Cambridge High School Library 2024

 By: Stan Walker Location: NF 920 Wal Genre: Stan Walker A startling and important memoir about family and forgiveness, love and redemption For the first time, Stan Walker speaks with startling honesty about abuse and addiction, hardship and excess, cancer and discrimination, and growing up in a family where love and violence were horribly entwined. From one of the finest singers to emerge from Australia and New Zealand Aotearoa in a generation, Impossible is a story of redemption and the power of forgiveness. It's also a story about courage and hope; about a young Maori boy finding his place and purpose, never forgetting who he is and where he came from. PRAISE FOR IMPOSSIBLE: As a chronicle of Walker's life, it is gripping, but where the book achieves greatness - and I mean real, true greatness - is as a totem to humanity's capacity for kindness. It's an insight into the soul of a man whose capacity for forgiveness seems boundless. - Sam Brooks 'This is a can'...

 By: Becky Manawatu Location: FIC Man Genre: Fiction, Aotearoa, Death “The best book of 2019 – and it really is immense, a deep and powerful work, maybe even the most successfully achieved portrayal of underclass New Zealand life since  Once Were Warriors “—Steve Braunias, Newsroom “Auē is not just the story of two boys, it is the story of a family, people who are born into it and those who become part of it. We travel through past and present, lives come together and are held together by strands of pain, cruelty, hardship, brutality, music and love. Throughout is the image of birds, some broken and battered, some who manage to fly. Some who sing. The writer knows exactly what she’s doing and takes us with her. I could not stop reading.” —Renée Taukiri was born into sorrow. Auē can be heard in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the music he draws out of the guitar that was his father’s. It spills out of the gang violence that killed his father and sent his mo...

 By: Nina Lacour Location: FIC LAC Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, LGBT, Paranormal, Ghosts “I'm learning that it's good to think about what scares you. To bring it into the light. Even to hold it in your hands, if you can, and feel how it can't hurt you anymore. To think of it and say, 'I am not afraid.”   Eighteen-year-old Mila has been in the foster system since her mother abandoned her. Now that she’s graduating high school, she has nothing to do and nowhere to call home. So when she gets an offer to work as an intern on the Farm, she readily accepts. Her main job is to take care of eight-year-old Lee. At first the Farm seems like an idyllic paradise, a remote place on the cliffs with view of the sea far below. But Mila soon realises there’s something more sinister going on. Lee’s recent trauma causes Mila’s own frightening memories to bubble to the surface. And then there are Billy and Liz. What is it they want from her? How much is she willing to give? Whispered secrets....

 By: Delia Owens Location: FIC OWE Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery “I wasn't aware that words could hold s o m uch. I didn't know a sentence could be so full.” “His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.” For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her. But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Ky...

 By: Jeanine Cummins Location: FIC CUM Genre: Fiction, Historical,  This book has caused such discussion in our office, who has the right to tell whose story? That has flowed over to our own stories in Aotearoa, who can tell the story of parihaka, who can tell the story of Aroamona? As a blog on Goodreads so aptly says "Would they say the same thing to Shakespeare, the greatest English-language writer of all time? After all, he was not a Danish prince, Italian teenagers, or Cleopatra. How dare he write about them?" Yet despite thst discussion, this book has been in huge demand and it leaves our readers with a book filled anger of justice and a forever knowing... Whoever tells the stort- it needs to be told! También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams. Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginni...

 By: Chris hammer Location: FIC HAM Genre: Mystery, Crime, Australia “If the bookshelves were pews, and the counter an altar, then this might be a chapel.”   In an isolated country town brought to its knees by endless drought, a charismatic and dedicated young priest calmly opens fire on his congregation, killing five parishioners before being shot dead himself. A year later, troubled journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend to write a feature on the anniversary of the tragedy. But the stories he hears from the locals about the priest and incidents leading up to the shooting don't fit with the accepted version of events his own newspaper reported in an award-winning investigation. Martin can't ignore his doubts, nor the urgings of some locals to unearth the real reason behind the priest's deadly rampage. Just as Martin believes he is making headway, a shocking new development rocks the town, which becomes the biggest story in Australia. The media descends on Riversen...

