A compelling account of a boy coming to terms with his brother’s death and his discovery of his own and his brother’s homosexuality.
Brothers is a book which is both compelling and intensely moving as it looks at life, death and love in the context of growing up and trying to make sense of it all. It is tender, sensitive and poignant as it deals with the sexual emergence of a teenage boy, trying to come to terms with the death of his brother and, while reading his brother’s diary, discovers not only that his brother was gay, but that he himself is also. As a story of two brothers, it is both thought provoking and intriguing. The reader is engaged instantly through its intimate narrative diary format. This is indeed an exceptional book.

Brothers

Literature & Fiction

Lieshout, Ted van

Contemporary

Collins Flamingo

Frances Leventhal's brother Daniel has committed suicide at the exclusive Pettengill School. But there is more to his death than meets the eye! 16-year-old Frances Leventhal, half Japanese, half Jewish American, can't bear to look at herself in the mirror. She has hidden from herself and everyone around her for years, and now that her brother Daniel has committed suicide by taking a massive heroine overdose, she can't help thinking that it's all her fault. If she hadn't been so caught up in her own insecurities, maybe she would have noticed her brother's pain. It's time to stop hiding -- to reach out to Daniel's friends at their private school, where they were both scholarship pupils. Daniel had been deeply involved in Unity Service, the charitable group famed across the country for its work through schools, and Frances is determined to join the group and somehow make amends. But something's not right about Unity, and soon Frances finds herself in the middle of a puzzle too ominous to ignore. Exactly what are the Unity members trying to conceal? This time, Francis isn't hiding. The memory of her brother is at stake.

Black Mirror

WERLIN, NANCY

Children's Books

Spellbound

Raven never expected to be a mother at sixteen. Is she going to be just another high school dropout, a project girl with few prospects?  Could be, except Raven has ambition. Still, when is she going to find the time to finish school?  Then her older sister tells her about a spelling bee that promises the winner a scholarship for college. Spelling? There isn't a subject she's worse at.  But once Raven's got her mind set, nothing gets in her way...

McDonald, Janet

The story of Aisha, teenage mother of two from the New York Projects, who is going nowhere. But when her welfare benefits are stopped, she has to find a job. Chill Wind charts Aisha's struggle as she transforms herself from workshy teenager to TV star.Aisha is nineteen with two children and a no-good boyfriend. Her idea of the good life is hanging with friends, dancing and chilling to music. But things get a bit too `chilly' when she receives sixty days' notice of termination of her welfare benefits. No way is Aisha going to do menial work for WorkFare. Then she sees a TV advert for BigModels. Aisha is pretty enough, and big enough, is this the way out for her?

Chill Wind

Teen & Young Adult

Mesmerising, moving novel from exceptional new author about one girl's struggle to cope after being wrongly admitted to a boot-camp-style rehabilitation centre. A powerful and page-turning read. Justine is trying to cope with the desperate loneliness she feels now her twin brother, Joshua, no longer lives at home. After trying to drown her feelings with her first ever experiment with alcohol, she is woken early by her mother one Sunday morning. Bundled into the car by her livid parents, Justine is driven to Come Clean, a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts and alcoholics. Confused, vulnerable and covered with vomit from her first hangover, Justine is forcibly admitted to cure her "addiction". There she begins a strict boot-camp routine of humiliation and discipline, where they attempt to strip her of her identity in order to rebuild her a better person. Justine escapes the daily torture at the centre by talking to Joshua in her head, reflecting back on their childhood and trying to puzzle out why her brother was a tortured soul! and why he chose to leave her. Because of the intensely personal nature of the narrative, this book engages the reader instantly and, however tough the subject matter, it is a real page-turner. At its heart, Come Clean is about a girl's inability to deal her grief and her family's ignorance of her pain. Justine shows strength, resilience, courage and hope while living a nightmare reality. This is a book which should and will attract controversy, as teenagers and society struggle to identify the problems and the treatment for drug and other teenage addictions.

Come Clean

Terri Paddock