The Voyage of the Sparrowhawk by Natasha Farrant
This middle grade novel is beautifully written and tells the story of two orphaned friends who set off in a narrowboat from England in the hopes of finding a missing part of themselves in France. *
The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst by Jaclyn Moriarty
This middle grade novel tells the story of Esther, an ordinary middle child who, returns to school after a quiet summer to discover that her friends haven't returned and the mountains surrounding the school, usually alive with Faeries, have become dark and threatening with Shadow Mages, and it's up to Esther to do something extraordinary. *
Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the ultimate Cold War Showdown by Steve Sheinkin
As World War II comes to a close, the United States and the Soviet Union emerge as the two greatest world powers on extreme opposites of the political spectrum. After the United States showed its hand with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the Soviets refuse to be left behind. With communism sweeping the globe, the two nations begin a neck-and-neck competition to build even more destructive bombs and conquer the Space Race. In their battle for dominance, spy planes fly above, armed submarines swim deep below, and undercover agents meet in the dead of night. The Cold War game grows more precarious as weapons are pointed towards each other, with fingers literally on the trigger. The decades-long showdown culminates in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world's close call with the third-and final-world war. *
The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson
Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, Doudna and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. Isaacson explores the development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. *
* From the publishers