Category: fiction

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Trouble Dog

Trouble Dog: From Shelter Dog to Conservation Hero
by Carol A. Foote (Author) and Larry Day (Illustrator)
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Booktalk: Tucker the dog never means to be trouble: he just loves to play. But at the animal shelter, every visitor says he’s too much trouble—until Laura. Laura thinks Tucker might be just right for a very special job. Could all his energy make him an amazing conservation dog? Laura trains Tucker to track down Gila monsters, endangered flowers, even grizzly bear poop. Where will his nose lead him next?

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Copyright © 2025 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved. (*bookstore affiliate)

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Rebellion 1776

Rebellion 1776
by Laurie Halse Anderson (Author)
@ Amazon* | Bookshop*

Booktalk: In the spring of 1776, thirteen-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper wakes to the sound of cannons. It’s the Siege of Boston, the Patriots’ massive drive to push the Loyalists out that turns the city into a chaotic war zone. Elsbeth’s father—her only living relative—has gone missing, leaving her alone and adrift in a broken town while desperately seeking employment to avoid the orphanage.

Just when things couldn’t feel worse, the smallpox epidemic sweeps across Boston. Now, Bostonians must fight for their lives against an invisible enemy in addition to the visible one. While a treatment is being frantically fine-tuned, thousands of people rush in from the countryside begging for inoculation. At the same time, others refuse protection, for the treatment is crude at best and at times more dangerous than the disease itself.

Elsbeth, who had smallpox as a small child and is now immune, finds work taking care of a large, wealthy family with discord of their own as they await a turn at inoculation, but as the epidemic and the revolution rage on, will she find her father?

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Copyright © 2025 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved. (*bookstore affiliate)