ability

When thirteen-year-old Erin discovers she is the daughter of the love god Cupid, she uses her newfound ability to sabotage her rival Trevor in the race for Multicultural Leadership Club president by making him fall in love with her, but she soon realizes love has a funny way of complicating things.

Talented healer Wren Southerland unknowingly accepts a request to cure the kingdom's most powerful enemy soldier, Hal Cavendish, only to find herself torn between duty and her heart when they uncover a sinister plot.

"In The Real Work--the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick--Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking down and building up--of identifying and perfecting the small constituent parts of a skill and the combining them for an overall effect greater than the sum of those parts. For another, mastery almost always involves intentional imperfection--as in music, where vibrato, a way of not quite landing on the right note, carries maximum expressiveness"--Provided by publisher.

At age twelve, Sophie learns that the remarkable abilities that have always caused her to stand out identify her as an elf, and after being brought to Eternalia to hone her skills, discovers that she has secrets buried in her memory for which some would kill.

"Siku has always called the Zambezi River her home. She understands the water--and strangely enough, it seems to understand her, too, bending to her will and coming to her aid in times of need. But things are changing on the river--a great dam is being built, displacing thousands of Shonga people--and things are changing in Siku, too, as her ability to manipulate water grows out of control, and visions of a great serpent pull her further from reality and her loving father, Tongai. When Tongai ventures to the Kariba Dam to find a cure for Siku and never returns, she sets off to find him with the help of Amedeo, the young son of Kariba's chief engineer. Together, they traverse elephant graveyards, rugged jungles, and ancient ruins, outrunning pirates, bootleggers, and shape-shifting prophets ready to use Siku to their own advantage. But Siku soon discovers that her father has been shielding a terrible secret: Siku is actually the daughter of the Great River Spirit, Nyaminyami, and the only way to bring about the necessary rumuko--a ritual which has brought balance to the Zambezi for centuries--is for Siku to give up the only life she's ever known. With the future of the Shonga resting on her shoulders, Siku must journey to the source of the river to understand the ancient power hidden within her"--Provided by publisher.

When twelve-year-old Onyeka discovers that she has psychokinetic powers, her mother reveals that she is Solari, part of a secret group of Nigerian mutants that trains at the Academy of the Sun.

The Kingdom keepers discover they are in possession of unusual powers as they work together to rescue their friend and discover the truth about how this real magic has entered their lives.

In rural West Virginia, teen anti-fracker Viv discovers an ability to sense forests' energy, a power that becomes heightened the more she interacts with Dex, the new boy in town.

"Despite all of the odds, Joan achieved the impossible. She reset the timeline, saved her family--and destroyed the hero, Nick. But her success has come at a terrible cost. She alone remembers what happened. Now, Aaron, her hard-won friend--and maybe more--is an enemy, trying to kill her. And Nick, the boy she loved, is a stranger who doesn't even know her name. Only Joan remembers that a greater and more dangerous enemy is still out there. When a deadly attack forces Joan back into the monster world, she finds herself on the run with Nick--as Aaron closes in. Torn between love and family and monstrous choices, Joan must find a way to re-gather her old allies to face down the deadliest of enemies, and to save the timeline itself"--Provided by publisher.

When sixteen-year-old Mateo and Chela discover each other and their powers during a political battle between neighborhood factions, they set aside their differences to unravel the mystery behind their sunken homeland and to stop a dangerous political operative who is trying to harness their gifts to unleash terror on the world.