Books R Us Book Club: Books

When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoints.

Winning a junior ice hockey championship might not mean a lot to the average person, but it means everything to the residents of Beartown, a community slowly being eaten alive by unemployment and the surrounding wilderness. One night at a drunken celebration following a key win, something happens between Kevin and the general manager's daughter--and the next day everything seems to have changed.

Asante's memoir recalls his troubled youth in Philadelphia. The older brother he looks up to is arrested. Asante hates the schools he attends where, invariable, he is told that his personality and attitude are "unacceptable". As a last resort he enrolls at an alternative school where the students are misfits and outcasts with purple Mohawks, some wearing treach coats and ponytails. Yet this is where he learns how to express himself in writing, and that changes his life. Asante overcomes obstacles, shows perseverance and finds purpose in his life.

Seventeen-year-old Zélie, her older brother Tzain, and rogue princess Amari fight to restore magic to the land and activate a new generation of magi, but they are ruthlessly pursued by the crown prince, who believes the return of magic will mean the end of the monarchy.

After Zélie and Amari bring magic back to the land of Orïsha, the monarchy and military unite to keep control of Orïsha, forcing Zélie to fight to secure Amari's right to the throne and protect the new maji from the monarchy's wrath.

This fresh, funny new novel about coming of age in the '60's on Chicago's south side shows what it was like to be black--before black was beautiful.

A gang leader's son finds his effort to go straight for the sake of his child challenged by a loved one's brutal murder.

Two fifteen-year-old girls--one a slave and the other an indentured servant--escape their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves.

Presents Mamie Till-Mobley's story of the murder of her son Emmett for whistling in the direction of a white woman in Mississippi. Mamie spent the last 35 years of her life as a teacher and a spokesperson for civil rights.