Teen Reads
Click on the boxes below to get a list of recommended reads!
• Bingham, Kelly. Formerly Shark Girl. Surviving a shark attack that cost her an arm, Jane, an aspiring artist, reevaluates her ambitions and sense of identity while harboring a crush on her attractive tutor and considering a relationship with a boy from her science class.
• Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. A series of letters to an unknown correspondent reveals the coming-of-age trials of a high-schooler named Charlie.
• Crutcher, Chris. Whale Talk. Intellectually and athletically gifted, TJ, a multiracial, adopted teenager, shuns organized sports and the gung-ho athletes at his high school until he agrees to form a swimming team and recruits some of the school’s less popular students.
• Doktorski, Jennifer. How My Summer Went Up in Flames. Placed under a temporary restraining order for torching her former boyfriend’s car, seventeen-year-old Rosie embarks on a cross-country car trip from New Jersey to Arizona while waiting for her court appearance.
• Forman, Gayle. Just One Day. Sparks fly when American good girl Allyson encounters laid-back Dutch actor Willem, so she follows him on a whirlwind trip to Paris, upending her life in just one day and prompting a year of self-discovery and the search for true love.
• King, A.S. Please Ignore Vera Dietz. When her best friend, whom she secretly loves, betrays her and then dies under mysterious circumstances, high school senior Vera Dietz struggles with secrets that could help clear his name.
• Lubar, David. Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie. 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.
• McCafferty, Megan. Sloppy Firsts. Devastated when her best friend moves away, sixteen-year-old Jessica Darling feels isolated at school and at home, as she struggles to deal with her father’s obsession with her track meets, her boy-crazy peers, and her own nonexistent love life.
• Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor & Park. Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits–smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try
• Vaughn, Lauren. OCD, the Dude, and Me. Danielle Levine stands out even at her alternative high school–in appearance and attitude–but when her scathing and sometimes raunchy English essays land her in a social skills class, she meets Daniel, another social misfit who may break her resolve to keep everyone at arm’s length.
• Walker, Brian. Black Boy/White School. When fourteen-year-old Anthony “Ant” Jones from the ghetto of East Cleveland, Ohio, gets a scholarship to a prep school in Maine, he finds that he must change his image and adapt to a world that never fully accepts him, but when he goes home he discovers that he no longer truly belongs there either.
• Zarr, Sara. The Lucy Variations. Sixteen-year-old San Franciscan Lucy Beck-Moreau once had a promising future as a concert pianist. Her chance at a career has passed, and she decides to help her ten-year-old piano prodigy brother, Gus, map out his own future, even as she explores why she enjoyed piano in the first place.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more angst or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Alex Awards Awards given to books written for adults that teens will love.
• Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Recognizes the year’s best nonfiction book for published for young adults.
• Best Fiction for Young Adults Over 100 books recommended for young adults ages 12-18.
• Fabulous Films for Young Adults Need a break from books? These recommended films are selected around different themes each year.
• Great Graphic Novels for Teens Recommended graphic novels or illustrated nonfiction books for teens.
• Illinois State Library Read for a Lifetime Program Read for a Lifetime, sponsored by Jesse White, Secretary of State and State Librarian, and the Illinois Center for Book, is the first statewide reading program to target high school students, was designed to promote the enjoyment of reading by encouraging students to read both classic and contemporary literature, and rewarding them for their effort.
• Morris Award Recognizes a book written for teens by a first-time author.
• Odyssey Award Audiobooks are recognized with this award, which honors the best audiobook for children and/or young adults.
• Printz Award Honors excellence in young adult literature.
• Readers’ Choice Readers choose their favorite teen titles from the past year.
• Teens’ Top Ten Teens nominate and vote for their favorite books from the previous year.
REVIEW SITES
• Adult Books 4 Teens School Library Journal reviewers blog about their favorite adult crossover books for teens.
• The Book Smugglers Two “book smugglers” review science fiction and young adult lit on this blog.
• Guys Read Author Jon Scieszka founded this space to get guys reading and for guys to share their favorite books.
• No Flying, No Tights Like comics and graphic novels? This site is all about reviews of graphic novels.
• NoveList Plus (PPL database) This online readers’ advisory tool will help find your next book or author to read based on what you already like. Use it at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Reading Rants Looking for something a little out of the box? Check here for out-of-the-ordinary book lists.
• YALSA The Hub: The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) runs this blog for all things related to young adult literature.
• Black, Yelena. Dance of Shadows. Fifteen-year-old Vanessa follows her sister Margaret to an elite Manhattan ballet school, not only gaining admission but also earning the lead in a production of the Firebird, while trying to uncover why and how Margaret and other lead dancers have disappeared.
• Charaipotra, Sona. Tiny Pretty Things. Three top students at an exclusive Manhattan ballet academy compete for the status of prima ballerina, with each willing to sacrifice, manipulate, and backstab to be the best of the best.
• Colbert, Brandy. Pointe. Four years after Theo’s best friend, Donovan, disappeared at age thirteen, he is found and brought home and Theo puts her health at risk as she decides whether to tell the truth about the abductor, knowing her revelation could end her life-long dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer.
• Flack, Sophia. Bunheads. Hannah Ward, nineteen, revels in the competition, intense rehearsals, and dazzling performances that come with being a member of Manhattan Ballet Company’s corps de ballet, but after meeting handsome musician Jacob she begins to realize there could be more to her life.
• Kiem, Elizabeth. Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy. After a harrowing defection to the United States in 1982, Russian teenager Marya and her father settle in Brooklyn, where Marya is drawn into a web of intrigue involving her gift of foresight, her mother’s disappearance, and a boy she cannot bring herself to trust.
• Rubin, Sarah. Someday Dancer. In South Carolina in 1959 Casey Quinn dreams of being a ballerina, and though she has never had the money for lessons, she follows her dream to New York City and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance.
• Suma, Nova Ren. The Walls Around Us. Orianna and Violet are ballet dancers and best friends, but when the ballerinas who have been harassing Violet are murdered, Orianna is accused of the crime and sent to a juvenile detention center where she meets Amber and they experience supernatural events linking the girls together.
• Bray, Libba. Beauty Queens. When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island’s other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.
• Cohn, Rachel. Beta. On a futuristic island paradise where humans are served by enslaved clones, a sixteen-year-old clone named Elysia seeks her own freedom.
• Crichton, Michael. Jurassic Park. A breakthrough in genetic engineering leads to the development of a technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA, a method that brings about the creation of Jurassic Park, a tourist attraction populated by creatures extinct for eons.
• Crewe, Megan. The Way We Fall. Sixteen-year-old old Kaelyn challenges her fears, finds a second chance at love, and fights to keep her family and friends safe as a deadly new virus devastates her island community.
• Dunn, Mark. Ella Minnow Pea. Recounts what happens when the citizens of an island must rely on all their ingenuity to communicate in an increasingly limited language when the government progressively bans letters from the alphabet.
• Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. Classic study of human nature which depicts the degeneration of a group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island.
• Han, Jenny. Burn for Burn. Three teenaged girls living on Jar Island band together to enact revenge on the people that have hurt them.
• Lanagan, Margo. The Brides of Rollrock Island. On remote Rollrock Island, men go to sea to make their livings–and to catch their wives. The witch Misskaella knows the way of drawing a girl from the heart of a seal, of luring the beauty out of the beast. And for a price a man may buy himself a lovely sea-wife. He may have and hold and keep her. And he will tell himself that he is her master. But from his first look into those wide, questioning, liquid eyes, he will be just as transformed as she. He will be equally ensnared. And the witch will have her true payment.
• McNeil, Gretchen. Ten. Ten teens head to a house party at a remote island mansion off the Washington coast . . . only for them to picked off by a killer one by one.
• Reichs, Kathy. Virals. The niece of famed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, fourteen-year-old Tory and her three friends are exposed to a rare strain of canine parvovirus that gives them special powers which they use to try to solve a murder.
• Riggs, Ransom. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. After a family tragedy, Jacob feels compelled to explore an abandoned orphanage on an island off the coast of Wales, discovering disturbing facts about the children who were kept there.
• Sedgwick, Marcus. Midwinter Blood. Seven linked vignettes unfold on a Scandinavian island inhabited–throughout various time periods–by Vikings, vampires, ghosts, and a curiously powerful plant.
• Shepherd, Megan. The Madman’s Daughter. Dr. Moreau’s daughter, Juliet, travels to her estranged father’s island, only to encounter murder, medical horrors, and a love triangle.
• Winters, Ben. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels?
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more strange island adventures or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Cormier, Robert. The Chocolate War. Jerry Renault is forced into a psychological showdown with Trinity School’s gang leader, Archie Costello, for refusing to be bullied into selling chocolates for the annual fund raising.
• Courtenay, Bryce. The Power of One. Follows Peekay, a white British boy in South Africa during World War II, between the ages of five and eleven, as he survives an abusive boarding school and goes on to succeed in life and the boxing ring, with help from a chicken, a boxer, a pianist, black African prisoners, and many others.
• Koja, Kathe. Buddha Boy. Justin spends time with Jinsen, the unusual and artistic new student whom the school bullies torment and call Buddha Boy, and ends up making choices that impact Jinsen, himself, and the entire school.
• Lyga, Barry. The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl. A fifteen-year-old “geek” who keeps a list of the high school jocks and others who torment him, and pours his energy into creating a great graphic novel, encounters Kyra, Goth Girl, who helps change his outlook on almost everything, including himself.
• Medina, Meg. Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. Informed that a bully she does not know is determined to beat her up Latin American teen Piddy Sanchez struggles to learn more about the father she has never met, until the bully’s gang forces her to confront more difficult challenges.
• Myers, Walter Dean. Shooter. Written in the form of interviews, reports, and journal entries, the story of three troubled teenagers ends in a tragic school shooting.
• Plum-Ucci, Carol. The Body of Christopher Creed. Torey Adams, a high school junior with a seemingly perfect life, struggles with doubts and questions surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the class outcast.
• Portman, Frank. 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.
• Shusterman, Neal. Bruiser. Inexplicable events start to occur when sixteen-year-old twins Tennyson and Bronte befriend a troubled and misunderstood outcast, aptly nicknamed Bruiser, and his little brother, Cody.
