Paint the Wind -- Pam Munoz Ryan

Maya lives a solitary life with her elderly grandmother who feels most things eleven-year olds like to do are a waste of time. Maya’s one outing, besides school, is her weekly, hour-long, chaperoned visit to the library. Maya is forbidden from even mentioning her own mother’s name because her grandmother blames her mother’s love of horses for the death of both Maya’s mother and father. But when Maya’s grandmother dies unexpectedly, Maya is sent to live with her mother’s family in Wyoming, people she has not seen in six years. As Maya adjusts to her new life and her new freedoms in the open range of Wyoming where her family spends its summers camping and watching wild horses, Maya comes to understand her mother’s love for horses and she is able to identify with the wild horses’ need to be free.

This easy-to-read book is poignant and touching and leaves the reader with an uplifted feeling. Interspersed with chapters seen from one of the wild horse’s perspective, it offers the reader a chance to change perspectives and experiment with seeing situations in a different and completely new way, allowing his or her imagination to run wild.

Unnatural Exposure -- Patricia Cornwell

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is the chief medical examiner of Virginia. In her line of work, she has seen the horrors of what people can do to each other, and nothing seems to surprise her anymore. Nothing, that is, until the torso of a deceased elderly woman that was found in a landfill is determined to have been infected with a smallpox-like disease. When Kay begins receiving mysterious emails from someone who refers to him or herself as “deadoc,” and when those emails contain graphic images of the very torso lying in her morgue, Kay begins to realize she has a dangerous killer on her hands; and this killer is different. This killer has access to a virus with plague-like potential that could affect not just Virginia and the United States, but ultimately, the world.

When Dr. Scarpetta is called to a local landfill for the collection of a human torso, she knows there is a possibility that the case is connected to a serial killer case in Ireland. But as more examination is done in her lab, she finds too many differences for the torso to be a victim of the serial killer, and she realizes someone else is responsible for this victim’s death. When she receives email through her AOL account that includes a disturbing picture of the very torso – determined to be that of an elderly female -- she has in her lab, she realizes the murderer has a sick agenda. And when Kay is called out to a small island off the coast of Virginia to examine a dead body there, she realizes that both the body on the island and the body in her lab are both infected with a smallpox-type disease, and she comes to the horrible knowledge that the crimes are related, and, worse yet, that she has been exposed to whatever infected these women. Suddenly Kay’s case turns into a national emergency and she finds herself under lockdown in a military facility as she waits to display symptoms of a deadly disease.

After several days of no symptoms, Kay is released and takes samples of the virus from the bodies to the CDC in Atlanta. Upon her return to Virginia, however, Kay begins to get sick. Unsure of what ails her, and terrified of knowing the truth, Kay throws herself into discovering the identity of “deadoc” who continues to communicate with her through chat rooms. The terror that grips the nation as news of a plague-like virus killing people in Virginia escapes creates a need for speed, and when Kay solves the mystery of who would tamper with a disease so deadly and begin to infect people with it, she realizes that not everything, or everyone, is what she thought.

The Keepsake -- Tess Gerritsen

The Crispin Museum, an almost-forgotten museum in Boston, Massachusetts, is the center of much excitement and news coverage when an ancient Egyptian mummy is found stored in the basement. Striving to learn more about the mummy, the museum curator arranges for a CT Scan of the remains at a local hospital. The results, though, are nothing anyone expected. A bullet in one of the legs of the mummy proves that this is no ancient mummy, and the case is turned over to the Medical Examiner's office, where Dr. Maura Isles discovers that the mummy is actually a modern murder victim who has been mummified and made into a keepsake for the killer. Immediately the Crispin Museum, along with its employees, is hurled into a murder investigation, and Detective Jane Rizolli and her partner Barry Frost begin digging around in the museum's basement, searching for clues as to how and when the mummy arrived there. Before long, more modern remains turn up in the museum basement, and clues left with the bodies become quite disturbing for Josephine Pulcillo, the museum's Egyptologist.

Josephine is not disturbed only by the gruesomeness of these acts. She is also disturbed by the coincidental links to her past these clues seem to posses. And when a third victim, also mummified, is found in her car trunk, she becomes sure that the clues are not coincidental. Her past has caught up with her, and now she is faced with the task of staying one step ahead of her hunter. Meanwhile, Detectives Rizolli and Frost follow leads from New Mexico and Texas as they track down the killer, all the while learning that Josephine Pulcillo is not who she claims to be. As they uncover secrets that are 15 years old, the detectives realize they are dealing with an obsessed killer; a killer who has managed to stay hidden for decades. Will they be able to find him and stop him before Josephine becomes his next keepsake?

The Bone Garden -- Tess Gerritsen

When Julia Hamill purchases an old “fixer-upper” house following her divorce, she thinks she is on her way to realizing some of her goals and rediscovering herself. But when, while working in her garden, she uncovers a human skeleton, she finds herself plunged into the history of her new home. As Julia tries to learn the skeleton’s identity and how it came to be buried in her garden, she begins a friendship with a distant relative of the home’s previous owner; a relative who has boxes of information that once belonged to the deceased owner, and which might provide clues to the skeleton’s identity. Julia soon learns that mystery surrounds the female skeleton buried in her garden; a mystery involving grave-diggers, doctors, poverty, and murder in 19th-century Boston.

