Robert Cormier: 17 books

Seventeen-year-old Mike visits his grandmother’s bedside and learns a family secret.    A divorced father discovers that only love, not bribes, can keep his daughter “his” on Thursdays.   A young white boy finds that friendship—and betrayal—can cross racial boundaries.   Robert Cormier...

Before there was Lois Lowry’s The Giver or M. T. Anderson’s Feed, there was Robert Cormier’s I Am the Cheese, a subversive classic that broke new ground for YA literature. A boy’s search for his father becomes a desperate journey to unlock a secret past. But the past must not be remembered...

Eugene is remembering the summer of 1938 in Frenchtown, a time when he began to wonder “what I was doing here on the planet Earth.” Here in vibrant, exquisite detail are his lovely mother, his aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, and especially his beloved, enigmatic father. Here, too, is the...

Buddy Walker is troubled by his parent’s recent divorce, and when Harry Flowers suggests a prank, he goes along, just for opportunity to do something different. He doesn’t realize that someone is watching.    When Jane Jerome’s house is trashed, and sister brutally injured in a home invasion,...

Sixteen-year-old Miro had instructions to kill the bus driver immediately.   They would then take the busload of children to the bridge and begin the standoff. Artkin was Miro’s mentor; the mastermind behind this act of terrorism that would get the world’s attention.  But Artkin had told Miro...

Money’s tight and Henry is lucky to have the job at Mr. Hairston’s grocery store. His parents are both lost in despair following the death of Henry’s older brother, and Henry is glad for the opportunity to feel like he’s helping. Saving to buy a marker for Eddie’s grave, Henry tries to ignore...

Francis Joseph Cassavant is 18. He has just returned home from the Second World War, and he has no face. He does have a gun and a mission: to murder his childhood hero.    Francis lost most of his face when he fell on a grenade in France. He received the Silver Star for bravery, but was it really...

Denny answered the phone.    He was forbidden to ever answer the phone, but at 16, he figured his dad’s rule was just stupid. And Denny is soon plunged into a terrifying ordeal of revenge and madness for a horrific incident that happened 25 years before. 

One of the most controversial YA novels of all time, The Chocolate War is a modern masterpiece that speaks to fans of S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and John Knowles’s A Separate Peace.   After suffering rejection from seven major publishers, The Chocolate War made its debut in 1974, and quickly...

Twelve-year old Jason is accused of the brutal murder of a young girl. Is he innocent or guilty? The shocked town calls on an interrogator with a stellar reputation: he always gets a confession. The confrontation between Jason and his interrogator forms the chilling climax of this terrifying look...

The school year is almost at an end, and the chocolate sale is ancient history. But no one at Trinity School can forget the Chocolate War.   Devious Archie Costello, commander of the secret school organization called the Vigils, still has some torturous assignments to hand out before he graduates....

IT IS THE summer of 1938 when young Paul Moreaux discovers he can “fade.” First bewildered, then thrilled with the power of invisibility, Paul experiments. But his “gift” soon shows him shocking secrets and drives him toward a chilling act. “Imagine what might happen if Holden Caufield...

Eighteen-year-old Eric has just been released from juvenile detention for murdering his mother and stepfather. Now he’s looking for tenderness—tenderness he finds in caressing and killing beautiful girls. Fifteen-year-old Lori has run away from home again. Emotionally naïve but sexually...

They are all going to die. All of the patients at the Complex are terminal, with no hope of reprieve. But they’ve volunteered to come here, to this experimental clinic to allow themselves to be test subjects. Still, they’re all going to die.   All except Barney. Barney cannot remember much about...