David Almond.  Clay

The developing relationship between teenager Davie and a mysterious new boy in town morphs into something darker and more sinister when Davie learns firsthand of the boy's supernatural powers.

M. T. Anderson.  The Astonishing Life of  Octavian Nothing, Traitor to

the Nation, Volume 1:  The Pox Party   Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.

Anne-Laure Bondoux.  The Killer's Tears

A young boy, Paolo, and the man who murdered his parents, Angel, gradually become like father and son as they live and work together on the remote Chilean farm where Paolo was born.

Coe Booth.  Tyrell

Fifteen-year-old Tyrell, who is living in a Bronx homeless shelter with his spaced-out mother and his younger brother, tries to avoid temptation so he does not end up in jail like his father.

Kevin Brooks.  The Road of the Dead

Two brothers, sons of an incarcerated gypsy, leave London traveling to an isolated and desolate village, in search of the brutal killer of their sister.

Marina Budhos.  Ask Me No Questions

Fourteen-year-old Nadira, her sister, and their parents leave Bangladesh for New York City, but the expiration of their visas and the events of September 11, 2001, bring frustration, sorrow, and terror for the whole family.

Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.  Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

High school student Nick O'Leary, member of a rock band, meets college-bound Norah Silverberg and asks her to be his girlfriend for five minutes in order to avoid his ex-sweetheart.

D. M.  Cornish.  Monster Blood Tattoo:  Foundling

Having grown up in a home for foundlings and possessing a girl's name, Rossamünd sets out to report to his new job as a lamplighter and has several adventures along the way as he meets people and monsters who are more complicated than he previously thought. Includes glossaries and maps.

Sarah Dessen.  Just Listen

Isolated from friends who believe the worst because she has not been truthful with them, sixteen-year-old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face and share what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life.

Tim Eldred.  Grease Monkey

Graphic novel.

Firebirds Rising:  An Anthology of Original Science Fiction and

Fantasy    A collection of sixteen short science fiction and fantasy stories by award-winning authors.

Susan Fletcher.  Alphabet of Dreams

Fourteen-year-old Mitra, of royal Persian lineage, and her five-year-old brother Babak, whose dreams foretell the future, flee for their lives in the company of the magus Melchoir and two other Zoroastrian priests, traveling through Persia as they follow star signs leading to a newly-born king in Bethlehem.

Helen Frost.  The Braid

Two Scottish sisters, living on the western island of Barra in the 1850s, relate, in alternate voices and linked narrative poems, their experiences after their family is forcibly evicted and separated with one sister accompanying their parents and younger siblings to Cape Breton, Canada, and the other staying behind with other family on the small island of Mingulay.

Jack Gantos.  The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs

A young woman named Ivy, who made a shocking discovery in her small western Pennsylvania town when she was seven years old and learned a surprising secret nine years later, questions whether she has inherited the Rumbaugh curse of having excessive love for one's mother.

Gail Giles.  What Happened to Cass McBride?

After his younger brother commits suicide, Kyle Kirby decides to exact revenge on the person he holds responsible.

Linzi Alex Glass.  The Year the Gypsies Came

In Johannesburg, South Africa, in the late 1960s, twelve-year-old Emily, who longs for affection from her quarreling parents, finds comfort in the stories of a Zulu servant and in her friendship with a young houseguest who has an equally troubled family.

K. L. Going.  Saint Iggy

Iggy Corso, who lives in city public housing, is caught physically and spiritually between good and bad when he is kicked out of high school, goes searching for his missing mother, and causes his friend to get involved with the same dangerous drug dealer who deals to his parents.

Alan Gratz.  Samurai Shortstop

While obtaining a Western education at a prestigious Japanese boarding school in 1890, sixteen-year-old Toyo also receives traditional samurai training which has profound effects on both his baseball game and his relationship with his father.

John Green.  An Abundance of Katherines

Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on a road trip with his best friend to try to find some new direction in life while also trying to create a mathematical formula to explain his relationships.

Sonya Hartnett.  Surrender

As he is dying, a twenty-year-old man known as Gabriel recounts his troubled childhood and his strange relationship with a dangerous counterpart named Finnigan.

Alice Hoffman.  Incantation

During the Spanish Inquisition, sixteen-year-old Estrella, brought up a Catholic, discovers her family's true Jewish identity, and when their secret is betrayed by Estrella's best friend, the consequences are tragic.

