Christmas On Emerald Mountain By: Cara Malone Synopsis When her dad decides to book a cabin in the idyllic, snow-capped mountains of Colorado for Christmas, the rest of the family is skeptical - why trade palm trees and warm weather for a snowbound ski resort? Carmen hasn't had a snow on Christmas for ten years. Her family has grown accustomed to beaches and extravagant tropical vacations, but she still remembers the snow in Massachusetts when she was a kid. Carmen's in the same 'bah humbug mood until she meets the impossibly optimistic, endlessly intriguing Joy, and their worlds collide - quite literally - on the slopes. Joy has lived her whole life on Emerald Mountain and watched a lot of people come and go through the resort town. She has learned to expect a certain amount of impermanence here, but Carmen makes her hope for more than just a vacation romance. Can Joy help Carmen and her family rediscover the true spirit of Christmas?
Blueprints For Better Worlds By: Tenea D. Johnson Synopsis Two girls barely in their teens devise on escape from a world abandoned by the privileged, ravaged by climate change, and losing its way. Will they find what the world has lost and what they've a so far only found in one another? Can a manufactured heaven floating amongst the stars provide more than illusions of perfection? How might it improve the world that its customers vacated? When all you have left is the space between you, can you overcome the distance, and what might be lurking in the things that you don't say, the days can't share, the secrets you keep from your self? In the absence of government, how can the people left behind avoid a grim fate of air thinner by the day, hope thinner by the hour? Is home where you're from or how it treats you? How much a home is a place where you're not equal? Might you change that by stepping into another person's life? Or stepping into new territories with...