08th Grade Coram Deo Academy Summer Reading

Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South--and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred

One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father--a crusading local lawyer--risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Grades aren't the point, so drill to win. Rebekah Merkle knows which high school classes you like and which you roll your eyes at, which books you enjoy and which you kinda skim. That's because she went through this whole thing called classical education, too. Classical Me, Classical Thee is light-hearted and -- most importantly for you busy students -- very short. It has a simple goal: to explain why you students are doing what you do in class. (Spoiler: it's not because you'll use your knowledge of the Iliad Book 5 yearly until you die.) What you do in class is a drill -- and nobody drills for the sake of the drill. You do drills so you can win the game. The real tragedy, though, would be if you didn't know you were doing drills...or didn't know there was a game at all.

A stranger emerges out of a freezing February day with a request for lodging in a cozy provincial inn. Who is this out-of-season traveler? More confounding is the thick mask of bandages obscuring his face. Why is he disguised in such a manner? What keeps him hidden in his room? The villagers, aroused by trepidation and curiosity, bring it upon themselves to find the answers. What they discover is not only a man trapped in the terror of his own creation, but a chilling reflection of the unsolvable mysteries of their own souls.

"My fantastic stories do not pretend to deal with possible things. They aim indeed only at the same amount of conviction as one gets in a gripping good dream."--H. G. Wells

With an Introduction by W. Warren Wagar
and an Afterword by Scott Westerfeld

The Ninth Legion marched into the mists of Northern Britain--and they were never seen again. Four thousand men disappeared and their eagle standard was lost. It's a mystery that's never been solved, until now . . .

Marcus has to find out what happened to his father, who led the legion. So he sets out into the unknown, on a quest so dangerous that nobody expects him to return.