The Check-in!

An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story

The star of Marvel’s first Asian superhero film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, tells his own origin story of being a Chinese immigrant, his battles with cultural stereotypes and his own identity, becoming a TV star, and landing the role of a lifetime.

In this honest, inspiring and relatable memoir, newly-minted superhero Simu Liu chronicles his family's journey from China to the bright lights of Hollywood with razor-sharp wit and humor. Through a swath of rejection and comical mishaps, Simu's determination to carve out a path for himself leads him to not only succeed as an actor, but also to open the door to reconciling with his parents.

Call number: 791.4302 LIU

Genre: Autobiography

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 304 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Nonfiction, Autobiography

In the world of competitive Scrabble, a teen girl is forced to investigate the mysterious death of her best friend a year after the fact when her Instagram comes back to life with cryptic posts and messages.

When Najwa Bakri walks into her first Scrabble competition since her best friend’s death, it’s with the intention to heal and move on with her life. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to choose the very same competition where said best friend, Trina Low, died. It might be even though Najwa’s trying to change, she’s not ready to give up Trina just yet. As secrets are revealed and the true colors of her friends are shown, it’s up to Najwa to find out who’s behind these mysterious posts—not just to save Trina’s memory, but to save herself.

Call number: FIC ALK

Genre: YA Fiction, Mystery

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 304 pages

Availability: MHHS

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction, Mystery

From the author of Some Kind of Animal comes a wildly unique story about an invisible girl struggling to see herself in a world obsessed with appearances.

Pie is the ghost in your house.
She is not dead, she is invisible.
The way she looks changes depending on what is behind her. A girl of glass. A girl who is a window. If she stands in front of floral wallpaper she is full of roses.

But Pie is lonely. And now, at seventeen, her mother’s given her a gift. The choice of the next city they will go to. And Pie knows exactly where she wants to go. Pittsburgh—where she fell in love with a girl who she plans to find once again. And this time she will reveal herself.

Only how can anyone love an invisible girl?

Call number: FIC ROM

Genre: YA Supernatural Fiction

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 432 pages

Availability: MHHS

Working on the Transcontinental Railroad promises a fortune―for those who survive.

Life on “the Gold Mountain” is grueling and dangerous. To build the railroad that will connect the west coast to the east, Ling Fan and other Chinese laborers lay track and blast tunnels through the treacherous peaks of the Sierra Nevada, facing cave-ins, avalanches, and blizzards―along with hostility from white Americans. When someone threatens to expose Ling Fan’s secret, she must take an even greater risk to save what’s left of her family . . . and to escape the Gold Mountain alive.

Call number: FIC YEE

Genre: YA Historical Fiction

Reading level: 6-12

Length: 288 pages

Availability: MHHS

Piper's fall was no accident. Did someone want her dead? It's up to her sister to discover the truth in this shocking new thriller with an unreliable narrator, from the acclaimed author of Little Creeping Things.

Piper Sullivan was in a strange hiking accident last month and has been in a coma ever since. Her older sister, Savannah, can't pretend to be optimistic about it; things look bad. Piper will likely never wake up, and Savannah will never get any answers about what exactly happened.

Call number: FIC ICH

Genre: YA Suspense, Thriller

Reading level: 8-12

Length: 336 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction

From Printz honoree and National Book Award Finalist Candice Iloh, a prose novel about a teenager reckoning with her family’s—and her home town's—secrets.

Yaminah Okar left Obsidian and the wreckage of her family years ago. She and her father have made lives for themselves in Brooklyn. She thinks she’s moved on to bigger and better things. She thinks she's finally left behind that city she would rather forget. But when a Facebook message about her estranged mother pierces Yaminah’s new bubble, memories of everything that happened before her parents' divorce come roaring back. Now, Yaminah must finally reckon with the truth about her mother and the growing collapse of a place she once called home.

Call number: FIC ILO

Genre: YA Fiction

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 224 pages

Availability: MHHS

For fans of Hustlers and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, the story of two Asian American women who band together to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise—an incisive and glittering blend of fashion, crime, and friendship.

Money can’t buy happiness… but it can buy a decent fake.

Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home—she’s built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava’s world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn’t been used in years, and her toddler’s tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.

