Stand-Alone Fiction

BETWEEN MOM AND JO
Julie Anne Peters
Megan Tingley Books/Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 0316739065
Ages 12-up
240 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

Nick has a three-legged dog named Lucky, some pet fish, and two moms who think he's the greatest kid ever. And he happens to think he has the greatest Moms ever. But everything changes when his birth mom and her wife Jo start to have marital problems. Suddenly, Nick is in the middle, and instead of having two Moms to turn to for advice, he has no one.

THE DEATH COLLECTOR
Justin Richards
Bloomsbury USA Children's Books
ISBN-10: 1582347212
ISBN-13: 9781582347219
Ages 12-up
336 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

What starts as an ordinary pick-pocketing incident in Victorian London unites three teens against a madman. Eddie is the pickpocket; George is an assistant at the British Museum; Elizabeth has a nose for trouble --- and all of them are being hunted by Augustus Lorimore. Lorimore is a sinister factory owner who's obsessed with reanimating the dead, both humans and dinosaurs --- and one of each is already terrorizing the streets of London. It's up to Eddie, George and Elizabeth to stop Lorimore's monsters…or die trying.

GOSSAMER
Lois Lowry
Houghton Mifflin/Walter Lorraine Books
ISBN-10: 0618685502
ISBN-13: 9780618685509
Ages 10-up
144 pages

• Read a Review & Excerpt
• Buy from Amazon.com

Where do dreams come from? What nighttime messengers are the guardians of our most deeply hidden hopes and our half-forgotten fears? Drawing on her rich imagination, two-time Newbery winner Lois Lowry confronts these questions and explores the conflicts between the gentle bits and pieces of the past that come to life in dream, and the darker horrors that find their form in nightmare. In a haunting story that tiptoes between reality and imagination, two people --- a lonely, sensitive woman and a damaged, angry boy --- face their own histories and discover what they can be to one another.

HIT THE ROAD
Caroline B. Cooney
Delacorte Press
ISBN-10: 0385901747
ISBN-13: 9780385901741
Ages 12-up
192 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

Brit has had her driver's license only 11 days when her parents drop her off to stay at her grandmother's house for two weeks while they go on vacation. Little do they know that Brit is headed for a three-state road trip with Nannie to pick up her college roommates and bring them to their alma mater for their 65th --- and most likely final --- reunion. Brit's negativity about this mini-excursion dissipates as she listens to "the girls" in the backseat laugh and reminisce about their many years of friendship.

JUMPING THE SCRATCH
Sarah Weeks
Laura Geringer Books/HarperCollins
ISBN-10: 0060541091
ISBN-13: 9780060541095
Ages 10-up
176 pages

• Read a Review
• Buy from Amazon.com

After his cat dies, his father leaves, and his aunt Sapphy has an accident that causes her memory to develop a skip, Jamie Reardon hopes his life will go back to the way it used to be. But unfortunately there's one more bad thing in store for Jamie --- something he'd give anything to be able to forget --- and this one leaves him feeling like a stranger to himself. Jamie tries in vain to find the magic trigger that will help Sapphy's memory jump the scratch, but in the end it's Aunt Sapphy who, along with one of Jamie's classmates, helps Jamie unravel the mysteries of memory and jump the scratch in his own life.

MY ALMOST EPIC SUMMER
Adele Griffin
G. P. Putnam's Sons
ISBN: 0399237844
Ages 11-up
192 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

Complicated friendships, inconvenient crushes and occupational mishaps seem to define Irene's summer. Although dreaming that someday she'll own a sun-kissed salon in L.A. where her specialty will be recreating the hairstyles of famous literary heroines, Irene's reality suggests something totally different. She has just been fired from her mom's beauty salon and is forced to take the only other job she can find --- babysitting. She then meets Starla, a gorgeous lifeguard whose diva attitude, dangerous obsessions, male admirers and cringe-worthy blog supply Irene with enough real-life drama and romance to fill a book.

STORE-BOUGHT BABY
Sandra Belton
Greenwillow Books
ISBN-10: 0060850868
ISBN-13: 9780060850869
Ages 12-up
256 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

Leah's adopted brother Luce has just been killed in a car accident. Leah is by turns angry and devastated, and sometimes even questions her parents' love for her. Did they love Luce more? She takes it upon herself to search for Luce's biological parents and wonders if he ever tried to find them on his own without telling anyone else.