• Strasser, Tod. Give a Boy a Gun. Events leading up to a night of terror at a high school dance are told from the point of view of various people involved.
• Williams-Garcia, Rita. Jumped. The lives of Leticia, Dominique, and Trina are irrevocably intertwined through the course of one day in an urban high school after Leticia overhears Dominique’s plans to beat up Trina and must decide whether or not to get involved.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
• Chambers, Aidan. This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn. Cordelia Kenn recounts her life from age fifteen to twenty in a series of formats, such as letters, diaries, poems, and short stories, to be read in the future by her daughter.
• Ellsworth, Loretta. In Search of Mockingbird. On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Erin receives her long-dead mother’s diary, which reveals that she too revered Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and wanted to be a writer, and Erin impulsively decides to take the Greyhound bus from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Monroeville, Alabama, to visit the reclusive author.
• Hubbard, Jennifer. The Secret Year. Reading the journal of the high-society girl he was secretly involved with for a year helps high school senior Colt cope with her death and come closer to understanding why she needed him while continuing to be the girlfriend of a wealthy classmate.
• Koertge, Ronald. Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs. Fourteen-year-old Kevin Boland, poet and first baseman, is torn between his cute girlfriend Mira and Amy, who is funny, plays Chopin on the piano, and is also a poet.
• Nielsen-Fernlund, Susin. The Reluctant Journey of Henry K. Larsen. After his life is shattered, Henry and his father are forced to resume their lives in a new city where in spite of Henry’s desire to remain invisible he befriends some oddball characters at school and in the apartment building.
• Pfeffer, Susan Beth. 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.
• Pierce, Tamora. Mastiff. Beka, having just lost her fiance in a slaver’s raid, is able to distract herself by going with her team on an important hunt at the queen’s request, unaware that the throne of Tortall depends on their success.
• Rees, Celia. Witch Child. In 1659, fourteen-year-old Mary Newbury keeps a journal of her voyage from England to the New World and her experiences living as a witch in a community of Puritans near Salem, Massachusetts.
• Van Draanen, Wendelin. Runaway. After running away from her fifth foster home, Holly, a twelve-year-old orphan, travels across the country, keeping a journal of her experiences and struggle to survive.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To peek into more diaries or find other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Fforde, Jasper. The Last Dragonslayer. Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange runs an agency for underemployed magicians in a world where magic is fading away, but when visions of the death of the world’s last dragon begin, all signs point to Jennifer–and Big Magic.
• Goodman, Alison. Eon : Dragoneye Reborn. Sixteen-year-old Eon hopes to become an apprentice to one of the twelve energy dragons of good fortune and learn to be its main interpreter, but to do so will require much, including keeping secret that she is a girl.
• Hartman, Rachel. Seraphina : a novel. In a world where dragons and humans coexist in an uneasy truce and dragons can assume human form, Seraphina, whose mother died giving birth to her, grapples with her own identity amid magical secrets and royal scandals, while she struggles to accept and develop her extraordinary musical talents.
• Johnston, E. K. The Story of Owen : Dragon Slayer of Trondheim. In an alternate world where industrialization has caused many species of carbon-eating dragons to thrive, Owen, a slayer being trained by his famous father and aunt, and Siobahn, his bard, face a dragon infestation near their small town in Canada.
• Jordan, Sophie. Firelight. When sixteen-year-old Jacinda, who can change into a dragon, is forced to move away from her community of shapeshifters and start a more normal life, she falls in love with a boy who proves to be her most dangerous enemy.
• McKinley, Robin. Dragonhaven. When Jake Mendoza, who lives in the Smokehill National Park where his father runs the Makepeace Institute of Integrated Dragon Studies, goes on his first solo overnight in the park, he finds an infant dragon whose mother has been killed by a poacher.
• Meadows, Jodi. Incarnate. After 5000 years of the same souls being reincarnated, Ana, a new soul, is born and on her eighteenth birthday sets off on a mission to learn the truth about her existence.
• Oh, Ellen. Prophecy. A demon slayer, the only female warrior in the King’s army, must battle demon soldiers, an evil shaman, and the Demon Lord to find the lost ruby of the Dragon King’s prophecy and save her kingdom.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more books with dragons or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Balcigalupi, Paolo. Ship Breaker. In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copper wiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beached clipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship for its wealth or rescue the girl.
• Cass, Kiera. The Selection. Sixteen-year-old America Singer is living in the caste-divided nation of Illea, which formed after the war that destroyed the United States. America is chosen to compete in the Selection–a contest to see which girl can win the heart of Illea’s prince–but all she really wants is a chance for a future with her secret love, Aspen, who is a caste below her.
• Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss’s skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place.
• Condie, Allyson. Matched. Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her, so when Xander appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows he is her ideal mate–until Ky Markham’s face appears for an instant before the screen fades to black.
• Dashner, James. The Maze Runner. Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.
• DeStefano, Lauren. Wither. After modern science turns every human into a genetic time bomb with men dying at age twenty-five and women dying at age twenty, girls are kidnapped and married off in order to repopulate the world.
• Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother. After being interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus, released into what is now a police state, decides to use his expertise in computer hacking to set things right.
• Fisher, Catherine. Incarceron. To free herself from an upcoming arranged marriage, Claudia, the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, a futuristic prison with a mind of its own, decides to help a young prisoner escape.
• Gardner, Sally. Maggot Moon. What if the football hadn’t gone over the wall. On the other side of the wall there is a dark secret. And the devil. And the Moon Man. And the Motherland doesn’t want anyone to know. But Standish Treadwell — who has different-colored eyes, who can’t read, can’t write, Standish Treadwell isn’t bright — sees things differently than the rest of the “train-track thinkers.” So when Standish and his only friend and neighbor, Hector, make their way to the other side of the wall, they see what the Motherland has been hiding.
• Johnson, Alaya Dawn. The Summer Prince. In a Brazil of the distant future, June Costa falls in love with Enki, a fellow artist and rebel against the strict limits of the legendary pyramid city of Palmares Tres’ matriarchal government, knowing that, like all Summer Kings before him, Enki is destined to die.
• Lu, Marie. Legend. In a dark future, when North America has split into two warring nations, fifteen-year-olds Day, a famous criminal, and prodigy June, the brilliant soldier hired to capture him, discover that they have a common enemy.
• Maas, Sarah. Throne of Glass. After she has served a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, Crown Prince Dorian offers eighteen-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien her freedom on the condition that she act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.
• Meyer, Marissa. Cinder. As plague ravages the overcrowded Earth, observed by a ruthless lunar people, Cinder, a gifted mechanic and cyborg, becomes involved with handsome Prince Kai and must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect the world in this futuristic take on the Cinderella story.
• Oliver, Lauren. Delirium. Lena looks forward to receiving the government-mandated cure that prevents the delirium of love and leads to a safe, predictable, and happy life, until ninety-five days before her eighteenth birthday and her treatment, when she falls in love.
• Price, Lissa. Starters. To support herself and her younger brother in a future Beverly Hills, sixteen-year-old Callie hires her body out to seniors who want to experience being young again, and she lives a fairy-tale life until she learns that her body will commit murder, unless her mind can stop it.
• Revis, Beth. Across the Universe. Teenaged Amy, a cryogenically frozen passenger on the spaceship Godspeed, wakes up to discover that someone may have tried to murder her.
• Rossi, Veronica. Under the Never Sky. Aria and Perry, two teens from radically different societies–one highly advanced, the other primitive–hate being dependent on one another until they overcome their prejudices and fall in love, knowing they can’t stay together.
• Westerfeld, Scott. Uglies. Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally’s best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.
• Yancey, Richard. The 5th Wave. Cassie Sullivan, the survivor of an alien invasion, must rescue her young brother from the enemy with help from a boy who may be one of them.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more dystopias or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
CINDERELLA
• Lo, Malinda. Ash. In this variation on the Cinderella story, Ash grows up believing in the fairy realm that the king and his philosophers have sought to suppress, until one day she must choose between a handsome fairy cursed to love her and the King’s Huntress whom she loves.
• Napoli, Donna Jo. Bound. In a novel based on Chinese Cinderella tales, fourteen-year-old stepchild Xing-Xing endures a life of neglect and servitude, as her stepmother cruelly mutilates her own child’s feet so that she alone might marry well.
SLEEPING BEAUTY
• Flinn, Alex. A Kiss in Time. Sixteen-year-old Princess Talia persuades seventeen-year-old Jack, the modern-day American who kissed her awake after a 300-year sleep, to take her to his Miami home, where she hopes to win his love before the witch who cursed her can spirit her away.
• McKinley, Robin. Spindle’s End. The infant princess Briar Rose is cursed on her name day by Pernicia, an evil fairy, and then whisked away by a young fairy to be raised in a remote part of a magical country, unaware of her real identity and hidden from Pernicia’s vengeful powers.
OTHER FAIRY TALES
• Lo, Malinda. Huntress. 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. (Fairy Queen)
• Napoli, Donna Jo. Beast. Elaborates on the tale of Beauty and the Beast told from the point of view of the beast and set in Persia. (Beauty and the Beast)
• Vande Velda, Vivian. Cloaked in Red. Presents eight twists on the traditional tale of Little Red Riding Hood, exploring such issues as why most characters seem dim-witted and what, exactly, is the theme. (Little Red Riding Hood)
SERIES
• Dokey, Cameron. Once Upon a Time. Each book in the series retells a different fairy-tale story. First book: The Storyteller’s Daughter. When Shaharazad becomes enslaved, she must remain cool and calm to come up with a clever plan that will make the coldhearted king see her in a different light in order to change her future.
• Flinn, Alex. Kendra Chronicles. First book: Beastly. A modern retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” from the point of view of the Beast, a vain Manhattan private school student who is turned into a monster and must find true love before he can return to his human form.
• George, Jessica Day. Princess Books. First book: Princess of the Midnight Ball. A retelling of the tale of twelve princesses who wear out their shoes dancing every night, and of Galen, a former soldier now working in the king’s gardens, who follows them in hopes of breaking the curse.
• Hale, Shannon. Books of Bayern. First book: Goose Girl. On her way to marry a prince she’s never met, Princess Anidori is betrayed by her guards and her lady-in-waiting and must become a goose girl to survive until she can reveal her true identity and reclaim the crown that is rightfully hers.
