Young Adult (ages 14-18)

Material appropriate for young adults

Divine Wind

In 1946, in the northern Australian fishing town of Broome, Hart Penrose remembers. He remembers his parents ­ his silent English mother and bluff Australian father. He remembers the storm that tore open is leg, and his sister Alice, whose exuberance and strength brought him out of despair. He remembers the racism and hatred that roiled Broome in the days before WW2, the unwarranted suspicions of the native Japanese that pulled the town apart. Most of all, he remembers Misty Sennosuke, the warm and beautiful girl next door, the girl he loved, the one he betrayed.

Mao’s Last Dancer

Chosen from millions of children to serve in Mao’s cultural revolution by studying at the Beijing Dance Academy, Li knows ballet would be his family’s best opportunity to escape the poverty in his rural China home. From one hardship to another, Li perseveres, never forgetting the family he left behind.

Twenty-Four Hours

It is seventeen-year-old Ellis’s first night at home after graduating from prep school. By chance he bumps into Jackie Cattle, whom he remembers from grade school. Jackie is a couple of years older than Ellis, a drifter, disreputable, yet with an odd charm and a disarming wit. For the next twenty-four hours, Ellis enters an extraordinary world on the fringe of society that he never knew existed. Jackie introduces him to life at the Land-of-Smiles, a dilapidated motel where nightly a strange collection of local characters gather to drink and talk. Two attractive sisters, Ursa and Leona, the elder studying to be a lawyer, live there. Leona loves and takes care of a baby whose mother stops in only once in a while. Then the baby disappears, and Ellis is thrust into a wild, sometimes almost violent search for the child. This is a stunning novel that grips the reader as it sweeps to its conclusion. Rich characterization, breathtaking action, and an ultimately heartwarming solution distinguish this latest triumph of Margaret Mahy.

My Saucy Stuffed Ravioli: The Life of Angelica Cookson Potts

While preparing for and going on vacation to Italy with her friends and family, food-loving English teenager Angelica deals with her unrequited love for Sydney, her fear of being seen in public in a bikini, and her worries that her mother might be having an affair.

Flight to Freedom

In Flight to Freedom, Anna Veciana-Suarez brings us Yara, an eighth-grader who lives in a middle-class neighborhood of 1967 Havana, Cuba. Her parents, who do not share the political beliefs of the Communist party, finally are forces to flee Cuba with their children to Miami, Florida. There, Yara records in her diary the difficulties she encounters in a strange land with foreign customs. She must learn English and go to school with new children. Her parents also adjust to the new country differently, and Yara’s father grows frustrated with her mother when she becomes more independent.

The Book of Jude

In 1989, when fifteen-year-old Jude’s mother wins a Fulbright fellowship to study art in Czechoslovakia, the family postpones a planned move to Utah to join her, but the political situation and the move itself are too much for Jude, who is overwhelmed by a previously undiagnosed psychological disorder.

Apocalypse

Kit and his parents are out sailing when things go horribly wrong. Fog rolls in; the compasses won’t work; weird cries come from the sea. Then squalls force their boat against a giant rock. They manage to get to shore, but the dismal, almost barren island they’re on provides no comfort. The only inhabitants are a brutal group of fundamentalists whose ancestors settled there long ago. For some reason they hate Kit the moment they see him.But Kit has glimpsed someone else, a girl who seems to be wild. He’s also seen a strange man who looks just like him, only older, with the same birthmark on his face. Kit goes in search of the girl, looking for answers to the eerie goings-on. He returns to find his parents gone and their tents torn to shreds. Have the islanders killed them? Kit sets off in a desperate search for them as he struggles for his own survival. Will the girl help him? And will he be able to escape the islanders, who clearly want to kill him? Journey on a startling voyage into the unknown, where an ordinary teenage boy faces a world filled with malice and a terrifying vision of the future, in this haunting thriller from award winner Tim Bowler.

The Wish House

From the best-selling author of WITCH CHILD and SORCERESS comes another engrossing, atmospheric novel — following a teenage boy as he uncovers the secrets of the mysterious and provocative Wish House. It’s the start of summer vacation, and fifteen-year-old Richard has discovered that a family has taken up residence in the usually deserted Wish House. Richard is intrigued by both the house and the bohemian family now living there. The father, Jethro Dalton, is an internationally renowned painter; his seemingly licentious wife is fascinated by herbs and cures. But it’s their beautiful and vibrant daughter, Clio, the muse for Jethro’s paintings, who draws Richard utterly into the Daltons’ world. Soon Richard finds himself so captivated by Clio that he steals off to the woods to spend days and nights with her, meanwhile struggling to understand and fit in with her eccentric clan. How could he know that some mysteries are best left alone — and that some betrayals can never be forgiven?