Young Adult (ages 14-18)

Material appropriate for young adults

Feeling Sorry For Celia

A #1 Bestseller in Australia and Book Sense 76 PickLife is pretty complicated for Elizabeth Clarry. Her best friend Celia keeps disappearing, her absent father suddenly reappears, and her communication with her mother consists entirely of wacky notes left on the fridge. On top of everything else, because her English teacher wants to rekindle the “Joy of the Envelope,” a Complete and Utter Stranger knows more about Elizabeth than anyone else. But Elizabeth is on the verge of some major changes. She may lose her best friend, find a wonderful new friend, kiss the sexiest guy alive, and run in a marathon. So much can happen in the time it takes to write a letter.

Guitar Highway Rose

Two 15-year-olds, Rosie and Asher, upset over the various unhappy circumstances of their lives in the Australian city of Perth, decide to run away, in a tale that explores the emotional roller coaster of adolescence.

Follow The Blue

Fifteen-year-old Bec, living with her family in Perth, Australia, decides to stop being sensible and follow her wilder impulses during the summer that her parents are away on a long trip to help her father recover from a breakdown.

Phoning A Dead Man

When John, a British demolitions expert, is supposedly killed blowing up a building in Siberia, his fiance Annie insists on investigating, despite being in a wheelchair, and John’s teenage sister Hayley goes along and finds that the Russian Mafia is involved.

The Other Side Of the Wall

Simon Schwartz was born in 1982 in East Germany, at a time when the repressive Socialist Unity Party of Germany controlled the area. Shortly before Simon’s birth, his parents decided to leave their home in search of greater freedoms on the other side of the Berlin Wall. But East German authorities did not allow the Schwartzes to leave for almost three years. In the meantime, Simon’s parents struggled with the costs of their decision: the loss of work, the attention of the East German secret police and the fragmentation of their family.

The Tightrope Walkers

A gentle visionary coming of age in the shadow of the shipyards of northern England, Dominic Hall is torn between extremes. On the one hand, he craves the freedom he feels when he steals away with the eccentric girl artist next door, Holly Stroud, his first and abiding love, to balance above the earth on a makeshift tightrope. With Holly, Dom dreams of a life different in every way from his shipbuilder dad’s, a life fashioned of words and images and story. On the other hand, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the brutal charms of Vincent McAlinden, a complex bully who awakens something wild and reckless and killing in Dom.

Summer of the Mariposas

In an adventure reminiscent of Homer’s Odyssey, fifteen-year-old Odilia and her four younger sisters embark on a journey to return a dead man to his family in Mexico, aided by La Llorona, but impeded by a witch, a warlock, chupacabras, and more.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume VII, Issue 3