In small town Oklahoma during the 1970s, a rough-and-tumble teenager learns to navigate the world with his older brother and a mostly absent father in S. E. Hinton’s young adult fiction novel Tex. Published in 1979, the book was subsequently made into a popular movie starring young Matt Dillon in the title role. Hinton herself has written that Texas McCormick is the favorite of all her iconic characters, so good natured and even tempered that... Read Tex Summary

Gillian McAllister’s 2021 domestic thriller, That Night, plunges readers into a tense ethical dilemma centered on the Plant siblings—Cathy, Joe, and Frannie. During a family vacation in Verona, Italy, a frantic late-night phone call pulls Cathy and Joe into a nightmare: Their sister Frannie has hit and killed a man with her car. Fearing the police will not believe it was an accident, the siblings make the fateful decision to bury the body and conceal... Read That Night Summary

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (published as The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle in Canada and the United Kingdom) is Stuart Turton’s first novel. The novel was first published in 2018 by Harper Collins; this guide references the first Canadian edition. The novel is primarily a mystery, with some elements of science fiction and fantasy. The plot features elements traditionally associated with the murder mystery genre made famous by Agatha Christie, since the... Read The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Summary

Irish author Michael Scott’s The Alchemyst, published in 2007, is the first installment in his six-part series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. This guide refers to the 2007 Kindle edition. The following books are The Magician (2008), The Sorceress (2009), The Necromancer (2010), The Warlock (2011), and The Enchantress (2012). The Alchemyst was included in Time Magazine’s 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time in 2015 and earned multiple awards internationally, including... Read The Alchemyst Summary

Jeannette Haien’s debut novel, The All of It (1986), is a compact and philosophical literary novella set in rural Ireland. The story centers on Father Declan de Loughry, a Catholic priest whose faith and understanding are challenged by the story of his parishioner, Enda Dennehy. Following the death of Kevin Dennehy, the man the community believed to be her husband, Enda reveals their lifelong secret that they were siblings who survived a traumatic childhood together... Read The All of It Summary

Published in 1999, The Bad Beginning, a darkly humorous adventure novel for middle-grade readers, chronicles the misadventures of three orphaned children whose distant cousin adopts them as part of a plan to steal their huge inheritance. As the first of 13 books in the bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events, the novel is written by Daniel Handler under the pen name Lemony Snicket, who’s also a character in the story. The books have sold 60... Read The Bad Beginning Summary

The Bell Bandit by Jacqueline Davies is a 2012 novel for young adult readers and the third book in The Lemonade War Series, which explores the adventures of siblings Evan and Jessie Treski. This installment takes place during a New Year’s visit to their grandmother’s house when they discover that the beloved town bell, a symbol of community, joy, and tradition, has gone missing. As the siblings set out to solve the mystery of the... Read The Bell Bandit Summary

The Berry Pickers (2023) is the debut novel of Canadian author Amanda Peters. Peters, who is of both Mi’kmaq and white-settler ancestry, explores the history and experiences of First Nations communities in the Nova Scotia, Canada environs. Peters holds an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto. The Berry Pickers was a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for... Read The Berry Pickers Summary

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is a 1972 children’s book by Barbara Robinson. It tells the story of six misbehaving children—the Herdmans—and their unexpected involvement with the town’s annual Christmas pageant. Told in first person by an unnamed narrator, it explores themes of Redemption, Perspective and Judgment, and Tradition. Robinson has a masterful ability to mix Roald Dahl-esque humor and nastiness with timeless lessons that will have a particular appeal to Christian readers who enjoy... Read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever Summary

Barbara Robinson’s The Best School Year Ever, first published in 1994, is a humorous middle grade realistic novel told from the perspective of sixth-grade student Beth Bradley. When Beth is assigned to come up with compliments for her classmates, she struggles to find something nice to say about Imogene Herdman. Imogene is part of a notorious family of badly behaved children, and Beth shares several stories of the terrible things that Imogene and her siblings... Read The Best School Year Ever Summary

