In what has become an end-of-year tradition, Bill Bussey, longtime English teacher and provost, conducted a virtual student book toss during one of the last virtual assemblies of the 2020-2021 school year. Typically, Bussey would physically propel some of his personal favorites, current best-sellers and an array of classics from the stage of Lawrence Auditorium out to a sea of students lunging to catch them. Last year, student names were drawn out of a hat and announced virtually. Here are the titles and brief descriptions of the books that the lucky winners took home for the summer.

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

With a degree from Princeton and two years of law school under his belt, Darren Mathews could have easily taken his place among the elite of African-American attorneys. Instead, he followed his uncle's lead to become a Texas Ranger. The East Texas town of Lark is small enough to drive through "in the time it [takes] to sneeze," but it's big enough to have had not one, but two such murders. The deeper Darren digs into the cases, encountering lives steeped in his home state's musical and social history, the more he begins to distrust his professional—and personal—instincts.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

Harriet "Hal" Westaway is barely making ends meet as a tarot reader on the Brighton Pier. Her mother died in a hit-and-run several years before, and in her grief, Hal has drifted into a solitary life. Worse still, she's under threat from a loan shark who's come to collect the interest on an earlier debt. So, when she receives a letter saying she's been named in the will of, possibly, an unknown grandmother, she decides to travel to Cornwall, despite fearing that it's probably all a mistake. Ware's novels continue to evoke comparison to Agatha Christie; they certainly have that classic flavor despite the contemporary settings. Expertly paced, expertly crafted.

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

Camino Rios lives in the Dominican Republic and yearns to go to Columbia University in New York City, where her father works most of the year. Yahaira Rios lives in Morningside Heights and hasn't spoken to her dad since the previous summer when she discovered he had another wife in the Dominican Republic. Their lives collide when their father—the same man—dies in an airplane crash with hundreds of other passengers heading to the Dominican Republic. Every line is laced with betrayal and longing as the teens struggle with loving someone despite their imperfections.

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

A fierce 13-year-old girl propels this dark, moving thriller. A tiny, picturesque town on the California coast is an emotional prison for the characters of this impressive, often lyrical novel. Its two main characters are a cop with an improbable naïveté and a child too old for her years. Whitaker crafts an absorbing plot around crimes in the present and secrets long buried, springing surprises to the very end.

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

Set in New York City during the Depression and World War II. We meet 12-year-old Anna Kerrigan accompanying her adored father, Eddie, to the Manhattan Beach home of suave mobster Dexter Styles. Just scraping by "in the dregs of 1934," Eddie is lobbying Styles for a job; he's sick of acting as bagman for a crooked union official, and he badly needs money to buy a wheelchair for his severely disabled younger daughter, Lydia. A fatal outcome for one appealing protagonist is balanced by Shakespearean reconciliation and renewal for others in a tender, haunting conclusion. Realistically detailed, poetically charged, and utterly satisfying.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Nguyen's protagonist tells us from the very first sentence, in a call-me-Ishmael moment, that he's a mole: "I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces." Two faces, two races, neither wholly trusted. Our hero is attached to the command of a no-nonsense South Vietnamese general who's airlifted out at the fall of Saigon in 1975, protected by dewy Americans, "with not a hint of a needle track in the crooks of their arms or a whiff of marijuana in their pressed, jungle-free fatigues," and whisked stateside, where the protagonist once spent time absorbing Americanness. Meanwhile, the general is at the center of a potent community of exiles whom the protagonist is charged with spying on—though it turns out he's as much observed as an observer. Both chilling and funny, and a worthy addition to the library of first-rate novels about the Vietnam War.

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas

The tale begins in Garden Heights in 1998, when Starr's parents, Maverick and Lisa, are high school seniors in love and planning for the future. Thomas proves Game of Thrones–esque in her worldbuilding ability, deepening her landscape without sacrificing intimacy or heart. Garden Heights doesn't contain dragons or sorcerers, but it's nevertheless a kingdom under siege, and the contemporary pressures its royalty faces are graver for the realness that no magic spell can alleviate.

