keep pregnant horses calm and stress-free until they give birth. But this spring, something awful is happening...foal after foal is a stillborn, and no one knows why. And worse for Sky, who lost her mother only months earlier, her most beloved horse is about to have her first foal. In agony, Sky takes it upon herself to figure out what the vets are missing, and stop it before even more foals are lost.