Recommended Reading

This AP reading list contains titles and summaries of many classic novels and plays. A number of HHS Language Arts teachers require their students to read from this list.

Great reads for people who love America’s past time. 

7 Days at the Hot Corner
by Terry Trueman
Varsity baseball player Scott Latimer struggles with his own prejudices and those of others when his best friend reveals that he is gay.

Beanball
by Gene Fehler
Relates, from diverse points of view, events surrounding the critical injury of popular and talented high school athlete, Luke "Wizard" Wallace, when he is hit in the face by a fastball.
    
Bull Catcher
by Alden R. Carter
Pete and Jeff continue their friendship and love of baseball as they progress from ninth grade through high school in their small Wisconsin town.
    
Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series
by Eliot Asinof
The story of the fantastic true scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series in Cincinnati.
    
Game of My Life: 20 Stories of Yankees Baseball
by David Buscema
Through personal narration as well as a look at the events surrounding the individual games, these Yankees offer you a look inside at just what has made them the most successful franchise in sports history.
    
Hard Ball
by Will Weaver
A fourteen-year-old Minnesota farm boy has to figure out how to get along with the arch-rival in his love life and on the baseball diamond, and both boys must learn how to deal with the unfair expectations of their fathers.
    
Hard Hit
by Anne Turner
A rising high school baseball star faces his most difficult challenge when his father is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
    
Heart of a Champion
by Carl Deuker
Seth faces a strain on his friendship with Jimmy, who is both a baseball champion and something of an irresponsible fool, when Jimmy is kicked off the team.
    
Heat
by Mike Lupica
Pitching prodigy Michael Arroyo is on the run from social services after being banned from playing Little League baseball because rival coaches doubt he is only twelve years old and he has no parents to offer them proof.
    
High Heat
by Carl Deuker
When sophomore Shane Hunter's father is arrested for money laundering at his Lexus dealership, the star pitcher's life of affluence and private school begins to fall apart.
    
Home is Everything: The Latino Baseball Story
by Marcos Breton
Explores the unique experiences of Latin American baseball players in the Major Leagues, including Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda, and Jose Santana; their struggles, disappointments, and sometimes enormous successes.
    
Mexican Whiteboy
by Matt de la Peña
Sixteen-year-old Danny searches for his identity amidst the confusion of being half-Mexican and half-white while spending a summer with his cousin and new friends on the baseball fields and back alleys of San Diego County, California.
    
My Brother's Keeper
by Patricia McCormick
Thirteen-year-old Toby, a prematurely gray-haired Pittsburgh Pirates fan and baseball card collector, tries to cope with his brother's drug use, his father's absence, and his mother dating Stanley the Food King.
    
Out of Left Field: How the Mariners made Baseball Fly in Seattle
by Art Thiel
Follows the Seattle Mariners' rise from basement to penthouse in major league baseball and Seattle's transition from funky burg to a major city of baseball fanatics.
    
Painting the Black
by Carl Deuker
When star athlete Josh Daniels moves in across the street, Remy Ward doesn't realize how much his life will change during his senior year at Seattle's Crown Hill High.
    
Plunking Reggie Jackson
by James W. Bennett
High school baseball star Coley Burke tries to deal with an ankle injury, back spasms, a pregnant girlfriend, academic failure, pressure from his father, and the legacy of his dead older brother.
    
Safe at Second
by Scott Johnson
Paulie Lockwood's best friend Todd Bannister is destined for the major leagues until a line drive to the head causes him to lose an eye and they both must find a new future for themselves.
    
Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs
by Ron Koertge
Fourteen-year-old Kevin Boland, poet and first baseman, is torn between his cute girlfriend Mira and Amy, who is funny, plays Chopin on the piano, and is also a poet.
    
Shoeless Joe
by W.P. Kinsella
“If you build it, he will come.” These mysterious words, spoken by an Iowa baseball announcer, inspire Ray Kinsella to carve a baseball diamond in his cornfield in honor of his hero, the baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson. The movie Field of Dreams was based on this novel.
    
The Brooklyn Nine
by Alan Gratz
Follows the fortunes of a German immigrant family through nine generations, beginning in 1845, as they experience American life and play baseball.
    
The Comeback Season
by Jennifer E. Smith
High school freshman Ryan Walsh, a Chicago Cubs fan, meets Nick when they both skip school on opening day, and their blossoming relationship becomes difficult for Ryan when she discovers that Nick is seriously ill and she again feels the pain of losing her father five years earlier.
    
The Rookie
by Jim Morris
Jim Morris was a high school physics teacher until becoming a professional ball player at age 35. This is the true story of how he signed on as the major league's oldest rookie pitcher in 40 years and how long-buried dreams can return to redeem a life.            
 
The Speed of Light
by Ron Carlson
Twelve-year-old Larry spends the summer before junior high school with his best friends, Witt and Rafferty, playing different forms of baseball and discovering the secrets of the universe.

Whether on or off the field, these books have great football drama.
    
Stupid Fast
by Geoff Herbach
F/Her
Just before his sixteenth birthday, Felton Reinstein has a sudden growth spurt that turns him from a small, jumpy, picked-on boy with the nickname of "Squirrel Nut" to a powerful athlete, leading to new friends, his first love, and the courage to confront his family's past and current problems.
    
Unstoppable
by Tim Green
F/Gre
If anyone understands the phrase 'tough luck,' it's Harrison. As a foster kid in a cruel home, he knows his dream of one day playing for the NFL is a long shot. Then Harrison's luck seems to change. He is brought into a new home with kind, loving parents--his new dad is even a football coach. Harrison's big build and his incredible determination quickly make him a star running back on the junior high school team. In no time, he's practically unstoppable. But Harrison's good luck can't last forever.
    
Knights of the Hill Country
by Tim Tharp
F/Tha
In his senior year, high school star linebacker Hampton Greene finally begins to think for himself and discovers that he might be interested in more than just football.
    
Food, Girls and Other Things I Can’t Have
by Allen Zadoff
F/Zad
Fifteen-year-old Andrew Zansky, the second fattest student at his high school, joins the varsity football team to get the attention of a new girl on whom he has a crush.
    
Pop
by Gordon Korman
F/Kor
New kid Marcus strikes up an unlikely friendship with former NFL star Charlie Popovich, nicknamed 'The King of Pop.' Charlie is a charismatic prankster, and the best football player Marcus has ever seen. But when his behavior starts getting more and more erratic, Marcus learns the secret that Charlie's family is desperate to hide.
    
Payback Time
by Carl Deuker
F/Deu
Overweight, somewhat timid Mitch reluctantly agrees to be the sports reporter for the Lincoln High newspaper because he is determined to be a writer, but he senses a real story in Angel, a talented football player who refuses to stand out on the field--or to discuss his past.
    
Friday Night Lights
by H.G. Bissinger
796.332/Bis
In Odessa, TX 20,000 fans turn out regularly to watch their Permian Panthers win. Here there is no high-blown talk of playing the game well; just the raw need to win at all costs. In this atmosphere, players vomit from nervousness before each game and often play with injuries. These kids are not just playing a game, they are literally fighting for the honor of their town.
    
Gym Candy
by Carl Deuker
F/Deu
Groomed by his father to be a star player, football is the only thing that has ever really mattered to Mick Johnson, who works hard for a spot on the varsity team his freshman year, then tries to hold onto his edge by using steroids, despite the consequences to his health and social life.
    
Leverage
by Joshua C. Cohen
F/Coh
High school sophomore Danny excels at gymnastics but is bullied, like the rest of the gymnasts, by members of the football team, until an emotionally and physically scarred new student joins the football team and forms an unlikely friendship with Danny.
    
Recruited
by Suzanne Weyn
F/Wey
Kadeem Jones is a star quarterback for Southside High. He is thrilled when college scouts seek him out. His visit to Teller College is amazing, but then NCAA officials accuse Teller's staff of illegally recruiting top talent. Will Kadeem decide to help their investigation, even though it means the end of the good times? What will it do to his chances of playing college football?
    
Cobra Strike
by Sigmund Brouwer
F/Bro
Roy Linden should be thrilled. His high school football team, the Johnstown Striking Cobras, just got a new quarterback, and that means a chance at a winning season and a college scholarship for Linden, the team's senior receiver. But then he stumbles onto a deadly secret in the small coal-mining town.
    
