The Diary of Pelly D
L.J. Adlington
Y Fic Adl

When Toni V, a construction worker on a futuristic colony, finds the diary of a teenage girl whose life has been turned upside-down by holocaust-like events, he begins to question his own beliefs.

subjects: Diaries, Science Fiction

The Perfect Shot
Elaine Marie Alphin
Y Fic Alp

Brian uses basketball to block out memories of his girlfriend and her family who were gunned down a year ago, but the upcoming murder trial and a high school history assignment force him to face the past and decide how far he should go to see justice served. Includes facts about miscarriages of justice in American history.

subjects: Murder, Basketball, Justice, High Schools

Peaches
Jodi Lynn Anderson
Y Fic And

Three teenaged girls from very different backgrounds, thrown together to pick peaches in a Georgia orchard, spend a summer in pursuit of the right boy, the truest of friends, and the perfect peach.

awards: Georgia Peach Award Nominees: 2007

subjects: Interpersonal relations, Farm Life-Georgia, Family Problems, Peaches, Georgia

Prom
Laurie Halse Anderson
Y Fic And

Eighteen-year-old Ash wants nothing to do with senior prom, but when disaster strikes and her desperate friend, Nat, needs her help to get it back on track, Ash's involvement transforms her life.

subjects: Proms, High Schools, Self-Realization, Family Life-Pennsylvania, Family

24 Girls in 7 Days
Alex Bradley
Y Fic Bra

Jack Grammar, average American senior, has no date to the prom. Or so he thinks. Percy and Natalie, Jack's so-called best friends, post an ad in the classified section of the online version of the school newspaper. They figure it couldn't hurt. After all, there's not much in this world sadder than Jack's love life.

subjects: Dating (Social Customs), High School Seniors, Humorous Stories

Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
Ann Brashares
Y Fic Bra

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants graduates from high school and spends their last summer before college learning about life and themselves.

subjects: Best Friends, Friendship, Jeans (Clothing), Conduct of Life

Candy
Kevin Brooks
Y Fic Bro

When Joe meets Candy, it seems like a regular boy-meets-girl scenario. They chat over coffee, she gives him her number, and he writes her a song. But then Joe is drawn into Candy's world --- a world of drugs, violence, and desperation. As the dark truth about Candy's life emerges, Joe finds himself facing real danger at every twist and turn. Soon Joe's conflicting emotions begin to mirror Candy's, and he understands that falling in love just might be worth the struggle.

subjects: First Loves, Drug Abuse

The Tequila Worm
Viola Canales
Y Fic Can

Sofia grows up in the close-knit community of the barrio in McAllen, Texas, then finds that her experiences as a scholarship student at an Episcopal boarding school in Austin only strengthen her ties to family and her "comadres."

subjects: Family Life-Texas, Neighborhood, Mexican Americans, Catholics, Boarding Schools, Schools, Texas

Kissing Vanessa
Simon Cheshire
Y Fic Che

THE INSTANT KEVIN Watts sees the new girl he falls head over heels in love. Not only is Vanessa is gorgeous, sophisticated, and intelligent, but she’s also into photography just like Kevin. He’s sure they’d be perfect for each other... if it weren’t for one, major glitch. Kevin is “Mr. Background,” upstaged by nearly every one else in school. How can an average guy like Kevin ever hope to win over a girl like Vanessa?

subjects: Love, Schools, High Schools, Interpersonal Relationships, England

Daniel Half Human: And the Good Nazi
David Chotjewitz
Y Fic Cho

All his life, Daniel has been hiding. He just doesn't know it. Until the spring of 1933, he's enjoyed a comfortable German boyhood with his well-to-do family, in school, at soccer. Daniel's even enjoyed jail -- for one exciting night -- with his best friend, Armin, after they've been caught painting a swastika on a wall in the hated Communist section of Hamburg. In their cell, the boys cut their wrists, mingle blood, and swear lasting brotherhood. Then, a thunderclap: Daniel learns to his horror that his mother is Jewish, that he is therefore half-Jewish and, in Aryan eyes, half-human. Daniel keeps the truth a secret. He and Armin still talk of joining the Hitler Youth. But Armin's father, an out-of-work longshoreman and a Socialist, forbids it. Armin joins anyway, with fateful consequences for Daniel's family. Throughout World War II, and until the story's haunting final scene, each friend holds the life of the other in his hands.

