Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

"They took me in my nightgown."

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In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author's family, includes a historical note.

Philomel Books; 344 pages

Freedom Stone by Jeffrey Kluger

"There were two kinds of slaves on the plantation Lillie and her family called home: those who could sleep on the night before the slave seller came and those who couldn't."

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Summary: After her father is killed during a Civil War battle, and the army accuses him of being a thief, a young slave girl is determined to prove him innocent and magically travels to the battle in which her father died to find out the true story.

Philomel Books; 314 pages

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine

"It looks like a one-winged bird crouching in the corner of our living room."

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Summary: In Caitlin’s world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That’s the stuff Caitlin’s older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon’s dead and Dad is no help at all. Caitlin wants to get over it, but as an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger’s, she doesn’t know how. When she reads the definition of closure, she realizes that is what she needs. In her search for it, Caitlin discovers that not everything is black and white—the world is full of colors—messy and beautiful.

Publisher: Philomel Books; 232 pages

SLOB by Ellen Potter

"My name is Owen Birnbaum, and I'm probably fatter than you are."

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Abstract: Picked on, overweight genius Owen tries to invent a television that can see the past to find out what happened the day his parents were killed.

Publisher: Philomel Books; 199 pages

When the Whistle Blows by Fran Cannon Slayton

"Every time I go to jump on a steam train as it chugs its way through Rowlesburg --"

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Summary: Jimmy Cannon tells about his life in the 1940s as the son of a West Virginia railroad man, loving the trains and expecting one day to work on the railroad like his father and brothers.

Publisher: Philomel Books; 162 pages

The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets by Nancy Springer

"Lunatics have no common sense, thinks the matron, but then, that's what deranges the faculties, isn't it, lack of common sense?"

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CIP Summary: Fourteen-year-old enola Holmes, disguised as a beautiful woman, finds clues in floral bouquets as she searches for the missing Doctor Watson, a companion of her famous older brother, Sherlock.

Publisher: Philomel Books; 170 pages