Cover-Up
by John Feinstein
F/Fei
Fledgling fourteen-year-old sports reporters Susan Carol and Stevie investigate suspicious activities at the Super Bowl after Stevie gets fired from his co-anchor job on a ground-breaking teen sports show.
    
Dairy Queen
by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
F/Mur
After spending her summer running the family farm and training the quarterback for her school's rival football team, sixteen-year-old D.J. decides to go out for the sport herself, not anticipating the reactions of those around her.
    
Imitate the Tiger
by Jan Cheripko
F/Che
Christopher is constantly angry and depressed, feeling out of control and unable to change. Only on the football field does Christopher find relief, and even there, as his team marches through its first undefeated season, the new coach presses him relentlessly.
    
Juice
by Eric Walters
F/Wal
When a new coach arrives to improve the football program Moose is thrilled. However, when the team is offered steroids tempers flare and players have to choose sides.
    
Necessary Roughness
by Marie G. Lee
F/Lee
Sixteen-year-old Korean American Chan moves from Los Angeles to a small town in Minnesota, where he must cope not only with racism on the football team but also with the tensions in his relationship with his strict father.
    
November Blues
by Sharon Draper
F/Dra
A teenaged boy's death in a hazing accident has lasting effects on his pregnant girlfriend and his guilt-ridden cousin, who gives up a promising music career to play football during his senior year in high school.
    
Raiders Night
by Robert Lipsyte
F/Lip
Matt Rydeck, co-captain of his high school football team, endures a traumatic season as he witnesses the rape of a rookie player by teammates and grapples with his own use of performance-enhancing drugs.
    
Tangerine
by Edward Bloor
F/Blo
Twelve-year-old Paul, who lives in the shadow of his football hero brother Erik, fights for the right to play soccer despite his near blindness and slowly begins to remember the incident that damaged his eyesight.
    
Touchdown: The Power and Precision of Football's Perfect Play
by Mark Stewart
796.332/Ste
This book takes readers beyond the record books and explores all aspects of bringing the ball into the end zone.

Fiction and nonfiction books for basketball lovers.

Ball Don't Lie
by Matt de la Peña
F/Pen
Seventeen-year-old Sticky lives to play basketball at school and at Lincoln Rec Center in Los Angeles and is headed for the pros, but he is unaware of the many dangers--including his own past--that threaten his dream.
    
Black and White
by Paul Volponi
F/Vol
Two star high school basketball players, one black and one white, experience the justice system differently after committing a crime together and getting caught.
    
Boost
by Kathryn Mackel
F/Mac
Thirteen-year-old Savvy's dreams of starting for her elite basketball team are in danger when she is accused of taking steroids.
    
Eagle Blue
by Michael D'Orso
796.323/Dor
Eight miles above the Arctic Circle, there's a village with no roads leading to it, but a high school basketball tradition that lights up winter's darkness and a team of native Alaskan boys who know "no quit." D’Oso follows the Eagles, winners of six regional championships in a row, through the course of an entire 28-game season, from their first day of practice in late November to the Alaska State Championship Tournament in March.
    
Expatriate Games
by Dave Fromm
921/Fro
Lawyer and pro basketballer wannabe Fromm offers an entertaining and often hilarious account of his year in Prague playing point guard in a semipro league and attending political science courses at Central European University.
    
Game
by Walter Dean Myers
F/Mye
If Harlem high school senior Drew Lawson is going to realize his dream of playing college, then professional, basketball, he will have to improve at being coached and being a team player, especially after a new--white--student threatens to take the scouts' attention away from him.
    
Hoop Dream
by Ben Joravsky
796.32/Jor
Based on the documentary film, this book follows Arthur Agee and William Gates from playing ball on the playground thru high school teams and the college recruitment process looking at how their dreams impacted not only them but their families and relationships.
    
Hoops
by Walter Dean Myers
F/Mye
A teenage basketball player from Harlem is befriended by a former professional player who, after being forced to quit because of a point shaving scandal, hopes to prevent other young athletes from repeating his mistake.
    
In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle
by Madeleine Blais
796.323/Bla
They were a talented team with a near-perfect record but a reputation for choking in the crunch of the state playoffs. Finally, after five straight years of disappointments, the Amherst Lady Hurricanes found they just might have what it took to go all the way.
    
Learning the Game
by Kevin Waltman
F/Wal
When he and his high school basketball teammates steal from a fraternity house in their small Indiana town, Nate contends with his guilt, his loyalty to his friends, and his desire to help his older brother who comes under suspicion for the crime.
    
Necessary Hunger
by Nina Revoyr
F/Rev
Two young women grapple with the stress of competitive high school basketball, college recruiters, their sexual identities, racism, and the interracial love story of their parents.
    
Night Hoops
by Carl Deuker
F/Deu
While trying to prove that he is good enough to be on his high school's varsity basketball team, Nick must also deal with his parents' divorce and erratic behavior of a troubled classmate who lives across the street.
    
Players
by Joyce Sweeney
F/Swe
Eighteen-year-old Corey sees a threat to his dream of winning the basketball championship when he discovers that the new player on his team is a girl-stealing, friend-framing, team-destroying force of evil.
    
Playing Without the Ball
by Rich Wallace
F/Wal
Feeling abandoned by his parents, who have gone their separate ways and left him behind in a small Pennsylvania town, seventeen-year-old Jay finds hope for the future in a church-sponsored basketball team and a female friend.
    
Rucker Park Setup
by Paul Volponi
F/Vol
While playing in a crucial basketball game on the very court where his best friend was murdered, Mackey tries to come to terms with his own part in that murder and decide whether to maintain his silence or tell J.R.'s father and the police what really happened.
    
Schooled
by Paul Langan
F/Lan
With a dream of joining the NBA, all Lionel wants to do at Bluford High is play basketball. But everyone's trying to stop him. His father thinks basketball is a waste of time; his teachers don't know he can barely read and threaten to fail him; and his dropout friend Jamar wants him to quit school.
    
Slam!
by Walter Dean Myers
F/Mye
Sixteen-year-old "Slam" Harris is counting on his noteworthy basketball talents to get him out of the inner city and give him a chance to succeed in life, but his coach sees things differently.
    
Swish: The Quest for Basketball's Perfect Shot
by Mark Stewart
796.323/Ste
Offers an engaging history of the sport, followed by profiles of some of the most impressive shots of all time and the players who made them.
    
The Hoopster
by Alan Lawrence Sitomer
F/Sit
Andre Anderson has a bright future as a basketball star until he is viciously attacked in a hate crime, causing him to question everything he once believed in.
    
The Outside Shot
by Walter Dean Myers
F/Mye
Recruited by a small mid-western college to play basketball, a Harlem boy has many new experiences, including working with a child who needs physical therapy and dealing with corruption in college sports.
    
The Perfect Shot
by Elaine Marie Alphin
F/Alp
Brian uses basketball to block out memories of his girlfriend and her family who were gunned down a year ago, but the upcoming murder trial and a high school history assignment force him to face the past and decide how far he should go to see justice served.
    
Throwing Stones
by Kristi Collier
F/Col
Fourteen-year-old Andy realizes a dream when he makes the high school basketball team, but when an accident keeps him from playing, he ventures into journalism and begins to understand the meaning of sportsmanship.
    
Travel Team
by Mike Lupica
After he is cut from his travel basketball team--the very same team that his father once led to national prominence--twelve-year-old Danny Walker forms his own team of cast-offs that might have a shot at victory.

Fiction and nonfiction stories about how gangs impact people both in and out of them.
    
It Calls You Back
by Luis J. Rodriguez
921/Rod
This follow up to Always Running is the harrowing story of Rodríguez starting over, at age eighteen, after leaving gang life—the only life he really knew. It Calls You Back opens with Rodríguez’s final stint in jail as a teenager and follows his struggle to kick heroin, renounce his former life, and search for meaningful work. He describes with heartbreaking honesty his challenges as a father and his difficulty leaving his rages and addictions completely behind. Even as he breaks with “la vida loca” and begins to discover success as a writer and an activist, Rodríguez finds that his past—the crimes, the drugs, the things he’d seen and done—has a way of calling him back.
    
Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty
by G. Neri
Graphic Novels 921/San
A graphic novel based on the true story of Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, an eleven-year old African American gang member from Chicago who shot a young girl and was then shot by his own gang members.
    
The Knife and the Butterfly
by Ashley Hope Perez
F/Per
After a brawl with a rival gang, sixteen-year-old Azael, the son of illegal Salvadoran immigrants and a member of Houston's MS-13 gang, wakes up in an unusual juvenile detention center where he is forced to observe another inmate through a one-way mirror.
    
A Different Kind of Heat
by Antonio Pagliarulo
F/Pag
Trying to come to terms with her brother's death, high school student and former gang member Luz meets his killer face to face as she begins to rebuild her own life in a group home in New York City.
    
Always Running
by Luis J. Rodriguez
921/Rod
By age twelve, Rodriguez was a veteran of East L.A. gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests and then watched with increasing fear as gang life claimed friends and family members. Before long, he saw a way out of the barrio through education and the power of words.
    
Autobiography of My Dead Brother
by Walter Dean Myers
F/Mye
Jesse pours his heart and soul into his sketchbook to make sense of life in his troubled Harlem neighborhood and the loss of a close friend.
    
Call Me Henri
by Lorraine M. Lopez
F/Lop
Faced with family problems, difficulty in school, and gangs in the barrio, Enrique dreams of some day reaching the "other America" depicted on television, while sympathetic teachers help him cope by supporting his fight to study French in-stead of ESL.
    
Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member
by Sanyika Shakur
921/Sha
"Monster" Kody, today known as Sanyika Sakur, spent 16 years as a "gangbanger" in South Central Los Angeles. His account begins at age 11, when he was inducted into the ranks of the Crips, and ends (hundreds of bodies later) with Scott serving a seven-year prison term for beating a crack dealer.
    
Muchacho
by LouAnne Johnson
F/Joh
Living in a neighborhood of drug dealers and gangs in New Mexico, high school junior Eddie Corazon, a juvenile delinquent-in-training, falls in love with a girl who inspires him to rethink his life and his choices.
    
Party Girl
by Lynne Ewing
F/Ewi
The death of her best friend Ana in a drive-by shooting causes fifteen-year-old Kata to question her position in the Los Angeles gang life.
    
Prep
by Jake Coburn
F/Cob
One-time tag-artist, Nick tries to come to terms with the death of a friend, to protect the brother of his would-be girl-friend, to escape the violence of wealthy New York City prep school hoods, and to figure out who he really is.
    
Romiette and Julio
by Sharon Draper
F/Dra
Romiette, an African-American girl, and Julio, a Hispanic boy, discover that they attend the same high school after falling in love on the Internet, but are harassed by a gang whose members object to their interracial dating.
    
Rules of Attraction
by Simone Elkeles
F/Elk
Living on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus with his older brother Alex, a college student and ex-gang member, high school senior Carlos is not ready to give up his wild ways until he meets a shy classmate named Kiara and becomes unwillingly involved in a drug ring.
    
Scorpions
by Walter Dean Myers
F/Mye
After reluctantly taking on the leadership of the Harlem gang, the Scorpions, Jamal finds that his enemies treat him with respect when he acquires a gun--until a tragedy occurs.
    
See No Evil
by Diane Young
F/You
After witnessing a local gang brutally attacking someone, Shawn and Daniel are terrified they’ll be next.
    
Snitch
by Allison van Diepen
F/Van
Julia DiVino tries hard not to get mixed-up with the gangs at South Bay High School, but when Eric Valientâe enters into her life, everything changes.
    
Street Kingdom
by Douglas Century
364.1/Cen
K tells about how he was seduced by the respect others gave to his brutal older brother, a gangster who once threw a friend down an elevator shaft for accidentally killing a pet canary. After a long spell in jail that began when he is 11, K joined the dangerous Franklin Avenue Posse, which ran most of the drug deals in Crown Heights. Now K is trying to go straight but the transition is not an easy one, and the years of well-honed street instincts keep threatening to drag him down.
    
Street Love
by Walter Dean Myers
F/Mye
This story told in free verse is set against a background of street gangs and poverty in Harlem in which seventeen-year-old African American Damien takes a bold step to ensure that he and his new love will not be separated.
    
The Brothers Torres
by Coert Voorhees
F/Voo
Frankie finally asking Julianne to the Homecoming dance leads to a face-off between a tough senior whose family owns most of their small town, and Frankie's soccer-star older brother and his gang-member friends.
    
The Knife that Killed Me
by Anthony McGowan
F/McG
Paul Varderman, a secondary student in an English Catholic School, is a loner until, just as he is becoming friends with "the freaks," the school bully encourages Paul to join his gang and gives him a knife to carry as an incentive.
    
The Outsiders
by S.E. Hinton
F/Hin
The struggle of three brothers to stay together after their parent's death and their quest for identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society.
    
Turf War
by Alex Kropp
F/Kro
Kasim and his friends aren't much of a gang. They're not like Crips or Bloods, they're just a bunch of guys who hang together. But that doesn't stop the Parkside Prep guys when they decide to clean up the Edge.
    
Wheelchair Warrior
by Melvin Jette
796.04/Jue
Melvin Juette has said that becoming paralyzed in a gang-related shooting was “both the worst and best thing that happened” to him. The incident, he believes, surely spared the then sixteen year-old African American from prison and/or an early death. It transformed him in other ways, too. He attended college and made wheelchair basketball his passion.
 

Experience a time period in history through the eyes of a fictional character.
    
A Brief History of Montmaray
by Michelle Cooper
F/Coo
On her sixteenth birthday in 1936, Sophia begins a diary of life in a fictional island country off the coast of Spain, where she is among the last descendants of an impoverished royal family trying to hold their nation together on the eve of the second World War.

    
A Northern Light
by Jennifer Donnelly
F/Don
In 1906, sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and fiancé, takes a job at a summer inn where she discovers the truth about the death of a guest. Based on a true story.

    
A Summer of Kings
by Han Nolan
F/Nol
Over the course of the summer of 1963, fourteen-year-old Esther Young discovers the passion within her when eighteen-year-old King-Roy Johnson, accused of murdering a white man in Alabama, comes to live with her family.

    
A Thousand Splended Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
F/Hos
Two women born a generation apart witness the destruction of their home and family in wartorn Kabul, losses incurred over the course of thirty years that test the limits of their strength and courage.

    
Black Duck
by Janet Taylor Lisle
F/Lis
Years afterwards, Ruben Hart tells the story of how, in 1929 Newport, Rhode Island, his family and his best friend's family were caught up in the violent competition among groups trying to control the local rum-smuggling trade.

    
Black Storm Comin'
by Diane Lee Wilson
F/Wil
Twelve-year-old Colton, son of a black mother and a white father, takes a job with the Pony Express in 1860 after his father abandons the family on their California-bound wagon train, and risks his life to deliver an important letter that may affect the growing conflict between the North and South.

    
Blood Gold
by Michael Cadnum
F/Cad
After an arduous journey, Will Dwinelle and his friend Ben finally reach California in 1849 intending to bring home the man who betrayed the honor of a girl back in Philadelphia, but find themselves tempted by the riches of the Gold Rush.

    
Bog Child
by Siobhan Dowd
F/Dow
In 1981, the height of Ireland's "Troubles," eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog.

    
Casa Azul
by Laban Carrick Hill
F/Hil
In 1940, after traveling from their country village to Mexico City to find their mother, fourteen-year-old Maria and her younger brother Victor are befriended by the artist Frida Kahlo and the talking animals and household objects that inhabit her home.

    
Chains
by Laurie Halse Anderson
F/And
After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.

Child of Dandelions
by Shenaaz Nanji
F/Nan
In Uganda in 1972, fifteen-year-old Sabine and her family, wealthy citizens of Indian descent, try to preserve their normal life during the ninety days allowed by President Idi Amin for all foreign Indians to leave the country, while soldiers and others terrorize them and people disappear.

    
In the Time of the Butterflies
by Julia Alvarez
F/Alv
Set during the final days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1960, this novel tells the story the Mirabal sisters, three young wives and mothers who are assassinated after visiting their jailed husbands.

