Cambridge High School Library 2025

 By: Victoria Breaker   Location: FIC AVE Genre:  Fantasy, Magic Series: #1 Realm Breaker A strange darkness grows in Allward. Even Corayne an-Amarat can feel it, tucked away in her small town at the edge of the sea. She soon discovers the truth: She is the last of an ancient lineage—and the last hope to save the world from destruction. But she won’t be alone. Even as darkness falls, she is joined by a band of unlikely companions: A squire, forced to choose between home and honor. An immortal, avenging a broken promise. An assassin, exiled and bloodthirsty. An ancient sorceress, whose riddles hide an eerie foresight. A forger with a secret past. A bounty hunter with a score to settle. Together they stand against a vicious opponent, invincible and determined to burn all kingdoms to ash, and an army unlike anything the realm has ever witnessed. Review by Emma This book pretty much includes everything I love! dirty pirates! disappointed mothers! mysterious lineages! ext...

By: Frances Quinn Loction: FIC QUI Genre: Historical Fiction- Literature   "The Smallest Man is a very absorbing, gripping piece of historical fiction set in a fascinating period of English history."- Joanna ‘I want you to remember something, Nat. You’re small on the outside. But inside you’re as big as everyone else. You show people that and you won’t go far wrong in life.’ A compelling story perfect for fans of The Doll Factory, The Illumination of Ursula Flight and The Familiars. My name is Nat Davy. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? There was a time when people up and down the land knew my name, though they only ever knew half the story. The year of 1625, it was, when a single shilling changed my life. That shilling got me taken off to London, where they hid me in a pie, of all things, so I could be given as a gift to the new queen of England. They called me the queen’s dwarf, but I was more than that. I was her friend, when she had no one else, and later on, when the people of...

 By: Elana K. Arnold Location: FIX ARN Genre: ReTellings- Fantasy, Dragons *A 2019 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book* A dark, twisted, unforgettable fairy tale from Elana K. Arnold, author of the National Book Award finalist  What Girls Are Made Of The rite has existed for as long as anyone can remember: When the king dies, his son the prince must venture out into the gray lands, slay a fierce dragon, and rescue a damsel to be his bride. This is the way things have always been. When Ama wakes in the arms of Prince Emory, she knows none of this. She has no memory of what came before she was captured by the dragon or what horrors she faced in its lair. She knows only this handsome young man, the story he tells of her rescue, and her destiny of sitting on a throne beside him. It’s all like a dream, like something from a fairy tale. As Ama follows Emory to the kingdom of Harding, however, she discovers that not all is as it seems. There is more to the legends of the dragons and t...

 By: J.Albert Mann Location: FIC MAN Genre: Historical Fiction “Respectful, unflinching, and eye-opening.” — Kirkus Reviews “Historical fiction that not only depicts a cruel, horrifying reality but also the strength and courage of the people who had to endure it.” — Booklist In the tradition of  Girl, Interrupted , this fiery historical novel follows four young women in the early 20th century whose lives intersect when they are locked up by a world that took the poor, the disabled, the marginalized—and institutionalized them for life. The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded is not a happy place. The young women who are already there certainly don’t think so. Not Maxine, who is doing everything she can to protect her younger sister Rose in an institution where vicious attendants and bullying older girls treat them as the morons, imbeciles, and idiots the doctors have deemed them to be. Not Alice, either, who was left there when her brother couldn’t bring himself to suppo...

 By: Courtney Summers Locztion: FIC SUM Genre: Mystery, Horror, Thriller  By the author of "Sadie" The Project  is an addictive, compelling, and emotional read about the bond between sisters and those who prey on the vulnerable. Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died, Lo's sister, Bea, joined The Unity Project, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt. Thanks to its extensive charitable work and community outreach, The Unity Project has won the hearts and minds of most in the Upstate New York region, but Lo knows there's more to the group than meets the eye. She's spent the last six years of her life trying—and failing—to prove it. When a man shows up at the magazine Lo works for claiming The Unity Project killed his son, Lo sees the perfect opportunity to expose the group and reunite with Bea once and for all. When her investigation puts her in the direct path of its leader, Lev Warren and as Lo delves deeper into The Project, the lives o...

 By: Mindy McGinnis  Location: FIC McG Genre: Rape Culture. Contemporary, Feminism, Mystery "A very difficult read and some of its early chapters left me re eling. I confess I went into this book expecting a feminist, Dexter-esque, wish-fulfillment experience, and I was here for it. Instead, I got a painful, complicated, ultimately redeeming story about the insidiousness of rape culture and what it takes to dismantle it. Watching flawed characters grapple with learned sexism and internalized misogyny is not always a comfortable thing, and though I was surprised by some of the choices McGinnis made, I was so impressed by the way she balanced the political and the personal. The final pages left me with tears in my eyes and a heart full of anger and hope. " Leigh Burdago A contemporary YA novel that examines rape culture through alternating perspectives. Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it. Three years ago, when her older sister, Anna, was...

