New Release Books by Karen Bass

Seventeen-year-old Jo McNair is one minute late for her curfew, and thanks to her controlling father, she's now locked out, cold and wandering the streets. She has no money and nowhere to sleep. Halfway through the night she meets someone who says they’re with a group working with at-risk kids, helping them get back on their feet. Jo gratefully accepts the offer of shelter for the night, only to find she has walked into a kidnapper’s trap. Now Jo and several other teens are being held prisoner. Their captors drug them regularly and force them to donate their blood. What is so special about the teens’ blood? And how long before they’re drained dry? When one of the teens doesn’t return, Jo suspects their days are numbered. She has to find a way to escape before their time runs out.

Angry over his family’s recent move and current enforced holiday in Halifax, twelve-year-old Laz Berenger rebels against a guided tour of the Citadel and sets out to explore on his own. In one dark tunnel, his St. Christopher medal burns suddenly hot. There’s a strange smell, and Laz blacks out. When he wakes up, everything happens at once. A sword is put to his throat. Men who look like extras from Pirates of the Caribbean hand him over to a ship’s captain who strips him and takes his medal. He is declared a French spy. Laz realizes, to his horror, that it is 1745 and he is trapped in time. These English colonists, still loyal to King George, are at war with the French. To earn his freedom, Laz must promise to spy on the French at the fortification of Louisbourg. But once in Louisbourg, Laz earns a job as runner to the kind Commander Morpain and learns to love both the man and the town. How will Laz find a way to betray the inhabitants of Louisbourg? How else can he hope to earn back his St. Christopher medal, which is surely his key to returning to his own time? The award-winning author of The Hill and Graffiti Knight has written an enthralling, swash-buckling time-slip adventure for middle-grade readers centered on a fascinating period in North American history.

Jared’s plane has crashed in the Alberta wilderness, and Kyle is first on the scene. When Jared insists on hiking up the highest hill in search of cell phone reception, Kyle hesitates; his Cree grandmother has always forbidden him to go near it. There’s no stopping Jared, though, so Kyle reluctantly follows. After a night spent on the hilltop—with no cell service—the teens discover something odd: the plane has disappeared. Nothing in the forest surrounding them seems right. In fact, things seem very wrong. And worst of all, something is hunting them. Karen Bass, the multi-award-winning author of Graffiti Knight and Uncertain Soldier, brings her signature action packed style to a chilling new subject: the Cree Wîhtiko legend. Inspired by the real story of a remote plane crash and by the legends of her Cree friends and neighbours, Karen brings eerie life—or perhaps something other than life—to the northern Alberta landscape in The Hill.

Seventeen-year-old Erich is a prisoner of war working at a northern Alberta logging camp. Twelve-year-old Max goes to school—reluctantly—in the nearby town. The two would be unlikely friends, except that neither has anyone else to turn to. At the height of World War II, nobody wants to befriend a German. It doesn’t matter that Erich was forced into the military by his father, or that Max was proudly born in Canada. They are both easy targets for the locals’ grief and anger against the Nazis. The other prisoners are no more welcoming, distrustful of Erich’s perfect English and his dislike for Nazism. Still, when a series of accidents shake the logging camp, they pressure Erich to question the Canadians and find the saboteur—even if his questions get him into trouble. Caught between angry prisoners and suspicious captors, Erich is afraid to take any action at all. It is only when Max’s schoolyard tormentors cross a dangerous line that Erich realizes that his real loyalties lie not with a regime or a country, but with his friend.

Kurt Schreiber can hardly believe his luck when his grade 12 German exchange lands him in Zethen, a town just east of Berlin where his beloved grandfather had grown up in the 1930's. Although Kurt had questioned his grandfather about his life in Germany, he received no answers so is determined to clarify his grandfather's past if only to silence the horrible dreams he endures in which, as a German soldier, he kills helpless civilians. Then at his great-grandparents' gravesite he meets an old man, Wolfgang Brandt, his grandfather's best childhood friend. As Kurt tries to escape the local bully and finds himself falling in love with Marta, Brandt's granddaughter, he slowly drinks in Brandt's war-time story about his grandfather's real actions during the war. As the war story climbs to a gripping climax, Kurt and Marta save the bully's brother from drowning in a vicious electrical storm. Kurt brings Wolfgang back to Canada for a visit to re-connect with his old friend, and makes plans to attend university in Berlin.-- Publisher.

YA. HISTORICAL FICTION. YA. A fast-paced story about a boy fighting for self-expression in Soviet-occupied East Germany. Ages 14+

More than anything, Sid wants to be a drummer in a band. When she gets the chance to try out for the best high school band in the area, she finds out that there is a lot more involved than just being a great drummer. How much will Sid give up to get what she wants? The Fourth Down needs a drummer, and Sid's the best in the school. But right from the start, the all-male band makes her struggle. One member outright votes against a girl in the group. And as for the lead singer, Rocklin, if Sid's going to make it in his band, she’s going to have to start dressing the part of a girl. Accustomed to being invisible, Sid quickly discovers the consequences of the makeover she undergoes at the hands of her cousin, who knows exactly how the girl-game is played. It's not only that playing kit in a skirt is impractical. As someone who was once taunted about her sexuality for being a drum-playing girl who likes shop class, Sid is now forced to deal with guys who think her new look makes her fair game. Frustrated with the two stereotypes forced on her and other girls –gay or slut – Sid turns even more to her music. The band can't deny she’s the best, but, as Sid soon discovers, sometimes being good still isn't good enough. Drummer Girl tackles the dangerous side of peer pressure and the politics of identity in high school, and ultimately, what it means to march to the beat of your own drum.

A troubled Alberta teen spending a summer in Germany discovers the story of a teen with real problems—pregnant and alone in the maelstrom of Nazi WWII.

This book closely follows the structure of the television series. In addition words, pictures, and graphics provide an eyewitness experience and reveal the mechanisms of the different events. Each chapter is set in a different location on our planet and shows how immensely powerful natural forces can drive chain reactions involving everything from microscopic organisms to entire tracts of rainforest, ultimately culminating in a spectacular natural event.