    
Keeping Corner
by Kashmira Sheth
F/She
In India in the 1940s, thirteen-year-old Leela's happy, spoiled childhood ends when her husband since age nine, whom she barely knows, dies, leaving her a widow whose only hope of happiness could come from Mahatma Ghandi's social and political reforms.

    
Monkey Town
by Ronald Kidd
F/Kid
When her father hatches a plan to bring publicity to their small Tennessee town by arresting a local high school teacher for teaching about evolution, the resulting 1925 Scopes trial prompts fifteen-year-old Frances to rethink many of her beliefs about religion and truth, as well as her relationship with her father.

    
My Mother the Cheerleader
by Robert Sharenow
F/Sha
Thirteen-year-old Louise uncovers secrets about her family and her neighborhood during the violent protests over school desegregation in 1960 New Orleans.

    
Postcards From No Man's Land
by Aidan Chambers
F/Cha
Alternates between two stories--contemporarily, seventeen-year-old Jacob visits a daunting Amsterdam at the request of his English grandmother--and historically, nineteen-year-old Geertrui relates her experience of British soldiers’ attempts to liberate Holland from its German occupation.

    
Riot
by Walter Dean Myers
F/Mye
In 1863, fifteen-year-old Claire, the daughter of an Irish mother and a black father, faces ugly truths and great danger when Irish immigrants, enraged by the Civil War and a federal draft, lash out against blacks and wealthy "swells" of New York City.

    
Tamar
by Mal Peet
F/Pee
In England in 1995, fifteen-year-old Tamar, grief-stricken by the puzzling death of her beloved grandfather, slowly begins to uncover the secrets of his life in the Dutch resistance during the last year of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the climactic events that forever cast a shadow on his life and that of his family.

    
Ten Cents a Dance
by Christine Fletcher
F/Fle
In 1940s Chicago, fifteen-year-old Ruby hopes to escape poverty by becoming a taxi dancer in a nightclub, but the work has unforeseen dangers and hiding the truth from her family and friends becomes increasingly difficult.

    
The Fire of Ares
by Michael Ford
F/For
When slaves rebel in ancient Sparta, twelve-year-old Lysander, guarded by an heirloom amulet, the Fire of Ares, is caught between the Spartan ruling class, with whom he has been training as a warrior since his noble heritage was revealed, and those among whom he was recently laboring as a slave.

    
The Goldsmith's Daughter
by Tanya Landman
F/Lan
As her city of Tenochtitlán is shaken by the invasion of Cortez, Itacate, whose father is a goldsmith, challenges fate, culture, and faith by pursuing her forbidden passion for goldwork and an equally illicit love.

    
The Last of the Mohicans
by James Fenimore Cooper
F/Coo
A tale of adventure, treachery, and friendship in the battle-torn wilderness of eighteenth-century upstate New York.

The Loud Silence of Francine Green
by Karen Cushman
F/Cus
In 1949, thirteen-year-old Francine goes to Catholic school in Los Angeles where she becomes best friends with a girl who questions authority and is frequently punished by the nuns, causing Francine to question her own values.

    
The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano
by Sonia Manzano
F/Man
It is 1969 in Spanish Harlem, and fourteen-year-old Evelyn Serrano is trying hard to break free from her conservative Puerto Rican surroundings, but when her activist grandmother comes to stay and the neighborhood protests start, things get a lot more complicated - and dangerous.

    
The Rock and the River
by Kekla Magoon
F/Mag
In 1968 Chicago, fourteen-year-old Sam Childs is caught in a conflict between his father's nonviolent approach to seeking civil rights for African Americans and his older brother, who has joined the Black Panther Party.

    
What I Saw and How I Lied
by Judy Blundell
F/Blu
In 1947, with her jovial stepfather Joe back from the war and family life returning to normal, teenaged Evie, smitten by the handsome young ex-GI who seems to have a secret hold on Joe, finds herself caught in a complicated web of lies whose devastating outcome changes her life and that of her family forever.

Ask the Passengers
by A.S. King
F/Kin
Astrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother's pushiness and her father's lack of interest tell her they're the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn't know the passengers inside, but they're the only people who won't judge her when she asks them her most personal questions . . . like what it means that she's falling in love with a girl.
    
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
F/Sae
Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.
    
Boyfriends with Girlfriends
by Alex Sanchez
F/San
Lance has always known he was gay, but he's never had a real boyfriend. Sergio is bisexual, but his only real relationship was with a girl. When the two of them meet, they have an instant connection--but will it be enough to overcome their differences? Allie's been in a relationship with a guy for the last two years--but when she meets Kimiko, she can't get her out of her mind. Does this mean she's gay? Does it mean she's bi? Kimiko, falling hard for Allie, and finding it impossible to believe that a gorgeous girl like Allie would be into her, is willing to stick around and help Allie figure it out.
    
It's Our Prom (So Deal With It)
by Julie Anne Peters
F/Pet
When Azure's principal gives her the chance to turn the school's traditional (and boring) senior prom into an event that will appeal to everyone, not just the jocks and cheerleaders, she jumps at the opportunity. Soon Azure manages to convince her best friends, Luke and Radhika, to join the prom committee as well. Facing heavy opposition and admittedly clueless about prom logistics, the three friends are nonetheless determined to succeed -- if Luke's and Azure's secret crushes on Radhika don't push the committee members, and their friendships, to the breaking point first.
    
Ash
by Malinda Lo
F/Lo
In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away. The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash's capacity for love-and her desire to live.
    
Geography Club
by Brent Hartinger
F/Har
A group of gay and lesbian teenagers finds mutual support when they form the "Geography Club" at their high school.
    
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
by John Green
F/Gre
When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other's best friend, who produces a play revealing his relationship with them both.
    
Wide Awake
by David Levithan
F/Lev
In the not-too-distant future, when a gay Jewish man is elected president of the United States, sixteen-year-old Duncan examines his feelings for his boyfriend, his political and religious beliefs, and tries to determine his rightful place in the world.
    
Hero
by Perry Moore
F/Moo
Thom Creed, the gay son of a disowned super-hero, finds that he, too, has special powers and is asked to join the very League that rejected his father, and it is there that Thom finds other misfits whom he can finally trust.
    
Absolute Brightness
by James Lecesne
F/Lec
In the beach town of Neptune, New Jersey, Phoebe's life is changed irrevocably when her gay cousin moves into her house and soon goes missing.
    
Absolutely, Positively Not
by David LaRochelle
F/Lar
Chronicles a teenage boy's humorous attempts to fit in at his Minnesota high school by becoming a macho, girl-loving, "Playboy" pinup-displaying heterosexual.
    
Boy Girl Boy
by Ron Koertge
F/Koe
Three troubled high school seniors, who plan to run away together from Illinois to California after graduation, try to figure out who they are and who they want to be.
    
Down to the Bone
by Mayra Dole
F/Dol
Laura, a seventeen-year-old Cuban American girl, is thrown out of her house when her mother discovers she is a lesbian, but after trying to change her heart and hide from the truth, Laura finally comes to terms with who she is and learns to love and respect herself.
    

Books to make you swoon!
    
Beautiful Disaster
by Jamie McGuire
F/McG
Abby Abernathy believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand. Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby wants—and needs—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet.
    
Every Day
by David Levithan
F/Lev
There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere. It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.
    
The Fault in Our Stars
by John Green
F/Gre
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
    
Addicted to Her
by Janet Nichols Lynch
F/Lyn
After falling obsessively in love, high school wrestler Rafael Montoya must choose between a reckless young woman and responsibilities to his family and future.
    
After the Moment
by Garret Freymann-Weyr
F/Fre
When seventeen-year-old Leigh changes high schools his senior year to help his stepsister, he finds himself falling in love with her emotionally disturbed friend, although he is still attached to a girl back home.
    
Chasing Windmills
by Catherine Ryan Hyde
F/Hyd
Two people trapped by life's circumstances break free and find a place in the world where love is genuine and selfless.
    
Delirium
by Lauren Oliver
F/Oli
Lena looks forward to receiving the government-mandated cure that prevents the delirium of love and leads to a safe, predictable, and happy life, until ninety-five days before her eighteenth birthday and her treatment, when she falls in love.
    