• Pearce, Jackson. Fairy Tale Retellings . First book: Sisters Red. After a Fenris, or werewolf, killed their grandmother and almost killed them, sisters Scarlett and Rosie March devote themselves to hunting and killing the beasts that prey on teenaged girls, learning how to lure them with red cloaks and occasionally using the help of their old friend, Silas, the woodsman’s son.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more enchanting tales or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Cross, Sarah. Kill Me Softly. Mirabelle’s past is shrouded in secrecy, from her parents’ tragic deaths to her guardians’ half-truths about why she can’t return to her birthplace, Beau Rivage. Desperate to see the town, Mira runs away a week before her sixteenth birthday–and discovers a world she never could have imagined. In Beau Rivage, nothing is what it seems–the strangely pale girl with a morbid interest in apples, the obnoxious playboy who’s a beast to everyone he meets, and the chivalrous guy who has a thing for damsels in distress. Here, fairy tales come to life, curses are awakened, and ancient stories are played out again and again. But fairy tales aren’t pretty things, and they don’t always end in happily ever after. Mira has a role to play, a fairy tale destiny to embrace or resist. As she struggles to take control of her fate, Mira is drawn into the lives of two brothers with fairy tale curses of their own . . . brothers who share a dark secret. And she’ll find that love, just like fairy tales, can have sharp edges and hidden thorns.
• Durst, Sarah Beth. Into the Wild. Having escaped from the Wild and the preordained fairy tale plots it imposes, Rapunzel, along with her daughter Julie Marchen, tries to live a fairly normal life, but when the Wild breaks free and takes over their town, it is Julie who has to prevent everyone from being trapped in the events of a story.
• Heppermann, Christine. Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty. Based on classic fairy tale characters and fairy tale tropes, the poems range from contemporary retellings to first person accounts set within the original stories. From Snow White’s cottage and Rapunzel’s tower to health class and the prom, these poems are a moving depiction of young women, society, and our expectations.
• Johnson, Christine. Grim. Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a dark and sinister twist, Grim contains short stories from some of the best voices in young adult literature today
• Kontis, Alethea. Enchanted. When Sunday Woodcutter, the youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week, kisses an enchanted frog, he transforms back into Rumbold, the crown prince of Arilland–a man Sunday’s family despises.
• Meyer, Marissa. Cinder. As plague ravages the overcrowded Earth, observed by a ruthless lunar people, Cinder, a gifted mechanic and cyborg, becomes involved with handsome Prince Kai and must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect the world in this futuristic take on the Cinderella story.
• Shulman, Polly. The Grimm Legacy. New York high school student Elizabeth gets an after-school job as a page at the “New-York Circulating Material Repository,” and when she gains coveted access to its Grimm Collection of magical objects, she and the other pages are drawn into a series of frightening adventures involving mythical creatures and stolen goods.
• Willingham, Bill. Fables: Legends in Exile. Who killed Rose Red? In Fabletown, where fairy tale legends live alongside regular New Yorkers, the question is all anyone can talk about. But only the Big Bad Wolf can actually solve the case – and, along with Rose’s sister Snow White, keep the Fabletown community from coming apart at the seams.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more enchanting tales or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Bray, Libba. A Great and Terrible Beauty. After the suspicious death of her mother in 1895, sixteen-year-old Gemma returns to England, after many years in India, to attend a finishing school where she becomes aware of her magical powers and ability to see into the spirit world.
• Carriger, Gail. Etiquette & Espionage. In an alternate England of 1851, spirited fourteen-year-old Sophronia is enrolled in a finishing school where, she is suprised to learn, lessons include not only the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also diversion, deceit, and espionage.
• Cast, P.C. Marked. Sixteen-year-old Zoey Redbird is Marked as a fledging vampyre and joins the House of Night where she will train to become an adult vampyre.
• Chainani, Soman. The School for Good and Evil. Best friends Sophie (princess wannabe) and Agatha (witchy loner) are headed (via kidnapping) to the School for Good and Evil, but their assumed destinies are reversed.
• Grossman, Lev. The Magicians. Harboring secret preoccupations with a magical land he read about in a childhood fantasy series, Quentin Coldwater is unexpectedly admitted into an exclusive college of magic and rigorously educated in modern sorcery.
• Hawkins, Rachel. Hex Hall. After a prom-night spell goes badly wrong, witch Sophie Mercer is exiled to an isolated reform school for wayward Prodigium, supernaturally gifted teenagers, where she learns that an unknown predator has been attacking students.
• Johnson, Maureen. The Name of the Star. Rory, of Boueuxlieu, Louisiana, is spending a year at a London boarding school when she witnesses a murder by a Jack the Ripper copycat and becomes involved with the very unusual investigation.
• Jones, Dianna Wynn. Year of the Griffin. When Elda, the griffin daughter of the great Wizard Derk, arrives for schooling at the Wizards’ University, she encounters new friends, pirates, assassins, worry, sabotage, bloodshed, and magic misused.
• Kate, Lauren. Fallen. Suspected in the death of her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Luce is sent to a Savannah, Georgia, reform school where she meets two intriguing boys and learns the truth about the strange shadows that have always haunted her.
• Mead, Rachel. Vampire Academy. Two years after a horrible incident made them run away, vampire princess Lissa and her guardian-in-training Rose are found and returned to St. Vladimir’s Academy, where one focuses on mastering magic, the other on physical training, while both try to avoid the perils of gossip, cliques, gruesome pranks, and sinister plots.
• Nix, Garth. Sabriel. Sabriel. daughter of the necromancer Abhorsen, must journey into the mysterious and magical Old Kingdom to rescue her father from the Land of the Dead.
• Rothfuss, Patrick. The Name of the Wind. A hero named Kvothe, now living under an assumed name as the humble proprietor of an inn, recounts his transformation from a magically gifted young man into the most notorious wizard, musician, thief, and assassin in his world.
• Walton, Jo. Among Others. Seeking refuge in fantasy novel worlds throughout a youth under the shadow of a dubiously sane mother who dabbled in magic, Mori Phelps is forced to confront her in a tragic battle and gains unwanted attention when she attempts to perform spells herself.
• Armstrong, Kelly. The Summoning. When Chloe Saunders sees a terrifying and grotesque ghost she has a breakdown and is sent to Lyle House, a group home. But soon bizarre situations start occurring at the house, not only to her, but also to the other residents.
• Blake, Kendare. Anna Dressed in Blood. For three years, seventeen-year-old Cas Lowood has carried on his father’s work of dispatching the murderous dead, traveling with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat, but everything changes when he meets Anna, a girl unlike any ghost he has faced before.
• Brosgol, Vera. Anya’s Ghost. Anya, embarrassed by her Russian immigrant family and self-conscious about her body, has given up on fitting in at school but falling down a well and making friends with the ghost there just may be worse. (graphic novel)
• Cabot, Meg. Shadowland. Sixteen-year-old Suze Simon can mediate between the living and the dead, and she hopes her move to California will be a fresh start, but a hot ghost named Jesse haunts her bedroom and another ghost is bent on vengeance at school.
• Kubo, Tite. Bleach. When Ichigo meets Rukia, a Soul Reaper, he absorbs her power and becomes a Soul Reaper himself, in charge of protecting the innocent from evil spirits. (graphic novel)
• McNeal, Tom. Far, Far Away. Jeremy Johnson Johnson hears voices. Or, specifically, one voice: the ghost of Jacob Grimm, one half of The Brothers Grimm. Jacob watches over Jeremy, protecting him from an unknown dark evil whispered about in the space between this world and the next. But Jacob can’t protect Jeremy from everything. When coltish, copper-haired Ginger Boultinghouse takes a bite of a cake so delicious it’s rumored to be bewitched, she falls in love with the first person she sees: Jeremy. In any other place, this would be a turn for the better for Jeremy, but not in Never Better, where the Finder of Occasions—whose identity and evil intentions nobody knows—is watching and waiting, waiting and watching. . . And as anyone familiar with the Brothers Grimm know, not all fairy tales have happy endings.
• Schroeder, Lisa. I Heart You, You Haunt Me. When her recently deceased boyfriend, Jackson, reappears as a ghost, Ava is thrilled to have him in her life in any way she can, but when she finally begins to move on with her life, Jackson must find a way to let her go.
• Soto, Gary. The Afterlife. A senior at East Fresno High School lives on as a ghost after his brutal murder in the restroom of a club where he had gone to dance.
• Stolarz, Laurie Faria. Project 17. When six high school students sneak into an abandoned mental institution to make a film about their night there, they do not expect the inexplicable and terrifying events that keep occuring within the crumbling, maze-like building, causing them to question themselves and, ultimately, to make different choices about the course of their lives.
• Whitcomb, Laura. A Certain Slant of Light. Although Helen died 130 years ago, her spirit is still bound to the earthly plane — and she has “cleaved” to one human host after another, watching the world around her but not really participating in it. Currently, Helen observes the world through the body of a high school English teacher, and one day, she is startled to realize that one of the teacher’s students can see her within the host.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more haunted stories or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Barakiva, Michael. One Man Guy. When Alek’s high-achieving, Armenian-American parents send him to summer school, he thinks his summer is ruined. But then he meets Ethan, who opens his world in a series of truly unexpected ways.
• Charlton-Trujillo, e. E. Fat Angie. Fat Angie’s sister was captured in Iraq, she’s the resident laughingstock at school, and her therapist tells her to count instead of eat. Can a daring new girl in her life really change anything?
• Cronn-Mills, Kirstin. Beautiful Music for Ugly Children. Gabe has always identified as a boy, but he was born with a girl’s body. With his new public access radio show gaining in popularity, Gabe struggles with romance, friendships, and parents–all while trying to come out as transgendered. An audition for a station in Minneapolis looks like his ticket to a better life in the big city. But his entire future is threatened when several violent guys find out Gabe, the popular DJ, is also Elizabeth from school.
• Danforth, Emily. The Miseducation of Cameron Post. In the early 1990s, when gay teenager Cameron Post rebels against her conservative Montana ranch town and her family decides she needs to change her ways, she is sent to a gay conversion therapy center.
