READ: Summer 2025

The Mona Lisa Vanishes by Nicholas Day; Brett Helquist (Illustrator) On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago, a desperate guard burst into the office of the director of the Louvre and shouted, La Joconde, c'est partie! - The Mona Lisa, she's gone! No one knew who was behind the heist. Was it an international gang of thieves? Was it an art-hungry American millionaire? Was it the young Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who was about to remake the very art of painting?

I Will Always Write Back by Martin Ganda; Caitlin Alifirenka; Liz Welch (As told to) It started as an assignment. Everyone in Caitlin's class wrote to an unknown student somewhere in a distant place. All the other kids picked countries like France or Germany, but when Caitlin saw Zimbabwe written on the board, it sounded like the most exotic place she had ever heard of -- so she chose it. Martin was lucky to even receive a pen pal letter. There were only ten letters, and forty kids in his class. But he was the top student, so he got the first one. That letter was the beginning of a correspondence that spanned six years and changed two lives.

Popular by Maya Van Wagenen A breakout teen author explores the true meaning of popularity and how to survive middle school in this hysterically funny, touchingly honest contemporary memoir.

The Notorious Benedict Arnold by Steve Sheinkin Most people know that Benedict Arnold was America's first, most notorious traitor. Few know that he was also one of its greatest Revolutionary War heroes. Steve Sheinkin introduces young readers to the real Arnold: reckless, heroic, and driven. Packed with first-person accounts, astonishing American Revolution battle scenes, and surprising twists, this is a gripping and true adventure tale from history.

The Radium Girls: Young Readers' Edition by Kate Moore Explore the unbelievable true story of America's glowing girls and their fight for justice in the young readers edition of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller The Radium Girls.

Impossible Escape by Steve Sheinkin A true story of two Jewish teenagers racing against time during the Holocaust--one in hiding in Hungary, and the other in Auschwitz, plotting escape.

Shackled by Candy J. Cooper Here is the explosive story of the Kids for Cash scandal in Pennsylvania, a judicial justice miscarriage that sent more than 2,500 children and teens to a for-profit detention center while two judges lined their pockets with cash, as told by Candy J. Cooper, an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist

Abuela, Don't Forget Me by Rex Ogle Rex captures and celebrates the powerful presence a woman he could always count on-to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him to the library where he could take out as many books as he wanted, and to offer safety when darkness closed in. Throughout a coming of age marked by violence and dysfunction, Abuela's red-brick house in Abilene, Texas, offered Rex the possibility of home, and Abuela herself the possibility for a better life.

Ambushed! by Gail Jarrow James Abram Garfield, the 20th President of the United States, was assassinated when he was shot by Charles Guiteau in July 1881, less than four months after he was elected president. But Garfield didn't actually die until 80 days later. In this page-turner, award-winning author Gail Jarrow delves into the fascinating story of the relationship between Garfield and Guiteau, and relates the gruesome details of Garfield's slow and agonizing death.

The Woman All Spies Fear by Amy Butler Greenfield Elizebeth Smith Friedman had a rare talent for spotting patterns and solving puzzles. These skills led her to become one of the top cryptanalysts in America during both World War I and World War II.

Rising from the Ashes by Paula Yoo In the spring of 1992, after a jury returned not guilty verdicts in the trial of four police officers charged in the brutal beating of a Black man, Rodney King, Los Angeles was torn apart. Thousands of fires were set, causing more than a billion dollars in damage. In neighborhoods abandoned by the police, protestors and storeowners exchanged gunfire. More than 12,000 people were arrested and 2,400 injured. Sixty-three died. In Rising from the Ashes, award-winning author Paula Yoo draws on the experience of the city's Korean American community to narrate and illuminate this uprising, from the racism that created economically disadvantaged neighborhoods torn by drugs and gang-related violence, to the tensions between the city's minority communities.

The Swans of Harlem by Karen Valby The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history--until now.

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown This is the amazing and inspiring story of an American rowing team from the University of Washington that defeated elite rivals at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics, sharing the experiences of their enigmatic coach, a visionary boat builder, and a homeless teen rower.

Framed by John Grisham; Jim McCloskey John Grisham is known worldwide for his bestselling novels, but it's his real-life passion for justice that led to his work with Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries, the first organization dedicated to exonerating innocent people who have been wrongly convicted. Together they offer an inside look at the many injustices in our criminal justice system. A fundamental principle of our legal system is a presumption of innocence, but once someone has been found guilty, there is very little room to prove doubt. These ten true stories shed light on Americans who were innocent but found guilty and forced to sacrifice friends, families, and decades of their lives to prison while the guilty parties remained free. In each of the stories, John Grisham and Jim McCloskey recount the dramatic hard-fought battles for exoneration. They take a close look at what leads to wrongful convictions in the first place and the racism, misconduct, flawed testimony, and corruption in the court system that can make them so hard to reverse. Impeccably researched and told with page-turning suspense as only John Grisham can deliver, Framed is the story of winning freedom when the battle already seems lost and the deck is stacked against you.

Chasing Beauty by Natalie Dykstra The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner--creator of one of America's most stunning museums--an American original whose own life was remade by art. Includes archival photos of Isabella's world, museum,and the she collected. Isabella Stewart Gardner's museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston's Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture. An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty illuminates the fascinating ways the museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words and displayed per Isabella's wishes in the exact placements she initially curated. Born in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella Stewart married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston's insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old. But in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace--all these were balm for loss.