Enthusiasm
by Polly Shulman
F/Shu
Julie and Ashleigh, high school sophomores and Jane Austen fans, seem to fall for the same Mr. Darcy-like boy and struggle to hide their true feelings from one another while rehearsing for a school musical.
    
Giving Up the V
by Serena Robar
F/Rob
When Spencer gets birth control pills from her mother for her sixteenth birthday, she finds herself considering the different members of her group of friends and trying to decide whether or not she even wants to date any of them.
    
If I Stay
by Gayle Forman
F/For
While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen-year-old Mia, a gifted cellist, weights whether to live with her grief or join her family in death.
    
If You Come Softly
by Jacqueline Woodson
F/Woo
After meeting at their private school in New York, fifteen-year-old Jeremiah, who is black and whose parents are separated, and Ellie, who is white and whose mother has twice abandoned her, fall in love and then try to cope with people's reactions.
    
My Most Excellent Year
by Steve Kluger
F/Klu
Three teenagers in Boston narrate their experiences of a year of new friendships, first loves, and coming into their own.
    
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
F/Coh
High school student Nick O'Leary, member of a rock band, meets college-bound Norah Silverberg and asks her to be his girlfriend for five minutes in order to avoid his ex-sweetheart.
    
Perfect Chemistry
by Simone Elkeles
F/Elk
When wealthy, seemingly perfect Brittany and Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, develop a relationship after Alex discovers that Brittany is not exactly who she seems to be, they must face the disapproval of their schoolmates--and others.
    
Played
by Dana Davidson
F/Dav
When Ian Striver is dared by "his boys" to sleep with plain Kylie Winship in just three weeks, he is up for the challenge, thinking it will be a breeze, but a series of unexpected events have surprises for both of them.
    
Scrambled Eggs at Midnight
by Brad Barkley & Heather Hepler
F/Bar
Calliope and Eliot, two fifteen-year-olds in Asheville, North Carolina, begin to acknowledge some unpleasant truths about their parents and form their own ideas about love.
    
Stay
by Deb Caletti
F/Cal
In a remote corner of Washington State where she and her father have gone to escape her obsessive boyfriend, Clara meets two brothers who captain a sailboat, a lighthouse keeper with a secret, and an old friend of her father who knows his secrets.
    
The Last Song
by Nicholas Sparks
F/Spa
Ronnie is angry about having to spend the summer with her father. But when she meets Will she slowly lets her guard down and begins to fall deeply in love.
    
The Loser’s Guide to Life and Love
by A.E. Cannon
F/Can
Over the summer, Salt Lake City high school student Ed McIff works at a video store, wearing a shirt with the name Sergio on it, and when a beautiful girl comes in one day, he decides to take on a new, more suave identity, resulting in a series of misunderstandings and star-crossed encounters.
    
The Other Countess
by Eve Edwards
F/Edw
In the court of Queen Elizabeth I in 1582, Eleanor Hutton, an alchemist's daughter, and William Lacey, the financially ruined Earl of Dorset, fall in love just as Will is supposed to be courting a rich and socially acceptable heiress.
    
The Sky is Everywhere
by Jandy Nelson
F/Nel
In the months after her sister dies, seventeen-year-old Lennie falls into a love triangle and discovers the strength to follow her dream of becoming a musician.
    
The Summer I Turned Pretty
by Jenny Han
F/Han
Belly spends the summer she turns sixteen at the beach just like every other summer of her life, but this time things are very different.
    
The Truth About Forever
by Sarah Dessen
F/Des
The summer following her father's death, Macy plans to work at the library and wait for her brainy boyfriend to return from camp, but instead she goes to work at a catering business where she makes new friends and finally faces her grief.
    
The Unwritten Rule
by Elizabeth Scott
F/Sco
Petite and young-looking, seventeen-year-old Sarah has been best friends with the glamorous and seductive Brianna forever, but when she starts liking Brianna's boyfriend, their friendship becomes precarious.

See if you can solve these mysteries.
    
Also Known As
by Robin Benway
F/Ben
As the active-duty daughter of international spies, sixteen-year-old safecracker Maggie Silver never attended high school.  When she and her parents are sent to New York for her first solo assignment, Maggie is introduced to cliques, school lunches, and maybe even a boyfriend.

    
Ashes to Ashes
by Tami Hoag
F/Hoa
A witness to a horrible crime needs Kate Conlon's help.  Kate's not sure she's trustworthy.  The case gets even harder when she has to work with Special Agent John Quinn.  They have bad history.  That can't matter as she realizes she's the only woman who has what it takes to stop the killer, if she can avoid being his next victim.

    
Ten
by Gretchen McNeil
F/McN
It was supposed to be the weekend of their lives—an exclusive house party on Henry Island. But what they expect is definitely not what they get, and what starts out as fun turns dark and twisted after the discovery of a DVD with a sinister message: Vengeance is mine. Suddenly people are dying, and with a storm raging, the teens are cut off from the outside world. No electricity, no phones, no internet, and a ferry that isn’t scheduled to return for two days. As the deaths become more violent and the teens turn on each other, can Meg find the killer before more people die? Or is the killer closer to her than she could ever imagine?

    
Texas Gothic
by Rosemary Clement-Moore
F/Cle
Seventeen-year-old Amy Goodnight has long been the one who makes her family of witches seem somewhat normal to others.  While spending a summer with her sister caring for their aunt's farm, Amy becomes the center of weirdness when she becomes tied to a powerful ghost.

    
Envy
by Gregg Olsen
F/Ols
Crime lives--and dies--in the deceptively picture-perfect town of Port Gamble, Washington. Evil lurks and strange things happen--and 15-year-olds Hayley and Taylor Ryan secretly use their wits and their telepathic “twin-sense” to uncover the truth about the town's victims and culprits. Envy, the series debut, involves the mysterious death of the twins' old friend, Katelyn. Was it murder? Suicide? An accident? Hayley and Taylor are determined to find out--and as they investigate, they stumble upon a dark truth that is far more disturbing than they ever could have imagined.

    
Etiquette & Espionage
by Gail Carriger
F/Car
In an alternate England of 1851, spirited fourteen-year-old Sophronia is enrolled in a finishing school.  She is surprised to learn, lessons include not only the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also diversion, deceit, and espionage.

    
Fake ID
by Lamar Giles
F/Gil
An African-American teen in the Witness Protection Program moves to a new town and finds himself trying to solve a murder mystery when his first friend is found dead.

    
The Body Finder
by Kimberly Derting
F/Der
Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: her new feelings for her best friend since childhood and her "power" to sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes that the dead leave behind in the world... and the imprints that attach to their killers. Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet on her quest to find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved to find herself hoping that Jay's intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she's falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer... and becoming his prey herself.

    
Gentlemen
by Michael Northrup
F/Nor
When three teenage boys suspect that their English teacher is responsible for their friend's disappearance, they must navigate a maze of assorted clues, fraying friendships, violence, and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment before learning the truth.

    
Reality Check
by Peter Abrahams
F/Abr
After a knee injury destroys 16-year-old Cody's college hopes, he drops out of high school and gets a job in his small Montana town, but when his ex-girlfriend disappears from her Vermont boarding school, Cody travels cross-country to join the search.

    
I am the Messenger
by Markus Zusak
F/Zus
After capturing a bank robber, nineteen-year-old cabdriver Ed Kennedy begins receiving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where people need help, and he begins getting over his lifelong feeling of worthlessness.

    
Kiss Me Kill Me
by Lauren Henderson
F/Hen
Longing to be part of the in-crowd at her exclusive London school, orphaned, sixteen-year-old Scarlett, a trained gymnast eagerly accepts an invitation to a party whose disastrous outcome changes her life forever.

    
Pago Pago Tango
by John Enright
F/Enr
After seven years with the San Francisco PD, Sgt. Apelu Soifua returns home to American Samoa, where being a cop is always personal .  On an island, there are no strangers.  Secrets may be commonly known but they're never discussed, and solving crimes requires a certain...finesse.  Here, Apelu walks the line between two cultures: Samoan versus American, native versus new, each with its own unique way of coping when things go wrong.

    
Period 8
by Chris Crutcher
F/Cru
Period 8 has always been a safe haven and high school senior Paulie "The Bomb" Baum a constant attendee.  As Paulie, Hannah, their friends, and a sympathetic teacher try to unravel the mystery of a missing classmate, the ultimate bully takes aim at the school.