• Donovan, John. I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. While trying to cope with his alcoholic mother and absent father, a lonely New York City teenager develops a confusing crush on another boy.
• Franklin, Emily. Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom. Feeling humiliated and confused when his best friend Tessa rejects his love and reveals a long-held secret , high school senior Luke must decide if he should stand by Tessa when she invites a female date to the prom, sparking a firestorm of controversy in their small Indiana town.
• Goode, L. Sister Mischief. Esme Rockett, also known as MC Ferocious, rocks her suburban Minnesota Christian high school with more than the hip-hop music she makes with best friends Marcy ( DJ SheStorm) and Tess (The ConTessa) when she develops feelings for her co-MC, Rowie (MC Rohini).
• Green, John. Will Grayson, Will Grayson. When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other’s best friend, who produces a play revealing his relationship with them both.
• Katcher, Brian. Almost Perfect. With his mother working long hours and in pain from a romantic break-up, eighteen-year-old Logan feels alone and unloved until a zany new student arrives at his small-town Missouri high school, keeping a big secret.
• Konigsberg, Bill. Openly Straight. Tired of being known as “the gay kid”, Rafe Goldberg decides to assume a new persona when he comes east and enters an elite Massachusetts prep school–but trying to deny his identity has both complications and unexpected consequences.
• LaCour, Nina. Everything Leads to You. While working as a film production designer in Los Angeles, Emi Price finds a mysterious letter from a silver screen legend which leads her to Ava, who is about to expand Emi’s understanding of family, acceptance, and true romance.
• Levithan, David. Two Boys Kissing. A chorus of men who died of AIDS observes and yearns to help a cross-section of today’s gay teens who navigate new love, long-term relationships, coming out, self-acceptance, and more in a society that has changed in many ways.
• Sáenz, Benjamin Alire. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.
• Sanchez, Alex. Boyfriends with Girlfriends. When Lance begins to date Sergio, who is bisexual, he is not sure that it will work out, and when his best friend Allie, who has a boyfriend, meets Sergio’s lesbian friend, she has unexpected feelings which she struggles to understand.
• Wilkinson, Lili. Pink. Sixteen-year-old Ava does not know who she is or where she belongs, but when she tries out a new personality–and sexual orientation–at a different school, her edgy girlfriend, potential boyfriend, and others are hurt by her lack of honesty.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more books featuring GLBTQ characters or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Anderson, M.T. Feed. In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble.
• Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. A veteran of years of simulated war games, Ender believes he is engaged in one more computer war game when in truth he is commanding the last fleet of Earth against an alien race seeking the complete destruction of Earth.
• Charbonneau, Joelle. The Testing. Sixteen-year-old Malencia (Cia) Vale is chosen to participate in The Testing to attend the University; however, Cia is fearful when she figures out her friends who do not pass The Testing are disappearing.
• Grant, Michael. Gone. In a small town on the coast of California, everyone over the age of fourteen suddenly disappears, setting up a battle between the remaining town residents and the students from a local private school, as well as those who have “The Power” and are able to perform supernatural feats and those who do not.
• Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. A reunion with two childhood friends–Ruth and Tommy–draws Kath and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into the supposedly idyllic years of their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the serene English countryside, and a dramatic confrontation with the truth about their childhoods and about their lives in the present.
• Lore, Pittacus. I Am Number Four. In rural Ohio, friendships and a beautiful girl prove distracting to a fifteen-year-old who has hidden on Earth for ten years waiting to develop the Legacies, or powers, he will need to rejoin the other six surviving Garde members and fight the Mogadorians who destroyed their planet, Lorien.
• Mafi, Tahereh. Shatter Me. Ostracized or incarcerated her whole life, seventeen-year-old Juliette is freed on the condition that she use her horrific abilities in support of The Reestablishment, a postapocalyptic dictatorship, but Adam, the only person ever to show her affection, offers hope of a better future.
• Moore, Alan. Watchmen. Exceptional graphic artwork brings to life the story of the Watchmen as they race against time to find a killer, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.
• O’Brien, Caragh M. Birthmarked. When her midwife mother is forcibly taken away by the very people she serves, sixteen-year-old Gaia Stone starts to question the role of the Enclave and whether it deserves the loyalty her family has so faithfully given.
• Pfeffer, Susan Beth. 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.
• Ryan, Carrie. The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Through twists and turns of fate, orphaned Mary seeks knowledge of life, love, and especially what lies beyond her walled village and the surrounding forest, where dwell the Unconsecrated, aggressive flesh-eating people who were once dead.
• Terrill, Cristin. All Our Yesterdays. Em must travel back in time to prevent a catastrophic time machine from ever being invented, while Marina battles to prevent the murder of the boy she loves.
• Wells, Robison E. Variant. After years in foster homes, seventeen-year-old Benson Fisher applies to New Mexico’s Maxfield Academy in hopes of securing a brighter future, but instead he finds that the school is a prison and no one is what he or she seems.
• Young, Moira. Blood Red Road. In a distant future, eighteen-year-old Lugh is kidnapped, and while his twin sister Saba and nine-year-old Emmi are trailing him across bleak Sandsea they are captured, too, and taken to brutal Hopetown, where Saba is forced to be a cage fighter until new friends help plan an escape.
• Zevin, Gabrielle. All These Things I’ve Done. In a dystopian future where chocolate and caffeine are contraband, teenage cellphone use is illegal, and water and paper are carefully rationed, sixteen-year-old Anya Balanchine finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight as heir apparent to an important New York City crime family.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Armstrong, Kelley. The Summoning. When Chloe Saunders sees a terrifying and grotesque ghost she has a breakdown and is sent to Lyle House, a group home. But soon bizarre situations start occurring at the house, not only to her, but also to the other residents
• Clement-Moore, Rosemary. Texas Gothic. Seventeen-year-old Amy Goodnight has long been the one who makes her family of witches seem somewhat normal to others, but while spending a summer with her sister caring for their aunt’s farm, Amy becomes the center of weirdness when she becomes tied to a powerful ghost.
• Gill, David Macinnis. Soul Enchilada. When, after a demon appears to repossess her car, she discovers that both the car and her soul were given as collateral in a deal made with the Devil by her irascible grandfather, eighteen-year-old Bug Smoot, given two-days’ grace, tries to find ways to outsmart the Devil as she frantically searches for her conveniently absent relative.
• Higson, Charles. The Enemy. After a disease turns everyone over sixteen into brainless, decomposing, flesh-eating creatures, a group of teenagers leave their shelter and set out of a harrowing journey across London to the safe haven of Buckingham Palace.
• Holt, Simon. The Devouring. The existence of Vours, supernatural creatures who feast on fear and attack on the eve of the winter solstice, becomes a terrifying reality for fifteen-year-old Reggie when she begins to suspect that her timid younger brother might be one of their victims.
• Kraus, Daniel. Rotters. Sixteen-year-old Joey’s life takes a very strange turn when his mother’s tragic death forces him to move from Chicago to rural Iowa with the father he has never known, and who is the town pariah.
• Lubar, David. Extremities. Here are thirteen tales of death, murder, and revenge from the fertile and febrile imagination of master storyteller David Lubar
• Nixon, Joan Lowery. The Séance. The séance started as a game, but it led to murder and terror for the people of a small east Texas community.
• Shusterman, Neal. Unwind. In a future world where those between the ages of thirteen and eighteen can have their lives “unwound” and their body parts harvested for use by others, three teens go to extreme lengths to uphold their beliefs– and, perhaps, save their own lives.
• Shan, Darren. Lord Loss. Presumably the only witness to the horrific and bloody murder of his entire family, a teenage boy must outwit not only the mental health professionals determined to cure his delusion, but also the demonic forces only he can see.
• Sleator, William. Hell Phone. Seventeen-year-old Nick buys a used cell phone only to call his girlfriend, but strange and desperate people keep calling–one of them a denizen of Hell–begging for or demanding his help.
• Van Etten, Chris. Wickedpedia. Cole and Greg love playing practical jokes through Wikipedia. They edit key articles and watch their classmates crash and burn giving oral reports on historical figures like Genghis Khan, the first female astronaut on Jupiter. So after the star soccer player steals Cole’s girlfriend, the boys take their revenge by creating a Wikipedia page for him, an entry full of outlandish information including details about his bizarre death on the soccer field. It’s all in good fun, until the soccer player is killed in a freak accident…just as Cole and Greg predicted. The uneasy boys vow to leave Wikipedia alone but someone continues to edit articles about classmates dying in gruesome ways…and those entries start to come true as well. To his horror, Cole soon discovers that someone has created a Wikipedia page for him, and included a date of death. He has one week to figure out who’s behind the murders, or else he’s set to meet a pretty grisly end.
• Yancey, Richard. The Monstrumologist. In 1888 New England, monster-hunting doctor Pellinore Warthrop and his apprentice Will Henry encounter an Anthropophagus — a headless, supposedly extinct monster that has teeth in its belly and feeds on humans – and the two of them must track and kill an entire pod of the beasts. Alternately flowery and dripping with gore, the writing is lush and compelling; it will transport you to the Victorian age…and scare your trousers off.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more spine tingling tales or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Brown, Teri J. Born of Illusion. Set in 1920s New York City, this is the story of budding magician Anna Van Housen, who has spent her whole life playing sidekick to her faux-medium mother–and trying to hide the fact the she actually possesses the very abilities her mother fakes.
• Godbersen, Anna. The Luxe. In Manhattan in 1899, five teens of different social classes lead dangerously scandalous lives, despite the strict rules of society and the best-laid plans of parents and others.
• Godbersen, Anna. Bright Young Things. In the spring of 1929, eighteen-year-old Cordelia Grey and her stage-struck friend Letty Larkspur run away from their small Ohio town to seek their fortunes in New York City and soon find themselves drawn into situations and relationships, particularly with the dazzling Astrid Donal, that change their lives forever.
• Goodwin, Daisy. The American Heiress. Presents the story of vivacious Cora Cash, whose early twentieth-century marriage to England’s most eligible duke is overshadowed by his secretive nature and the traps and betrayals of London’s social scene.
