Books with author Julie Dretzin

17-year old Tesla Abbott is not loving high school. She's a shy math nerd with oddly-colored eyes and an object of pity because her mom died in an unusual car accident--all of which adds up to zero chance of meeting any interesting boys, it seems. When she's dragged to a college party by her best friend Keisha, however, her world gets turned upside down. Some older guys know Tesla's name and try to force her outside for a chat; Keisha's totally hot cousin, Finn, seems to dislike Tesla intensely, though they've just met, and she can't figure out what his problem is; and one of Finn's roommates turns out to be the lab assistant for Tesla's dad, a university professor and experimental physicist whose work is top secret. Within 24 hours Tesla's father is kidnapped, Finn and his friends appear to be involved somehow, and Tesla has to acknowledge the strange abilities she's always tried to hide because being the weird girl is the worst. But the people she loves are in danger, and it's up to Tesla and her new friends--the ones she can trust--to figure out what happened to her father, how she might be connected to his top secret work, and to solve the mystery of her parents' past. In a literal race against time, Tesla must learn what she's capable of if any of them are to have a future at all.

Now that Tesla Abbott has been revealed to the world as the girl who can time travel, her life is a total nightmare. In this new present she created by changing the past, the paparazzi are relentless, a black ops group will go to any lengths to figure out how she alone is able to use her father's time machine, and everyone she ever loved has been altered. Injured, alone, and filled with regret, Tesla goes to ground, forced to use the survival skills she's learned from the agency, as well as her uncanny abilities which finally feel right, as if they are truly a part of her instead of some cosmic joke being played at her expense. As dangerous forces close in, Tesla must decide what she owes others and what, despite the cost, she owes herself. In the end, the choices she makes will remake the world.

Tesla Abbot assumed that using her father's time machine to save his life and defeat his evil-scientist nemesis would've finally make her life at least somewhat normal, but her junior year is off to a bad start. Working part-time for a secret government agency is cool and all, but the physical training is intensifying the strange abilities she's always tried to hide, and now the whole school has seen her in action in a humiliating episode of epic proportions. Her dad is clearly hiding something related to her mother's death, making Tesla wonder if it was an accident at all, and her suspicions are taking a toll on their relationship and putting her little brother Max, whom she adores, in the middle of it all. As if that weren't bad enough, she can't figure Finn out--one day he's all over her, the next, she doesn't exist--and Sam wants more than she's ready to give. Pushed to the breaking point by literally every aspect of her life, Tesla decides that jumping back in time again will allow her to figure out her present and solve the central mystery of her past: who killed her mother. But every action has unintended consequences, and when Tesla time travels again she's faced with the horror of unthinkable choices whose ripple effects in every direction could destroy the future she's hoping to create, for herself and everyone she loves.

When Tesla Abbott and her best friend Keisha sneak into a college party, they have a frightening confrontation with a couple of linebacker-sized creeps, and Finn, the hot guy who threw the party, is inexplicably hostile. But Tesla is used to things going badly. Her mother is dead and her dad won't talk about it, she has weird, differently-colored eyes, and uncanny abilities with all things mathematical. She assumes the ruined party is just one more day in her disastrous life, until she discovers that her family is under surveillance. Finn and his roommates seem to know an awful lot about the Abbotts, and they, along with a criminal scientist, a gorgeous stranger who suddenly appears, and a network of international spies think Tesla is the best way to get to her physicist father, who is close to a breakthrough in his work on time travel. But Tesla doesn't know anything about her dad's work--or does she? Are her 'gifts' somehow connected to her father's top-secret project? When her father is kidnapped, Tesla must make difficult choices--she doesn't have much time, and what's left of her family could be destroyed forever.

Tesla Abbot assumed that using her father's time machine to save his life and defeat his evil-scientist nemesis would've finally make her life at least somewhat normal, but her junior year is off to a bad start. Working part-time for a secret government agency is cool and all, but the physical training is intensifying the strange abilities she's always tried to hide, and now the whole school has seen her in action in a humiliating episode of epic proportions. Her dad is clearly hiding something related to her mother's death, making Tesla wonder if it was an accident at all, and her suspicions are taking a toll on their relationship and putting her little brother Max, whom she adores, in the middle of it all. As if that weren't bad enough, she can't figure Finn out--one day he's all over her, the next, she doesn't exist--and Sam wants more than she's ready to give. Pushed to the breaking point by literally every aspect of her life, Tesla decides that jumping back in time again will allow her to figure out her present and solve the central mystery of her past: who killed her mother. But every action has unintended consequences, and when Tesla time travels again she's faced with the horror of unthinkable choices whose ripple effects in every direction could destroy the future she's hoping to create, for herself and everyone she loves.

