Lady in the Lake
The Hunt for Red October

Long Way Down

New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s “tour de force” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) novel in verse takes place in sixty potent seconds: the time it takes a kid to go down an elevator—and decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother.

Will’s older brother, Shawn, has been shot.
Dead.
Will feels a sadness so great, he can’t explain it. But in his neighborhood there are THE RULES:

No. 1: Crying.
Don’t.
No matter what.

No. 2: Snitching
Don’t.
No matter what.

No. 3: Revenge
Do.
No matter what.

So fifteen-year-old Will puts a gun in the waistband of his jeans and sets out to do just that. Avenge his brother. But when he gets on the elevator, it inexplicably stops on every floor, and each time, a different person—each connected to his brother—steps on. And each person gives Will a bigger piece of the story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator.

Not to mention that each person who gets on that elevator is…dead.

Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

More Non-Juvenile, YA Books

  • Skillfully weaving together oral narratives, archival research, existing published histories, and his own family's recollections and stories, Aamaawia John Bickers illustrates the broader strategies and forces that affected how the Miami Nation responded to American imperial expansion, illuminating the challenges, achievements, and occasional missteps along the way.

  • When Ex-Green Beret George Hayduke returns from war to find his beloved Southwestern desert threatened by industrial development, it’s up to him to take the noxious bull by the horns.

  • With admirable scholarship, Mrs. Brooks has traced the background of conflict, analyzed the emotional climate at the time, pointed up the social and military organization in Utah, and revealed the forces which culminated in the great tragedy at Mountain Meadows.

  • Douglass begins by saying that he does not know his birthday and this bothers him.