, James Howe
Outspoken thirteen-year-old Addie Carle learns about love, loss, and staying true to herself as she navigates seventh grade, enjoys a visit from her grandmother, fights with her boyfriend, and endures gossip and meanness from her former best friend.

Back When You Were Easier to Love, Emily Wing Smith
When her boyfriend Zan leaves high school in Utah a year early to attend Pitzer College, a broken-hearted Joy and Zan’s best friend Noah take off on a road trip to California seeking “closure.”

 

Dearly Departed, Lia Habel
Nora Dearly, a young woman in New Victoria, a high-tech society based on an ancient age, escapes her aunt’s plans to marry her off for money when she is nearly kidnapped by a horde of walking corpses, and ends up battling them and the Laz, the fatal virus that raises the dead, while falling in love with Bram Griswold, a young soldier in a special undead unit that has availed itself of modern science in 2195 to hold onto his mind, manners, and body parts.

Fins Are Forever, Tera Lynn Childs
Mermaid princess Lily is about to renounce her place in the royal succession of the undersea kingdom of Thalassina and spend her life on land with the boy she loves, until her annoying cousin appears and throws her decision into doubt.

The FitzOsbornes in Exile, Michelle Cooper
In January 1937, as Sophia FitzOsborne continues to record in her journal, the members of Montmaray’s royal family are living in luxurious exile in England but, even as they participate in the social whirl of London parties and balls, they remain determined to free their island home from the occupying Germans despite growing rumors of a coming war that might doom their country forever.

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, Lish McBride
Sam LaCroix, a Seattle fast-food worker and college dropout, discovers that he is a necromancer, part of a world of harbingers, werewolves, satyrs, and one particular necromancer who sees Sam as a threat to his lucrative business of raising the dead.

Hunted, Adam Slater
At the time called The Shadowing, the barrier between the netherworld and the human world begins to break down, and as fourteen-year-old Callum sees his visions of grisly murders coming true he strives to fulfill his destiny to stand against bloodthirsty demon forces while he, himself, is being hunted.

Huntress, Malinda Lo
Seventeen-year-olds Kaede and Taisin are called to go on a dangerous and unprecedented journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen, in an effort to restore the balance of nature in the human world.

The Isle of Blood (Monstrumologist, Book 3), Rick Yancey
When Dr. Warthrop goes hunting for the “Holy Grail of Monstrumology” in 1888, twelve-year-old orphan Will Henry follows him to Socotra, plunging into depths of horror worse than anything he has experienced so far.

Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25, Richard Paul Evans
To everyone at Meridian High School, fourteen-year-old Michael Vey is nothing special, just the kid who has Tourette’s syndrome. But in truth, Michael is extremely special–he has electric powers. Michael thinks he is unique until he discovers that a cheerleader named Taylor has the same mysterious powers. With the help of Michael’s friend, Ostin, the three of them set out to discover how Michael and Taylor ended up with their abilities, and their investigation soon brings them to the attention of a powerful group who wants to control the electric teens–and through them, the world.

The Ocean of Blood (The Saga of Larten Crepsley, Book 2), Darren Shan
As young vampires, Larten Crepsley and his blood brother Wester travel widely, trying to experience fully the violent, hedonistic pleasures of the human world before committing to the vampire life.

Stay With Me, Paul Griffin (Teen Book Festival 2012 Author)
Fifteen-year-olds Mack, a high school drop-out but a genius with dogs, and Ce?ce, who hopes to use her intelligence to avoid a life like her mother’s, meet and fall in love at the restaurant where they both work, but when Mack lands in prison he pushes Ce?ce away and only a one-eared pit-bull can keep them together.

Winter Town, Stephen Emond
Evan and Lucy, childhood best friends who grew apart after years of seeing one another only during Christmas break, begin a romance at age seventeen but his choice to mindlessly follow his father’s plans for an Ivy League education rather than becoming the cartoonist he longs to be, and her more destructive choices in the wake of family problems, pull them apart.


Published on December 22, 2011.


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