MADreads for Teens

This is the book I'm going to be recommending to everyone in 2019- it's the delightful, funny, and very relevant story of Alex, the First Son of the US, and Henry, Prince of England and their journey from having a PR driven "friendship" to a real relationship and love. The story takes place a kind of alternate reality where a progressive female with biracial children has won the presidency. Her son, Alex, believes that he's meant to go into politics, and behind his seemingly party lifestyle, he works tirelessly to campaign and research in preparation for his mother's hopeful reelection.

The most tragic shipwreck in history may be one very few people remember.  It’s not the Titanic.  It is the World War II sinking of the German military transport ship Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945.  On a ship designed to carry 1,465 passengers and crew, 10,582 desperate refugees from the Balkans and Eastern Europe, fleeing the advancing Russian troops, crammed on-board.  Two torpedoes fired from a Russian submarine sank the ship and 9,343 passengers drowned, including 5,000 children. 

Purple and Black is brilliantly done - a gem of a book (if I may be so cliche). Tightly woven. Thought-provoking. And all of that in a slender 113 pages. This is a fantasy novel, but don't let that prevent you reading it. It's only a fantasy in that it has a made up country. Everything else about it reads like historical fiction.

In the second of her new series set in 1920s New York former con artist Elizabeth Miles helps a friend whose husband has died (killed by a streetcar). As though grieving her suddenly dead husband weren't bad enough, Priscilla Knight learns after his death that all of her money is gone. She'd come into this second marriage a wealthy woman and somehow in less then a year her husband Endicott made all that money disappear. Now Priscilla isn't sure how she'll support herself and her two young daughters.