    
The Christopher Killer
by Alane Ferguson
F/Fer
On the payroll as an assistant to her coroner father, a 17-year-old Cameryn Mahoney uses her knowledge of forensic medicine to catch the killer of a friend while putting herself in terrible danger.

    
Bad Kitty
by Michele Jaffe
F/Jaf
While vacationing with family in Las Vegas, 17-year-old Jasmine stumbles upon a murder mystery that she attempts to solve with the help of her friends.

    
Black Rabbit Summer
by Kevin Brooks
F/Bro
When two of 16-year-old Pete’s childhood classmates disappear from a carnival the same night, he is a suspect, but his own investigation implicates other old friends he was with that evening. A tough, knife-wielding enemy is determined to keep him quiet.

    
Chasing the Jaguar
by Michele Greene
F/Gre
After having unsettling dreams about the kidnapped daughter of her mother’s employer, 15-yearold Martika learns that she is a descendant of a long line of curanderas—Mayan medicine women with special powers.

    
Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters
by Gail Giles
F/Gil
Fourteen-year-old Sunny is stunned when a stranger shows up at her house posing as her older sister Jazz, who supposedly died out of town in a fire months earlier.

    
Desert Crossing
by Elise Broach
F/Bro
A summer trip across the New Mexico desert turns nightmarish for 14-year-old Lucy, her older brother Jamie, and his best friend Kit, as they become involved in the suspicious death of a young girl.

    
Down the Rabbit Hole
by Peter Abrahams
F/Abr
Like her idol Sherlock Holmes, eighth grader Ingrid Levin-Hill uses her intellect to solve a murder case in her home town of Echo Falls.

    
Drawing a Blank, or, How I tried to Solve a Mystery, End a Feud, and Land the Girl of My Dreams
by Daniel Ehrenhaft
F/Ehr
Carlton Dunne IV, an outcast boarding school student with a secret identity as a graphic novelist, teams up with a beautiful Scottish girl who yearns to be an American police officer, to resolve an ancient feud and rescue Carlton's kidnapped father.

    
Enter the Parrot
by Kiki Lon
F/Lon
Meet Jade, the White girl in the Wong family. On the surface, Jade fits in perfectly. But just below the surface lurks the fragrance of ginger, ginseng, and a secret king fu society. When her crazy grandpa's deluded parrot goes missing, Jade must dive deep into the seedy underbelly of Chinatown to find him, keeping secrets from her best friends and her cute eco-mentor, Cedric: aka the hottest guy in school. She'll need her wits about her to solve the riddle, especially when more than one bird goes missing.

    
Finding Nouf
by Zoe Ferraris
F/Fer
When 16-year-old Nouf goes missing, along with a truck and her favorite camel, her prominent family calls on Nayir al-Sharqi, a desert guide, to lead a search party. Ten days later, just as Nayir is about to give up in frustration, her body is discovered by anonymous desert travelers. But when the coroner’s office determines that Nouf died not of dehydration but from drowning, and her family seems suspiciously uninterested in getting at the truth, Nayir takes it upon himself to find out what really happened to her.

    
Snatched
by Pete Hautman
F/Hau
Too curious for her own good, Roni, crime reporter for her high school newspaper, teams up with Brian, freshman science geek, to investigate the beating and kidnapping of a classmate.

    
Something Rotten
by Alan Gratz
F/Gra
In a contemporary story based on Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, Horatio Wilkes seeks to solve the murder of his friend Hamilton Prince's father in Denmark, Tennessee.

    
Storm Catchers
by Tim Bowler
F/Bow
Filled with guilt over his younger sister's kidnapping, teenaged Fin tries to rescue her and in the process learns about a dark family secret.

    
The Big Over Easy
by Jasper Fforde
F/Ffo
It is Easter in Reading and no one can remember the last sunny day. Nursery celebrity Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty II is found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Detective Spratt and assistant Mary Mary find themselves grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, bullion smuggling, problems with beanstalks, titans seeking asylum, and the cut and thrust world of international chiropody.

    
The Boxer and the Spy
by Robert Parker
F/Par
Fifteen-year-old Terry, an aspiring boxer, uncovers the mystery behind the unexpected death of a classmate.

    
The Celebutantes: In the Club
by Antonio Pagliarulo
F/Pag
Wealthy triplets Madison, Park, and Lexington Hamilton are shocked when one of their classmates at St. Cecilia’s Prep is killed during the opening of their father’s newest nightclub, but even after they narrow down the suspects to the members of a secret campus role-playing club, the murderer is not obvious.
    
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
F/Doy
Here, collected in one volume, are all four full length novels and 56 short stories chronicling the colorful adventures of Sherlock Holmes—every word Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote about Baker Street’s most famous resident.

    
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
F/Had
Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.

    
The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die
by April Henry
F/Hen
She doesn't know who she is.  She doesn't know where she is, or why.  All she knows when she comes in to a ransacked cabin is that there are two men arguing over whether or not to kill her, and that she must run.  Follow Cady and Ty (her accidental savior turned companion), as they race against the clock to stay alive.

    
The Last Shot
by John Feinstein
F/Fei
After winning a basketball reporting contest, 8th graders Stevie and Susan Carol are sent to cover the Final Four tournament, where they discover that a talented player is being blackmailed into throwing the final game.

    
The Lost Symbol
by Dan Brown
F/Bro
Famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon answers an unexpected summons to appear at the U.S. Capitol Building. His planned lecture is interrupted when a disturbing object—artfully encoded with five symbols—is discovered in the building. Langdon recognizes in the find an ancient invitation into a lost world of potentially dangerous wisdom. When his mentor Peter Solomon—a longstanding Mason and beloved philanthropist—is kidnapped, Langdon realizes that the only way to save Solomon is to accept the mystical invitation and plunge headlong into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and one inconceivable truth.

    
The Naturals
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
F/Bar
Seventeen-year-old Cassie, who has a natural ability to read people, joins an elite group of criminal profilers at the FBI in order to help solve cold cases.

    
The Night My Sister Went Missing
by Carol Plum-Ucci
F/Plu
When his sister goes missing under mysterious circumstances, seventeen-year-old Kurt spends a night at the local police station overhearing statements from a variety of witnesses that reveal the deep prejudices and shocking secrets of his small beach community.
    
The Night She Disappeared
by April Henry
F/Hen
Told from various viewpoints, Gabie and Drew set out to prove that their missing co-worker Kayla is not dead, and to find her before she is, while the police search for her body and the man who abducted her.

    
They Never Came Home
by Lois Duncan
F/Dun
Joan’s boyfriend and her brother are missing and assumed dead until the voice on the phone hints at something more terrible.

    
Tightrope
by Gillian Cross
F/Cro
When she begins receiving threatening messages from someone who seems to know her every move, teenage Ashley, after seeking help from the neighborhood tough guy, comes to realize that she alone can end the stalker’s reign of terror.

    
Top 8
by Katie Finn
F/Fin
When popular high school junior Madison’s online profile is hacked, it sends her life into turmoil and forces her to reevaluate some important matters as she figures out who committed the crime.

    
What I Saw and How I Lied
by Judy Blundell
F/Blu
In 1947, with her jovial stepfather Joe back from the war and family life returning to normal, teenaged Evie, smitten by the handsome young ex-GI who seems to have a secret hold on Joe, finds herself caught in a complicated web of lies whose devastating outcome changes her life and that of her family forever.

These just might keep you up at night.
    
I Hunt Killers
by Barry Lyga
F/Lyg
Raised by a sociopath serial killer, Jazz is all too familiar with the evils in this world. When someone starts recreating his father's kills, Jazz is uniquely able to assist the police, but his involvement could just be the end of his own sanity. For mystery lovers this scary, twisty-turny thriller is a must read.
    
Ripper
by Stefan Petrucha
F/Pet
Carver Young dreams of becoming a detective, despite growing up in an orphanage with only crime novels to encourage him. But when he is adopted by Detective Hawking of the world famous Pinkerton Agency, Carver is given not only the chance to find his biological father, he finds himself smack in the middle of a real life investigation: tracking down a vicious serial killer who has thrown New York City into utter panic.
    
