Horror: Verdigris Deep

When Ryan and his friends are caught stranded and penniless late one night, they steal coins from a wishing well for bus fare. Soon after, strange things start happening to them. Peculiar marks tingle on Ryan's knuckles, light bulbs explode, and a terrified Chelle starts speaking words that aren't her own. Then the well witch appears, with her fountains for eyes and gargled demands. From now on, the friends must serve her - and fulfill the lost wishes that lie rotting at the bottom of the well.

This spooky book is perfect for teens who want to scare themselves silly. If you liked watching The Grudge or The Ring (yikes!!) you'll love this tale.
Fiction (horror!)
Grades 9-12
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Fiction: Book of a Thousand Days

When Dashti, a maid, and Lady Saren, her mistress, are shut in a tower for seven years for Saren’s refusal to marry a man she despises, the two prepare for a very long and dark imprisonment.

As food runs low and the days go from broiling hot to freezing cold, it is all Dashti can do to keep them fed and comfortable. But the arrival outside the tower of Saren’s two suitors—one welcome, and the other decidedly less so—brings both hope and great danger, and Dashti must make the desperate choices of a girl whose life is worth more than she knows.

With Shannon Hale’s lyrical language, this forgotten but classic fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm is reimagined and reset on the central Asian steppes; it is a completely unique retelling filled with adventure and romance, drama and disguise.

Fiction
Grades 7-12
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Science Fiction: Unwind

Connor's parents want to be rid of him because he's a troublemaker. Risa has no parents and is being unwound to cut orphanage costs. Lev's unwinding has been planned since his birth, as part of his family's strict religion. None of them are willing to let themselves be unwound, their bodies salvaged for spare parts by the rich.

Brought together by chance, and kept together by desperation, these three unlikely companions make a harrowing cross-country journey, knowing their lives hang in the balance.

If they can survive until theireighteenth birthday, they can't be harmed -- but when every piece of them, from their hands to their hearts, are wanted by a world gone mad, eighteen seems far, far away.

Science Fiction

Grades 10-12

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Fiction: Big Fat Manfesto

Jamie is a senior in high school, and that means she's incredibly busy with school, extracurriculars, and - oh yeah - trying to change how the world looks at fat people. Jamie's sick of people thinking that she doesn't know she's fat, that she's ashamed of her size, and that she can't get a date. Nothing could be further from the truth! She decides to challenge her fellow students with a new column in the school newsletter, starring Fat Girl (that's Jamie) and her Big Fat Manifesto.

As her column raises all kinds of questions, so too, must she find her own private way in her world, with love popping up in unexpected places, and satisfaction in her size losing ground to real frustration. A great read that will challenge your preconceptions.

Fiction

Grades 8-12

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Fantasy: Powers

Ursula Le Guin is a master of fantasy, and it shows in this thoughtful novel. Young Gavir was brought up a slave in a comfortable and orderly upper class house. His world is founded on the trust between master and slave; one protects, one serves. But when war ravages the city and Gavir's beloved elder sister dies a tragic and unnecessary death, Gavir flees his masters and begins a dangerous journey into the unknown. Is he seeking freedom? Or his own people? Or the true use of his strange power of future sight? There is a complex interplay of trust, dependency and individual freedome in this book that will leave every reader questioning their own views.

Fiction

Grades 9-12

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Fiction: Duchessina

Young Catherine de' Medici is the sole heiress to the entire fortune of the wealthy Medici family. But her life is far from luxurious. After a childhood spent locked away behind the walls of a convent, she joins the household of the pope, where at last she can be united with her true love. But, all too soon, that love is replaced with an engagement to a boy who is cold and aloof. It soon becomes clear that Catherine will need all the cunning she can muster to command the respect she deserves as one of France's most powerful queens. Readers will be awed by the detailed descriptions of opulent court life, and historical details abound.

Fiction

Grades 10-12

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Fiction: Sara's Face

Seventeen-year-old Sara wants to be spectacular. Not just pretty, not just popular, but spectacularly famous. She is a borderline anorexic, purposely hurts herself, often adopts different personalities, and sees ghosts, among other things. When pop idol Jonathon Heat takes her under his wing, she crosses into a world of lunacy and cosmetic surgery to reach her goals.

An eerie Michael Jackson-esque figure, Heat lives on a wacky estate with a private plastic surgery theater and has undergone so many facial reconstructions that he's forced to cover his pieced-together face with a mask. After Sara moves into his compound, readers are led to believe that she will meet the same fate, or worse. Known for edgy, raw teen novels that pull no punches, Burgess certainly delivers his trademark sexual frankness, folding in the mature issues of body image, self-mutilation, and personality disorder.

Fiction

Grade 9 and up

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Fiction: H.I.V.E.

H.I.V.E. is operated on a volcanic island in a distant ocean by G.L.O.V.E., a shadowy organization of worldwide wickedness. And, as 13-year-old master of mischief Otto Malpense soon discovers, here the slickest of young tricksters, thieves, and hackers have been brought against their will to be trained as the next generation of supervillains.

Otto and his friends refuse to be held prisoner at the institution and develop a scheme to escape from the island, but they must defeat the all-seeing computer system, a seemingly undefeatable assassin in black, and a giant carnivorous plant to succeed. Warner's first novel is a real page-turner; those who love superhero stories will eat it up and not want to put it down.

Science Fiction
Grades 5-8
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Fiction: Treasure at the Heart of Tanglewood

This original and atmospheric fantasy by the author of the Darkangel and Firebringer trilogies introduces Hannah, who lives by the fearsome Tanglewood with a few talkative companion animals. Hannah doesn't age, and she has no memory of anything but this life of isolation. Once a month she plucks the flowers that grow from her head and brews them into a tea for the wizard who lives deep in the woods.

Hannah is an unusually compelling character: lost but self-assured, brave but deeply na‹ve. When she falls in love with one of the many knights who search for the treasure of the title, she begins to question the wizard's motives, eventually escaping his manipulative power and undertaking a quest to heal the knight, whom the wizard has transformed into a fox. The book loses momentum somewhat as Hannah begins her travels, largely because readers will be quicker than Hannah at piecing together the story elements. As the flowers in her hair grow unplucked, spring descends upon the land (which has been lost in an epic winter) yet she never guesses that, among other identities, she is the legendary Spring Maid of whom townspeople talk, the treasure all those knights were seeking.

Fiction

Grades 9 and up

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