• Gray, Claudia. Fateful. When seventeen-year-old Tess Davies, a ladies’ maid, meets handsome Alec Marlow aboard the RMS Titanic, she quickly becomes entangled in the dark secrets of his past, but her growing love puts her in mortal peril even before fate steps in.
• Ibbotson, Eva. The Reluctant Heiress. In 1920s Austria, no one in the Viennese opera company knows that their wardrobe mistress Tessa is really a princess. But when the dashing self-made millionaire Guy Farne arrives at the opera, Tessa realizes that there may be more to life–and love–than just music.
• Kindle, Patrice. Keeping the Castle. In order to support her family and maintain their ancient castle in Lesser Hoo, seventeen-year-old Althea bears the burden of finding a wealthy suitor who can remedy their financial problems.
• Miller, Sarah. Lost Crown. In alternating chapters, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia tell how their privileged lives as the daughters of the tsar in early twentieth-century Russia are transformed by world war and revolution.
• Rushby, Allison. The Heiresses. Teenaged triplets–estranged since birth–are thrust together in glittering 1926 London to fight for their inheritance, only to learn they cannot trust anyone–least of all each other.
• Weyn, Suzanne. Distant Waves: a Novel of the Titanic. In the early twentieth century, five sisters and their widowed mother, a famed spiritualist, travel from New York to London, and as the Titanic conveys them and their acquaintances, journalist W.T. Stead, scientist Nikola Tesla, and industrialist John Jacob Astor, home, Tesla’s inventions will either doom or save them all.
• Winters, Cat. In The Shadow of Blackbirds. In San Diego in 1918, as deadly influenza and World War I take their toll, sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort and, despite her scientific leanings, must consider if ghosts are real when her first love, killed in battle, returns.
• Bacigalupi, Paolo. Ship Breaker. In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copper wiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beached clipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship for its wealth or rescue the girl.
• Bick, Ilsa J. Ashes. Alex, a resourceful seventeen-year-old running from her incurable brain tumor, Tom, who has left the war in Afghanistan, and Ellie, an angry eight-year-old, join forces after an electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky and kills most of the world’s population, turning some of those who remain into zombies and giving the others superhuman senses.
• Bruchac, Joseph. Killer of Enemies. In a world that has barely survived an apocalypse that leaves it with pre-twentieth century technology, Lozen is a monster hunter for four tyrants who are holding her family hostage.
• Carman, Patrick. Pulse. In the year 2051, when most Americans live in one of two gigantic, modern States, Faith Daniels, part of a dwindling group that lives between, learns that she, like other misfits, has unusual abilities that could help when the inevitable war begins.
• Charbonneau, Joelle. The Testing. Sixteen-year-old Malencia (Cia) Vale is chosen to participate in The Testing to attend the University; however, Cia is fearful when she figures out her friends who do not pass The Testing are disappearing.
• Dashner, James. The Maze Runner. Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.
• DeStefano, Lauren. Perfect Ruin. Sixteen-year-old Morgan Stockhour lives in Internment, a floating city utopia. But when a murder occurs, everything she knows starts to unravel.
• Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother. After being interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus, released into what is now a police state, decides to use his expertise in computer hacking to set things right.
• London, Alex. Proxy. Privileged Syd and his proxy, Knox, are thrown together to overthrow the system.
• Malley, Gemma. The Declaration. In 2140 England, where drugs enable people to live forever and children are illegal, teenaged Anna, an obedient “Surplus” training to become a house servant, discovers that her birth parents are trying to find her.
• Ness, Patrick. The Knife of Never Letting Go. Pursued by power-hungry Prentiss and mad minister Aaron, young Todd and Viola set out across New World searching for answers about his colony’s true past and seeking a way to warn the ship bringing hopeful settlers from Old World.
• Patneaude, David. Epitaph Road. In 2097, men are a small and controlled minority in a utopian world ruled by women, and fourteen-year-old Kellen must fight to save his father from an outbreak of the virus that killed ninety-seven percent of the male population thirty years earlier.
• Rosoff, Meg. How I Live Now. To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.
• Shusterman, Neal. Unwind. In a future world where those between the ages of thirteen and eighteen can have their lives “unwound” and their body parts harvested for use by others, three teens go to extreme lengths to uphold their beliefs–and, perhaps, save their own lives.
• Simmons, Kristen. Article 5. Seventeen-year-old Ember Miller has perfected the art of keeping a low profile in a future society in which Moral Statutes have replaced the Bill of Rights and offenses carry stiff penalties, but when Chase, the only boy she has ever loved, arrests her rebellious mother, Ember must take action.
• Westerfeld, Scott. Uglies. Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally’s best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.
• Young, Moria. Blood Red Road. In a distant future, eighteen-year-old Lugh is kidnapped, and while his twin sister Saba and nine-year-old Emmi are trailing him across bleak Sandsea they are captured, too, and taken to brutal Hopetown, where Saba is forced to be a cage fighter until new friends help plan an escape.
• Arnold, David. Mosquitoland. After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the “wastelands” of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland. So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.
• Hopkins, Ellen. Impulse. Three teens who meet at Reno, Nevada’s Aspen Springs mental hospital after each has attempted suicide connect with each other in a way they never have with their parents or anyone else in their lives.
• Kuehn, Stephanie. Charm & Strange. A lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy must either surrender his sanity to the wild wolves inside his mind or learn that surviving means more than not dying.
• Lockhart, E. The Boyfriend List. A Seattle fifteen-year-old explains some of the reasons for her recent panic attacks, including breaking up with her boyfriend, losing all her girlfriends, tensions between her performance-artist mother and her father, and more.
• Roskos, Evan. Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets. A sixteen-year-old boy wrestling with depression and anxiety tries to cope by writing poems, reciting Walt Whitman, hugging trees, and figuring out why his sister has been kicked out of the house.
• Shusterman, Neal. Challenger Deep. Caden Bosch is on a ship that’s headed for the deepest point on Earth: Challenger Deep, the southern part of the Marianas Trench. Caden Bosch is a brilliant high school student whose friends are starting to notice his odd behavior. Caden Bosch is designated the ship’s artist in residence to document the journey with images. Caden Bosch pretends to join the school track team but spends his days walking for miles, absorbed by the thoughts in his head.Caden Bosch is split between his allegiance to the captain and the allure of mutiny. Caden Bosch is torn.
• Smith, Hilary. Wild Awake. The discovery of a startling family secret leads seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd from a protected and naive life into a summer of mental illness, first love, and profound self-discovery.
• Vaughn, Lauren Roedy. OCD, the Dude, and Me. Danielle Levine stands out even at her alternative high school–in appearance and attitude–but when her scathing and sometimes raunchy English essays land her in a social skills class, she meets Daniel, another social misfit who may break her resolve to keep everyone at arm’s length.
• Vizzini, Ned. 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.
• Wolitzer, Meg. Belzhar. Jam Gallahue, fifteen, unable to cope with the loss of her boyfriend Reeve, is sent to a therapeutic boarding school in Vermont, where a journal-writing assignment for an exclusive, mysterious English class transports her to the magical realm of Belzhar, where she and Reeve can be together.
• Banks, Anna. Of Poseidon. Galen, prince of the Syrena, is sent to land to find a girl he’s heard can communicate with fish. He finds Emma and after several encounters, including a deadly one with a shark, Galen becomes convinced Emma holds the key to his kingdom.
• Brown, Anne Greenwood. Lies Beneath. As the only brother in a family of mermaids living in Lake Superior, Calder White is expected to seduce Lily, the daughter of the man believed to have killed the mermaids’ mother, but he begins to fall in love with her just as Lily starts to suspect the legends about the lake are true.
• Childs, Tera Lynn. Forgive My Fins. Seventeen-year-old Lily, half-mermaid and half-human, has been living on land and attending high school, where she develops a crush on a boy but is afraid to tell him of her true destiny as the ruler of the undersea kingdom of Thalassinia.
• Deebs, Tracy. Tempest Rising. On her seventeenth birthday, Tempest must decide whether to remain a human and live on land or submit to her mermaid half, like her mother before her, and enter into a long-running war under the sea.
• Madigan, L.K. The Mermaid’s Mirror. Lena, almost sixteen, has always felt drawn to the waters of San Francisco Bay despite the fears of her father, a former surfer, but after she glimpses a beautiful woman with a tail, nothing can keep Lena from seeking the mermaid in the dangerous waves at Magic Crescent Cove.
• Madison, Bennett. September Girls. Vacationing in a sleepy beach town for the summer, Sam is pursued by hordes of blonde girls before falling in love with the unusual DeeDee, who compels him to uncover secrets about the community’s ocean-dwelling inhabitants.
• Moskowitz, Hannah. Teeth. Rudy’s life is flipped upside-down when his family moves to a remote island in a last attempt to save his sick younger brother. With nothing to do but worry, Rudy sinks deeper and deeper into loneliness and lies awake at night listening to the screams of the ocean beneath his family’s rickety house. Then he meets Diana, who makes him wonder what he even knows about love, and Teeth, who makes him question what he knows about anything. Rudy can’t remember the last time he felt so connected to someone, but being friends with Teeth is more than a little bit complicated. He soon learns that Teeth has terrible secrets. Violent secrets. Secrets that will force Rudy to choose between his own happiness and his brother’s life.
• Napoli, Donna Jo. Sirena. The gods grant immortality to the mermaid Sirena when she rescues a human man from the sea and they fall in love, but his mortality creates great conflict between love and honor when he is called to defend Greece in the Trojan War.
• Porter, Sarah. Lost Voices. Assaulted and left on the cliffs outside of her grim Alaskan fishing village by her abusive, alcoholic uncle, fourteen-year-old Luce expects to die when she tumbles into the icy waters below, but when she instead transforms into a mermaid she is faced with struggles and choices she could never have imagined.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more stories under the sea or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Benway, Robin. Audrey, Wait! While trying to score a date with her cute co-worker at the Scooper Dooper, sixteen-year-old Audrey gains unwanted fame and celebrity status when her ex-boyfriend, a rock musician, records a breakup song about her that soars to the top of the Billboard charts.
• Briant, Ed. I Am (Not) the Walrus. As the singer and bass player for a Beatles cover band, Toby embarks on a quest to increase his sex appeal, a plan that derails when he finds a mysterious note inside his old bass guitar.