 By: Scott Ellsworth  Location: NF 920 ELL Genre: Basketball, History, Leadership "The Secret Game was a basketball game played in 1944 between an all-white Duke Medical Student team and the team from North Carolina College for Negros, now NCCU. The game is one chapter of the book - that's really not what the book is about. But it's a shaggy dog story that takes themes that tie together in the game - people's lives, Jim Crow laws, the amazingly bad way that African Americans were treated and the sub-culture that resulted. This book is a slap in the face, a sharp reminder of how badly Americans treated Americans only decades ago. And for that reminder, the book is brilliant and needs to be read. It's well written - one of those pieces of history (and this is a history book) that's a page turner while it's building its themes. It's also a vital reminder of how closely below the veneer of everyday life hate lies in human cultures. It's not a heavy book...

 By:Lily King Location: FIC KIN Genre: Fiction, Romance, Contemp “It's a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.” 'Exuberant and affirming, it's funny and immensely clever, emotionally rare and strong. I feel bereft now I've finished' Tessa Hadley Casey has ended up back in Massachusetts after a devastating love affair. Her mother has just died and she is knocked sideways by grief and loneliness, moving between the restaurant where she waitresses for the Harvard elite and the rented shed she calls home. Her one constant is the novel she has been writing for six years, but at thirty-one she is in debt and directionless, and feels too old to be that way - it’s strange, not be the youngest kind of adult anymore. And then, one evening, she meets Silas. He is kind, handsome, interested. But only a few weeks later, Oscar walks into her restaurant, his two boys in tow. He is older, grieving the loss of his wife, and wrapped up in his own creat...

 By: Ashley Poston Location: FIC POS Genre:  Romance - Retelling In the third book in Ashley Poston's Once Upon a Con series, Beauty and the Beast is retold in the beloved Starfield universe. Rosie Thorne is feeling stuck—on her college application essays, in her small town, and on that mysterious General Sond cosplayer she met at ExcelsiCon. Most of all, she’s stuck in her grief over her mother’s death. Her only solace was her late mother’s library of rare Starfield novels, but even that disappeared when they sold it to pay off hospital bills. On the other hand, Vance Reigns has been Hollywood royalty for as long as he can remember—with all the privilege and scrutiny that entails. When a tabloid scandal catches up to him, he's forced to hide out somewhere the paparazzi would never expect to find him: Small Town USA. At least there’s a library in the house. Too bad he doesn’t read. When Rosie and Vance’s paths collide and a rare book is accidentally destroyed, Rosie finds hers...

 By: Alina Boyden Location: FIC BOY Genre: Fantasy. LGBGT I love things Moughal, having been to India and been to those amazing palaces, photographed the arches, walked the Taj. I loved the book "The Twenthieth Wife" - and I loved walking around Agra Fort afterwards. This book is set in the Mughal time so it is a no brainer from me... Protecting her identity means life or death in this immersive epic fantasy inspired by the Mughal Empire. In a different life, under a different name, Razia Khan was raised to be the Crown Prince of Nizam, the most powerful kingdom in Daryastan. Born with the soul of a woman, she ran away at a young age to escape her father’s hatred and live life true to herself. Amongst the hijras of Bikampur, Razia finds sisterhood and discovers a new purpose in life. By day she’s one of her dera’s finest dancers, and by night its most profitable thief. But when her latest target leads her to cross paths with Arjun Agnivansha, Prince of Bikampur, it is she who...

 By: Astrid Scholte Location: FIC SCH Genre: Fantasy, Sci Fi Bestselling author Astrid Scholte, returns with a thrilling adventure in which the dead can be revived...for a price. Seventeen-year-old Tempe was born into a world of water. When the Great Waves destroyed her planet, its people had to learn to survive living on the water, but the ruins of the cities below still called. Tempe dives daily, scavenging the ruins of a bygone era, searching for anything of value to trade for Notes. It isn't food or clothing that she wants to buy, but her dead sister's life. For a price, the research facility on the island of Palindromena will revive the dearly departed for twenty-four hours before returning them to death. It isn't a heartfelt reunion that Tempe is after; she wants answers. Elysea died keeping a terrible secret, one that has ignited an unquenchable fury in Tempe: Her beloved sister was responsible for the death of their parents. Tempe wants to know why. But once revived...