Firday Finds (11/11/11)

First off, whooooo hooooo! I've been waiting a WHOLE YEAR to be able to write 11/11/11 and that day is finally here!!! :) And, you know what? I'm going to post this at exactly 11:11 am on 11/11/11! :)

Secondly, happy Remembrance Day everybody. I hope you're remembering.

Thirdly, it's Friday, which means it's time for Friday Finds! 

This week I've found quite a few lovely new reads, like:

Rikers High by Paul Volponi

(246 pages)
Pub. date: 02/10/10

Series: N/A

About the book:

Martin was sitting on the front stoop of his apartment building minding his own business when he was arrested for something he didn't even mean to do. Five months later, he's still locked up on Rikers Island, in a New York City jail. Just when it seems things couldn't get much worse, Martin is caught between two warring prisoners, and his face is slashed. Now he'll be forever marked with a prison scar. One good thing comes from the attack: Martin is transferred to a different part of Rikers where inmates are required to attend high school. If Martin opens up to a teacher who really seems to care, perhaps he'll learn a lesson more valuable than any taught in class.

An award-winning author, Paul Volponi is uniquely qualified to tell Martin's story because he taught on Rikers Island for six years. He originally wrote Rikers for an adult audience. The book has been revised for young adults and is being republished as Rikers High.

On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves

(332 pages)

Pub date: 10/11/11

Series: N/A

About the book:

When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family's summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day. T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He's almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn't bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family - and a stack of overdue assignments - instead of his friends. Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter. Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.'s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man. 

 

Beg for Mercy by Shannon Dermott

(472 pages)
Pub. date: 10/19/11

Series: Cambion #1

About the book: 

Everyone dreams of that first kiss. Of that magic moment when your lips finally meet those of that special person you’ve waited your whole life for. A little awkward, a little scary, a little hot and every bit amazing. We speculate that the whole world will shake and time will just stop. No one, however, ever imagines that kiss to bring Death himself knocking. Sixteen year old Mercy Moore's life just got more complicated. The kiss that originally could have meant she would finally have a boyfriend now was the kiss that could have very nearly ended his life. A small detail her mother conveniently never told her will take her life for an abrupt u-turn. Dating, no love, was now completely and utterly impossible. And the boy well, that boy would never be the same. But life, however cruel, goes on. Far too soon for her taste, Mercy finds herself at a senior party with the elite students of her school and her best friend. And of all things, playing a stupid game that could very well mean the death of someone in that small room. If it were not for her best friend, the hottest guys in school, and a small need to fit in, she may have been able to escape the disaster that was to come. Her worst nightmare, her personal curse, her very life, only gets dangerously worse.

The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi

(416 pages)
Pub. date: 01/05/12

 Series: N/A

About the book:

A gripping literary thriller and smash bestseller that has taken Italy, France, Germany and the UK by storm.
The severed arms of five girls who vanished in broad daylight are discovered buried in a clearing in the woods. Alive or dead, the remainder of the girls' bodies are nowhere to be found. Worse still, there is a sixth, yet to be identified.
At first, the case seems simple. A series of clues leads investigators Mila Vasquez, a celebrated profiler with an attitude problem who is an expert in crimes relating to children, and Goran Gavila, the eerily prescient criminologist who sees deeper into Mila's dark past than any man has before, to a twisted killer. But when they begin to follow the leads for the second missing child, it points in a vastly different direction.
Vasquez and Gavila begin to wonder if they've been brought in to take the fall in a near-hopeless case. Is it all coincidence? Copycats? Or, is there a mastermind of evil behind the killings? And if so, from where is he conducting his symphony of murder?
Obsessed with a case that becomes more tangled and intense as they unravel the layers of evil, Gavila and Vasquez find that their lives are increasingly in each other's hands....
THE WHISPERER, as sensational a bestseller in Europe as the Stieg Larsson novels, is that rare creation: a thought-provoking, intelligent thriller that is also utterly unputdownable.

What new reads did you find this week?