The Better Sister (2019) by Alafair Burke is a psychological thriller that blends domestic noir with legal drama. The novel opens with the murder of attorney Adam Macintosh in his East Hampton vacation house, and the investigation identifies his son Ethan as the prime suspect. To defend him, Ethan’s stepmother, high-powered magazine editor Chloe Taylor, must join forces with her estranged older sister, who is both Ethan’s birth mother and Adam’s ex-wife. The story explores... Read The Better Sister Summary

Published in 1939, The Big Sleep by novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler is a murder mystery widely regarded as one of the greatest hard-boiled detective stories of the 20th century. The work introduces Philip Marlowe, a fictional private eye with a jaundiced view of humanity but a strong sense of fairness, who appears in seven other novels by Chandler. Hired by a super-rich family to negotiate with a blackmailer, Marlowe encounters murder, mayhem, and a... Read The Big Sleep Summary

The Blithedale Romance (1852) is a novel by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. This work, Hawthorne’s third “romance,” is loosely based on his experiences at Brook Farm, an experimental utopian commune established near Boston in the 1840s. Like Hawthorne’s earlier novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance is a work of Dark Romanticism, focusing on the negative aspects of human nature and the failure of Enlightenment thought.This study guide references... Read The Blithedale Romance Summary

The Bookbinder (2023) is a work of literary fiction by Australian author Pip Williams. The novel focuses on the life of a young woman named Peggy Jones, who works in the bindery at Oxford University Press. Peggy longs to attend Somerville College, Oxford’s college for women, but fears she will never have the opportunity because she is the primary caretaker for her identical twin sister, Maude. When World War I changes their world, introducing new... Read The Bookbinder Summary

The Book of Cold Cases, written by Simone St. James, was published in 2022 by Berkeley. St. James is the author of seven other novels and a New York Times and USA Today bestseller for The Sun Down Motel and The Broken Girls. Before its publication, The Book of Cold Cases was nominated as a Most Anticipated Novel by Goodreads and PopSugar. St. James spent 20 years in television before making the leap to fiction... Read The Book of Cold Cases Summary

The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman is the 2021 installment in Hoffman’s Practical Magic fantasy series. The first book in the series, Practical Magic (1995), focuses on the love stories of witches named Sally and Gillian Owens. The prequel, The Rules of Magic (2017), tells the story of Jet and Franny (the aunts who raised Sally and Gillian) and their brother, Vincent. Magic Lessons (2020) details the life of Maria Owens, who cursed her... Read The Book of Magic Summary

The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner, is the first in a series of mystery novels for early-to-middle-grade readers. The story tells of four orphaned children who find shelter in an abandoned railroad boxcar and learn how to live by themselves in the woods while hiding from their feared grandfather.First published in 1924 and revised by the author in 1942, the book proved popular, and Warner wrote 19 more books about the Boxcar Children. Other... Read The Boxcar Children Summary

The Bridge Home was published in 2019 by Indian American author Padma Venkatraman and has received extensive critical praise. The Bridge Home won the Golden Kite Award for Middle Grade Fiction and the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature. Raised through her teens in India, Venkatraman spent her childhood caring for impoverished children like those she writes about in the novel. In addition to penning several other noteworthy books for younger readers, the... Read The Bridge Home Summary

The Brothers Hawthorne (2023) is the fourth installment of The Inheritance Games series (The Inheritance Games, The Hawthorne Legacy, The Final Gambit), with the fifth book (a collection), Games Untold, scheduled to be released in November 2024. The Brothers Hawthorne and Games Untold overlap Barnes’s sequel series, which begins with The Grandest Game (July 2024). Alternating between Jameson’s and Grayson Hawthorne’s points of view, The Brothers Hawthorne follows both brothers as they navigate their relationships... Read The Brothers Hawthorne Summary

Elizabeth Strout’s novel The Burgess Boys, published in 2013, explores the relationships between adult siblings during a time of family crisis. It examines the ways that past events and traumas continue to shape one’s sense of self. Set amid a Somali refugee crisis in the state of Maine, it also explores the ways that identity forms community and the way that community can be affected by newcomers.The author of 10 novels, Strout is acclaimed for... Read The Burgess Boys Summary