If I Run

Blackstock, Terry. If I Run. Book 1 of the If I Run series. 2016. 305p. 402 mins. ISBN 978-0-310-33246-6. Available as an audiobook and as an ebook from Overdrive.

When Casey Cox discovers to her horror that her friend Brent has been stabbed and killed, she runs off with the minimum of things: money, a change of clothes, a cell phone. She didn't kill Brent, but she knows the evidence will point to her. Her fingerprints are all over Brent's apartment. Her shoes stepped in his blood, and this blood is now in her car and on her clothes. The police will not believe her, especially since she knows for a fact corrupt police officers were behind her father's own supposed suicide ten years earlier.

Brent had been investigating her father's death. A former cop, his death by hanging showed signs of struggle, but detectives had ruled it a suicide. Now Casey is on the run, and needs to figure a way to prove both her innocence in Brent's death and her father's own murder while remaining safely hidden from the corrupt police officers chasing her. She needs to stay one step ahead of them and hide where they will not look for her.

Dylan Roberts has returned from Iraq with PTSD, but he wants to continue his work serving the public. A former criminal investigator in the Army, Dylan hopes to join the local police force but must overcome his diagnosis. A friend of Brent, he is hired by his parents to investigate Brent's murder and track down Casey, something the local police, with stretched resources, will not be able to do. If he can bring her back to face justice, he will secure a place on the force.

As he follows Casey from Louisiana to Georgia, Dylan notices that Casey is not doing what a criminal with a guilty conscience would do. She helps people and puts herself in harm's way, instead of going to ground and disappearing. The more Dylan digs, the darker the mystery surrounding Casey and the double murders of her friend Brent and her father, and the more convinced he becomes that the police is involved in both. How can he get Casey to come in knowing she's at risk of dying in an "accident?"

Casey, meanwhile, starts a new life, only to discover that the kidnapped daughter of the new friends she made may be closer than everyone thinks. She may be in her new neighborhood. But investigating may blow her cover identity and alert Dylan and the police tracking her to her whereabouts. Faced with her own safety or the hope of rescuing an innocent victim, Casey makes a decision that will change the rest of her life....

Football Genius

Green, Tim. Football Genius. 2008. 256p. 309 mins. ISBN 978-0-06-112272-9. Available as an audiobook from Overdrive.

Troy White lives football. He loves the game, and enjoy playing it with his friends, burly Nathan and fast on her feet Tate. And though he doesn’t like the coach of his team nor his son Jamie, who is the star quarterback, he loves playing for his team, the Duluth Tigers. Being from Georgia, Troy always cheers for the Atlanta Falcons, but they’re having a tough season. Troy, however, is sure he could help them. He has the uncanny ability to see all of the play patterns on the field and call the current play before it happens. Troy wishes he could share this ability with his father, but he doesn’t know anything about him.

When his mother gets a job as a publicist with the Falcons, Troy cant believe his luck. Dared by Jamie to bring back an official ball from the game, Troy crosses town and goes to the gated community where Seth Halloway lives, with Tate and Nathan. He gets in, retrieves a football, but gets lost on the way back and is confronted by a security guard. He manages to escape, but barely.

He gets to attend their first game, against the Dallas Cowboys. Seeing a play develop, he tries to tell Seth Halloway, the best defensive player for the Falcons, but his advice is ignored and the Falcons lose the game. In the process, he gets taken away by the stadium guards after the Coach Krock, the defensive coach complains, and he almost gets his mother fired. Now Troy has to figure a way to share his gift with the Falcons so they can turn a losing season into a winning one. When Troy realizes that Coach Krock is ensuring that the team loses on purpose so he can get the head coach position, he has to act fast. But with his mother’s job in the balance, can Troy risk making contact with Seth one more time?

Filled with accurate and realistic sports descriptions, this story sees Troy confront bullies and persevere to reach his goals. Fans of Dairy Queen or Run for Your Life will enjoy Troy’s struggles to become his own person.