subjects: Germany-History-1933-1945, Nazis, Best Friends, Friendship, Prejudices, Jews-Germany-History-1933-1945

The Innocent
Harlan Coben
M Cob

The horror of one night is forever etched in Matt Hunter’s memory: the night he innocently tried to break up a fight—and ended up a killer. Now, nine years after his release from prison, his innocence long forgotten, he’s an ex-con who takes nothing for granted. With his wife, Olivia, pregnant and the two of them closing on a house in his home town, things are looking up. Until the day Matt gets a shocking, inexplicable video call from Olivia’s phone. And in an instant, the unraveling begins.

subjects: Ex-Convicts, Judicial Error, Married People, Fugitives From Justice, Stalkers-Crimes Against, New Jersey, Psychological Fiction, Mystery Fiction

The Blue Girl
Charles De Lint
Y Fic Del

New at her high school, Imogene enlists the help of her introverted friend Maxine and the ghost of a boy who haunts the school after receiving warnings through her dreams that soul-eaters are threatening her life.

subjects: Fairies, Ghosts, Imaginary Playmates, Dreams, Conduct of Life, High Schools, Supernatural, Schools

Runner
Carl Deuker
Y Fic Deu

Living with his alcoholic father on a broken-down sailboat on Puget Sound has been hard on seventeen-year-old Chance Taylor, but when his love of running leads to a high-paying job, he quickly learns that the money is not worth the risk.

subjects: Smuggling, Alcoholism, Single-Parent Families, Poverty, Terrorism, Puget Sound (Wash.)

Fade to Black
Alex Flinn
Y Fic Fli

An HIV-positive high school student hospitalized after being attacked, the bigot accused of the crime, and the only witness, a classmate with Down Syndrome, reveal how the assult has changed their lives as they tell of its aftermath.

subjects: Toleration, Hate Crimes, HIV (Viruses), Down Syndrome, High Schools

Where I Want to Be
Adele Griffin
Y Fic Gri

Two teenaged sisters, separated by death but still connected, work through their feelings of loss over the closeness they shared as children that was later destroyed by one's mental illness, and finally make peace with each other.

subjects: Sisters, Mental Illness, Death, Rhode Island

Dark Sons
Nikki Grimes
Y Fic Gri

Alternating poems compare and contrast the conflicted feelings of Ishmael, son of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, and Sam, a teenager in New York City, as they try to come to terms with being abandoned by their fathers and with the love they feel for their younger stepbrothers.

subjects: Fathers and Sons, Stepbrothers, Ishmael (Biblical Figure), African Americans, Self-Perception, New York (N.Y.), Bible-History of Biblical Events

Invisible
Pete Hautman
Y Fic Hau

Doug and Andy are unlikely best friends--one a loner obsessed by his model trains, the other a popular student involved in football and theater--who grew up together and share a bond that nothing can sever.

subjects: Best Friends, Frienship, Railroads-Models, Schools, Mental Illness

Hitch
Jeanette Ingold
Y Fic Ing

To help his family during the Depression and avoid becoming a drunk like his father, Moss Trawnley joins the Civilian Conservation Corps, helps build a new camp near Monroe, Montana, and leads the other men in making the camp a success.

subjects: Civilian Conservation Corps (U.S.), Conservation of Natural Resourses, Leadership, Depressions-1929, Montana-History-20th Century, United States-History-1933-1945

A Fast and Brutal Wing
Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson
Y Fic Joh

A series of journal entries, emails, stories, and newspaper articles reveals the strange events that led to the disappearance of a reclusive author on Halloween night and the involvement of a teenager and his friends--a brother and sister some say can transform into animals and back again.

subjects: Missing Persons, Brothers and Sisters, Metamorphosis, Mental Illness, Family, Colorado

Real Time: A Novel
Pnina Moed Kass
Y Fic Kas

Sixteen-year-old Tomas Wanninger persuades his mother to let him leave Germany to volunteer at a kibbutz in Israel, where he experiences a violent political attack and finds answers about his own past.

