As we head into summer with lots of time to read, here are seven first books in a series you may want to try. Some are award nominees as well as favorite librarian picks – you decide which #1 book looks like the next best read for you. Click on the book titles to read the Goodreads’ synopsis.
Part of Scott Westerfeld’s trilogy, the award-winning Leviathan comes highly recommended by Ed Technology’s Mrs. Grigg. Behemoth and Goliath complete this steampunk series.
Recommended by students and staff alike, this first book of the Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss is considered an amazing fantasy. The Wise Man’s Fear is book two, followed by The Slow Regard of Silent Things.
The 2018 Abraham Lincoln Award-winning Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo is a great series about six dangerous outcasts and an impossible heist. Book two, Crooked Kingdom, continues the tale.
Robert Galbraith, more commonly known to the world as J.K. Rowling, has a mystery series following private investigator Cormoran Strike. Also adapted for TV and coming to US screens this summer, The Silkworm is the second book in the series and Career of Evil is book three with more to come. Ms. Fumarolo, LFHS Librarian, highly recommends this series.
Kiera Cass’ Selection series is an interesting twist on The Bachelor concept – 35 girls, 1 crown, and marriage to a prince. If you like this first book, there are so many more to enjoy. LFHS Library staff members recommend this fun read.
Mrs. Roman, LFHS Library’s comic connoisseur, loves the Walking Dead graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. Check out Volume 1 and see if this is a series you can sink your teeth into – seriously.
LFHS Library Assistant Mrs. Middlebrook recommends the Sci-Fi series Ender’s Saga by Orson Scott Card. The other books in the series include the original books, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind as well as much newer tales, all found here.
Spring Break is here so what have you packed to read along the way? 
The Lost & Found
Watch the movie and read the book.¨Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians know as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.
An Olympic story: ¨Seen around the world, John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s Black Power salute on the 1968 Olympic podium sparked controversy and career fallout. Yet their show of defiance remains one of the most iconic images of Olympic history and the Black Power movement. Here is the remarkable story of one of the men behind the salute, lifelong activist John Carlos.¨ From Goodreads.com
¨Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hellish for all the slaves but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood – where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned and, though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.¨ Goodreads.com
¨Did you know that many of America’s Founding Fathers—who fought for liberty and justice for all—were slave owners? Through the powerful stories of five enslaved people who were “owned” by four of our greatest presidents, this book helps set the record straight about the role slavery played in the founding of America. From Billy Lee, valet to George Washington, to Alfred Jackson, faithful servant of Andrew Jackson, these dramatic narratives explore our country’s great tragedy—that a nation “conceived in liberty” was also born in shackles.¨ Goodreads.com review
Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares and The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, are two modern romance books by two authors, taking readers all across New York City during the “most wonderful time of the year.”
Elizabeth Wein has a pair of gripping World War II stories – one about a daring spy held as a prisoner of war, the other a pilot in a concentration camp – that are so well researched and written, it’s almost hard to believe that they’re fiction, 
“Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh… BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator?”
With No Shave November under way, and Halloween already a memory, here’s a list of five titles about characters in some “hairy” situations.
Makani Young thought she’d left her dark past behind her in Hawaii, settling in with her grandmother in landlocked Nebraska. She’s found new friends and has even started to fall for mysterious outsider Ollie Larsson. But her past isn’t far behind. Then, one by one, the students of Osborne Hugh begin to die in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasingly grotesque flair…” 
Amouteru is a survivor of the blood fever. A decade ago, the deadly illness swept through her nation. Most of the infected perished, while many of the children who survived were left with strange markings. Adelina’s black hair turned silver, her lashes went pale, and now she has only a jagged scar where her left eye once was. Her cruel father believes she is a malfetto, an abomination, ruining their family’s good name and standing in the way of their fortune. But some of the fever’s survivors are rumored to possess more than just scars—they are believed to have mysterious and powerful gifts, and though their identities remain secret, they have come to be called the Young Elites.”
“Go on the adventure of a lifetime with a teen and his family after they are selected to colonize Mars in this thrilling new novel from multiple Bram Stoker Award–winning author Jonathan Maberry…” Read more GR review 
The Permian Panthers of Odessa, Texas are the winningest team in Texas history. 
Veronica Mars meets William Shakespeare in E.K. Johnston’s latest brave and unforgettable heroine
A ripped-from-the-headlines story about teens and steroids.
When we first meet Michael Oher is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or how to read or write. He takes up football, and school, after a rich, white, Evangelical family plucks him from the streets. Then two great forces alter Oher: the family’s love and the evolution of professional football itself into a game in which the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist becomes the priceless package of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback’s greatest vulnerability: his blind side.
Felton Reinstein has never been good with stress. Which is why he’s seriously freaking out. Revealing his college choice on national TV? It’s a heart attack waiting to happen. Deciding on a major for the next four years of his life? Ridiculous. He barely even knows who he is outside of football. And so…he embarks on The Epic Quest to Be Meaningful.
High school all-American Neely Crenshaw was probably the best quarterback ever to play for the legendary Messina Spartans. Fifteen years have gone by since those glory days, and Neely has come home to Messina to bury Coach Eddie Rake, the man who molded the Spartans into an unbeatable football dynasty.
The pressure is on.
The true story of the NFL’s oldest rookie
Veronica Mars meets William Shakespeare in E.K. Johnston’s latest brave and unforgettable heroine
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture starring Will Smith, Concussion is the riveting, unlikely story of Dr. Bennet Omalu, the pathologist who made one of the most significant medical discoveries of the twenty-first century, a discovery that challenges the existence of America’s favorite sport and puts Omalu in the crosshairs of football’s most powerful corporation: the NFL.
Lake Forest High School Library 