Young Adult (ages 14-18)

Material appropriate for young adults

Ivy

Ivy is used to being overlooked. The youngest in a family of thieves, scoundrels, and roustabouts, the girl with the flame-colored hair and odd-colored eyes is declared useless by her father from the day she is born. But that’s only if you look at her but don’t see. For Ivy has a quality that makes people take notice. It’s more than beauty — and it draws people toward her.

Which makes her the perfect subject for an aspiring painter named Oscar Aretino Frosdick, a member of the pre-Raphaelite school of artists. Oscar is determined to make his mark on the art world, with Ivy as his model and muse. But behind Ivy’s angelic looks lurk dark secrets and a troubled past — a past that has given her an unfortunate taste for laudanum. And when treachery and jealousy surface in the Eden that is the artist’s garden, Ivy must learn to be more than a pretty face if she is to survive.

Julie Hearn, author of The Minister’s Daughter and The Sign of the Raven, has created a memorable tale of nineteenth-century England with a character destined to take her place alongside Dickens’s Pip and Oliver Twist.

M Is For Magic

Stories to delight, enchant, and surprise you. Bestselling author and master storyteller Neil Gaiman here presents a breathtaking collection of tales that may chill or amuse readers—but always embrace the unexpected: A teenage boy who has trouble talking to girls finds himself at a rather unusual party. A sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who owned it. A boy raised in a graveyard makes a discovery and confronts the much more troubling world of the living. A stray cat fights a nightly battle to protect his adopted family from a terrible evil. These eleven stories illuminate the real and the fantastic, and will be welcomed with great joy by Neil Gaiman’s many fans as well as by readers coming to his work for the first time.

Shizuko’s Daughter

After her mother’s suicide when she is twelve years old, Yuki spends years living with her distant father and his resentful new wife, cut off from her mother’s family, and relying on her own inner strength to cope with the tragedy.

 

 

Dusk

Dusk is more than just a girl—her DNA was fused with hawk genes in a military experiment to make the best warriors, resulting in traits like night vision. After 13 years of being held captive in a government lab, she escapes and hides in an abandoned town. There she lives in an uneasy truce with the other subjects who fled the lab: a horde of killer mutant rats and a clan of vicious guard dogs. Then one day, a boy named Jay stumbles into town. Will Dusk follow her human instincts and save Jay? Or will the hawk in her see an easy prey? In vivid prose, Susan Gates conjures a tale of science gone wrong that seems eerily realistic. As Dusk and Jay dance around both the local predators and each other, readers will find deep sympathy in their situation, even as they race through the pages to see what happens next.

The Edge

No one understands Declan. Not his mother or his father or his teachers. No one but maybe his new group of friends. After moving, Declan will do anything to fit in at his new school, even if it is illegal. When he and his new friends get caught, the consequences are tragic. Given a second chance that he is not sure that he wants, Declan is sent to work at a ski lodge in the Canadian Rockies. Though he is not locked up, he feels trapped and lonely, and learns that second chances aren’t easy. While there, Declan learns to snowboard and meets new friends, but the ghosts of his past keep rising up to haunt him. Standing on the edge, Declan realizes that the only way to break free is to face his past, and to look forward to the future.

Alis

At fourteen, Alis has never been outside her strict religious community. But when her parents arrange for her to marry a forty-year-old man, she flees desperately to the dangerous, unfamiliar city. She learns quickly that the only way to survive there is to become a thief—or worse. Facing an impossible choice between a forced marriage or life on the streets, Alis seizes control of her own fate. But the path she chooses sets off a disastrous chain of events that leave her accused of murder. Steadfastly loyal, Alis must decide: will she betray a loved one or sacrifice herself?

Dangerous Spaces

Flora has always known that her house is haunted. But things have taken a sinister turn since her orphaned cousin Anthea moved in. Frightening scenes are played out in the night–and in the girls’ dreams. Although they don’t get along, the two must work together to escape their nightmares–before they get trapped forever.

Dreamhunter (The Dreamhunter Duet, Book 1)

Laura comes from a world similar to our own except for one
difference: it is next to the Place, an unfathomable land that
fosters dreams of every kind and is inaccessible to all but a
select few, the Dreamhunters. These are individuals with special
gifts: the ability to catch larger-than-life dreams and relay them
to audiences in the magnificent dream palace, the Rainbow
Opera. People travel from all around to experience the benefits
of the hunters’ unique visions. Now fifteen-year-old Laura and
her cousin Rose, daughters of Dreamhunters, are eligible to test
themselves at the Place and find out whether they qualify for
the passage. But nothing can prepare them for what they are
about to discover. For within the Place lies a horrific secret kept
hidden by corrupt members of the government. And when
Laura’s father, the man who discovered the Place, disappears,
she realizes that this secret has the power to destroy everyone
she loves . . .In the midst of a fascinating landscape, Laura’s dreamy
childhood is ending and a nightmare beginning. This rich
novel, filled with beauty, danger, politics, and intrigue, comes to
a powerful crescendo, leaving readers clamoring for Book Two.