Hanna Jansen.  Over a Thousand Hills I Walk With You

Ann Jaramillo.  La Linea

When fifteen-year-old Miguel's time finally comes to leave his poor Mexican village, cross the border illegally, and join his parents in California, his younger sister's determination to join him soon imperils them both.

Harriet McBryde Johnson.  Accidents of Nature

Having always prided herself on blending in with "normal" people despite her cerebral palsy, seventeen-year-old Jean begins to question her role in the world while attending a summer camp for children with disabilities.

Maureen Johnson.  Devilish

Jane Jarvis, a senior at a Catholic girl's school in Providence, Rhode Island, tries to save her best friend by making a pact with a demon--in the form of a cupcake-eating, very friendly teenage girl.

Elizabeth Knox.  Dreamhunter:  Book One of the Dreamhunter Duet

In a world where select people can enter "The Place" and find dreams of every kind to share with others for a fee, a fifteen-year-old girl is training to be a dreamhunter when her father disappears, leaving her to carry on his mysterious mission.

Amy Goldman Koss.  Side Effects

Everything changes for Isabelle, not quite fifteen, when she is diagnosed with lymphoma--but eventually she survives and even thrives.

Bob Krech.  Rebound

Determined to make the varsity basketball team, seventeen-year-old Ray finds his efforts to play both hindered and helped by the atmosphere of racism in his town.

Margo Lanagan.  White Time

Presents ten short stories, both dark and hopeful, that journey into the past, the future, and altered versions of the present.

Lori Lansens.  The Girls

Since their birth, twin sisters Rose and Ruby Darien have been known as "the girls." Raised by Aunt Lovey, the nurse who took them in after their mother abandoned them, they have lived all their lives in the small town of Leaford, in an old farmhouse bordered by cornfields. This is the story of their shared life, two sisters who are ordinary in most respects but who have a relationship of profound and unmatched intimacy. For Rose and Ruby are conjoined twins, connected inseparably, facing the world side by side.

Kirby Larson.  Hattie Big Sky

After inheriting her uncle's homesteading claim in Montana, sixteen-year-old orphan Hattie Brooks travels from Iowa in 1917 to make a home for herself and encounters some unexpected problems related to the war being fought in Europe. Despite everything, Hattie's determined to stay until a tragedy causes her to discover the true meaning of home.

Lat.  Kampung Boy

Lat recounts the life of Mat, a Muslim boy growing up in rural Malaysia in the 1950s: his adventures and mischief-making, fishing trips, religious study, and work on his family's rubber plantation. Meanwhile, the traditional way of life in his village (or "kampung") is steadily disappearing, with tin mines and factory jobs gradually replacing family farms and rubber small-holders. When Mat himself leaves for boarding school, he can only hope that his familiar "kampung" will still be there when he returns.

Janet Taylor Lisle.  Black Duck

Years afterwards, Ruben Hart tells the story of how, in 1929 Newport, Rhode Island, his family and his best friend's family were caught up in the violent competition among groups trying to control the local rum-smuggling trade.

Scott Lynch.  The Lies of Locke Lamora

An orphan's life is harsh - and often short - in the island city of Camorr, built on the ruins of a mysterious alien race. But born with a quick wit and a gift for thieving, Locke Lamora has dodged both death and slavery, only to fall into the hands of an eyeless priest known as Chains - a man who is neither blind nor a priest.

Patricia McCormick.  Sold

Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape.

Kirsten Miller.  Kiki Strike:  Inside the Shadow City

Life becomes more interesting for Ananka Fishbein when, at the age of twelve, she discovers an underground room in the park across from her New York City apartment and meets a mysterious girl called Kiki Strike who claims that she, too, wants to explore the subterranean world.

David Mitchell.  Black Swan Green

Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an observed world that is anything but sleepy.

Catherine Gilbert Murdock.  Dairy Queen

After spending her summer running the family farm and training the quarterback for her school's rival football team, sixteen-year-old D.J. decides to go out for the sport herself, not anticipating the reactions of those around her.

Walter Dean Myers.  Street Love

This story told in free verse is set against a background of street gangs and poverty in Harlem in which seventeen-year-old African American Damien takes a bold step to ensure that he and his new love will not be separated.

An Na.  Wait for Me

As her senior year in high school approaches, Mina yearns to find her own path in life but working at the family business, taking care of her little sister, and dealing with her mother's impossible expectations are as stifling as the southern California heat, until she falls in love with a man who offers a way out.

