ESCAPE FROM BOTANY BAY: The True Story of Mary Bryant
Gerald Hausman and Loretta Hausman
Orchard Books
ISBN: 0439403278
Ages 12-up
176 pages

Nineteen-year-old Mary finds herself aboard a prison ship bound for Australia after she's caught stealing a lady's bonnet. Chained below deck in crowded, hot and filthy conditions, Mary's unconquerable spirit is challenged almost to the breaking point. But she somehow manages to survive and nurture her own and other prisoners' hope for freedom. Her life is a mixture of both happiness and adventure --- from her marriage at sea, to the birth of her two children, and to their ultimate escape from the new British colony at Botany Bay.

GETTING THE GIRL
Markus Zusak
Arthur A. Levine Books
ISBN: 0439389496
Ages 12-up
272 pages

Nothing is easy for Cameron in this sequel to FIGHTING RUBEN WOLFE. He meets a girl named Octavia, who he admires very much and enjoys spending time with. Unfortunately, she already has a boyfriend --- Cameron's brother, Ruben. But romance comes much too easily for Ruben, and he hardly gives Octavia a second thought. Cameron and Ruben have a tremendous, unspoken bond that has, up to this point, pulled them through every difficult situation they've ever faced. Cameron has an important decision to make that will seriously test the strength of this bond.

KEESHA'S HOUSE
Helen Frost
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
ISBN: 0374340641
Ages 12-up
128 pages

Keesha has found a safe place to live, and other kids come to her house when they just can't make it on their own.

They include Stephie, who's pregnant and is trying to make the right decisions for herself and those she cares about; Jason, Stephie's boyfriend who is torn between his responsibility to Stephie and the baby and the promise of a college basketball career; Dontay, who is in foster care while his parents are in prison and is feeling unwanted both inside and outside the system; Carmen, who is arrested on a DUI charge and is waiting in a juvenile detention center for a judge to hear her case; Harris, who is disowned by his father after disclosing that he's gay and is now living in his car, taking care of himself; and Katie, who is angry at her mother's loyalty to an abusive stepfather and is losing herself in long hours of work and school.

These seven teenagers courageously struggle to hold their lives together and overcome their difficulties.

KING OF THE MILD FRONTIER: An Ill-Advised Autobiography
Chris Crutcher
Greenwillow Books
ISBN: 0060502495
Ages 13-up
208 pages

In this "ill-advised autobiography," Chris Crutcher talks about, among other things, trying to impress a member of the girls' softball team (with disastrous dental results) and enduring the humiliation of his high school athletic club initiation (which involved, of all things, olives and oysters). We also learn that, throughout the entire tenth grade, he never did homework on his own. So how did this man ever become a writer and the author of eight critically acclaimed books for young people? Crutcher has written an honest, hilarious and riveting account of his life as a child and the tricky road to adulthood.

THE KINGS ARE ALREADY HERE
Garret Freymann-Weyr
Houghton Mifflin Co.
ISBN: 0618263632
Ages 12-up
149 pages

Fifteen-year-old Phebe Knight is training to become a ballerina. She has never once questioned this ambition. But now, one year away from joining the Company, her mind begins to wander. She decides to spend the summer with her father, who lives in Switzerland, hoping that a change of scene will bring her focus back to her tutus and ballerina shoes.

Nikolai Kotalev is a sixteen-year-old chess champion who Phebe's father befriends. Nikolai is looking for the chess teacher he needs: the legendary Stas Vlajnik. Nikolai's attention never wanders. He plays chess beautifully and wants to learn from Stas how to become a grandmaster capable of both grace and speed.

Phebe, who knows what it means to follow one's obsessions, organizes a search to help Nikolai find the elusive Stas. They travel across Europe with Phebe's father and his girlfriend, hunting for him. Phebe and Nikolai study each other's obsessions to find the lives they truly want.

MAHALIA
Joanne Horniman
Knopf
ISBN: 0375823255
Ages 12-up
192 pages

Matt had loved everything about Emmy. He loved her freckled and luminous body, which he thought was magical. He loved her free spirit and the way she made everything special. He loved the future he saw for them when he found out Emmy was pregnant. And he loved her answer when her parents protested their decision to keep the baby: "We'll just love it, okay?" But after five months, what Matt loves most about Emmy is what drives her away. Now he only has Mahalia to love. Is his love enough to make the two of them a family?