Call number: FIC CHE

Genre: Fiction, Mystery

Reading level: 11-12

Length: 288 pages

Availability: MHHS

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievements: Fiction, Mystery

Dahlia Adler's Home Field Advantage is a sparkling romance about fighting for what - or who - you truly want.

Amber McCloud’s dream is to become cheer captain at the end of the year, but it’s an extra-tall order to be joyful and spirited when the quarterback of your team has been killed in a car accident. For both the team and the squad, watching Robbie get replaced by newcomer Jack Walsh is brutal. And when it turns out Jack is actually short for Jaclyn, all hell breaks loose.

Call number: FIC ADL

Genre: YA Romance, Sports, LGBTQIA+

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 304 pages

Availability: MHHS

Book 2 of 2: Jane Austen Murder Mysteries

In this second book of the Jane Austen Murder Mystery series, Tirzah Price takes readers for another fun, murderous romp through one of Austen’s beloved novels.

When eighteen-year-old aspiring scientist Elinor Dashwood discovers her beloved father slumped over the desk of his office study, she knows his death means dire straits for the Dashwood women. To make matters worse, an outdated will entails his estate—including Norland & Company, the private investigation firm where her younger sister Marianne worked as her father’s partner and protégé—to their half-brother and his haughty wife, who waste no time in forcing the Dashwoods out of their home and into a cramped apartment on London’s Barton Street.

Call number: FIC PRI

Genre: YA Mystery

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 416 pages

Availability: MHHS, Sora (SDCL)

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievement: Fiction, Mystery

GRAPHIC NOVEL

This thrilling graphic novel, based on real events, chronicles the intense legal and political battles sparked by the discovery of a priceless shipwreck.

May 2007. When an American treasure-hunting company uncovers a shipwreck containing the greatest underwater trove ever found, the world is captivated by their discovery. But over in Spain, a group of low-level government officials surmises that the sunken ship is in fact an ancient Spanish vessel. Thus begins a legal and political thriller, pitting a group of idealistic diplomats against a rich and powerfully connected treasure hunter, in which vital cultural artifacts and hundreds of millions of dollars hang in the balance.

GRAPHIC NOVEL

Call number: 741.5 ROC

Genre: Graphic Novel, Nonfiction

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 224 pages

Availability: MHHS

In this triumphant new novel, Pura Belpré Award-winning author Guadalupe García McCall explores sisterhood, family secrets, intergenerational trauma, life, and love in a modern Gothic setting with a magical realist twist.

In Eagle Pass, Texas, Grace struggles to understand the echoes she inherited from her mother--visions which often distort her reality. One morning, as her sister, Mercy, rushes off to work, a disturbing echo takes hold of Grace, and within moments, tragedy strikes. Attending community college for the first time, talking to the boy next door, and working toward her goals all help Grace recover, but her estrangement from Mercy takes a deep toll.

Call number: FIC GAR

Genre: YA Fiction

Reading level: 10-12

Length: 400 pages

Availability: MHHS

Secrets. Lies. Super-bad choices. Witchcraft. This is Our Crooked Hearts, a darkly gripping contemporary fantasy from Melissa Albert, the New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood.

Seventeen-year-old Ivy’s summer break kicks off with an accident, a punishment, and a mystery: a stranger whose appearance in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, heralds a string of increasingly unsettling events. As the days pass, Ivy grapples with eerie offerings, corroded memories, and a secret she’s always known―that there's more to her mother than meets the eye.

Call number: FIC ALB

Genre: YA Fiction, Supernatural

Reading level: 10-12

Length: 352 pages

Availability: MHHS

From the author of Sing Me Forgotten comes a lush new fantasy novel with an art-based magic system, romance, and murder…

Myra has a gift many would kidnap, blackmail, and worse to control: she’s a portrait artist whose paintings alter people’s bodies. Guarding that secret is the only way to keep her younger sister safe now that their parents are gone. But one frigid night, the governor’s wife discovers the truth and threatens to expose Myra if she does not complete a special portrait that would resurrect the governor's dead son.

Call number: FIC OLS

Genre: YA Fantasy, Romance, Historical Fiction

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 384 pages

Availability: MHHS

Audiobook: Sora (SDCL)

Sora achievements: Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy