Sophie Kinsella. Mum and Dad are out for the day with friends at some garden show and they’ve taken Frank with them to “broaden his horizons,” so they have no idea I’m doing this.
I couldn’t face the whole big deal of telling them and Mum fussing and all that palaver. So I waited till they left, got my key, got my money and the camera, and just left the house. Which I haven’t done for . . . I don’t know. So long. We live about twenty minutes’ walk from Starbucks, if you’re striding. My dark glasses are on, my hands are jammed in the pockets of my hoodie, and I’ve pulled the hood up for extra protection.
As I reach the town centre the crowds become denser and the shop fronts are bright and noisy and with every step I have a stronger desire to run, but I don’t. And then, at last, I’ve made it to Starbucks. I push the door open and there’s Linus, sitting at a table near the entrance. I mean, obviously it’s not a date. Midsentence Stop. Linus’s face brightens as he sees me, and he leaps up from the table. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn, Author, David Levithan, Author . Knopf $16.95 (183p) ISBN 978-0-375-83531-5. Rachel Cohn, Author, David Levithan, Author .
Knopf $16.95 (183p) ISBN 978-0-375-83531-5 This compulsively readable novel takes place in less than 24 hours. At a New York club one night, Nick convinces a stranger to pose as his girlfriend in order to fool Tris, the girl who broke his heart. He does not guess (though readers may) that kissing Norah will lead to a long, complicated evening, and a new chance for love. Levithan (Boy Meets Boy ) and Cohn (Gingerbread ) reveal the clever construction of the book in an authors' note: they sent chapters back and forth, he writing as Nick, she as Norah. Waiting for You by Susane Colasanti. Turtles All the Way Down — John Green. I Crawl Through It by A.S. King. Black Box by Julie Schumacher, Author . Delacorte $15.99 (168p) ISBN 978-0-385-90523-7. Julie Schumacher, Author .
Delacorte $15.99 (168p) ISBN 978-0-385-90523-7 Lena Lindt and her older sister, Dora, have always been close, like “right and left hands laced tight together.” They and their parents accept that Dora is the moody but fun one, “a storm on the horizon, [Lena] the needle that always pointed to steady ,” a formula that works until Dora is overcome by severe depression in her junior year of high school. Schumacher's (The Book of One Hundred Truths ) characterizations are humane yet shaded: to combat the effect of Dora's illness, Mr. and Mrs. Lindt send the outwardly coping Lena to a therapist but treat Dora's eventual hospitalization like a shameful secret.