Did you know ...

• Napoleon's hemorrhoids contributed to his defeat at Waterloo . They prevented him from surveying the battlefield on horseback.

• The average airspeed of the common housefly is 4.5 miles per hour. A housefly beats its wings about 20,000 times per minute.

• The gastric juices of a snake can digest bones and teeth — but not fur or hair.

REBOUND by Bob krech

In Greenville, New Jersey, the Polish kids wrestle, and the black kids play basketball. But Ray Wisniewski is different. He loves basketball so much that he keeps trying to make the high-school team, even though he is always getting cut. Ray's got game, but the coach--Polish himself--seems biased toward black players. Finally, in Ray's senior year, a new coach is hired--a black guy--and Ray makes the team. That's when things get complicated, and Ray is caught up in racism close to home and on the court. Ray thinks he is not a racist, but as he gradually finds out, he doesn't know himself as well as he thought. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association.

BEAUTIFUL CITY OF THE DEAD by Leander Watts

Tamora Pierce begins a new Tortall trilogy introducing Beka Cooper, an amazing young woman who lived 200 years before Pierce's popular Alanna character. For the first time, Pierce employs first-person narration in a novel, bringing readers even closer to a character that they will love for her unusual talents and tough personality.

Beka Cooper is a rookie with the law-enforcing Provost's Guard, and she's been assigned to the Lower City. It's a tough beat that's about to get tougher, as Beka's limited ability to communicate with the dead clues her in to an underworld conspiracy. Someone close to Beka is using dark magic to profit from the Lower City's criminal enterprises--and the result is a crime wave the likes of which the Provost's Guard has never seen before. By Publisher