Shadowlands
by Kate Brian
F/Bri
Someone creepy is in the woods and he's stalking his next victim. Rory thinks she's safe when she sees her math teacher, but he's not at all what he seems especially when trying to choke the life out of her. She just manages to escape, but he's unwilling to let any potential victim go. Rory and her family will be in danger until he's caught, but his 14 previous victims know how impossible it is to escape with your life.
    
Bloodline
by Kate Cary
F/Car
In this story told primarily through journal entries, a British soldier in World War I makes the horrifying discovery that his regiment commander is descended from Count Dracula.
    
Carrie
by Stephen King
F/Kin
The story of misunderstood high school girl Carrie White, her extraordinary telekinetic powers, and her violent rampage of revenge, remains one of the most barrier-breaking and shocking novels of all time.
    
Clay
by David Almond
F/Alm
The developing relationship between teenager Davie and a mysterious new boy in town morphs into something darker and more sinister when Davie learns firsthand of the boy's supernatural powers.
    
Darkside
by Tom Becker
F/Bec
Jonathan Starling's father is in an asylum and his home has been attacked when, while running away from kidnappers, he stumbles upon Darkside, a terrifying and hidden part of London ruled by the descendants of Jack the Ripper, where Jonathan is in mortal danger if he cannot find the way out.
    
Frankenstein: Prodigal Son
by Dean Koontz
F/Koo
Set in present day New Orleans, the story follows the activities of Victor Frankenstein, now known as Victor Helios, as he continues to create new life forms for his own purposes. Opposed to his activities are two homicide detectives and Frankenstein's original monster.
    
Kid Cyclone Fights the Devil & Other Stories
by Xavier Garza
F/Gar
A collection of scary short stories featuring popular characters from Mexican folklore. Characters such as La Llorona and El Chupacabras are sure to give readers the chills. Stories are told in both English and Spanish.
    
Lord Loss
by Darren Shan
F/Sha
Presumably the only witness to the horrific and bloody murder of his entire family, a teenage boy must outwit not only the mental health professionals determined to cure his delusion, but also the demonic forces only he can see.
    
Mason
by Thomas Pendleton
F/Pen
When a sadistic high school student tries to cover up a murder by brutally beating an innocent girl, his mentally-challenged but psychically-gifted brother, Mason, uses his powers to bring about justice in their sleepy Louisiana town.
    
Neverwhere
by Neil Gaiman
F/Gai
Richard Mayhew, learns the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished. He ceases to exist in the ordinary world of London Above, and joins a quest through the dark and dangerous London Below, a shadow city of lost and forgotten people, places, and times.
    
Nightwood
by Patricia Windsor
F/Win
Casey, Gena, and Maryann decide to ditch the senior trip to Washington D.C. and instead camp out at Casey's parents amazing cabin in Delonga. No curfews, no rules, and no parents. No one will even know they're up there. And no one will hear them when they scream for help. When the first body shows up, it's shocking. When the knock comes on the back door, it's horrifying. And when they realize there's nowhere to hide, they'll wish they were already dead.
    
Rot and Ruin
by Jonathan Maberry
F/Mab
In a post-apocalyptic world where fences and border patrols guard the few people left from the zombies that have overtaken civilization, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura is finally convinced that he must follow in his older brother's footsteps and become a bounty hunter.
    
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
by Alvin Schwartz
398.2/Sch
Are you brave enough for scary stories? Inside this collection you’ll find tales of horror, dark revenge and the supernatural.
    
Skin
by Rick Jasper
F/Jas
It looks like a pizza exploded on Nick Barry's face. But bad skin is the least of his problems. His bones feel like living ice. A strange rash seems to be some sort of ancient code. And then there's the anger... Something evil is living under Nick's skin.
    
Sleepless
by Thomas Fahy
F/Fah
Terrified by the gruesome nightmares and unexplained bouts of sleepwalking that seem to be affecting her and many other students at Saint Opportuna High, Emma and her friends become even more unnerved when, after several deaths, they begin to suspect that something is causing them to kill in their sleep.
    
Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Ray Bradbury
F/Bra
The memorable story of two boys, James Nightshade and William Halloway, and the evil that grips their small Midwestern town with the arrival of a "dark carnival" one Autumn midnight.
    
Sorcerers of the Nightwing
by Geoffrey Huntington
F/Hun
Every kid fears the monsters in the closet, but for Devon March the monsters are all too real. Horrible things come slithering out across his floor, determined to drag him with them back down their Hellhole. But Devon is no ordinary young man.
    
Tales of Edgar Allen Poe
by Edgar Allen Poe
F/Poe
Poe is a master of dark and creepy tales about murder, revenge, torture, being buried alive, and insanity.
    
The Forest of Hands and Teeth
by Carrie Ryan
F/Rya
In Mary's world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth. But, slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future.
    
The Haunting of Hood Canal
by Jack Cady
F/Cad
Readers will dive into this dark and moody novel about a small town in Washington disturbed by a mysterious entity that drags cars into Hood Canal.
    
The Lottery
by Shirley Jackson
F/Jac
The people of a village perform their annual lottery, with startling consequences for the recipient of the one paper with the black spot.
    
The Stone Child
by Dan Poblocki
F/Pob
When friends Eddie, Harris, and Maggie discover that the scary adventures in their favorite author's fictional books come true, they must find a way to close the portal that allows evil creatures and witches to enter their hometown of Gatesweed.
    
Thirsty
by M.T. Anderson
F/And
From the moment he knows that he is destined to be a vampire, Chris thirsts for the blood of people around him while also struggling to remain human.

Travel to the far reaches of the galaxy, fight off alien invaders, or heed the warning that technology (especially in the wrong hands) can be very dangerous. Let these science fiction stories sweep you away.
     
Quicksilver
by R.J. Anderson
F/And
Back in her hometown, Tori Beaugrand had everything a teenaged girl could want—popularity, money, beauty. But she also had a secret. A secret that could change her life in an instant, or destroy it. Even though she’s left everything from her old life behind, escaping her past isn't that easy. She has one last shot at getting her enemies off her trail and winning the security and independence she’s always longed for. But saving herself will take every ounce of Tori’s incredible electronics and engineering skills—and even then, she may need to sacrifice more than she could possibly imagine if she wants to be free.
    
Under the Never Sky
by Veronica Rossi
F/Ros
Aria has lived her whole life in the protected dome of Reverie. Her entire world confined to its spaces, she's never thought to dream
of what lies beyond its doors. So when her mother goes missing, Aria knows her chances of surviving in the outer wasteland long enough to find her are slim. Then Aria meets an outsider named Perry. He's searching for someone too. He's also wild - a savage - but might be her best hope at staying alive.
    
Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline
F/Cli
In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines -- puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, the race is really on, and to survive he'll have to win!
    
Starters
by Lissa Price
F/Pri
To support herself and her younger brother in a future Beverly Hills, 16-year-old Callie hires her body out to seniors who want to experience being young again, and she lives a fairy-tale life until she learns that her body will commit murder, unless her mind can stop it.
    
Steelheart
by Brandon Sanderson
F/San
At age eight, David watched as his father was killed by an Epic, a human with superhuman powers, and now, ten years later, he joins the Reckoners--the only people who are trying to kill the Epics and end their tyranny.
    
The 5th Wave
by Richard Yancey
F/Yan
Cassie Sullivan, the survivor of an alien invasion, must rescue her young brother from the enemy with help from a boy who may be one of them.
    
The Eye of Minds
by James Dashner
F/Das
Michael is a skilled internet gamer in a world of advanced technology.  When a cyber-terrorist begins to threaten players, Michael is called upon to seek him and his secrets out.
    
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
F/Ada
Just before the Earth is demolished to make way for a new hyper spatial expressway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by friend Ford Prefect from the Planet Betelgeuse and begins his hitch-hiking misadventures throughout the universe.

    
2001: A Space Odyssey
by Arthur C. Clarke
F/Cla
The year is 2001, and cosmonauts uncover a mysterious monolith that has been buried on the Moon for at least three million years. To their astonishment, the monolith releases an equally mysterious pulse—a kind of signal—in the direction of Saturn after it is unearthed. Whether alarm or communication, the human race must know what the signal is—and who it was intended for.
    
