Steve Alten.  The Loch

Incorporating the latest research and "new evidence," that leads to real answers concerning the Loch Ness monster's identity, bestselling author Steve Alten weaves a tale of horror about the most publicized and controversial creature ever imagined.

Philip Beard.   Dear Zoe:  A Novel

Fifteen-year-old Tess attempts to work through her guilt and grief over the death of her three-year-old sister Zoe by writing letters to the child who was struck and killed by a car on September 11, 2001, while Tess was supposed to be watching her.

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.

Elise Broach.  Desert Crossing

A summer trip across the New Mexico desert turns nightmarish for fourteen-year-old Lucy, her older brother Jamie, and his best friend Kit, as they become involved in the suspicious death of a young girl.

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.

Michael Connelly.  The Closers:  A Novel

25-year LAPD veteran Harry Bosch comes back from retirement to try to solve the 1988 murder of a 16-year-old girl.

John Coy.  Crackback

Miles barely recalls when football was fun after being sidelined by a new coach, constantly criticized by his father, and pressured by his best friend to take performance-enhancing drugs.

Melissa De La Cruz.  Blue Bloods

Select teenagers from some of New York City's wealthiest and most socially prominent families learn a startling secret about their bloodlines.

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.

Sharon Draper.  Copper Sun

Two fifteen-year-old girls--one a slave and the other an indentured servant--escape their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves.

Alane Ferguson.  The Christopher Killer

On the payroll as an assistant to her coroner father, seventeen-year-old Cameryn Mahoney uses her knowledge of forensic medicine to catch the killer of a friend while putting herself in terrible danger.

Sharon Flake.  Bang!

A teenage boy must face the harsh realities of inner city life, a disintegrating family, and destructive temptations as he struggles to find his identity as a young man.

Christine Fletcher.  Tallulah Falls

Having left her Oregon home to meet a troubled friend in Florida, high-school student Tallulah finds herself stranded in Tennessee and taken in by the employees of a veterinary clinic.

Mariah Fredericks.  Crunch Time

Four students, who have formed a study group to prepare for the SAT exam, sustain each other through the emotional highs and lows of their junior year in high school.

Garret Freymann-Weyr.  Stay With Me

When her sister kills herself, sixteen-year-old Leila goes looking for a reason and, instead, discovers great love, her family's true history, and what her own place in it is.

Don Gallo, ed.  What Are You Afraid Of?  Stories About Phobias

Presents ten short stories by well-known authors featuring teenagers with phobias, inluding fear of gaining weight, fear of clowns, and fear of cats.

James Cross Giblin.  Good Brother, Bad Brother:  The Story of Edwin

Booth and John Wilkes Booth    History has recorded John Wilkes Booth as the most notorious of assassins.  This book takes a look at his brother, famed actor Edwin Booth, and how Lincoln's assassination affected his career and the lives of the Booth family.

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.

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.

John Grogan.  Marley & Me:  Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog

John and Jenny were just beginning their life together. Then they brought home Marley, a wiggly yellow furball of a puppy. Life would never be the same. Marley grew into a barreling, ninety-seven-pound streamroller of a Labrador retriever. He crashed through screen doors, gouged through drywall, and stole women's undergarments. Obedience school did no good - Marley was expelled. But just as Marley joyfully refused any limits on his behavior, his love and loyalty were boundless, too. Marley remained a model of devotion, even when his family was at its wit's end. Unconditional love, they would learn, comes in many forms.

Ann Halam.  Siberia

After spending two years at a prison school, thirteen-year-old Sloe sets off on a trek across frozen wastelands, tending to the secret "seeds" of wild animals her mother left in her care, trying to reach a new life for all of them.

Pete Hautman.  Rash

In a future society that has decided it would "rather be safe than free," sixteen-year-old Bo's anger control problems land him in a tundra jail where he survives with the help of his running skills and an artificial intelligence program named Bork.

April Henry.  Shock Point

Fifteen-year-old Cassie Streng is determined to expose her stepfather after learning that he is giving a dangerous experimental drug to his teenaged psychiatric patients, but he sends her to a boot camp for troubled teens in Mexico in order to keep her quiet.

Ellen Hopkins.  Burned

Seventeen-year-old Pattyn, the eldest daughter in a large Mormon family, is sent to her aunt's Nevada ranch for the summer, where she temporarily escapes her alcoholic, abusive father and finds love and acceptance, only to lose everything when she returns home.

Katherine Ryan Hyde.  Becoming Chloe

A gay teenage boy and a fragile teenage girl meet while living on the streets of New York City and eventually decide to take a road trip across America to discover whether or not the world is a beautiful place.

Melissa Kantor.  If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince?

When the father of high school sophomore, Lucy Norton, remarries, Lucy finds herself tormented by two bratty stepsisters and a wicked stepmother.

