It was a dark and stormy night...

The folks who write book jacket blurbs have a daunting task. They have just a couple of paragraphs to convince potential readers that, yes, this is the book to buy/borrow/read. Maybe I'm a pushover but, based on their blurbs, I want to read several of the titles that are currently on our new book shelf. Here are a few excerpts:

It all starts the day Stephen Rose arrives in town. Thirteen-year old Davie and his best friend, Geordie, are altar boys at their Catholic church. They're full of mischief, stealing the sacramental wine and battling with the local toughs. But that all changes when Father O'Mahoney asks them to befriend Stephen.

Forty-seven is a young slave boy living under the watchful eye of a brutal slave master. His life seems doomed, until he meets a mysterious runaway slave, Tall John. The two become inseparable, and Forty-seven soon finds himself swept up in an otherworldly battle and a personal struggle for his own liberation.

Seventeen-year-old Phil has felt like an outsider as long as he can remember. All Phil has ever known about his father is that he was Number Three on his mother's long list -- third in a series of affairs that have set Phil's family even further apart from the critical townspeople across the river. As for his own sexuality, Phil doesn't care what the neighbors will think; he's just waiting for the right guy to come along.

Callum is a Naught, a second-class citizen in a society run by the ruling Crosses. Sephy is a Cross, and daughter of the man slated to become prime minister. In their world, white naughts and black Crosses simply don't mix -- and they certainly don't fall in love. But that's exactly what they've done.

See if you can match up the blurbs with their titles and authors (okay, okay, two of them are gimmes):

Clay, by David Almond (Fiction AL68c 2006)
Naughts & Crosses: A Thriller, by Marjorie Blackman (Fiction B565n 2005)
The Center of the World, by Andreas Steinhofel (Fiction St358m:E)
47, by Walter Mosley (Fiction M853f)