In nineteenth-century Boston, a sickness was spreading and killing women following childbirth. Most of the women who suffered this painful death were the impoverished Irish immigrants found in the maternity ward of the medical school’s hospital; the only place they could receive medical attention, because it was free. That is where Rose’s sister Aurnia dies mere hours after giving birth. When Aurnia’s husband decides to give the baby up for adoption, telling Rose the baby is not his, Rose steps in, swearing she will do all in her power to keep her niece. But when Rose happens upon the fresh murder scene of one of the nurses who tended her sister, she realizes protecting her niece and herself may not be an easy feat.

Rose finds herself embroiled in a race against time as she tries to discover the truth behind her niece’s paternity while trying to stay hidden in the slums of Boston; for she has seen the nurse’s murderer – a hideous creature with wings, and she knows she is a hunted woman. Norris, a poor medical student, becomes her only ally after he too sees the hideous creature and is accused of a second nurse’s death. Together, Rose and Norris make startling discoveries about their friends, about themselves, and about each other as they try to save their reputations, Rose’s niece, and their own lives.

As Julia delves deeper into the mystery of the skeleton in her garden, she finds herself taken through many twists and turns as she is sucked into the history of Boston. She realizes that not everything and not everyone can be taken at face-value, and she discovers how frightening and surprising the motivations of a killer can be.

Stargirl -- Jerry Spinelli

She appeared at the beginning of the school year, as if out of nowhere. She wore long, flowing skirts; brought her pet rat Cinnamon to school with her every day; and she sang “Happy Birthday” to every student on his or her birthday while strumming her ukulele in the lunchroom. In the community, she attended the funerals of strangers, she made anonymous cards for people celebrating, though she didn’t know them, and she bought gifts for community members she would never meet. She never got credit for her kindness, but then, she never wanted credit. She was not a typical teenager or student, but she changed the community, the school, and its students forever by being herself. When she was born, her parents named her Susan, but by the time she showed up at Mica High School, she had changed her name to Stargirl.

When Stargirl began the school year, she was an anomaly to the other students. None of them had ever before encountered anyone like her. Most students avoided her but were still mesmerized by her – awestruck by her odd behavior. Soon, Stargirl was the talk of the school – her name was upon everyone’s lips: “Did you hear? Stargirl decorates her desk in each class with a flower in a vase.” “Did you see? Stargirl was cheering atop the goalpost at the football game.” The more Stargirl did, the more the students paid attention. School spirit soared to new heights from the lackluster indifference that existed before she attended school sporting events. Before long, Stargirl had a following. Students dressed like her, bought pet rats like her, and hung on her every word. Stargirl was even invited to join the cheerleading squad, which she did. For the first time in anyone’s memory, Mica High’s basketball team was undefeated; and for the first time, the students were excited. Stargirl became the most popular student at Mica High, and Leo became enamored with her. Leo soon learned that Stargirl likes him as well, and before long, their relationship blooms.

But when Stargirl started cheering for the opposing basketball team as well as her own; when Stargirl hurried to the side of another team’s injured player, Stargirl’s status dropped among Mica High-schoolers. And when Mica High started losing games and was no longer undefeated, Stargirl was blamed for destroying the players’ spirits by cheering for the opposing team. Soon, Stargirl was shunned. Nobody in school would talk to her, and because Leo was now her boyfriend, he was shunned by association. Leo loved Stargirl, but he wanted to be accepted by his classmates as well. The time Leo and Stargirl spent together outside of school was wonderful, but for Leo, the week of school was something to be dreaded. Though the shunning did not seem to bother Stargirl, Leo was deeply bothered. So Leo set about to make things right by explaining to Stargirl that she needed to be “normal.” She needed to fit in with “them.” He assured her that doing so would end the shunning and that she would be accepted. But at what cost? And would it work? If she didn’t conform, what then? For Stargirl, the answers lie in a choice.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time -- Mark Haddon

Christopher is not a typical fifteen-year old boy. He excels at physics and math - in fact he knows every prime number up to 7,057. He finds people confusing for two main reasons: “the first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words” and “the second main reason is that people often talk using metaphors,” which Christopher feels are lies. Christopher does not like jokes because he does not understand them, and he therefore refuses to include any jokes in the book he is writing about the murder of a neighborhood dog. Christopher does not hug to show affection - he and his father show their love for each other by spreading their fingers apart and touching fingertips. This is because Christopher does not like to be touched; and this is because Christopher is autistic.

When Christopher discovers a neighbor’s dog stabbed to death with a garden fork, he feels it is his responsibility to solve the murder and to write a mystery book about it as he solves it. For Christopher, the murder of a dog is the equivalent of the murder of a human being; therefore, he worries about his own safety in the wake of the horrendous discovery. Using a logic that is so straight-forward as to seem unfamiliar, Christopher pursues his plan to find the dog’s murderer, sharing his ideas with the readers in diagrams more than in description, because Christopher pictures everything in his mind and takes everything at face-value.

Because of Christopher’s relentless detective work, the guilty party feels forced to admit to the crime. But when Christopher finally has his answer, he must face a fear he could never have imagined. When an admission of guilt to the murder is made, more secrets are uncovered, and Christopher learns that he has trusted people who have lied to him for years. No longer feeling safe in his own neighborhood, he journeys, alone, into the big city of London to find the safety he feels he has lost. With this goal in mind, Christopher must overcome his disability and deal with society in a way that has never been required of him before.

Can someone who murdered a dog be trusted to not murder a human? Can trust in people be restored when logic is the governing factor in one’s life? For Christopher, these answers are not easily attained, and he can only find the answers as he struggles to accomplish his dreams amid a world where nothing is as straightforward as he always thought it was.