When Ruben and Jeddy find a dead body in an evening suit washed up on the shore, they are certain it has to do with smuggling liquor. It is spring 1929, Prohibition is in full swing, and many in their community are involved.

Soon the boys, along with Jeddy’s strong-willed sister, Marina, are drawn in, suspected by rival bootlegging gangs of taking something crucial off the dead man. Then Ruben meets the daring captain of the Black Duck, the most elusive smuggling craft of them all, and it isn’t long before he’s keeping dangerous company.

Inspired by very real accounts of the Black Duck, a legendary rum-running boat that worked the New England shores during the era, Newbery Honor winner Janet Taylor Lisle has produced a colorful, original work of historical fiction.

Frequently honored by the ALA and recipient of a Newbery Honor distinction, Janet Taylor Lisle’s work offers thrills and adventure for all young listeners. Into a colony of feral cats a trio of kittens comes to stay. Living in a small patch of woods near a mall, the colony is frightened by continued human incursion. But can these strange kittens be the key to saving their home? “Recommend this novel to fans of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s ‘Cat Pack’ series or other animal adventure books.”-School Library Journal

Newbery Honor winner Janet Taylor Lisle’s gorgeous and profound new novel about a pivotal summer in two girls’ lives explores the convictions we form, the judgments we make, and the values we hold. The pond is called Quicksand Pond. It’s a shadowy, hidden place, full of chirping, shrieking, croaking life. It’s where, legend has it, people disappear. It’s where scrappy Terri Carr lives with her no-good family. And it’s where twelve-year-old Jessie Kettel is reluctantly spending her summer vacation. Jessie meets Terri right away, on a raft out in the water, and the two become fast friends. On Quicksand Pond, Jessie and Terri can be lost to the outside world-lost until they want to be found. But a tragedy that occurred many decades ago has had lingering effects on this sleepy town, and especially on Terri Carr. And the more Jessie learns, the more she begins to question her new friendship-and herself.

It’s World War II, and fear permeates the Rhode Island coastal town where Robert, his mother, and sister are living out the war with his paternal grandparents. It is fear of Nazi submarines offshore; fear of Abel Hoffman, a German artist living reclusively outside of town; and for Robert, a more personal fear, of his hot-tempered, controlling grandfather.

As Robert watches the townspeople’s hostility toward Hoffman build, he worries about the friendship that his sensitive cousin Elliot has with the artist. And he wonders more and more about the family secret everyone seems to be keeping from him–a secret involving Robert’s father, a bomber pilot in Europe. Will Elliot’s ability to detach himself from the turmoil around him be enough to sustain him when prejudice and suspicions erupt into violence? And can Robert find his own way to deal with the shocking truth about his family’s past?

Motherless Olivia and Nellie go to live with their elderly Great-Aunt Minty, who knows little about children, but a lot about her overgrown garden. Then one day, Olivia finds an old teacup in a flowerbed–and later, an old story about eight children transformed into flowers. Only the person who finds their teacups can bring them back. Now the two sisters know what they must do.