 By: A.J Steiger   Location: FIC STE Genre:  Romance and Health A heartbreaking debut YA romance featuring a neuroatypical girl with a tragic history and the chronically ill boy trying to break the vault encasing her heart. Alvie Fitz doesn’t fit in, and she doesn’t care. She’s spent years swallowing meds and bad advice from doctors and social workers.  Adjust, adapt. Pretend to be normal . It sounds so easy. If she can make it to her eighteenth birthday without any major mishaps, she’ll be legally emancipated. Free. But if she fails, she’ll become a ward of the state and be sent back to the group home. All she wants is to be left alone to spend time with her friend, Chance, the one-winged hawk at the zoo where she works. She can bide her time with him until her emancipation. Humans are overrated anyway. Then she meets Stanley, a boy who might be even stranger than she is—a boy who walks with a cane, who turns up every day with a new injury, whose body seems as fragi...

 By: Margaret Dilloway Location: FIC DIL Genre: Realistic Fiction THIS BOOK HAS THE RECIPES AT THE BACK!!!! I chose Strawberry Basil Pie! A heartfelt contemporary middle grade novel about a girl who must try to save her aunt’s failing pie shop, perfect for fans of  The Thing About Jellyfish, Fish in a Tree —and  The Great British Baking Show . When Cady Bennett is sent to live with the aunt she didn’t even know she had in the quaint mountain town of Julian, she isn’t sure what to expect. Cady isn’t used to stability, after growing up homeless in San Diego with her dad. Now she’s staying in her mother’s old room, exploring the countryside filled with apple orchards and pie shops, making friends, and working in Aunt Shell’s own pie shop—and soon, Cady starts to feel like she belongs. Then she finds out that Aunt Shell’s shop is failing. Saving the business and protecting the first place she’s ever really felt safe will take everything she's learned and the help of all her n...

 By: Mark Oshiro  Location: FIC OSH Genre: Young Adult, LGBGT, Fiction “Anger is a gift. Remember that." She stood. "You gotta grasp onto it, hold it tight and use it as ammunition. You use that anger to get things done instead of just stewing in it.” Official blurb: "ANGER IS A GIFT is an explosion of fury and revolution. Mark Oshiro's beautiful and brutal debut proves that not only can anyone be a hero, but great change comes when the heroes work together. " Moss Jeffries is many things—considerate student, devoted son, loyal friend and affectionate boyfriend, enthusiastic nerd. But sometimes Moss still wishes he could be someone else—someone without panic attacks, someone whose father was still alive, someone who hadn’t become a rallying point for a community because of one horrible night. And most of all, he wishes he didn’t feel so stuck. Moss can’t even escape at school—he and his friends are subject to the lack of funds and crumbling infrastructure at Wes...

 By: Jennifer Donnelly   Location: FIC DON Genre: Retellings, Fantasy Jennifer Donnelly turns her feminist eye to this most delicious of fairy tales and shows Snow White as she's never been seen before.   Once upon a time, a girl named Sophie rode into the forest with the queen's huntsman. Her lips were the color of ripe cherries, her skin as soft as new-fallen snow, her hair as dark as midnight. When they stopped to rest, the huntsman pulled out his knife . . . and took Sophie's heart. It shouldn't have come as a surprise. Sophie had heard the rumors, the whispers. They said she was too kind and foolish to rule -- a waste of a princess. A disaster of a future queen. And Sophie believed them. She believed everything she'd heard about herself, the poisonous words people use to keep girls like Sophie from becoming too powerful, too strong . . . With the help of seven mysterious strangers, Sophie manages to survive. But when she realizes that the jealous queen might no...

 By: Emma Lord   Location: FIC LOR Genre: Young Adult, Romance “If you learn to capture a feeling, it’ll always be louder than words.” From the beloved author of  Tweet Cute  comes Emma Lord's  You Have a Match , a YA novel of family, friendship, romance and sisterhood… When Abby signs up for a DNA service, it’s mainly to give her friend and secret love interest, Leo, a nudge. After all, she knows who she is already: Avid photographer. Injury-prone tree climber. Best friend to Leo and Connie…although ever since the B.E.I. (Big Embarrassing Incident) with Leo, things have been awkward on that front. But she didn’t know she’s a younger sister. When the DNA service reveals Abby has a secret sister, shimmery-haired Instagram star Savannah Tully, it’s hard to believe they’re from the same planet, never mind the same parents—especially considering Savannah, queen of green smoothies, is only a year and a half older than Abby herself. The logical course of action? ...