Susan Beth Pfeffer.  Life as We Knew It

Through journal entries sixteen-year-old Miranda describes her family's struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon, causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.

Tamora Pierce.  Terrier

When sixteen-year-old Beka becomes "Puppy" to a pair of "Dogs," as the Provost's Guards are called, she uses her police training, natural abilities, and a touch of magic to help them solve the case of a murdered baby in Tortall's Lower City.

Frank Portman.  King Dork

High school loser Tom Henderson discovers that "The Catcher in the Rye" may hold the clues to the many mysteries in his life.

Terry Pratchett.  Wintersmith

When witch-in-training Tiffany Aching accidentally interrupts the Dance of the Seasons and awakens the interest of the elemental spirit of Winter, she requires the help of the six-inch-high, sword-wielding, sheep-stealing Wee Free Men to put the seasons aright.

Charlie Price.  Dead Connection

A loner who communes with the dead in the town cemetery hears the voice of a murdered cheerleader and tries to convince the adults that he knows what happened to her.

Dana Reinhardt.  A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life

Sixteen-year-old atheist Simone Turner-Bloom's life changes in unexpected ways when her parents convince her to make contact with her biological mother, an agnostic from a Jewish family who is losing her battle with cancer.

Meg Rosoff.  Just in Case

Convinced that fate is out to get him, fifteen-year-old David Case assumes a new identity in the hope of avoiding what he believes is certain doom.

Meghan Nuttall Sayres.  Anahita's Woven Riddle

In Iran, more than 100 years ago, a young girl with three suitors gets permission from her father and a holy man to weave into her wedding rug a riddle to be solved by her future husband, which will ensure that he has wit to match hers.

Marcus Sedgwick.  The Foreshadowing

Having always been able to know when someone is going to die, Alexandra poses as a nurse to go to France during World War I to locate her brother and to try to save him from the fate she has foreseen for him.

Shyam Selvadurai.  Swimming in the Monsoon Sea

The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it is the season of monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life "before," when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith's holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school's production of "Othello" and he is learning to type at Uncle Lucky's tropical fish business. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith's ordered life is storm-tossed. He finds himself falling in love with the Canadian boy.

John Smelcer.  The Trap

In alternating chapters, seventeen-year-old Johnny Least-Weasel, who is better known for brains than brawn, worries about his missing grandfather, and the grandfather, Albert Least-Weasel, struggles to survive, caught in his own steel trap in the Alaskan winter.

David Stahler, Jr.  Doppelganger

When a sixteen-year-old member of a race of shape-shifting killers called doppelgangers assumes the life of a troubled teen, he becomes unexpectedly embroiled in human life--and it is nothing like what he has seen on television.

Jean-Philippe Stassen.  Deogratias, a Tale of Rwanda

Set in Rwanda before and after the Tutsi genocide, and seen through the eyes of a young Hutu boy, this story reveals the grip of madness and horror on one young man and his country.

Katherine Sturtevant.  A True and Faithful Narrative

In London in the 1680s, Meg--now sixteen years old--tries to decide whether to marry either of the two men who court her, taking into account both love and her writing ambitions.

Tim Tharp.  Knights of the Hill Country

In his senior year, high school star linebacker Hampton Greene finally begins to think for himself and discovers that he might be interested in more than just football.

Megan Whalen Turner.  The King of Attolia

Eugenides, still known as a Thief of Eddis, faces palace intrigue and assassins as he strives to prove himself both to the people of Attolia and to his new bride, their queen.

Twice Told:  Original Stories Inspired by Original Art

Presents nine drawings by a single illustrator, each of which has been translated into a story by two different authors writing about what they imagine is going on in the picture.

Susan Vaught.  Trigger

Teenager Jersey Hatch must work through his extensive brain damage to figure out why he decided to shoot himself.

Ned Vizzini.  It's Kind of a Funny Story

A humorous account of a New York City teenager's battle with depression and his time spent in a psychiatric hospital.

Paul Volponi.  Rooftop

Still reeling from seeing police shoot his unarmed cousin to death on the roof of a New York City housing project, seventeen-year-old Clay is dragged into the whirlwind of political manipulation that follows.

Adrienne Maria Vrettos.  Skin

When his parents decide to separate, eighth-grader Donnie watches with horror as the physical condition of his sixteen-year old sister, Karen, deteriorates due to an eating disorder.

Nancy Werlin.  The Rules of Survival

Seventeen-year-old Matthew recounts his attempts, starting at a young age, to free himself and his sisters from the grip of their emotionally and physically abusive mother.