subjects: Germans-Israel, Terrorism, Interpersonal Relations, Family, Israel

Dark Angel
David Klass
Y Fic Kla

Seventeen-year-old Jeff thought he would never again have to deal with his older brother, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence. But after six years, Troy’s sentence has been overturned on a technicality and he is released from prison. He returns to a family deeply divided about having him back home. Jeff can’t forget how his life was disrupted by his brother, how his family had to move to another state and start over. Still, his parents believe things will be different now. But Troy’s return makes a mess of Jeff ’s life – at home, at school, and with his girlfriend. When Jeff ’s rival on the soccer field turns up missing, Jeff suspects Troy is involved, and he sets out to prove it. But nothing could prepare Jeff for what happens as he gets closer to the truth.

subjects: Brothers, Ex-Convicts, Secrets, High Schools

Magic or Madness
Justine Larbalestier
Y Fic Lar

From the Sydney, Australia home of a grandmother she believes is a witch, fifteen-year-old Reason Cansino is magically transported to New York City, where she discovers that friends and foes can be hard to distinguish.

subjects: Magic, Space and Time, Grandmothers, Mental Illness, New York (N.Y.), Sydney (N.S.W.), Australia

Sleeping Freshman Never Lie
David Lubar
Y Fic Lub

While navigating his first year of high school and awaiting the birth of his new baby brother, Scott loses old friends and gains some unlikely new ones as he hones his skills as a writer.

awards: Bulletin Blue Ribbons: 2005, ALA Best Books for Young Adults: 2006

subjects: Self-confidence, Conduct of Life, Interpersonal Relations, Authorship, Brothers, High Schools

Stealing Henry
Carolyn MacCullough
Y Fic Mac

The experiences of high-schooler Savannah, following her decision to take her eight-year-old half brother from his abusive father and their oblivious mother, are interspersed with the earlier story of her mother, Alice, as she meets Savannah's father and unexpectedly becomes pregnant.

subjects: Runaways, Family Problems, Mothers and Daughters, Brothers and Sisters, Stepfathers, Interpersonal Relations, Pregnancy

Pinned
Alfred C. Martino
Y Fic Mar

Dealing with family problems, girls, and their own competitive natures, high school seniors Ivan Korske and Bobby Zane face each other in the final match of the New Jersey State Wrestling Championship.

subjects: Wrestling, Family Problems, Friendship, Competition (Psychology), New Jersey, Problem Families

The Secret Under My Skin
Janet McNaughton
Y Scf Mac

In the year 2368, humans exist under dire environmental conditions and one young woman, rescued from a workcamp and chosen for a special duty, uses her love of learning to discover the truth about the planet's future and her own dark past.

subjects: Science Fiction, Environmental Degradation, Books and Reading, Orphans, Child Labor

Twilight
Stephanie Meyer
Y Fic Mey

When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.

subjects: Vampires, High Schools, Washington (State)

Caught In the Act
Peter Moore
Y Fic Moo

Everyone believes that sophomore honors student Ethan Lederer is a top-notch scholar and a great guy, but a new student helps Ethan to discover and disclose that he is just acting a role, even as she reveals her own mental instability.

subjects: Self-Realization, Theater, Mental Illness, Family Life, High Schools

Private Peaceful
Michael Morpurgo
Y Fic Mor

When Thomas Peaceful's older brother is forced to join the British Army, Thomas decides to sign up as well, although he is only fourteen years old, to prove himself to his country, his family, his childhood love, Molly, and himself.

subjects: Single-Parent Families, Poverty, Soldiers, People with Mental Disabilities, World War-1914-1918, Great Britain

Gothic!: Ten Original Dark Tales
Deborah Noyes (Ed.)
Y SS Got

Drawing on dark fantasy and the fairy tale as well as horror and wild humor, ten acclaimed authors pay homage to the gothic tale in wide-ranging stories of the supernatural and surreal.

subjects: Supernatural, Horror Tales, Short Stories

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
James Patterson
Y Scf Pat

Get ready for the maximum thrill ride from #1 New York Times bestselling author James Patterson.

subjects: Genetic Engineering, Adventure and Adventurers

A Room on Lorelei Street
Mary Pearson
Y Fic Pea

To escape a miserable existence taking care of her alcoholic mother, seventeen-year-old Zoe rents a room from an eccentric woman, but her earnings as a waitress after school are minimal and she must go to extremes to cover expenses.

subjects: Freedom, Family Problems, Interpersonal Relations, Alcoholism, Lodging Houses, Texas