After the summer she’d just survived, Tesla Abbott assumed her life would return to some kind of normalcy, but her junior year is not exactly off to a great start. She’s accepted a part-time job with a secret government agency and the physical training required has intensified her strange abilities—those same abilities she has always tried to hide and that have now been revealed in front of the entire school. To make matters worse, Finn runs hot and cold, and Sam wants more from her than she’s ready to give. Plus, her dad has information about her mother’s death that he won’t divulge. If Tesla jumps back in time again, will she learn what really happened to her mother? Better yet, can she do the unthinkable, and prevent it from happening at all? Tesla assumes life will be simpler, clearer if she jumps back. What she finds, however, is that everything just got a whole lot more complicated. She tries to control the past in order to create the future she wants, but learns that every action has unintended consequences: her mom is not at all what Tesla expected, the guy who kidnapped her father last summer is alive and well in the past, and Tesla’s boy troubles have, quite literally, just begun.

17-year old Tesla Abbott is not loving high school. She's a shy math nerd with oddly-colored eyes and an object of pity because her mom died in an unusual car accident--all of which adds up to zero chance of meeting any interesting boys, it seems. When she's dragged to a college party by her best friend Keisha, however, her world gets turned upside down. Some older guys know Tesla's name and try to force her outside for a chat; Keisha's totally hot cousin, Finn, seems to dislike Tesla intensely, though they've just met, and she can't figure out what his problem is; and one of Finn's roommates turns out to be the lab assistant for Tesla's dad, a university professor and experimental physicist whose work is top secret. Within 24 hours Tesla's father is kidnapped, Finn and his friends appear to be involved somehow, and Tesla has to acknowledge the strange abilities she's always tried to hide because being the weird girl is the worst. But the people she loves are in danger, and it's up to Tesla and her new friends--the ones she can trust--to figure out what happened to her father, how she might be connected to his top secret work, and to solve the mystery of her parents' past. In a literal race against time, Tesla must learn what she's capable of if any of them are to have a future at all.

Now that Tesla Abbott has been revealed to the world as the girl who can time travel, her life is a total nightmare. In this new present she created by changing the past, the paparazzi are relentless, a black ops group will go to any lengths to figure out how she alone is able to use her father's time machine, and everyone she ever loved has been altered. Injured, alone, and filled with regret, Tesla goes to ground, forced to use the survival skills she's learned from the agency, as well as her uncanny abilities which finally feel right, as if they are truly a part of her instead of some cosmic joke being played at her expense. As dangerous forces close in, Tesla must decide what she owes others and what, despite the cost, she owes herself. In the end, the choices she makes will remake the world.

A child's perspective on war. In 1998 the Serb military intensifies its efforts to expel Albanians from Kosovo. Ethnic cleansing forces many families to seek safety in the surrounding hills and mountains. The Kosovo Liberation Army fights back guerrilla style, struggling for an independent Kosovo. Some Albanian villagers support the freedom fighters. Others fear that armed resistance, which they have successfully avoided through long years of Serb repression, will only increase the death toll. And always there is terrible tension between Serbian and Albanian neighbors who once were friends. Eleven-year-old Zana Dugolli, an Albanian Kosovar, isn't sure what to think. She does know not to speak her language to Serbs. And every day she worries about her mother and father, her brothers, the farm, the apple orchard. Already she has lost her best friend, a Serb. Then Zana's village is shelled, and her worst nightmare is realized. Her father and two brothers are killed in the attack, and her leg is shattered by shrapnel. Alone in a Serb hospital, she remembers her father's words: "Don't let them fill your heart with hate." Based on a true story, Alice Mead's stark, affecting novel about a place and conflict she knows well will help young readers understand the war in Kosovo.