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In Yxta Maya Murray’s newest novel, The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Kidnapped, we’re on a high speed, high stakes thrill ride from the first page.  15 year old Michelle Pena is a determined and fierce young woman.  She’s a track star and an excelling student who is living with her gay foster father and working towards a scholarship at a prestigious Los Angeles area high school.  The problem is her past:  Michelle is the daughter of the gang’s leader, and when her dad was killed, her mother took over and ruled the organization with an iron fist.  She’s in prison and Michelle’s brother, Sampson aka “king,”Read More →

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Catherine Fisher’s latest fantasy novel, Incarceron, has recently been released in the US by Dial, and this The Times’ Children’s Book of the Year (2007) is worth picking up. Incarceron is a prison unlike anything you’ve ever imagined: its inmates live their whole lives, from birth to death, in an entirely enclosed world with a vast network of cities, underground tunnels, metal forests, and unbound wilderness, all under the ever-present, all-seeing, sentient Eye of Incarceron.  It has been sealed for centuries and only in legend has anyone ever escaped.  Finn, a 17 year old prisoner, has no memories before waking up in a cell 3 years before. EveryRead More →

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Texas librarian Dia Reeves’ debut novel, Bleeding Violet, is a whirlwind, crazed, supernatural romantic thrillride, replete with madness, demons, sarcasm, irreverence, violence, sex and teen angst.  My head is still spinning… 16 year old Hanna’s mother abandoned her when she was a baby, leaving her to be raised in Finland by her father. After he dies, Hanna runs away to find and force a reunion with the mother she’s never met.  But Hanna’s life isn’t meant to be easy: she’s plagued by her own demons (manic depression and bipolar disorder) and a tendency towards violence and casual risk-taking; and when she breaks into her mother’sRead More →

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Rooted firmed in the steampunk genre,  Scott Westerfeld’s new series opens with gusto in Leviathan, released last week from Simon Pulse. In this alternate reality where the Central Powers (Clankers) have invented amazing mechanikal war machines, 15 year old Prince Aleksander Ferdinand’s parents, the heir to the throne of the Austria-Hungarian Empire Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek, have been assassinated and he is whisked away in the dead of night by just a few loyal men in a giant walking war machine, a Stormwalker.  Naive to the intricacies of politics and international intrigue, Alek slowly realizes this assassination has been the spark to set off the greatest warRead More →

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Action, adventure, mythology and high-tech crime are packed into Stephen Cole’s Thieves Like Us.  The first book in an explosive series, Thieves Like Us, introduces us to a crew of brilliant teens whose skill and ambition are harnessed by a criminal mastermind, Coldheart, making them an almost unstoppable band of high-end thieves.  First we meet Jonah Wish, an ultra-talented computer programmer as he’s serving the second month of a year-long incarceration for illegal computer hacking and multi-million dollar theft.  Jonah’s as surprised as the reader when a commotion breaks out in the jail and he’s spirited away by some well-trained, technologically savvy teens to aRead More →

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What’s the toughest part about Hunger Games? After finishing it, the next book that I read just doesn’t have as much grab for me. I wonder if that’s a problem for Suzanne Collins. As I talked with students and staff about what to expect with Catching Fire, we had no clue how the author would follow up such a great story. Now I can’t figure which one’s my favorite. We knew that there would be rebellion. There’s no way that Capitol officials would let Katniss’ act of defiance go unnoticed. In the first book it is made very clear that Panem resembles Ancient Rome, hostingRead More →

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When Thomas wakes up in a dark lift, headed upwards to who knows where, all he can remember is his first name. He has no idea where he came from, who he is, or how he got where he is. When the door above him opens, he discovers he’s “welcomed” by other teen boys, in a large expanse, called The Glade, surrounded by tall stone walls.  The Gladers also have no memories of their lives before – they only know they’ve been virtual prisoners in the maze for about 2 years.  They know that every morning, the large stone doors open and runners head out into the mazeRead More →

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“I will have to travel from district to district, to stand before cheering crowds who secretly loathe me, to look into the faces of the families who children I have killed…” By page four of Catching Fire I am swept away with emotion.   When I left the heroine of The Hunger Games, Katniss, I thought I could easily hold it together until she returned in its sequel.  How wrong I was.  When I was able to read an advanced copy, I found myself pinned to the couch, taking only time to eat one meal…forcing myself to stop at 1am with 40 pages to go.  Why? Read More →