Just Like That
Marsha Qualey
Y Fic Qua

A tragic accident ending with the death of two people her own age changes life forever for an eighteen-year-old woman.

subjects: Grief, Accidents, Friendship, Family Life, Interpersonal Relations, Dating (Social Customs)

Eyes of the Emperor
Graham Salisbury
Y Fic Sal

Following orders from the United States Army, several young Japanese American men train K-9 units to hunt Asians during World War II.

subjects: World War 1939-1945, Japanese Americans, Dogs-War Use

I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader
Kieran Scott
Y Fic Kie

As a brunette on the all-blonde cheerleading squad at her new Florida high school, sophomore Annisa Gobrowski tries to fit in with her popular teammates without losing the friendship of Bethany, the only other non-blonde at the school.

subjects: Identity, Popularity, Cheerleading, Blondes, High Schools, Florida

The Book of Dead Days
Marcus Sedgwick
Y Fic Sed

With the help of his servant and an orphan girl, a magician named Valerian searches graveyards, churches, and underground waterways for a book he hopes will save him from a pact he has made with evil.

subjects: Magicians, Magic, Orphans, Lost and Found Possessions, Horror Stories

The Boy From the Basement
Susan Shaw
Y Fic Sha

A twelve-year-old boy is confined to his basement without food or clothing. For Charlie, the basement is home.

subjects: Child Abuse, Foster Home Care

Finding Lubchenko
Michael Simmons
Y M Sim

When his father is framed for murder and bioterrorism, high-school junior Evan, using clues from a stolen laptop, travels from Seattle to Paris with two friends to find the real culprit.

subjects: Fathers, Murder, Bioterrorism, Paris (France), Mystery and Detective Stories

Fake ID
Walter Sorrells
Y M Sor

After a lifetime of moving and assuming new identities, sixteen-year-old Chass begins to piece together the disturbing past that haunts her and her mother and which involves a mysterious tape, a deceased popular singer, and the secrets of several people in a small Alabama town.

subjects: Murder, Mothers and Daughters, Secrets, Identity, Musicians, Alabama, Mystery and Detective Stories

Light Years: A Novel
Tammer Stein
Y Fic Ste

Maya Laor leaves her home in Israel to study astronomy at the University of Virginia after the tragic death of her boyfriend in a suicide bombing.

subjects: Suicide Bombings, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Grief

Black and White
Paul Volponi
Y Fic Vol

Two star high school basketball players, one black and one white, experience the justice system differently after committing a crime together and getting caught.

subjects: African Americans, Race Relations, Basketball, Juvenile Delinquency, High Schools

Uglies
Scott Westerfeld
Y Fic Wes

Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that? Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there. But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world -- and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

subjects: Beauty-Personal, Teenage Girls

Broken China
Lori Aurelia Williams
Y Fic Wil

China Cup Cameron might miss school or fall asleep in class sometimes, but she's trying hard to be a good mother to Amina, her two-year-old daughter. When tragedy befalls the small family, China must quit school and work full-time to make ends meet. But the only place in town that's willing to hire a fourteen-year-old high-school dropout is Obsidian Queens, a strip club, and China is forced to make some difficult and potentially self-destructive decisions.

subjects: Teenage Mothers, Mothers and Daughters, Single-Parent Families, Poor, Uncles, African Americans, Death, Funeral Rites and Ceremonies

The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
Chris Wooding
Y Fic Woo

As Thaniel, a witch-hunter, and Cathaline, his friend and mentor, try to rid the alleys of London's Old Quarter of the terrible creatures that infest them, their lives become entwined with that of a woman who may be either mad or possessed.

subjects: Supernatural, London (England) Great Britain-History

Elsewhere
Gabrielle Zevin
Y Fic Zev

After fifteen-year-old Liz Hall is hit by a taxi and killed, she finds herself in a place that is both like and unlike Earth, where she must adjust to her new status and figure out how to "live."

subjects: Future Life, Death

I Am the Messenger
Marcus Zusak
Y Fic Zus

After capturing a bank robber, nineteen-year-old cab driver Ed Kennedy begins receiving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where people need help, and he begins getting over his lifelong feeling of worthlessness.

subjects: Self-Esteem, Heroes, Taxicab Drivers