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

In an apocalyptic future Canada, Indigenous people have been forced to live on the run to avoid capture by the Recruiters, government military agents who kidnap Indians and confine them to facilities called "schools." Orphan Frenchie (Métis) is rescued from the Recruiters by Miigwans (Anishnaabe) along with a small band of other Indians from different nations, most young and each with a tragic story. Miigwans leads the group north to find others, holding on to the belief of safety in numbers.

Super Fake Love Songs by David Yoon

Unlike Gray, his aspiring rock star older brother, camera-shy Korean-American teen Sunny Dae loves sharing his nerdy hobbies of live-action role-playing Dungeons & Dragons and designing cosplay props with his best friends, Milo and Jamal—despite the bullying he receives from a school jock. Milo is Guatemalan-American and Jamal is Jamaican-American, and the trio has bonded in their Southern California town that is over 99% White. Then Sunny meets Rancho Ruby High School's newest student, the beautiful, worldly, music-loving, Korean-American Cirrus Soh. Soon, he finds himself doing things he's never done before, like pretending his brother's band is actually his. A clever, hilarious, and empathetic look at diverse teens exploring authenticity, identities, and code-switching.

City of Thieves by David Benioff

It's New Year's Eve in 1941, and Lev Beniov is alone in Leningrad. The 17-year-old's mother and sister were evacuated before the siege began in September; his father, a respected poet, was "removed" by the NKVD in 1937. Lev's real troubles begin when a German paratrooper, frozen to death, lands on his street. Lev deserts his firefighter's post, steals the German's knife, is arrested by soldiers and jailed. Despite a "parade of atrocities," the pace will keep your adrenaline pumping right up to the climactic chess game between Lev and a fiendish Nazi officer. This gut-churning thriller will sweep you along. An annual favorite in our book toss over the last decade.

Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America by Gigi Georges

Georges presents the stories of five young women on the cusp of adulthood in Maine's furthest northeast county. She began chronicling her subjects, whose names she has changed due to privacy concerns, in their teens, conducting interviews and following their lives. McKenna, a gifted softball pitcher, has been hauling lobsters with her father and brother since childhood, and has saved enough money to buy her own boat. As she finishes high school, she is torn between offers from two colleges and her passion: becoming one of the few females in the area running their own boat. Audrey is a basketball star and a dedicated member of her school's civil rights team. Though she matriculates at prestigious Bates College, she finds it to be a tough fit and transfers. And Josie, the class valedictorian, is accepted at Yale, and also finds herself questioning her parents' conservative religious beliefs. Each of these stories reflects the extreme challenges of life in poor, rural America, areas that are often awash with substance abuse, offer few opportunities for education, and lack decent-paying career opportunities. It's almost impossible not to care about these fierce young women and cheer for their hard-won success.

The Back Roads to March by John Feinstein

Feinstein returns to his first love—college basketball—with a fascinating and compelling journey through a landscape of unsung, unpublicized, and often unknown heroes of Division I college hoops. Feinstein pulls back the curtain on college basketball's lesser-known Cinderella stories—the smaller programs that no one expects to win, who have no chance of attracting the most coveted high school recruits. To tell this story, Feinstein follows a handful of players, coaches, and schools who dream not of winning the NCAA tournament, but of making it past their first- or second-round games. Every once in a while, one of these coaches or players is plucked from obscurity to lead a major team or play professionally, cementing their status in these fiercely passionate fan bases as a legend. Feinstein reveals the big-time programs you've never heard of, the bracket busters you didn't expect to cheer for, and the coaches who inspire them to take their teams to the next level.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

The national bestseller and the first volume in McCarthy's Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at 16 finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic, and sometimes tragic journey to a place where dreams are paid for. There's nothing quite like this novel. Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.