Ronald Kidd.  Monkey Town

When her father hatches a plan to bring publicity to their small Tennessee town by arresting a local high school teacher for teaching about evolution, the resulting 1925 Scopes trial prompts fifteen-year-old Frances to rethink many of her beliefs about religion and truth, as well as her relationship with her father.

Gordon Korman.  Born to Rock

High school senior Leo Caraway, a conservative Republican, learns that his biological father is a punk rock legend.

Carolyn Lehman.  Strong at the Heart:  How It Feels to Heal From

Sexual Abuse  Every year more than half a million young people are sexually abused or assaulted in North America. This groundbreaking book brings readers face-to-face with nine survivors who speak with candor and courage about the abuse they experienced, how they have healed, and how they are moving forward with their lives. White, black, Latino, and Native American, these everyday heroes come from a wide range of communities and have found different ways to cope with and overcome sexual trauma.

Diane Les Becquets.  Love, Cajun Style

Teenaged Lucy learns about life and love with the help of her friends and saucy Tante Pearl over the course of one hot Louisiana summer before her senior year of high school.

Chris Lynch.  Inexcusable

High school senior and football player Keir sets out to enjoy himself on graduation night, but when he attempts to comfort a friend whose date has left her stranded, things go terribly wrong.

Tracy Lynn.  Rx

Thyme Gilchrest is an honors student. Thyme Gilchrest is popular. Thyme Gilchrest is on student council. Thyme Gilchrest is a drug dealer. Like piecing together a logic puzzle, Thyme has organized a complex trading system that enables her to obtain the meds her friends need. Thyme Gilchrest is nothing if not good at dealing.

Peter Marino.  Dough Boy

Overweight, fifteen-year-old Tristan, who lives happily with his divorced mother and her boyfriend Frank, suddenly finds that he must deal with intensified criticism about his weight and other aspects of his life when Frank's popular but troubled, nutrition-obsessed daughter moves in.

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.

Mary Beth Miller.  On the Head of a Pin

While drinking alcohol and playing with a loaded gun at a party, a teenage boy accidentally shoots and kills another student and then tries to conceal her death.

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.

Sonia Nazario.  Enrique's Journey

Enrique, a Honduran boy, braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States.

William Nicholson.  Seeker

Having been rejected by the Nomana--the revered warrior-monk order they long to join--sixteen-year-olds Seeker and Morning Star, along with a curious pirate named Wildman, attempt to prove that they are worthy of joining the community, after all.

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.

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.

Sharon Shinn.  The Truth-Teller's Tale

Twins Eleda, who can tell only the truth, and Adele, who cannot reveal others' secrets, are sorely tested by a newly arrived pair of handsome dance instructors who seem to harbor a secret.

Walter Sorrells.  Club Dread

When sixteen-year-old Chastity witnesses the murder of a pop star, her hopes of settling down with her mother in San Francisco seem to disappear.

Suzanne Fisher Staples.  Under the Persimmon Tree

During the 2001 Afghan War, the lives of Najmal, a young refugee from Kunduz, Afghanistan, and Nusrat, an American-Muslim teacher who is awaiting her husband's return from Mazar-i-Sharif, intersect at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Tanya Lee Stone.  A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl

Josie, Nicolette, and Aviva all get mixed up with a senior boy who can talk them into doing almost anything he wants. In a blur of high school hormones and personal doubt, each girl struggles with how much to give up and what ultimately to keep for herself.

Joyce Sweeney.  Headlock

High school senior Kyle is determined to become a professional wrestler but his dream is threatened by a loved one's illness and the dramatic reappearance of a long-absent relative.

Diane Tullson.  Red Sea

During an around-the-world voyage, Libby's boat is attacked by pirates who kill her stepfather.  Fourteen-year-old Libby must then fend for both herself and her grievously injured mother.

Susan Vaught.  Trigger

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

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.

Kevin Waltman.  Learning the Game

When he and his high-school basketball teammates steal from a fraternity house in their small Indiana town, Nate contends with his guilt, his loyalty to his friends, and his desire to help his older brother who comes under suspicion for the crime.

Will Weaver.  Full Service

In the summer of 1965, teenager Paul Sutton, a northern Minnesota farm boy, takes a job at a gas station in town, where his strict religious upbringing is challenged by new people and experiences.

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.

Scott Westerfeld.  Peeps

Cal Thompson is a carrier of a parasite that causes vampirism, and must hunt down all of the girlfriends he has unknowingly infected.

Chris Wooding.  Poison

When Poison leaves her home in the marshes of Gull to retrieve the infant sister who was snatched by the fairies, she and a group of unusual friends survive encounters with the inhabitants of various Realms, and Poison herself confronts a surprising destiny.

Marcus 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.