 By: Jo Walton  Location: FIC WAL Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction From Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jo Walton comes  Lent,  a magical re-imagining of the man who remade fifteenth-century Florence--in all its astonishing strangeness Young Girolamo's life is a series of miracles. It's a miracle that he can see demons, plain as day, and that he can cast them out with the force of his will. It's a miracle that he's friends with Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia. It's a miracle that when Girolamo visits the deathbed of Lorenzo "the Magnificent," the dying Medici is wreathed in celestial light, a surprise to everyone, Lorenzo included. It's a miracle that when Charles VIII of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him in the field, and convinces him to not only spare Florence but also protect it. It's a miracle than whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds swoon. It's a miracle that, despite the Pope's deter...

 By: Kalynn Bayron   Location: FIC BAY Genre: Fantasy, LGBGT, RE-tellings It's 200 years since Cinderella found her prince, but the fairytale is over. Sophia knows the story though, off by heart. Because every girl has to recite it daily, from when she's tiny until the night she's sent to the royal ball for choosing. And every girl knows that she has only one chance. For the lives of those not chosen by a man at the ball . are forfeit. But Sophia doesn't want to be chosen - she's in love with her best friend, Erin, and hates the idea of being traded like cattle. And when Sophia's night at the ball goes horribly wrong, she must run for her life. Alone and terrified, she finds herself hiding in Cinderella's tomb. And there she meets someone who will show her that she has the power to remake her world.

 By: Carole Johnstone Location: FIC JOH Genre: Mystery With the startling twists of  Gone Girl  and the haunting emotional power of  Room, Mirrorland  is a thrilling work of psychological suspense about twin sisters, the man they both love, and the dark childhood they can’t leave behind. Cat lives in Los Angeles, far away from 36 Westeryk Road, the imposing gothic house in Edinburgh where she and her estranged twin sister, El, grew up. As girls, they invented Mirrorland, a dark, imaginary place under the pantry stairs full of pirates, witches, and clowns. These days Cat rarely thinks about their childhood home, or the fact that El now lives there with her husband Ross. But when El mysteriously disappears after going out on her sailboat, Cat is forced to return to 36 Westeryk Road, which has scarcely changed in twenty years. The grand old house is still full of shadowy corners, and at every turn Cat finds herself stumbling on long-held secrets and terrifying ghos...

By: Charlie Mackesy  Location: In someones hands Genre: Beautiful- Little Prince x Winnie the Pooh This is the most stunning book I have pondered on in a very long time. It is just beautiful and thoughtful and profound.  Enter the world of Charlie's four unlikely friends, discover their story and their most important life lessons. The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse have been shared millions of times online - perhaps you've seen them? They've also been recreated by children in schools and hung on hospital walls. They sometimes even appear on lamp posts and on cafe and bookshop windows. Perhaps you saw the boy and mole on the Comic Relief T-shirt, Love Wins? Here, you will find them together in this book of Charlie's most-loved drawings, adventuring into the Wild and exploring the thoughts and feelings that unite us all.

 By: Peter Bunzl  Location: FIC BUN Genre: Fantasy, Steampunk Thirteen-year-old Lily Harman always dreamed of adventure. A strong-willed girl, Lily felt trapped in a life of Victorian stuffiness at her prim boarding school. But after her father-a famous inventor-disappears on a routine zeppelin flight, Lily's life gets turned upside down. Now cared for by her guardian, the heartless Madame Verdigris, Lily is quite certain that she's being watched. Mysterious, silver-eyed men are lurking in the shadows, just waiting for their chance to strike. But what could they possibly want from her? There are rumors, Lily learns, that her father had invented the most valuable invention ever made-a perpetual motion machine. But if he made such a miraculous discovery, he certainly never told Lily. And all he left behind is a small box-with no key, no hinges. With the help of a clockmaker's son, Robert, and her mechanimal fox, Malkin, Lily escapes London in search of the one person who migh...

 By: Maggie O'Farrell   Location: FIC OFA Genre: Historical Fiction Verdict:  Hamnet  is a devastating book, as upsetting and vivid as the current global pandemic.  An absolute must read. It is to him she speaks in her disordered mind, not the trees, not the magic cross, not the patterns and markings of lichen, not even to her mother, who died while trying to give birth to a child. Please, she says to him, inside the chamber of her skull, please come back. I need you. Please. I should never have schemed to send you away. Make sure this child has safe passage; make sure it lives; make sure I survive to care for it. Let us both come through this. Please. Let me not die. Let me not end up cold and stiff in a bloodied bed. Drawing on Maggie O'Farrell's long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, HAMNET is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child. Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes ...

