Books In the Middle Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Blood Gone Cold by Katy Grant As siblings who used to get alone, Abby can't figure out why she and Natalie seem to be on opposite ends of everything these days. So much so, that even their parents are tired of all the fighting. So when neither girl can agree on what they want to do for dinner, their parents decide to leave them at the rented cabin in the snowy woods and go to...

Send us Fan Mail All is Fair by Dee Garretson Clara is shocked and terrified when she is called down to the headmistress of her boarding school's office and is given a telegram. After all, the year is 1918, she lives in England and her brother, Crispin has been missing in action for several months. Believing the worst, she opens the telegram, only to find a strange missive from her father, ur...

Send us Fan Mail I Will Follow by Eireann Corrigan Shea Davison is an influencer and known on social media platforms for her dancing and honest look at her mother's depression after her divorce. Now things are feeling a bit complicated though. Turns out her best friend, Delancey's dad, and her mom found each other on a dating site and are now getting married! Which should be great, but f...

Send us Fan Mail The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams by Daniel Nayeri When the boy was running for his life from the Monks he had been living with, because they were trying to stone him to death, it was Samir who stopped them and it was how the boy because known as the Monkey and began to serve Samir on the silk road with other merchants traveling. However, once Monkey learns ju...

Send us Fan Mail Red in Tooth and Claw by Lish McBride Faolan is alone after her grandfather dies. And out on the frontier is no place for a teen girl, alone. Which is why her grandfather encouraged her to dress as a boy ever since she lost her parents. But even if she is pretending to be a boy, the town of New Retienne's mayor has his sights set on the land that was her grandfather's. T...

Send us Fan Mail The Girl in the Lake by India Hill Brown Celeste and her younger brother are being dropped off at their grandparents place lake house for a long summer week with their two cousins. But Celeste is worried. She doesn't know how to swim, and here she is ... at a lake house. But it turns out that shouldn't be her biggest worry. Because there is definitely a ghost haunting th...

Send us Fan Mail The Red Palace by June Hur The year is 1758, and the place is Korea. Hyeon has accomplished her dream of becoming a palace nurse. After many years of studying, she hopes to make her father proud. A father who barely even acknowledges her existence since she is his illegitimate daughter. However, when four women are murdered, one of them a palace nurse and the others students and a...

Send us Fan Mail Something Like Home by Andrea Beatriz Arango Laura is confused. She thought she was doing the right thing - but it turns out that where she has ended up is not at all where she thought she would be. Living with her aunt that she doesn't even know, is not her idea of a solution. When will she be able to go back with her parents? She doesn't want to settle in, because this...

Send us Fan Mail Flowerheart by Catherine Bakewell Clara is devastated to learn that she will not be joining the Council because her magically powers are to volatile. She hasn't been able to control them since she got them, and she doesn't know why. To add insult to injury, her old best friend Xavier is there with the Council - as part of the Council - when she receives the bad news. Who...

Send us Fan Mail The Steps by Wendelin Van Draanen Ruby misses her best friend, Sterling. They haven't been able to communicate in anyway for a long time. And why? It isn't because they drifted apart, or had a fight, no, it is because of their Dads. Their dads are in the middle of an epic family feud and Ruby and Sterling, who are cousins, are just casualties of the fight. But one night,...

Send us Fan Mail Tiger Daughter by Rebecca Lim Wen and her best friend, Henry, have a plan. A plan to help get them out of their everyday lives. Because being immigrants to the country of Australia - not the easiest thing in the world. Especially when you have a father who is resentful of the fact that things didn't work out as he thought they would, as is the case with Wen, whose family has...

Send us Fan Mail I.R.L. by Jenny Goebel Lucy is excited because, finally, after months of online schooling, she will get to meet her classmates in person. After after being stuck in a cabin with just her parents for all of winter, in Alaska, no less, she is going a bit stir crazy. They had been doing online schooling because the weather was so unpredictable that it was easier to just keep in onlin...

Send us Fan Mail A Dangerous Idea: The Scopes Trial, The Original Fight Over Science In Schools by Debbie Levy When John T. Scopes was interrupted during a game of tennis after finishing his first year of teaching in Tennessee, and asked to go down and talk to some of the local townspeople at the drugstore, he didn't think much of it. But when he arrived he found some guys planning something...