A NORTHERN LIGHT
Jennifer Donnelly
Harcourt Children's Books
ISBN: 0152167056
Ages 14-up
400 pages

Mattie Gokey has a word for everything. She collects words and stores them up as a way of warding off the hard truths of her life, the truths that she can't write down in stories: the fresh pain of her mother's death, the burden of raising her sisters while her father struggles over his farm, the feelings Mattie has for handsome but dull Royal Loomis, who says he wants to marry her, and the secret dreams that keep her going --- visions of finishing high school, going to college in New York City, and becoming a writer.

Yet, when the drowned body of a young woman turns up at the hotel where Mattie works, all her words are useless. But in the dead woman's letters, Mattie again finds her voice and a determination to live her own life.

NOT AS CRAZY AS I SEEM
George Harrar
Houghton Mifflin Co
ISBN: 0618263659
Ages 12-up
224 pages

What do you do when a bottle of liquid hand-sanitizer lasts you only a week? How about when you realize that you're unable to eat in the school cafeteria or sit on an office couch because they're too dirty? And is it a crime to have all of your shirts neatly lined up, color coded, and buttoned from top to bottom? What about alphabetized books? When does neatness become an obsession?

Preoccupied with orderliness, cleanliness and warding off impending disaster through rituals, Devon Brown is concerned with all of his actions, which is just fine by him. However, his parents and therapist see his "tendencies" in a more negative light --- especially when such compulsions land him in the middle of big trouble at his new high school.

OUR TIME ON THE RIVER
Don Brown
Houghton Mifflin Co.
ISBN: 0618311165
Ages 12-up
144 pages

The year is 1968. Steve's older brother has just broken the news that he has quit college to enlist in the army. Before David departs for Vietnam in September, their father decides to send them on a canoe trip down the Susquehanna River. Steve knows that David isn't happy about the plan, and he's not looking forward to being trapped with his swaggering, tough-guy brother either.

"Look out for each other!" is the last thing they hear Dad shout as they round a bend out of sight. At first, the river is narrow and quiet as a stream, but it soon grows wider and more complicated, carrying the boys on a journey that alters their adversarial relationship significantly. There's no map or guide for this trip --- just two brothers going forward, navigating the twists and turns of the river, and learning to fight for each other.

THE PACK
Elisa Lynn Carbone
Viking Children's Books
ISBN: 0670036196
Ages 12-up
176 pages

What's the deal with Akhil Vyas? At first, Becky is convinced that he's the weirdest person on earth when he shows up in her English class. He refuses to sit in a chair, stares at her with his dark eyes, and has skin covered in scars. But when her best friend Omar starts hanging out with him, Becky's revulsion switches to fascination. Akhil reveals that the National Institute of Health is studying him, but he can't say why --- until something happens that makes him swear Omar and Becky to secrecy. Suddenly Becky isn't sure which is more shocking --- Akhil's secret, or the chilling reason why he must reveal it.

PRINCESS IN WAITING (The Princess Diaries, Vol. 4)
Meg Cabot
HarperCollins Juvenile Books
ISBN: 0060096071
Ages 12-up
240 pages

Girls have found a heroine in Mia Thermapolis, a.k.a. Princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo. This ordinary girl is suddenly becoming a princess, and the stories of her misadventures continue in Volume IV. Mia has to deal with an assortment of challenges: she must face her Genovian public for the first time, try to schedule a first date with newly appointed Royal Consort Michael Moscovitz, and search her soul for a talent --- any talent whatsoever.

SANCTUARY (Angel Series)
Jeff Mariotte
Simon Pulse
ISBN: 0689856644
Ages 16-up
320 pages

A crime is committed on the supposedly secure grounds of Caritas, the demon karaoke bar. While Angel and her fellow investigators set off to find the missing Fred, the Host sits each patron down and questions them about what they saw. It turns out that the witnesses each have their own version of events, but one thing is clear: time is running out for Fred!

THE WEE FREE MEN
Terry Pratchett
HarperCollins Juvenile Books
ISBN: 0060012366
Ages 12-up
272 pages

In a riveting tale that is both suspenseful and humorous, Terry Pratchett tells the story of a young witch-to-be named Tiffany who must journey through the terrifying and ever-shifting dreamscape of Fairyland to rescue her kidnapped brother. Armed with only a frying pan, Tiffany is aided in her quest by the Nac Mac Feegle, a clan of sheep-stealing, sword wielding, six-inch-high blue men who are fierce but also funny.

• Terry Pratchett's Website
• AuthorsOnTheWeb.com Author of the Month, 5/01