Ellen Wittlinger.  Blind Faith

While coping with her grandmother's sudden death and her mother's resulting depression and fascination with a spiritualist church, whose ministers claim to communicate with the dead, fifteen-year-old Liz finds herself falling for a new neighbor whose mother is dying of cancer.

Chris Wooding.  Storm Thief

With the help of a golem, two teenaged thieves try to survive on the city island of Orokos, where unpredictable probability storms continually change both the landscape and the inhabitants.

Daniel Woodress.  Winter's Bone:  A Novel

The sheriff's deputy at the front door brings hard news to Ree Dolly. Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date.  Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley. But the house is all they have, and Ree's father would never forfeit it to the bond company unless something awful happened. With two young brothers depending on her and a mother who's entered a kind of second childhood, Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive, or else see her family turned out into the unforgiving cold.

Gene Luen Yang.  American Born Chinese

Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format.

Markus Zusak.  The Book Thief

Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

Ann Bausum.  Freedom Riders:  John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the

Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement   "Freedom Riders" compares and contrasts the childhoods of John Lewis, growing up in black America, and Jim Zwerg, growing up in white America, in a way that helps young readers understand the segregated experience of our nation's past.

Michael Benanav.  Men of Salt:  Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan

of White Gold   After hearing that the last remaining camel caravans were threatened by the introduction of trucks, American journalist and photographer Michael Benanav joined one as it headed into the deadly heart of the Sahara to obtain slabs of solid salt to sell at market. In this accessible narrative, he recounts his experiences among the camel drivers as they traveled for nearly 1,000 miles without a map or visible landmarks, through sandstorms and searing heat.

Margarita Engle and Sean Qualls.  The Poet Slave of Cuba:  A

Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano  Juan Francisco Manzano was born in 1797 into the household of wealthy slaveowners in Cuba. He spent his early years at the side of his owner's wife, entertaining her friends. His poetry was his outlet, reflecting the beauty and cruelty of his world. Written in verse.

Sid Fleischman.  Escape!:  The Story of the Great Houdini

In this passionate biography, the Newbery Medal-winning author of "The Whipping Boy" turns his eye to the greatest magician of them all: Harry Houdini.

Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin.  5,000 Miles to

Freedom:  Ellen and William Craft's Flight from Slavery Ellen and William Craft were two of the few slaves to ever escape from the Deep South. Their first escape took them to Philadelphia, then on to Boston pursued by slave hunters, and finally 5000 miles across the ocean to England, where they were able to settle peacefully.

Russell Freedman.  Freedom Walkers:  The Story of the Montgomery

Bus Boycott   Covers the events surrounding and including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the end of segregation on buses.

Hill Harper.  Letters to a Young Brother:  MANifest Your Destiny

Deborah Hopkinson.  Up before Daybreak:  Cotton and People in

America   Read about the importance of cotton in America's history and learn about the lives of people who picked it and worked with it.

John Hubner.  Last Chance in Texas:  The Redemption of Criminal

Youth  

Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon.  The 9/11 Report:  A Graphic

Adaptation   This graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Commission's official report on the terrorist attacks puts at every American's fingertips the most defining event of the century. Sid Jacobson's text faithfully captures the report's investigative thoroughness, while Ernie Colon's stunning artwork powerfully conveys the facts, insights, and urgency of the original.

Carla Killough McClafferty.  Something Out of Nothing:  Marie Curie

and Radium   Meet Manya Sklodowska, better known today as Marie Curie, the co-discoverer of radium, and who became the first woman awarded the Nobel prize for her work on the discovery. Learn what life was like for Marie, and the effect her discovery had on the world.

Deborah Noyes.  One Kingdom:  Our Lives with Animals

Photographer and former zookeeper Noyes delivers an artfully designed photo essay that examines the ways humans' lives have overlapped with animals throughout history and embarks on a quest for understanding the "other" kingdom.

James I. Robertson, Jr.  Robert E. Lee:  Virginian Soldier, American

Citizen   Provides young adult readers with a comprehensive look at the life and accomplishments of this famous Confederate General of the Civil War, enhanced with period photos, illustrations, and source notes.

Catherine Thimmesh.  Team Moon:  Now 400,000 People Landed

Apollo 11 on the Moon  Culled from direct quotes from the people behind the scenes, NASA transcripts, national archives and NASA photos, the whole story of Apollo 11 and the first moon landing emerges.