Young Adult (ages 14-18)

Material appropriate for young adults

Town Boy

Malaysian teenager Mat makes a life-changing move from the quiet kampung where he was born to Ipoh, the rapidly industrializing nearby town.  Living far from his rural roots at a boarding school, he discovers bustling streets, modern music, heady literature, budding romance, and through it all his growing passion for art. The companion novel to the critically acclaimed Kampung Boy, Town Boy offers more of Lat’s delicious storytelling and enchanting pen-and-ink artwork.  At once exotic and familiar, his cartoon world builds a bridge for readers into another world, another culture, and another time. 

The Last Apprentice: Curse Of The Bane (The Last Apprentice)

The Spook and his apprentice, Thomas Ward, rid the county of witches, ghosts, boggarts, and other creatures of the dark. And there’s some unfinished business to attend to in Priestown. Deep in the catacombs lurks a creature the Spook has never been able to defeat; a force so evil that the whole county is in danger. The Bane!

But the Bane is not their only enemy. The Quisitor arrives, intent on hunting down anyone who meddles with the dark. Thomas Ward and the Spook must prepare for the battle of their lives.

Fight Game

When rogue gypsy boy Freedom Smith runs into trouble with the law, he strikes a deal with the police: Instead of going to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, he’ll go undercover — and underground — using his incredible strength and boxing skills to infiltrate a nefarious, high-tech fight club known as The Bear Pit. His mission: to save other street children from the terrible fate the Pit has in store for them. Freedom thinks he can trust Java, his newfound friend, with his secret life. If only he knew that this high-spirited, upper-class girl has a secret of her own….

What The Birds See

/”Hartnett again captures the ineffable fragility of childhood in this keenly observed tale.\” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review)Nine-year-old Adrian watches his world closely, but there is much he cannot understand. He does not, for instance, know why three neighborhood children might set out to buy ice cream one summer’s day and never be seen again. . . . In a suburb that is no longer safe and innocent, in a broken family of self-absorbed souls, Sonya Hartnett sets the story of a lone little boy — unwanted, unloved, and intensely curious — a story as achingly beautiful as it is shattering.

The Tide Knot

In a seaside town of sandy beaches and ocean breezes, Sapphy has never felt so far from the sea. The crowded shore at St. Pirans is nothing like the cove at Sapphy’s old home, where she first found her way into the underwater world of Ingo. But Ingo’s pull is strong, and it always finds a way. Soon Sapphy and her brother, Conor, are swimming beneath the waves again, riding the currents and teasing their Mer friend Faro. As Sapphy goes deeper into Ingo, she learns to feel more at home in the sea – even as she begins to be aware of its dangers. There’s the danger of going in too deep, and breaking the delicate balance between Sapphy’s life on land and her life in Ingo. There’s the mysterious disappearance of Sapphy’s father, an experienced sailor who should never have drowned. And then there’s Ingo itself – a restless power as old as the world, as strong as the tides, and more dangerous than anything Sapphy has ever known.

A Darkling Plain (The Hungry City Chronicles)

The once-great traction city of London is now just a radioactive wreck, a ruin haunted by electrical discharges and the dashed hopes of the people who once called it home – people like Tom Natsworthy. Twenty years after he fled, intending never to return, he discovers that something stirs in the remains of the old city.

Tom and his daughter, Wren, aren’t the only people interested in London. The desperate armies of the Traction Cities and the Green Storm are also closing in, certain that whatever is taking shape within the city holds the key to victory in their never-ending war.

But it may be too late. Even as Tom and Wren hurry to uncover the mystery of London, Hester Shaw – estranged from her husband and her daughter – tracks the resurrected Stalker Fang, who has found another way to end the war and all life on the planet once and for all.

Time’s Chariot

THE HIMALAYAS, 5000 BC:

Commissioner Daiho is dead, but there’s no question of foul play. The murder of a Home Timer is about as likely as unauthorized interference with the work of a Correspondent. . . .

Isfahan, Arabia, 1029:

Abu Ali was startled. He hadn’t heard the stranger enter. The Correspondent was even more alarmed—his enhanced senses would have picked up the arrival of any normal human. Then the stranger spoke, and it was the language of the Home Time. Seconds later, Correspondent RC/1029’s world went dark.

The Home Time, 2000 Years Later:

Field Operative Rico Garron is about to have a very bad day.

The Devil’s Breath

When fifteen-year-old Max Gordon’s environmentalist-adventurer father goes missing while working in Namibia and Max becomes the target of a would-be assassin at his school in England, he decides he must follow his father to Africa and find him before they both are killed.

Black Rabbit Summer

Thoughtful Pete, tough Pauly, twins Eric and Nicole, strange Raymond: As kids they were tight; now they’ve grown up–and apart. They agree to get together one last time, but, twisted by personal histories and fueled by pharmaceuticals, old jealousies surface. The party’s soon over, and the group splinters off into the night. Into the noise and heat and chaos of the carnival. Days later, a girl goes missing. The prime suspect in her disappearance? One of their own, one of the old gang. Pete doesn’t know what to believe: Could one of his childhood friends really be a cold-blooded killer?

Babylonne

Exotic and exciting, this unflinching coming-of-age tale featuring a headstrong heroine weaves a vivid tapestry of life in the Middle Ages.Early thirteenth-century Languedoc is a place of valor, violence, and persecution. At age sixteen, Babylonne has survived six bloody sieges. She’s tough, resourceful, and — now that her strict aunt and abusive grandmother intend to marry her off to a senile old man —desperate. Disguised as a boy, Babylonne embarks on an action-packed adventure that amounts to a choice: trust the mysterious Catholic priest — a sworn enemy to her Cathar faith — who says he’s a friend of her dead father, Pagan. Or pursue a fairy-tale version of her future, one in which she’ll fight and likely die in a vicious war with the French. Though Babylonne never knew her irreverent father, fans of Catherine Jinks’s novels about Pagan Kidrouk will be sure to see the resemblance in his feisty daughter.