• Cronn-Mills, Kristin. Beautiful Music for Ugly Children. Gabe has always identified as a boy, but he was born with a girl’s body. With his new public access radio show gaining in popularity, Gabe struggles with romance, friendships, and parents–all while trying to come out as transgendered. An audition for a station in Minneapolis looks like his ticket to a better life in the big city. But his entire future is threatened when several violent guys find out Gabe, the popular DJ, is also Elizabeth from school.
• Donnelly, Jennifer. Revolution. An angry, grieving seventeen-year-old musician facing expulsion from her prestigious Brooklyn private school travels to Paris to complete a school assignment and uncovers a diary written during the French revolution by a young actress attempting to help a tortured, imprisoned little boy–Louis Charles, the lost king of France.
• Draper, Sharon M. The Battle of Jericho. A high school junior and his cousin suffer the ramifications of joining what seems to be a “reputable” school club.
• Going, K.L. Fat Kid Rules the World. Seventeen-year-old Troy, depressed, suicidal, and weighing nearly 300 pounds, gets a new perspective on life when a homeless teenager who is a genius on guitar wants Troy to be the drummer in his rock band.
• John, Antony. Five Flavors of Dumb. Eighteen-year-old Piper becomes the manager for her classmates’ popular rock band, called Dumb, giving her the chance to prove her capabilities to her parents and others, if only she can get the band members to get along.
• Korman, Gordon. Born to Rock. High school senior Leo Caraway, a conservative Republican, learns that his biological father is a punk rock legend.
• Woodson, Jacqueline. After Tupac and D Foster. In the New York City borough of Queens in 1996, three girls bond over their shared love of Tupac Shakur’s music, as together they try to make sense of the unpredictable world in which they live.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more musical literature or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Abrahams, Peter. Reality Check. After a knee injury destroys sixteen-year-old Cody’s college hopes, he drops out of high school and gets a job in his small Montana town, but when his ex-girlfriend disappears from her Vermont boarding school, Cody travels cross-country to join the search.
• Blundell, Judy. What I Saw and How I Lied. In 1947, with her jovial stepfather Joe back from the war and family life returning to normal, teenaged Evie, smitten by the handsome young ex-GI who seems to have a secret hold on Joe, finds herself caught in a complicated web of lies whose devastating outcome changes her life and that of her family forever.
• Coben, Harlan. Shelter: A Mickey Bolitar Novel. After tragic events tear Mickey Bolitar away from his parents, he is forced to live with his estranged Uncle Myron and switch high schools, where he finds both friends and enemies, but when his new girlfriend, Ashley, vanishes, he follows her trail into a seedy underworld that reveals she is not what she seems to be.
• Feinstein, John. Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery. After winning a basketball reporting contest, eighth graders Stevie and Susan Carol are sent to cover the Final Four tournament, where they discover that a talented player is being blackmailed into throwing the final game.
• Ferguson, Alane. 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.
• Fredericks, Mariah. The Girl in the Park. When a teenaged girl with a bad reputation is murdered in New York City’s Central Park after a party, her childhood friend is determined to solve the mystery of who caused her death.
• Green, John. Paper Towns. One month before graduating from his Central Florida high school, Quentin “Q” Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, Q’s neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears.
• Johnson, Maureen. The Name of the Star. Rory, of Bénouville, Louisiana, is spending a year at a London boarding school when she witnesses a murder by a Jack the Ripper copycat and becomes involved with the very unusual investigation.
• Lane, Andy. Death Cloud. In 1868, with his army officer father suddenly posted to India, and his mother mysteriously “unwell,” fourteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes is sent to stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt in their vast house in Farnham, where he uncovers his first murder and a diabolical villain.
• Portman, Frank. 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.
• Sepetys, Ruta. Out of the Easy. Josie, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a French Quarter prostitute, is striving to escape 1950 New Orleans and enroll at prestigious Smith College when she becomes entangled in a murder investigation.
• Shepard, Sara. Pretty Little Liars. When one of their tightly-knit group mysteriously disappears, four high school girls find their friendship difficult to maintain when they begin receiving taunting messages from someone who seems to know everything about their past and present secrets.
• Snyder, Scott. Batman: The Black Mirror. A series of brutal murders push Batman’s detective skills to the limit and force him to confront one of Gotham City’s oldest evils. In a second story, the corpse of a killer whale shows up on the floor of one of Gotham City’s foremost banks. The event begins a strange and deadly mystery that will bring Batman face to face with the new, terrifying faces of organized crime in Gotham.
• Westerfeld, Scott. So Yesterday. Hunter Braque, a New York City teenager who is paid by corporations to spot what is “cool,” combines his analytical skills with girlfriend Jen’s creative talents to find a missing person and thwart a conspiracy directed at the heart of consumer culture.
• Zusak, Markus. I am the Messenger. 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.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To get hooked on more mysteries or find other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Ashby, Amanda. Zombie Queen of Newbury High. While trying to cast a love spell on her date on the eve of the senior prom, Mia inadvertently infects her entire high school class with a virus that will turn them all into zombies.
• Bradley, Alex. 24 Girls in 7 Days. 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. Soon Percy and Natalie have assembled a list of girls eager to go to the prom with Jack, including one mysterious girl known only as FancyPants. He has just seven days to meet and date them before he will ask one special girl to the prom.
• Brian, Kate. Fake Boyfriend. When Lane and Vivi’s best friend Isabelle has her heart broken by her unreliable boyfriend, they decide to save her by inventing a new boy on the Internet to ask Isabelle to the prom, but the scheme quickly becomes complicated, and the results surprise them all.
• Clement-Moore, Rosemary. Prom Dates from Hell. High school senior and yearbook photographer Maggie thought she would rather die than go to prom, but when a classmate summons a revenge-seeking demon, she has no choice but to buy herself a dress and prepare to face jocks, cheerleaders, and Evil Incarnate.
• Czukas, Liz. Ask Again Later. Instead of a “No Drama Prom-a” with a group of friends, seventeen-year-old Heart LaCoeur must choose between two boys with good reasons for asking her, but a flip of a coin leads not to one date but two complete–and very different–prom nights.
• Ehrenhaft, Daniel. 21 Proms. Prom. It’s a near-universal high school experience. And here at least 21 of today’s bestselling and up-and-coming YA authors riff on it. Authors include: Libba Bray, Jacqueline Woodson, Ned Vizzini, John Green, Sarah Mylnowski, Melissa de la Cruz, Holly Black, Brent Hartinger, Lisa Sandell, Will Leitch, Leslie Margolis, Cecily von Ziegessar, E. Lockhart, Jodi Anderson, David Levithan, Dan Ehrenhaft, Liz Craft, Aimee Friedman, and Adrienne Vrettos.
• Ferraro, Tina. Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress. Having been stood up for the prom the previous year, high school junior Nicolette works on a top ten list of things to do with her unworn dress while also trying to help her divorced parents and take care of her relationships with her best friend and with potential boyfriends.
• Le Ny, Jeanine. Dream. Best friends Jordan, Tara, and Nisha are psyched for the senior prom. All three are loving the dress and shoe shopping. The limos have been ordered. Beautiful Jordan is a shoo-in for Prom Queen, bossy Tara is head of the Prom Committee, and sweet Nisha is in love with her wonderful boyfriend. But what happens when Jordan decides to rebel, Tara has to find suitable date in time, and Nisha’s strict parents say no to her boyfriend– and to prom?
• Nelson, Blake. Prom Anonymous. Three childhood friends reunite to attend prom together and, in the process of finding dates and dresses, gain some surprising insights into themselves.
• Palmer, Robin. Cindy Ella. Sophomore iconoclast Cindy Gold publishes an anti-prom letter in her high school newspaper, but when she develops a crush on her SAT tutor, on top of the ones she already has on popular senior Adam Silver as well as a boy she has been exchanging instant messages with, she begins to doubt her own convictions.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Cabot, Meg. Avalon High. Having moved to Annapolis, Maryland, with her medievalist parents, high school junior Ellie enrolls at Avalon High School where several students may or may not be reincarnations of King Arthur and his court.
• De la Cruz, Melissa. Blue Bloods. Select teenagers from some of New York City’s wealthiest and most socially prominent families learn a startling secret about their bloodlines.
• Duncan, Lois. Gallows Hill. When seventeen-year-old Sarah works in the fortune-telling booth at a school carnival, she finds that sometimes she can really see the future in the crystal ball, a talent that disturbs some of the other students and makes them suspect her of being a witch.
• Gibsen, Cole. Katana. When seventeen-year-old Rileigh Martin discovers she may be harboring the spirit of Senshi, a samurai, she is torn between continuing as an ordinary, shoe-loving girl and embracing the warrior inside, with help from a handsome martial arts instructor, Kim.
• Kate, Lauren. Fallen. Suspected in the death of her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Luce is sent to a Savannah, Georgia, reform school where she meets two intriguing boys and learns the truth about the strange shadows that have always haunted her.
• King, A.S. The Dust of 100 Dogs. Cursed to live the lives of 100 dogs, a seventeenth-century pirate finally returns to life as a human being and has only one thing on her mind–to recover the treasure she had buried in Jamaica three hundred years before.
• Knight, Karsten. Wildefire. After a killing for which she feels responsible, sixteen-year-old Ashline Wilde moves cross-country to a remote California boarding school, where she learns that she and others have special gifts that can help them save the world, but evil forces are at work to stop them.
• Lindsey, Mary. Shattered Souls. When a Texas high school student starts hearing voices she assumes she is schizophrenic like her father, but instead she finds out that she is a “Speaker,” who can communicate with the dead in order to help their troubled souls find resolution.
• Meadows, Jodi. Incarnate. After 5000 years of the same souls being reincarnated, Ana, a new soul, is born and on her eighteenth birthday sets off on a mission to learn the truth about her existence.
• Miller, Kirsten. The Eternal Ones. Seventeen-year-old Haven Moore leaves East Tennessee to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, where she meets playboy Iain Morrow, whose fate may be tied to hers through a series of past lives.
• Omololu, Cynthia Jaynes. Transcendence. After handsome Griffon Hall tells sixteen-year-old Cole Ryan that her strange visions are of past lives, he introduces her to the Akhet, a group of people with the same ability, one of whom seeks to love and protect her and another, vengeance.
