Hold Fast by Blue Balliett - 2014

Hold Fast by Blue Balliett
Scholastic Press
274p.


Summary: On a cold winter day in Chicago, Early's father disappeared, and now she, her mother and her brother have been forced to flee their apartment and join the ranks of the homeless--and it is up to Early to hold her family together and solve the mystery surrounding her father.

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake - 2014

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake
Alfred Knopf
257p


Summary:  In 1871 Wisconsin, thirteen-year-old Georgia sets out to find her sister Agatha, presumed dead when remains are found wearing the dress she was last seen in, and before the end of the year gains fame as a sharpshooter and foiler of counterfeiters.

Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman

Obsidian Blade (Klaatu Diskos, 1) by Pete Hautman
Candlewick Press
308pg.

After thirteen-year-old Tucker Feye's parents disappear, he suspects that the strange disks of shimmering air that he keeps seeing are somehow involved, and when he steps inside of one he is whisked on a time-twisting journey trailed by a shadowy sect of priests and haunted by ghostlike figures.

Chomp by Carl Hiaasen

Chomp by Carl Hiaasen
Alfred Knopf
290 pg.


When the difficult star of the reality television show "Expedition Survival" disappears while filming an episode in the Florida Everglades using animals from the wildlife refuge run by Wahoo Crane's family, Wahoo and classmate Tuna Gordon set out to find him while avoiding Tuna's gun-happy father.

Wilwood by Colin Meloy

Wildwood by Colin Meloy
Balzer + Bray
2011
541p.


When her baby brother is kidnapped by crows, seventh-grader Prue McKeel ventures into the forbidden Impassable Wilderness--a dangerous and magical forest in the middle of Portland, Oregon--and soon finds herself involved in a war among the various inhabitants.

Lunch-Box Dream by Tony Abbott

Lunch-Box Dream by Tony Abbott
Farrar Straus Giroux
2011
178p.

Told from multiple points of view, a white family on a 1959 road trip between Ohio and Florida, visiting Civil War battlefields along the way, crosses paths with a black family near Atlanta, where one of their children has gone missing.

The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines

The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines

Roaring Brook Press

2011

342p.

In 1942 New York City, fifteen-year-old Iris grieves for her mother who committed suicide and for the loss of her life of privilege, and secretly helps her father with his detective business since he, having lost a leg at Pearl Harbor, struggles to make ends meet.