HOLIDAY READS “Summer reading goes well with lemonade, ice- cream, beaches and tree- houses, but all you really need is a good book.” Mark Teague Our favourite books in the library Images and some descriptions provided by Amazon www.amazon.co.uk SCHOOL-BASED FICTION Say her name by James Dawson Bobbie Rowe does not believe in ghosts. A Halloween dare at her ridiculously spooky boarding school is no big deal, especially when her best friend Naya and cute local boy Caine agree to join in too. They are ordered to summon the legendary ghost of Bloody Mary: say her name five times in front of a candlelit mirror, and she shall appear...But, surprise surprise, nothing happens. Or does it? Next morning, Bobbie finds a message on her bathroom mirror - five days - but what does it mean? And who left it there? Things get increasingly weird and more terrifying for Bobbie and Naya, until it becomes all too clear that Bloody Mary was indeed called from the afterlife that night, and she is definitely not a friendly ghost. Bobbie, Naya and Caine are now in a race against time before their five days are up and Mary comes for them, as she has come for countless others before. The lies we tell ourselves by Robin Talley It's 1959. The battle for civil rights is raging. And it's Sarah's first day as one of the first black students at previously all-white Illustration by Harry Haysom ©The Observer Jefferson High. No one wants Sarah there. Not the Governor. Not the teachers. And certainly not the students - especially Linda, daughter of the town's most ardent segregationist. Sarah and Linda are supposed to despise each other. But the more time they spend together, the less their differences matter. And both girls start to We are so lucky at Shrewsbury School. Our school library is really well stocked with feel something they've never felt before. Something they're fantastic fiction. We set ourselves a difficult task therefore when we decided to determined to ignore. Because it's one thing to stand up to an unjust world - but another to be terrified of what's in your own heart. choose only five favourite titles from the range of genres within the library. Within these pages you’ll find details of books which library staff have either read and “'Portrays brilliantly the fight for the right to an education, and the human cost of asserting that right' Tanya Landman enjoyed, or have included on their own holiday reading lists. There is a diverse range of titles here—hopefully there will be titles to suit everyone’s reading taste. Winner of the Amnesty CILIP Honour 2016 All the books listed are available in the school library. Unseen academicals by Terry Pratchett Have a fabulous Summer and we hope you find the time to enjoy a really great read. Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork. And now, Best wishes from all the library staff the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything Ms Jo Elliot Ms Cheryl Fullard Ms Alison McKeever else. This is not going to be a gentleman's game. The prospect of Head Librarian Library Assistant Library Assistant the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr. Nutt (and no one knows anything much about Mr. Nutt, not even Mr. Nutt). As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football. PHILOSOPHICAL AWARD WINNERS FICTION The five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom One by Sarah Crossan (meaning of live / life after death) Grace and Tippi are conjoined twins. At the age of sixteen, it's time for them to join society and for them to see the Eddie is killed in a tragic accident at the amusement park where world, and for world to see them. For the first time ever, they he works. On his way to heaven Eddie meets five people who have real friends who accept that they are just like any other were instrumental in some way in his life. While each guide teenagers. They smoke, they drink, they argue, they laugh, takes him through heaven, Eddie learns a little bit more about they cry, they fall in love. But what neither of the twins has what his time on earth meant, what he was supposed to have told anyone is that Tippi is ill. As Tippi's heart begins to fail, learned, and what his true purpose on earth was. Throughout the girls must make the life-changing and heart-wrenching there are dramatic flashbacks where we see scenes from his decision to separate. Will either of them survive the troubled childhood, his years in the army in the Philippines surgery? And even if they do, how do they face a life apart? jungle, and with his first and only love, his wife Marguerite. Winner of the YA Book Prize 2016 and the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2016 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney (medical ethics) One messy murder affects the lives of five Irish Flowers for Algernon is the story of Charlie, a man with misfits. Ryan is a 15-year-old drug dealer. Tony, is learning difficulties, whose experimental quest for intelligence obsessed with his unhinged next-door neighbour. mirrors that of Algernon, an extraordinary lab mouse. In Georgie is a prostitute, who feigns a religious poignant diary entries, Charlie tells how a brain operation conversion. Maureen, the accidental murderer, has increases his IQ and changes his life. As the experimental returned to Cork after 40 years to discover that procedure takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it Jimmy, her estranged son has grown into the most fearsome gangster in the city. In seeking atonement surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his for the murder and a multitude of other perceived metamorphosis. The experiment seems to be a scientific sins, she thrusts the intertwined lives of the Irish breakthrough until Algernon begins his sudden, unexpected underworld into the spotlight. deterioration. Will the same happen to Charlie? Winner of the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016 SCHOOL-BASED The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge When Faith's father is found dead under mysterious FICTION circumstances, she is determined to untangle the truth from the lies. Searching through his belongings for clues, she discovers a strange tree. A tree that feeds off Night School by C. J. Daugherty whispered lies and bears fruit that reveals hidden secrets. But as Faith's untruths spiral out of control, she Allie's world is falling apart...She hates her school. Her brother discovers where lies seduce, truths shatter … has run away. She's just been arrested. Again. And now her parents are sending her away. But instead of hating boarding “a substantial text that is complex and intelligent: a school, Allie is happy. She's making friends. And there's Carter, a lustrous, delicious romp about evolution and feminism, brooding loner with whom she feels an instant connection. which contains a Hamlet-esque revenge plot.” Meg Rosoff Cimmeria Academy is no ordinary school. Her classmates - and The Costa Book of the Year 2015 maybe some of the teachers - are hiding a secret. And soon it begins to feel like a very dangerous place. PHILOSOPHICAL AWARD WINNERS FICTION A brief history of seven killings by Marlon James The enchanted by Rene Denfeld Jamaica, 1976. Just before the general election, as (death penalty) political tensions mount, seven gunmen storm Bob Marley's house, machine guns blazing. Marley survives, The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through but the gunmen are never caught. Marlon James' the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and dazzling new novel takes the form of an imagined oral in re-imagining life around him. A female investigator searches for biography of the event, told by a cast of unforgettable buried information from prisoners' pasts that can save those soon characters - slum kids, drug lords, gunmen, journalists, to be executed. Digging into the background of a killer named beauty queens, conmen, FBI and CIA agents, and even York, she uncovers wrenching truths that challenge familiar notions Keith Richards' drug dealer. The story sweeps across of victim and criminal, innocence and guilt, and reveals shocking three decades and traverses strange landscapes, as secrets of her own. motivations are examined and questions asked. “My favourite read this year—absolutely fantastic!” Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2015 Jo Elliot, Head Librarian A god in ruins by Kate Atkinson The last act of love: the story of my brother and his sister by Teddy Todd - would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber Cathy Rentzenbrink pilot, husband, father, and grandfather - navigates the (assisted suicide) perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge is living in a In the summer of 1990, Cathy's brother Matty was knocked down by a future he never expected to have. This gripping, often car on the way home from a night out. It was two weeks before his deliriously funny yet emotionally devastating book looks at GCSE results, which turned out to be the best in his school.