• Sedgwick, Marcus. Midwinterblood. Seven stories of passion and love separated by centuries but mysteriously intertwined—this is a tale of horror and beauty, tenderness and sacrifice. An archaeologist who unearths a mysterious artifact, an airman who finds himself far from home, a painter, a ghost, a vampire, and a Viking: the seven stories in this compelling novel all take place on the remote Scandinavian island of Blessed where a curiously powerful plant that resembles a dragon grows. What binds these stories together? What secrets lurk beneath the surface of this idyllic countryside? And what might be powerful enough to break the cycle of midwinterblood?
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Benway, Robin. Also Known As. As the active-duty daughter of international spies, sixteen-year-old safecracker Maggie Silver never attended high school so when she and her parents are sent to New York for her first solo assignment, Maggie is introduced to cliques, school lunches, and maybe even a boyfriend.
• Carlton, Kat. Two Lies and a Spy. Sixteen-year-old Kari juggles saving her spy parents while impressing the guy she has been in love with forever.
• Carriger, Gail. Etiquette & Espionage. In an alternate England of 1851, spirited fourteen-year-old Sophronia is enrolled in a finishing school where, she is suprised to learn, lessons include not only the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also diversion, deceit, and espionage.
• Carter, Ally. I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I Would Have to Kill You. As a sophomore at a secret spy school and the daughter of a former CIA operative, Cammie is sheltered from “normal teenage life” until she meets a local boy while on a class surveillance mission.
• Carter, Ally. All Fall Down. There are many powerful people along Embassy Row who want Grace to block out all her unpretty thoughts. But Grace will not stop until she finds out who killed her mother and make the killer pay.
• Higson, Charles. SilverFin: A James Bond Adventure. Prequel to the adventures of James Bond, 007, introduces the young James when he is just starting boarding school in England and is about to become involved in his first adventure.
• Horowitz, Anthony. Stormbreaker. After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle’s dangerous work for Britain’s intelligence agency, MI6.
• Kiem, Elizabeth. Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy. After a harrowing defection to the United States in 1982, Russian teenager Marya and her father settle in Brooklyn, where Marya is drawn into a web of intrigue involving her gift of foresight, her mother’s disappearance, and a boy she cannot bring herself to trust.
• McGowan, Jennifer. Maid of Secrets. In 1559 England, Meg, an orphaned thief, is pressed into service and trained as a member of the Maids of Honor, Queen Elizabeth I’s secret all-female guard, but her loyalty is tested when she falls in love with a Spanish courtier who may be a threat.
• Muchamore, Robert. The Recruit. James is recruited into CHERUB, a secret division of MI5 which consists of teenage spies. He successfully completes his training and goes on his first mission.
• Schreiber, Joe. Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick. Perry’s parents insist that he take Gobi, their quiet, Lithuanian exchange student, to senior prom but after an incident at the dance he learns that Gobi is actually a trained assassin who needs him as a henchman, behind the wheel of his father’s precious Jaguar, on a mission in Manhattan.
• Smith, Lindsay. Sekret. A group of psychic teenagers in 1960s Soviet Russia are forced to use their powers to spy for the KGB.
• Vance, Talia. Spies and Prejudice. Berry Fields’s life working for her dad’s investigation firm and searching for clues to her mother’s death unravels when gorgeous Tanner arrives in town and changes everything.
• Zettel, Sarah. Palace of Spies: Being a True, Accurate, and Complete Account of the Scandalous and Wholly Remarkable Adventures of Margaret Preston Fitzroy, Counterfeit Lady, Accused Thief, and Confidential Agent at the Court of His Majesty, King George I. In 1716 London, an orphaned sixteen-year-old girl from a good family impersonates a lady-in-waiting only to discover that the real girl was murdered, the court harbors a nest of spies, and the handsome young artist who’s helping her solve the mystery might be a spy himself.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more strange island adventures or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Cameron, Sharon. The Dark Unwinding. In 1852, when seventeen-year-old Katharine is sent to her family’s estate to prove that her uncle is insane, she finds he is an inventor whose work creating ingenious clockwork figures supports hundreds of families, but strange occurences soon have her doubting her own sanity.
• Colfer, Eoin. Airman. In the late nineteenth century, when Conor Broekhart discovers a conspiracy to overthrow the king, he is branded a traitor, imprisoned, and forced to mine for diamonds under brutal conditions while he plans a daring escape from Little Saltee prison by way of a flying machine that he must design, build, and, hardest of all, trust to carry him to safety.
• Dolamore, Jaclyn. Magic Under Glass. A wealthy sorcerer’s invitation to sing with his automaton leads seventeen-year-old Nimira, whose family’s disgrace brought her from a palace to poverty, into political intrigue, enchantments, and a friendship with a fairy prince who needs her help.
• Fisher, Catherine. Incarceron. To free herself from an upcoming arranged marriage, Claudia, the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, a futuristic prison with a mind of its own, decides to help a young prisoner escape.
• Kittredge, Caitlin. The Iron Thorn. In an alternate 1950s, mechanically gifted fifteen-year-old Aoife Grayson, whose family has a history of going mad at sixteen, must leave the totalitarian city of Lovecraft and venture into the world of magic to solve the mystery of her brother’s disappearance and the mysteries surrounding her father and the Land of Thorn.
• Kress, Adrienne. The Friday Society. Cora, Nellie, and Michiko, teenaged assistants to three powerful men in Edwardian London, meet by chance at a ball that ends with the discovery of a murdered man, leading the three to work together to solve this and related crimes without drawing undue attention to themselves.
• McQuerry, Maureen. The Peculiars. Eighteen-year-old Lena Mattacascar sets out for Scree, a weird place inhabited by Peculiars, seeking the father who left when she was young, but on the way she meets young librarian Jimson Quiggley and handsome marshall Thomas Saltre, who complicate her plans.
• Richards, Justin. The Death Collector. Three teens and a curator of unclassified artifacts at the British Museum match wits with a madman determined to use unorthodox methods to reanimate the dead, both humans and dinosaurs.
• Wooding, Chris. The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray. As Thaniel, a wych-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.
SERIES
• Carriger, Gail. Finishing School. First book: Etiquette & Espionage. In an alternate England of 1851, spirited fourteen-year-old Sophronia is enrolled in a finishing school where, she is suprised to learn, lessons include not only the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also diversion, deceit, and espionage.
• Clare, Cassandra. Infernal Devices. First book: Clockwork Angel. When sixteen-year-old orphan Tessa Fell’s older brother suddenly vanishes, her search for him leads her into Victorian-era London’s dangerous supernatural underworld, and when she discovers that she herself is a Downworlder, she must learn to trust the demon-killing Shadowhunters if she ever wants to learn to control her powers and find her brother.
• Cornish, D.M. Monster Blood Tattoo. First book: Foundling. Having grown up in a home for foundlings and possessing a girl’s name, Rossamund 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 that he previously thought. Includes glossaries and maps.
• Cross, Kady. The Steampunk Chronicles. First book: The Girl in the Steel Corset. When Griffin King, the orphaned Duke of Greythorne, encounters sixteen-year-old Finley Jayne, he can tell that she’s no ordinary girl. Sensing the magical darkness inside her, he invites her to join his band of misfits, each with strange abilities much like her own, and together they must work to stop The Machinist, a criminal mastermind who is behind a number of recent crimes by automatons.
• Oppel, Kenneth. Airborn. First book: Airborn. Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl traveling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence of mysterious winged creatures reportedly living hundreds of feet above the Earth’s surface.
• Pullman, Philip. His Dark Materials. First book: The Golden Compass. Accompanied by her shape-shifting daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North.
• Reeve, Philip. Fever Crumb. (Prequel to the Hunger City Chronicles) Foundling Fever Crumb has been raised as an engineer although females in the future London, England, are not believed capable of rational thought, but at age fourteen she leaves her sheltered world and begins to learn startling truths about her past while facing danger in the present.
• Slade, Arthur. The Hunchback Assignments. First book: The Hunchback Assignments. In Victorian London, fourteen-year-old Modo, a shape-changing hunchback, becomes a secret agent for the Permanent Association, which strives to protect the world from the evil machinations of the Clockwork Guild.
• Westerfeld, Scott. Leviathan. First book: Leviathan. In an alternate 1914 Europe, fifteen-year-old Austrian Prince Alek, on the run from the Clanker Powers who are attempting to take over the globe using mechanical machinery, forms an uneasy alliance with Deryn who, disguised as a boy to join the British Air Service, is learning to fly genetically-engineered beasts.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more steam powered, alternative history or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Burd, Nick. The Vast Fields of Ordinary. The summer after graduating from an Iowa high school, eighteen-year-old Dade Hamilton watches his parents’ marriage disintegrate, ends his long-term, secret relationship, comes out of the closet, and savors first love.
• Calame, Don. Swim the Fly. Fifteen-year-old Matt Gratton and his two best friends, Coop and Sean, always set themselves a summertime goal. This year’s goal is to see a real-live naked girl for the first time. Given that none of the guys has the nerve to even ask a girl out on a date this is quite a challenge. But catching a girl in the buff starts to look easy compared to Matt’s other summertime aspiration: to swim the 100-yard butterfly as a way to impress Kelly West, the sizzling new star of the swim team.
• Calonita, Jen. Sleepaway Girls. When the exceptionally people-pleasing Sam spends a summer as a counselor-in-training, she learns how to say no, to stand up for herself, and what it feels like to have a crush on a great guy.
• Fitzpatrick, Huntley. What I Thought Was True. 17-year-old Gwen Castle is a working-class girl determined to escape her small island town, but when rich-kid Cass Somers, with whom she has a complicated romantic history, shows up, she’s forced to reassess her feelings about her loving, complex family, her lifelong best friends, her wealthy employer, the place she lives, and the boy she can’t admit she loves.
• Hartinger, Brent. Project Sweet Life. When their fathers insist that they get summer jobs, three fifteen-year-old friends in Tacoma, Washington, dedicate their summer vacation to fooling their parents into thinking that they are working, which proves to be even harder than having real jobs would have been.