Walking with Miss Millie

Bundy, Tamara. Walking with Miss Millie. 2017. 227p. ISBN 978-0-399-54456-9. Available at FIC BUN on the library shelves.

It is 1968, and Alice and her family are moving to Rainbow, Georgia. Rainbow is a sleepy little town, and Alice, her younger brother Eddie and her mother. Her father has remained behind in Ohio, but they haven’t seen him for six months, ever since Christmas last year. Alice is upset that the family has to move down to her parents’ birthplace so they can help grandmother. After all, grandmother looked fine the last time she came to visit. Rainbow is small, it is hot, and it is in the middle of nowhere.

Straight upon arrival Alice notices that her grandmother is not well. The house smells, the garden is mostly dead, and she is wearing her nightgown outside in the afternoon. Alice’s hope for a reconsideration of their move is dashed. Then her brother Eddie runs in the neighbor’s yard. Eddie is deaf and sometimes does not pay attention to what he does. Alice goes get him, and she meets the next door neighbor, Miss Millie. Older even than her grandmother, Miss Millie seems stern. When the telephone rings, Alice picks up, forgetting that it is a party line. She eavesdrops on a conversation between Miss Millie and a friend. Told to apologize by her mother, she goes over there the next morning and is asked to walk Clarence, Miss Millie’s dog. Unfortunately, Clarence will not walk if Alice holds the leash, so Miss Millie goes with them.

Over the course of the summer, Alice gets to know Ms. Millie and her struggles as a black woman in a white neighborhood in the South. She learns of her family history, of segregation, and of the racism that still pervades the town. In turn she’s able to share with Miss Millie the pain and anxiety that comes from being rejected by her father, who neither calls nor writes.

As their friendship grows, Alice realizes that life in Rainbow might not be as bad as she thought it would be.

Tumble & Blue

Beasley, Cassie. Tumble & Blue. 2017. 390p. ISBN 978-0-525-42844-2. Available at FIC BEA on the library shelves.

Blue Montgomery is a loser. Not in the metaphorical way, in the real world way of losing at everything. Blue always manages to lose any game or activity he participates in, even if it is a one-player game. His father, by contrast, is a winner and never loses. A car racer by profession, Blue’s father is always on the move, looking for another race. This year, however, he decides to drop off Blue at his grandmother’s house in on the edge of the Okefenokee swamp in Georgia. Abandoned in Murky Branch (population 340), Blue discovers that the Montgomerys have been cursed. An ancestor decades ago entered the swamp on a red moon and made a pact with a strange golden alligator named Munch. But the wish went wrong. Half of the Montgomerys are blessed with abilities or talents that make them the envy of the world. The other half? Their talents are deadly, obnoxious, or, like Blue and losing, completely dangerous to their lives.

Now the red moon arises again, and Montgomerys from all over the world are congregating once again in the hopes of being the one to whom Munch will give a wish. Blue finds himself in the frenzy that plagues his grandmother’s house as more and more relatives arrive. Trying to escape them all, he runs into Tumble, a girl who has moved down the street. Her parents are renting a small cabin but Tumble has decided to continue living in their RV. Upon seeing Blue, Tumble makes the decision to save him from his curse. For, you see, Tumble herself follows Maximal Star’s advice to always be the hero. Let the heroing begin!

As they learn more about the curse, Tumble and Blue realize that it will not be as easy as they thought to rid Blue of his bad fate. Great-grandmother Myrtle Montgomery is the only one that knows exactly when the red moon will occur, and she’s making everyone entertain her before she tells her handpicked choice the time. With no hope of being picked, Blue must discover how he can transform himself from a loser to a winner without depending on a mythical golden alligator. But what if that alligator really did exist?

Lyrical and beautifully written, Blue and Tumble’s adventures through the small town of Murky Branch show that fate is never fixed and can always be altered, with a little help from friends and family.