Young Adult (ages 14-18)

Material appropriate for young adults

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?

Gangsta Rap

School, what school? My name is X-Ray-X So be careful how you flex I used to freestyle in me bedroom But me daddy got me vex The teacher kicked me out of the classroom Now I’m rapping in The Rex.

Ray has trouble at home and trouble at school. It’s the last straw for everyone when Ray and his friends Prem and Tyrone are permanently suspended. But they know what they want, more than most, perhaps. Their headmaster decides to give them a second chance, a chance to live their dream of forming a rap group. Through a specialized social program, the boys are taught the business of the music industry, what it takes to record an album, and how to lay down a track. Within weeks they have become the Positive Negatives, and within a few months they have signed a record deal and are on their way to the top. But their dream soon becomes a nightmare as violence escalates around them. Suddenly, not only their careers but their very lives are at stake. The Positive Negatives are determined to prove that you don’t need to be a gangster to be a great rapper.

Teen’s Top 10 (Awards)

Ten Things I Hate About Me

“At school I’m Aussie-blonde Jamie — one of the crowd. At home I’m Muslim Jamilah — driven mad by my Stone Age dad. I should win an Oscar for my acting skills. But I can’t keep it up for much longer…” Jamie just wants to fit in. She doesn’t want to be seen as a stereotypical Muslim girl, so she does everything possible to hide that part of herself. Even if it means pushing her friends away because she’s afraid to let them know her dad forbids her from hanging out with boys or that she secretly loves to play the darabuka (Arabic drums). But when the cutest boy in school asks her out and her friends start to wonder about Jamie’s life outside of school, her secrets threaten to explode. Can Jamie figure out how to be both Jamie and Jamilah before she loses everything?

The Corps Of The Bare-Boned Plane

When an accident leaves teenage cousins Meline and Jocelyn parentless, they come to live with their unknown and eccentric Uncle Marten on his private island. They soon discover that the island has a history as tragic as their own: it was once an air force training camp, led by a mad commander whose crazed plan to train pilots to fly airplanes without instruments sent eleven pilots to their deaths. Jocelyn, Meline, and Uncle Marten are soon joined on this island of wrecked planes and wrecked men by an elderly Austrian housekeeper, a very mysterious butler, a cat, and a dog. But to Jocelyn and Meline, being in a strange new place around strange new people only underscores the fact that the world they once knew has ended. Told in the alternating voices of four characters dealing with grief in different ways, Polly Horvath’s new novel is a rich and complicated story about loss and the possibility— and impossibility—of beginning again.

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.

Two Suns in the Sky

In 1944, an Upstate New York teenager named Christine meets and falls in love with Adam, a Yugoslavian Jew living in a refugee camp, despite their parents’ conviction that they do not belong together.