 By: S. Kirk Walsh   Location: FIC WAL Genre: Historical Fiction A stunning World War Two novel for fans of Natasha Lester, Heather Morris, Kate Furnivall, Mandy Robotham, based on a true story. As the bombs rain down on the city, Belfast's first ever female zookeeper must fight to save the baby elephant in her charge in this gripping, uplifting tale based on a true story. 1941. With the men away fighting, animal-lover Hettie Quin is made Belfast Zoo's first ever female zookeeper. She is put in charge of Violet, a three-year-old Indian elephant, and they soon form a special bond. With Violet at her side, Hettie can almost escape the grim reality of her life: the father who has abandoned her family; the sister who recently died; the war that's raging hundreds of miles away. But the devastation of war is closer than she thought. When the bombs begin to rain down on the city, Hettie must gather all her courage to protect those she loves the most. Can she save Violet - and ge...

 By: Leigh Bardugo   Location: FIC Bar Genre: Fantasy Series: King of Scars #2 “This is what love does. In the stories, love healed your wounds, fixed what was broken, allowed you to go on. But love wasn’t a spell, some kind of benediction to be whispered, a balm or a cure-all. It was a single, fragile thread, which grew stronger through connection, through shared hardship and trust.” The Grishaverse will be coming to Netflix soon with Shadow and Bone, an original series! The wolves are circling and a young king will face his greatest challenge in the explosive finale of the instant #1  New York Times -bestselling King of Scars Duology. The Demon King.  As Fjerda's massive army prepares to invade, Nikolai Lantsov will summon every bit of his ingenuity and charm—and even the monster within—to win this fight. But a dark threat looms that cannot be defeated by a young king's gift for the impossible. The Stormwitch.  Zoya Nazyalensky has lost too much to war. S...

 By: Marissa Meyer  Location: FIC MEY Genre: Roamnce, Magical Realism "...it’s sweet, entertaining, feel-good reading that I need! I enjoyed it a lot!" Chronic overachiever Prudence Daniels is always quick to cast judgement on the residents of her coastal town. Her dreams of karmic justice are fulfilled when, after a night out with her friends, she wakes up with the sudden ability to cast instant karma on those around her. Pru giddily makes use of the power, flexing it on everyone from public vandals to karaoke hecklers. But there is one person on whom her powers consistently backfire: Quint Erickson, her slacker of a lab partner and all-around mortal enemy. Soon, Pru begins to uncover truths about Quint, her peers, and even herself. She discovers how thin the line is between virtue and vanity, generosity and greed . . . love and hate.  

 By: Jared Savage    Location: NF 364.1 SAV Genre: Gangs in NZ "An entertaining and scary peek behind the curtain of organised crime." New Zealand's underworld of organised crime and deadly gangs 'The best true-crime book of the year by a long stretch.' - Steve Braunias, Newsroom 'A series of rip-snorting yarns about gangs, drugs, fancy cars, wads of cash, violence, and guns - Aotearoa New Zealand style.' - Simon Bridges New Zealand is now one of the most lucrative illicit drug markets in the world. Organised crime is about making money. It's a business. But over the past 20 years, the dealers have graduated from motorcycle gangs to Asian crime syndicates and now the most dangerous drug lords in the world - the Mexican cartels. In  Gangland , award-winning investigative reporter Jared Savage shines a light into New Zealand's rising underworld of organised crime and violent gangs. The brutal execution of a husband-and-wife; the undercover cop who in...

 By: Sabaa Tahir  Location: FIC TAH Genre: Fantasy Series: Amber in the Ashes #3 Beyond the Martial Empire and within it, the threat of war looms ever larger. Helene Aquilla, the Blood Shrike, is desperate to protect her sister's life and the lives of everyone in the Empire. Yet danger lurks on all sides. Emperor Marcus, haunted by his past, grows increasingly unstable and violent, while Keris Veturia, the ruthless Commandant, capitalizes on the Emperor's volatility to grow her own power—regardless of the carnage she leaves in her path. Far to the east, Laia of Serra knows that the fate of the world lies not in the machinations of the Martial court, but in stopping the Nightbringer. During the hunt to bring him down, Laia faces unexpected threats from those she hoped would help her, and is drawn into a battle she never thought she'd have to fight. And in the land between the living and the dead, Elias Veturius has given up his freedom to serve as Soul Catcher. However, in d...

 By: Jane Harper  Location: FIC HAR Genre: Mystery It is a quiet story with a lot of tragedy to wade through. There is a resolution and a slow transformation that culminates into a moment of hope." “She could-almost-have been one of The Survivors.” Coming home dredges up deeply buried secrets... Kieran Elliott's life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal community he once called home. Kieran's parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn. When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away... "This is an atmospheric and weighty story about a man who survived a tragedy attempting to come to terms with his past. The pacing is slow, and it is much more of a charac...