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SHADOW PEOPLE Joyce McDonald Hardcover Delacorte Books for Young Readers | November 2000 | $15.95 | 0-385-32662-9 | Ages 12 up

Four lonely and angry teens are united by accident and form a gang known as the Lords of Destruction. Gabriel is obsessed with finding the “thugs” who murdered his brother; Lydia is determined to escape the hands of a controlling father; Alec wants to fight the system that sent him to a detention center; and Hollis Feeney, age fifteen and the most brilliant of the four, is fixated on a poor self-image. In the beginning, they commit small acts of vandalism, but their frustration escalates to a more serious act when they blow up an abandoned building and kill a homeless man. Then there is Gem Hennessey, an outsider who complicates matters because both Gabriel and Alec are in love with her. But Hollis simply sees her as a threat to his plan of destruction, and wants to get rid of her. The troubled teens are arrested and face charges of vandalism, breaking and entering, theft, arson, conspiracy, and manslaughter. Told in alternating viewpoints, this psychological thriller raises important questions about hate, crime, and personal anger.

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Prepared by Pat Scales, Director of Library Services, the South Carolina Governor’s School for Arts and Humanities, Greenville, SC

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