Send us Fan Mail Silent Sister by Megan Davidhizar When Grace wakes up in the hospital, she has no recollection of the past week. Everything feels different, and she is confused. Her sister, Maddy is missing and she appears to have been the last person to see her. So why can't she remember what happened? And more importantly, where is her sister? She must hold the key to that night, if only s...

Send us Fan Mail Songs for the Offseason by Ryan Wolf Dustin is super excited to be heading off to Japan for a fun filled summer. His whole baseball team is going and he's had to work hard to earn the money for the trip. But when his mom comes into his room, just days before the trip is supposed to happen, and gives him some shocking news, he knows he can't go on the trip. But what he do...

Send us Fan Mail The Flicker by H.E. Edgmon With Millie's mom dead, and now Rose's father, all they have left is each other and their little brother Sammy. But how can two girls and a baby make in this new world after the flicker - a massive solar flare that left most of the world charred and barren? Millie is determined to head off and find her grandmother, but Rose thinks they should f...

Send us Fan Mail The Secret Life of Lincoln Jones by Wendelin Van Draanen Could life be any worse? Lincoln doesn’t think so. I mean, how many kids have to go to their parents work after school? And how much worse that his mom works in a crazy home, or AKA – old folks home – or AKA a nursing home for dementia patients? Plus, Lincoln is having to deal with moving to a new school and a new apartment...

Send us Fan Mail Better than Revenge by Kasie West Finley has been wanting to be a podcaster for her school since 7th grade. She is anxious and excited that the moment she has been waiting for has finally arrived. What she doesn't count on, is her boyfriend, Jensen, deciding he wants to try out for a spot too. And then, he gets it! While her world seems to be crashing down, he seems completel...

Send us Fan Mail Spirit Sleuths by Gail Jarrow During the middle of the 1800s in America, there came to be a belief that certain people had the ability to speak to the dead. They were called mediums and a whole religion sprang up around this idea. However, it turned out that everyone who claimed they could talk to the dead, when actually tested, could not. In fact, magicians could see right throug...

Send us Fan Mail Runaway by Wendelin Van Draanen Holly is a runaway - from her latest foster placement. The guy gave her the creeps and they locked her in the laundry room at night, giving her very little food, so what was the point in staying? She's been homeless before with her mom, but she's never been on her own homeless. Still, she knows what it takes and she thinks she can handle i...

Send us Fan Mail Beastly Beauty by Jennifer Donnelly Beau is in a hurry to get back to his little brother. But first he has to escape the gang of thieves he has been with for many years. When the gangs latest heist goes south, they take refugee in a strange castle - it seems abandoned but has food out and plenty of things they can steal to sell. However, it also appears to have a beast prowling ar...

Send us Fan Mail Boy 2.0 by Tracey Baptiste Coal has just landed in another foster home. And he is upset because the last one with Tom, was a good one. Still, his "new" family seem welcoming enough, if a little loud. But when Coal goes out one afternoon to do a chalk drawing, he ends up running for his life - and it is those moments of terror that fundamentally change everything he thoug...

Send us Fan Mail Lifeboat 5 by Susan Hood Life has become unbearable for Bess in London, 1940. The Germans are bombing the city all the time, and she is scared. Plus she hates the girls at her school who have been bullying her. Maybe the way out is through the organization called Children's Overseas Reception Board. If only she and her younger brother, Louis, can get on board one of the ships...

Send us Fan Mail This year has been a big one for me in terms of my library. I got a new one! Well, sort of. My library got a complete facelift and it does look totally new! And without doors, which, honestly, I'm not a fan of. I would like doors on the library. But alas, no doors look to be coming anytime soon.  Regardless, I have new paint, a beautiful circulation desk, and lovely shelves....

Send us Fan Mail Bye Forever, I Guess by Jodi Meadows Ingrid is in a bit of a crisis. She doesn't think she actually wants to be best friends with her best friend anymore. Or even just plain friends. Especially after Ingrid feels she has gone too far. But even though Ingrid likes to be invisible, she doesn't want to be lonely. Thankfully she has a good friend online, but when a new perso...