• LaCour, Nina. The Disenchantments. Colby’s post-high school plans have long been that he and his best friend Beth would tour with her band, then spend a year in Europe, but when she announces that she will start college just after the tour, Colby struggles to understand why she changed her mind and what losing her means for his future.
• Lockhart, E. We Were Liars. Spending the summers on her family’s private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged Cadence struggles to remember what happened during her fifteenth summer.
• Matson, Morgan. Second Chance Summer. Taylor Edwards’ family might not be the closest-knit–everyone is a little too busy and overscheduled–but for the most part, they get along just fine. Then Taylor’s dad gets devastating news, and her parents decide that the family will spend one last summer all together at their old lake house in the Pocono Mountains. Crammed into a place much smaller and more rustic than they are used to, they begin to get to know each other again. And Taylor discovers that the people she thought she had left behind haven’t actually gone anywhere. Her former best friend is still around, as is her first boyfriend…and he’s much cuter at seventeen than he was at twelve. As the summer progresses and the Edwards become more of a family, they’re more aware than ever that they’re battling a ticking clock. Sometimes, though, there is just enough time to get a second chance–with family, with friends, and with love.
• Tamaki, Mariko and Jillian Tamaki. This One Summer. Rose’s latest summer at a beach lake house is overshadowed by her parents’ constant arguments, her younger friend’s secret sorrows, and the dangerous activities of older teens.
• Thompson, Holly. Orchards. Sent to Japan for the summer after an eighth-grade classmate’s suicide, half-Japanese, half-Jewish Kana Goldberg tries to fit in with relatives she barely knows and reflects on the guilt she feels over the tragedy back home.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more summer vacation reads or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Frenette, Bethany. Dark Star. Audrey Whitticomb has nothing to fear. Her mother is the superhero Morning Star, the most deadly crime fighter in the Twin Cities, so its hard for Audrey not to feel safe. That is, until shes lured into the night by something human and not human–something with talons and teeth, and a wide scarlet smile.
• Grant, Michael. Gone. In a small town on the coast of California, everyone over the age of fourteen suddenly disappears, setting up a battle between the remaining town residents and the students from a local private school, as well as those who have “The Power” and are able to perform supernatural feats and those who do not.
• Hale, Shannon. Dangerous. When aspiring astronaut Maisie Danger Brown, who was born without a right hand, and the other space camp students get the opportunity to do something amazing in space, Maisie must prove how dangerous she can be and how far she is willing to go to protect everything she has ever loved.
• King, Wesley. The Vindico. When supervillains of the Vindico realize they are getting too old to fight the League of Heroes, they kidnap and begin training five teens, but James, Lana, Hayden, Emily, and Sam will not become the next generation of evil without a fight.
• Lloyd-Jones, Emily. Illusive. After a vaccine accidentally creates superpowers in a small percentage of the population, seventeen-year-old Ciere, an illusionist, teams up with a group of fellow high-class, super-powered thieves to steal the vaccine’s formula while staying one step ahead of mobsters and deadly government agents.
• Lupica, Mike. Hero. Fourteen-year-old Zach learns he has the same special abilities as his father, who was the President’s globe-trotting troubleshooter until “the Bads” killed him, and now Zach must decide whether to use his powers in the same way at the risk of his own life.
• Moore, Perry. Hero. Thom Creed, the gay son of a disowned superhero, finds that he, too, has special powers and is asked to join the very League that rejected his father, and it is there that Thom finds other misfits whom he can finally trust.
• Mull, Brandon. A World Without Heroes. Fourteen-year-old Jason Walker is transported to a strange world called Lyrian, where he joins Rachel, who was also drawn there from our world, and a few rebels, to piece together the Word that can destroy the malicious wizard emperor, Surroth.
• Priest, Cherie. I Am Princess X. Years after writing stories about a superheroine character she created with a best friend who died in a tragic car accident, sixteen-year-old May is shocked to see stickers, patches, and graffiti images of the superheroine appearing around Seattle.
• Sanderson, Brandon. Steelheart. 10 years ago, a burst in the sky game ordinary people superhuman powers. Now, these Epics wish to rule over humans. Only the Reckoners, regular humans who study Epics, fight against them, and David wants to join their cause after an Epic killed his father. Every hero and villain has a weakness, and figuring out what it is is the key to bringing them down.
• Bick, Isla J. Ashes. Alex, a resourceful seventeen-year-old running from her incurable brain tumor, Tom, who has left the war in Afghanistan, and Ellie, an angry eight-year-old, join forces after an electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky and kills most of the world’s population, turning some of those who remain into zombies and giving the others superhuman senses.
• Black, Holly. Zombies vs. Unicorns. Twelve short stories by a variety of authors seek to answer the question of whether zombies are better than unicorns.
• Brooks, Max. World War Z. In World War Z, life as we know it ends the way many horror fans knew it would: zombies rise up! After the post-war devastation, author Max Brooks (son of actors Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft) “interviews” survivors and records their stories as well as details on what causes zombies, how they spread, what will stop them, and effective strategic warfare methods against them.
• Grahame-Smith, Seth. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic Novel. It is known as “the strange plague,” and its unfortunate victims are referred to only as “unmentionables” or “dreadfuls.” All over England, the dead are rising again, and now even the daughters of Britain’s best families must devote their lives to mastering the deadly arts. Elizabeth Bennet is a fearsome warrior whose ability with a sword is matched only by her quick wit and even sharper tongue. But she faces her most formidable foe yet in the haughty, conceited, and somehow strangely attractive Mr. Darcy.
• James, Brian. Zombie Blondes. Each time fifteen-year-old Hannah and her out-of-work father move she has some fears about making friends, but a classmate warns her that in Maplecrest, Vermont, the cheerleaders really are monsters.
• Kenyon, Sherrilyn. Invincible: The Chronicles of Nick. Fourteen-year-old sarcastic, street-savvy Nick is drawn into the world of the Dark-Hunters, but must hide his participation in the battle against werewolves, vampires, and zombies from his mother and high school principal.
• Maberry, Jonathan. Rot & Ruin. In a post-apocalyptic world where fences and border patrols guard the few people left from the zombies that have overtaken civilization, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura is finally convinced that he must follow in his older brother’s footsteps and become a bounty hunter.
• Marion, Isaac. Warm Bodies. A zombie who yearns for a better life ends up falling in love with a human, in this original debut novel. R is a zombie. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse, but he has dreams. He doesn’t enjoy killing people; he enjoys riding escalators and listening to Frank Sinatra. He is a little different from his fellow Dead. Not just another zombie novel, this is funny, scary, and deeply moving.
• Martin, T. Michael. The End Games. In the rural mountains of West Virginia, seventeen-year-old Michael Faris tries to protect his fragile younger brother from the horrors of the zombie apocalypse.
• Perkins, Lori. Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance. Sometimes zombies don’t steal each other’s hearts just to feed their undead hunger for human flesh, as proven in this collection of romance tales about the walking dead by a talented group of fantasy authors.
• Ryan, Carrie. The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Through twists and turns of fate, orphaned Mary seeks knowledge of life, love, and especially what lies beyond her walled village and the surrounding forest, where dwell the Unconsecrated, aggressive flesh-eating people who were once dead.
• Shan, Darren. Zom-B. B wonders about a zombie outbreak in Ireland and finds himself struggling for survival while forging precarious alliances in the serpentine corridors of his high school.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more zombie adventures or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
• Becker, Tom. Darkside. Jonathan Starling’s father is in an asylum and his home has been attacked when, while running away from kidnappers, he stumbles upon Darkside, a terrifying and hidden part of London ruled by the descendents of Jack the Ripper, where Jonathan is in mortal danger if he cannot find the way out.
• Bickle, Laura. The Hallowed Ones. Amish teen Katie smuggles a gravely injured young man, an outsider, into her family’s barn despite the elders’ ruling that no one can come in or out of the community while some mysterious and massive unrest is wreaking havoc in the “English” world.
• Black, Holly. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown. When seventeen-year-old Tana wakes up following a party in the aftermath of a violent vampire attack, she travels to Coldtown, a quarantined Massachusetts city full of vampires, with her ex-boyfriend and a mysterious vampire boy in tow.
• Cary, Kate. Bloodline. In this story told primarily through journal entries, a British soldier in World War I makes the horrifying discovery that his regiment commander is descended from Count Dracula.
• Datlow, Ellen. Teeth : Vampire Tales. A collection of nineteen short stories about vampires features tales from Cassandra Clare and Holly Black, Neil Gaiman, and Melissa Marr.
• Fukuda, Andrew Xia. The Hunt. Gene has passed as a vampire for years, but now, just as he finds a girl worth fighting for, he is chosen to participate in the hunt for the last remaining humans among ruthless vampires who soon suspect his true nature.
• Jenkins, A. M. Night Road. Battling his own memories and fears, Cole, an extraordinarily conscientious vampire, and Sandor, a more impulsive acquaintance, spend a few months on the road, trying to train a young man who recently joined their ranks.
• Kagawa, Julie. The Immortal Rules. Allison Sekemoto survives in the Fringe, the outermost circle of a vampire city, until she too becomes an immortal vampire. Forced to flee into the unknown, outside her city walls, she joins a ragged band of humans who are seeking a legend — a possible cure to the disease that killed off most of humankind and created the rabids, the mindless creatures who threaten humans and vampires alike.
• Sedgwick, Marcus. My Swordhand is Singing. In the dangerous dark of winter in an Eastern European village during the early seventeenth century, Peter learns from a gypsy girl that the Shadow Queen is behind the recent murders and reanimations, and his father’s secret past may hold the key to stopping her.
• Shan, Darren. Cirque du Freak: the Saga of Darren Shan. Two boys who are best friends visit an illegal freak show, where an encounter with a vampire and a deadly spider forces them to make life-changing choices.
• Stoker, Bram. Dracula. After discovering the double identity of the wealthy Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, a small group of people vow to rid the world of the evil vampire. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.
• Westerfield, Scott. Peeps. Cal Thompson is a carrier of a parasite that causes vampirism, and must hunt down all of the girlfriends he has unknowingly infected.
All annotations from NoveList Plus. To find more vampire stories or other books you’ll love, check out the database NoveList Plus at the Peoria Public Library or at home with your Peoria Public Library card.