A Confusion of Princes
by Garth Nix
F/Nix
Battling aliens, space pirates, and competitors, Prince Khemri meets a young woman, named Raine, and learns more than he expected about the hidden workings of a vast, intergalactic Empire, and about himself.
    
A Long Long Sleep
by Anna Sheehan
F/She
Sixteen-year-old Rosalinda Fitzroy, heir to the multiplanetary corporation UniCorp, is awakened after sixty years in stasis to find that everyone she knew has died and as she tries to make a new life for herself, learns she is the target of a robot assassin.
    
Across the Universe
by Beth Revis
F/Rev
Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet three hundred years in the future, but her frozen slumber abruptly ends fifty years too soon when someone on board the ship tries to murder her.
    
Ashes
by Ilsa J. Bick
F/Bic
An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device, wiping out every computerized system, and killing billions. Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. Now desperate to find out what happened after the pulse crushes her to the ground, Alex meets up with Tom—a young soldier—and Ellie, a girl whose grandfather was killed by the EMP. For this improvised family and the others who are spared, it’s now a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human.
    
Black Hole Sun
by David Macinnis Gill
F/Gil
On the planet Mars, 16-year-old Durango and his crew of mercenaries are hired by the settlers of a mining community to protect their most valuable resource from a feral band of marauders.

    
Cinder
by Marissa Meyer
F/Mey
As a plague ravages the overcrowded Earth, Cinder, a gifted mechanic and cyborg, becomes involved with handsome Prince Kai and must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect the world in this futuristic take on the Cinderella story.
    
Dune
by Frank Herbert
F/Her
The first book of the Dune chronicles is set on the desert planet Arrakis and begins with the story of Maud'dib, a hero who will guide his great family in establishing the perfect society.
    
Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card
F/Car
Ender Wiggin, a boy genetically engineered to be a superior military mind, is bred to win Earth's long war with an alien insectoid race by completely destroying their home world.
    
Epic
by Conor Kostick
F/Kos
On New Earth, a world based on a video role-playing-game, 14-year-old Erik persuades his friends to aid him in some unusual gambits in order to save Erik's father from exile and safeguard the futures of each of their families.
    
Erebos
by Ursula Poznanski
F/Poz
When 16-year-old Nick Dunmore receives a package with a mysterious computer game called Erebos, he hopes it will explain his classmates' strange behavior. He is quickly drawn into the cryptic world of the game, where players must obey a strict code. Erebos watches its players and begins to manipulate their lives in frightening ways. It soon becomes clear the game has a deadly agenda. When Nick sets out on a dangerous mission, reality and the virtual world begin to blur.
    
Feed
by M.T. Anderson
F/And
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires.
    
Halo: First Strike
by Eric Nylund
F/Nyl
The Covenant shows no mercy as they continue to assault every human world they can find, but Spartan 117, the Master Chief, has discovered an ancient secret that could alter the course of the war and save the Earth.
    
Heir Apparent
by Vivian Vande Velde
F/Van
While playing a total immersion virtual reality game of kings and intrigue, 14-year-old Giannine learns that demonstrators have damaged the equipment to which she is connected, and she must win the game quickly or be damaged herself.
    
I Am Number Four
by Pittacus Lore
F/Lor
In rural Ohio, friendships and a beautiful girl prove distracting to a 15-year-old who has hidden on Earth for ten years waiting to develop the Legacies, or powers, he will need to rejoin the other six surviving Garde members and fight the Mogadorians who destroyed their planet, Lorien.
    
Insignia
by S.J. Kincaid
F/Kin
Tom, a 14-year-old genius at virtual reality games, is recruited by the United States Military to begin training at the Pentagon Spire as a Combatant in World War III, controlling the mechanized drones that do the actual fighting off-planet.
    
Leviathan
by Scott Westerfeld
F/Wes
In an alternate 1914 Europe, 15-year-old Austrian Prince Alek, on the run from the Clanker Powers who are attempting to take over the globe using mechanical machinery, forms an uneasy alliance with Deryn who, disguised as a boy to join the British Air Service, is learning to fly genetically-engineered beasts.
    
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
by James Patterson
F/Pat
After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the "birdkids," who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose.
    
The Host
by Stephanie Meyer
F/Mey
A member of a species that takes over the minds of human bodies, Wanderer is unable to disregard his host's love for a man in hiding, a situation that forces both possessor and host to become unwilling allies.
    
The Obsidian Blade
by Pete Hautman
F/Hau
After thirteen-year-old Tucker Feye's parents disappear, he suspects that the strange disks of shimmering air that he keeps seeing are somehow involved, and when he steps inside of one he is whisked on a time-twisting journey trailed by a shadowy sect of priests and haunted by ghostlike figures.

Read about teenagers struggling with hardships in their lives.
    
Under the Bridge
by Michael Harmon
F/Har
Tate's younger brother Indy is probably the best skateboarder in Spokane. He's also really smart though he couldn't care less about school. But when Indy clashes with his father one too many times and drops out of school, it's up to Tate to win his brother back from the seedier elements of Spokane. Can Tate convince Indy to come home, finish his high school degree, and return to skating under the bridge with their crew?
    
Out of Reach
by Carrie Arcos
F/Arc
Rachel has always idolized her older brother Micah. He struggles with addiction, but she tells herself that he’s in control. And she almost believes it. Until the night that Micah doesn’t come home. Rachel’s terrified—and she can’t help but feel responsible. She should have listened when Micah tried to confide in her. And she only feels more guilt when she receives an anonymous note telling her that Micah is nearby and in danger. With nothing more to go on than hope and a slim lead, Rachel and Micah’s best friend, Tyler, begin the search. Along the way, Rachel will be forced to confront the possibility that Micah may never come home.
    
A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl
by Tanya Lee Stone
F/Sto
When a handsome senior boy enters their mix, friends Josie, Nicolette and Aviva soon find themselves in questionable situations where each girl must make the right decision before their personal sacrifices become too great.
    
Cut
by Patricia McCormick
F/McC
While confined to a mental hospital, 13–year-old Callie slowly comes to understand some of the reasons behind her self-mutilation, and gradually starts to get better.
    
Dreamland
by Sarah Dessen
F/Des
After her older sister runs away, 16-year-old Caitlin decides that she needs to make a major change in her own life and begins an abusive relationship with a boy who is mysterious, brilliant, and dangerous.
    
Flash Burnout
by L.K. Madigan
F/Mad
Fifteen-year-old Blake has a girlfriend and a friend who’s a girl. One of them loves him; the other one needs him.
    
Jellicoe Road
by Melina Marchetta
F/Mar
Abandoned by her drug-addicted mother at the age of eleven, Taylor Markham struggles with her identity and family history at a boarding school in Australia.
    
Lessons From a Dead Girl
by Jo Knowles
F/Kno
After her former friend Leah dies in an automobile accident, Laine remembers their troubled relationship, dating back to
elementary school when Leah convinced Laine to “practice” in the closet with her, and Leah could control her every thought.
    
Living Dead Girl
by Elizabeth Scott
F/Sco
After being abducted when she was ten and abused for five years by her kidnapper, Ray, Alice's only hope of freedom is in death.
    
Looking for Alaska
by John Green
F/Gre
Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.   
    
Playing With Matches
by Brian Katcher
F/Kat
While trying to find a girl who will date him, high school junior Leon Sanders befriends a lonely, disfigured female classmate.
    
The Rules of Survival
by Nancy Werlin
F/Wer
Seventeen-year-old Matthew recounts his attempts, starting at a young age, to free himself and his sisters from the grip of their emotionally and physically abusive mother.
    
Story of a Girl
by Sara Zarr
F/Zar
In the three years since her father caught her in the back seat of a car with an older boy, 16-year-old Deanna’s life at home has been a nightmare. While dreaming of escaping with her brother and his family, she discovers the power of forgiveness.
    
Thirteen Reasons Why
by Jay Asher
F/Ash
When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his class-mate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death.
    
Twisted
by Laurie Halse Anderson
F/And
After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, 17-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of the popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving into his destructive thoughts.
    
Why I Fight
by J. Adams Oaks
F/Oak
After his house burns down, 12-year-old Wyatt Reaves takes off with his uncle. They drive from town to town for six years,
earning money, mostly by fighting, until Wyatt finally confronts his parents one last time.