TALLULAH FALLS
Christine Fletcher
Bloomsbury USA Children's Books
ISBN-10: 1582346623
ISBN-13: 9781582346625
Ages 14-up
304 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

When Tallulah Addy sets out on an impulsive cross-country trip to rescue her best friend, she doesn't anticipate getting stranded in rural Tennessee without any money. Nor does she guess that rescuing a dog will land her a job in the local veterinarian's office. But Tallulah works harder than ever before, tending to animals of all shapes and sizes --- and unexpectedly, to wounds long-buried in herself.

TERSIAS THE ORACLE
G.P. Taylor
G. P. Putnam's Sons
ISBN: 0399242589
Ages 12-up
262 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

A comet has just missed the Earth, leaving London in chaos. In this time of uncertainty, only the blind boy oracle, Tersias, can see what the future holds. But awareness of his power is growing and he is captured by Solomon, a false prophet in search of disciples. Tersias is just what Solomon needs, and with Tersias under his control, Solomon believes he's finally in a position to complete his master plan.

YOU, MAYBE: The Profound Asymmetry of Love in High School
Rachel Vail
HarperCollins
ISBN-10: 0060569174
ISBN-13: 9780060569174
Ages 12-up
208 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

Josie is independent, fierce, and does not care what anyone thinks about her, especially where guys are concerned. She may flirt with them, and even kiss them, but it doesn't mean anything. So who can explain what happens when Carson Gold, the hottest senior, decides he's interested in her? At first Josie treats him the same way she treats everybody else. But something about him gets to her. Maybe it's the same thing that causes everyone to watch him. Maybe it's something between them, something just he and Josie share.

Series Books

Gossip Girl

ONLY IN YOUR DREAMS: Gossip Girl #9
Cecily von Ziegesar
Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 0316011827
Ages 15-up
240 pages

• Read a Review & Excerpt
• Buy from Amazon.com

This ninth Gossip Girl novel marks the gang's last summer together before heading off to college --- and things are really heating up! Despite that steamy kiss on graduation night, Blair, Serena and Nate have gone their separate ways...though not for long. Blair is off to London with her English Lord boyfriend, Serena is about to become a movie star, Nate is headed to the Hamptons, and Dan and Vanessa are rekindling their love.

Uglies Trilogy

SPECIALS
Scott Westerfeld
Simon Pulse
ISBN-10: 0689865406
ISBN-13: 9780689865404
Ages 12-up
384 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

Tally has been transformed from a repellent ugly to a supermodel pretty. Now, finally, she's a special --- a super-amped fighting machine. Her mission is to keep the uglies down and the pretties stupid, to maintain order in a world built on carefully engineered perfection. The strength, the speed, and the clarity and focus of her thinking feel better than anything Tally can remember. Most of the time. One tiny corner of her heart still remembers something more. Still, it's easy to tune that out --- until Tally is offered a chance to stamp out the rebels of the New Smoke permanently.

The Noble Warriors

SEEKER: Book One of the Noble Warriors
William Nicholson
Harcourt Children's Books
ISBN: 0152057684
Ages 12-up
432 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

This first novel in the Noble Warriors series begins when Seeker's older brother is publicly humiliated and --- with no explanation --- exiled from the Nomana, a revered order of warrior monks. Seeker refuses to believe that his beloved older brother is capable of committing a betrayal that would warrant such severe consequences, so he sets off alone on a journey to rescue his brother and find out at last what really happened. Along the way he meets two other young people who are on quests of their own, and in a shocking turn of events, the three are soon caught up in a harrowing and bloody race to save the Nomana --- and themselves --- from destruction.

Alias

ONCE LOST
Kirsten Beyer
Simon Spotlight Entertainment
ISBN-10: 1416909478
ISBN-13: 9781416909477
Ages 12-up
320 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

A strain of the deadly Marburg virus has come up for sale on the black market, and someone has infected an African village. APO has one potential lead: a researcher named Magrite whose success in treating Marburg victims may be the reason for his sudden disappearance. Out in the field again, Agent Sydney Bristow and her father close in on the kidnapper, but determining Magrite's location is only the first challenge in a chain of obstacles. Magrite has a dark secret that forces Sydney to confront her past, even as APO races to stop the distribution of a new and terrifying weapon.

Charmed

SWEET TALKIN' DEMON
Laura J. Burns
Simon Spotlight Entertainment
ISBN-10: 1416914692
ISBN-13: 9781416914693
Ages 16-up
192 pages

• Buy from Amazon.com

Phoebe has met the perfect man. Daniel is handsome, sensitive, charming, and seductively poetic. He's almost too good to be true --- and Paige and Piper make it their mission to dig up the dirt on the suitor with the silver tongue. Paige orbs into the house when Daniel is at work, only to catch a glimpse of a demon in his living room. The sisters wonder if Daniel is an evil power himself or just a gullible, insecure warlock set up to steal their powers.