Books with title Under-Currents

This middle-grade historical novel follows three young girls living very different lives who are connected by one bottle that makes two journeys across the ocean. It's 1854 and eleven-year-old Bones is a slave on a Virginia plantation. When she finds her name in the slave-record book, she rips it out, rolls it up, and sets it free, corked inside a bottle alongside the carved peach pit heart her long-lost father made for her. Across the Atlantic on the Isle of Wight, motherless Lady Bess Kent and her sister discover Bones's bottle half-buried on the beach. Leaving Bones's name where it began and keeping the peach pit heart for herself, Bess hides her mother's pearl-encrusted cross necklace in the bottles so her scheming stepmother, Elsie, can't sell it off like she's done with other family heirlooms. When Harry, a local stonemason's son, takes the fall for Elsie's thefts, Bess works with her seafaring friend, Chap, to help him escape. She gives the bottle to Harry and tells him to sell the cross. Back across the Atlantic in Boston, Mary Margaret Casey and her father are at the docks when Mary Margaret spies something shiny. Her father fishes it out of the water, and they use the cross to pay for a much needed doctor's visit for Mary Margaret's ailing sister. As Bess did, Mary Margaret leaves Bones's name where it belongs. An epilogue returns briefly to each girl, completing the circle of the three unexpectedly interconnected lives.

This middle-grade historical novel follows three young girls living very different lives who are connected by one bottle that makes two journeys across the ocean. It's 1854 and eleven-year-old Bones is a slave on a Virginia plantation. When she finds her name in the slave-record book, she rips it out, rolls it up, and sets it free, corked inside a bottle alongside the carved peach pit heart her long-lost father made for her. Across the Atlantic on the Isle of Wight, motherless Lady Bess Kent and her sister discover Bones's bottle half-buried on the beach. Leaving Bones's name where it began and keeping the peach pit heart for herself, Bess hides her mother's pearl-encrusted cross necklace in the bottles so her scheming stepmother, Elsie, can't sell it off like she's done with other family heirlooms. When Harry, a local stonemason's son, takes the fall for Elsie's thefts, Bess works with her seafaring friend, Chap, to help him escape. She gives the bottle to Harry and tells him to sell the cross. Back across the Atlantic in Boston, Mary Margaret Casey and her father are at the docks when Mary Margaret spies something shiny. Her father fishes it out of the water, and they use the cross to pay for a much needed doctor's visit for Mary Margaret's ailing sister. As Bess did, Mary Margaret leaves Bones's name where it belongs. An epilogue returns briefly to each girl, completing the circle of the three unexpectedly interconnected lives.

This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format. Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship.

In Undercurrent, Paul Blackwell's fast-paced teen thriller, sixteen-year-old Callum Harris survives a plummet over a waterfall but wakes to find himself in a life that's totally different from the one he knew.His parents were separated. Now they're together. His brother, Cole, was a sports star. Now he's paralyzed. And Callum, who used to be quiet and sort of unpopular, is suddenly a jock with two hot girls after him. But there's one difference that matters more than all the others combined: His former best friend wants Callum dead. And he isn't the only one.Tense and original, Undercurrent is a psychological thrill ride with sci-fi elements that will appeal to fans of Neal Shusterman. The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books said, "the riveting opening and intense final scene will keep genre fans satisfied and breathless," while ALA Booklist called it "a menacing, suspenseful thriller."

Fourteen-year-old Nikki Simons has lost her mother to cancer. Her older sister, Bonnie, will soon be off on an exciting trip before heading to college, leaving Nikki to cope with things at home, including her little brother, Sam. Nikki still grieves for her mother, knows she will desperately miss Bonnie, and feels inadequate to fill in for them at home. And then their father makes a shattering announcement: He is going to marry Crystal, a woman he met through work who is only slightly older than his daughters. Not long after the peculiar wedding (none of Crystal's family or friends attended), Nikki learns that in place of a European trip the family had planned before her mother's death, they will be spending part of the summer in the village of Trinidad, in northern California, where Crystal has inherited a house on the beach. Nikki decides that going to the beach is preferable to having no vacation at all. But soon she's troubled by more than just Dad's hasty marriage to a woman who doesn't make much of an attempt to relate to his children. Other things about Nikki's new stepmother remain unexplained: Why is she reluctant to return to the house where she spent some time as a child? And after Dad is called back to Seattle on an emergency, what awful secret causes Crystal to have nightmares that waken Nikki out of a sound sleep? How is Nikki, by herself, expected to cope with things that baffle and frighten her? Then Nikki meets Julian Gyasi, an intriguing boy known as Spook who lives in a house on the cliff nearby. Why are there mysterious lights in the tower windows over there, and who is the man who frightens Nikki by watching her from the top of the cliff? As the days pass, Crystal's behavior becomes even stranger and Dad is still not there to help Nikki deal with either her stepmother or the increasingly mysterious situation at the Gyasi house.

In Undercurrent, Paul Blackwell's fast-paced teen thriller, sixteen-year-old Callum Harris survives a plummet over a waterfall but wakes to find himself in a life that's totally different from the one he knew.His parents were separated. Now they're together. His brother, Cole, was a sports star. Now he's paralyzed. And Callum, who used to be quiet and sort of unpopular, is suddenly a jock with two hot girls after him. But there's one difference that matters more than all the others combined: His former best friend wants Callum dead. And he isn't the only one.Tense and original, Undercurrent is a psychological thrill ride with sci-fi elements that will appeal to fans of Neal Shusterman. The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books said, "the riveting opening and intense final scene will keep genre fans satisfied and breathless," while ALA Booklist called it "a menacing, suspenseful thriller."

In Undercurrent, Paul Blackwell’s fast-paced YA thriller, sixteen-year-old Callum Harris survives a plummet over a waterfall, but wakes to find himself in a life that’s totally different from the one he knew. His parents were separated. Now they’re together. His brother Cole was a sports star. Now he’s paralyzed. And Callum, who used to be quiet and sort of unpopular, is suddenly a jock with two hot girls after him. But there’s one difference that matters more than all the others combined: His former best friend wants Callum dead. And he isn’t the only one. Tense and original, Undercurrent is a psychological thrill-ride with sci-fi elements that will appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman and Neal Shusterman.

Fergal is helping his mother nurse a bedridden woman on a Yorkshire farm. In his free time he roams the hills and dales, and there meets a girl, Alex, sensing at once the peculiar obsession with the nearby reservoir that grips her and everyone else in the valley. As rainless heat settles over the parched land, everyone is watching the reservoir, seeing the water level fall day by day and waiting - as if something undefinable will rise from its depths. The undercurrents threaten Fergal too, with memories of his failure to help a drowning friend, and his belief that soon he will have to help Alex. This time he must not fail.

Nothing has been normal since Vanessa Sands learned that her sister was murdered by sirens — femme fatales of the watery depths — and that everything she believed about her family was a lie. Her boyfriend Simon’s been the only person Vanessa feels she can really trust. But now there are some secrets she can’t tell even him. And when Vanessa finds herself in the sights of Parker, Hawthorne Prep’s resident charmer, she needs someone to confide in more than ever. Doubting her relationship with Simon, unsure of Parker’s intentions — and of her own — and terrified by what she’s learned about herself, Vanessa has never felt so alone. But personal problems must be put aside, because the Winter Harbor sirens are back for revenge. Now, Vanessa must face her past and accept that she is just like her enemies — every bit as alluring, every bit as dangerous. The eagerly anticipated second novel of the Siren trilogy, Undercurrent is a seductive paranormal romance that will leave you breathless.