From My Bookshelf

Most recent Young Adult novels I've read and would recommend:

LIAR SOCIETY:

FIRST LINE: Her email didn't move or disappear or do any of the creepy things I'd expect an email from a ghost to do.

Secret societies dominate a posh co-educational private school in this suspenseful, possibly supernatural mystery. One or both of those societies may be responsible for the death of a girl, or so 15-year-old Kate believes. Kate's best friend, Grace, was killed in a fire under mysterious circumstances a year earlier.

When she gets an e-mail from her dead friend, Kate believes Grace is asking for justice and begins to investigate what really happened. The Roeckers populate the school with the standard drop-dead handsome rich guys and a few supermodel-style girls, but Kate finds herself more attracted to dangerous, scruffy Liam. Then there's her annoying next-door neighbor, nerdy Seth, who has an obvious crush on her.


Despite the difficulties they cause, the two help her so much that at last she enlists them in her quest. Tension mounts when the trio finds secret areas in the school and starts to track down who was really responsible on the night of the fire. A final confrontation solves the mystery, but can Kate really bring the culprit to justice? And is Grace's ghost really haunting her?

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CLARITY:

FIRST LINE: "You don't want to kill me," I said.

When you can see things others can't, where do you look for the truth?
This paranormal murder mystery will have teens reading on the edge of their seats.

Clarity "Clare" Fern sees things. Things no one else can see. Things like stolen kisses and long-buried secrets. All she has to do is touch a certain object, and the visions come to her. It's a gift.


And a curse.

When a teenage girl is found murdered, Clare's ex-boyfriend wants her to help solve the case--but Clare is still furious at the cheating jerk. Then Clare's brother--who has supernatural gifts of his own--becomes the prime suspect, and Clare can no longer look away. Teaming up with Gabriel, the smoldering son of the new detective, Clare must venture into the depths of fear, revenge, and lust in order to track the killer.

But will her sight fail her just when she needs it most?

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ACROSS THE UNIVERSE:

FIRST LINE: Daddy said, "Let Mom go first."

Imagine leaving everything behind in order to be with the people you love, only to be left with nothing. Amy and her parents have been cryogenically frozen to be awakened in 300 years when their spaceship reaches the planet they will colonize.

Unfortunately, Amy is unfrozen 50 years too soon. Her parents are too critical to the colony to awaken early, so by the time she sees them again, she will be older than they are. The culture on the spaceship is unfamiliar and everyone Amy meets is either an emotionless drone or lives in the mental ward. But there is little time for her to grieve the loss of her former life, because someone is thawing other colonists and leaving them to die.

In order to find the murderer, Amy must join forces with Elder, the teenage future leader of the ship. But all of the inhabitants on board have been told lies, and there are secrets that even Elder doesn't know.

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DELIRIUM:

FIRST LINE: It had been sixty-four years since the president and the consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure.

Oliver’s follow-up to her smash debut, Before I Fall (2010), is another deft blend of realism and fantasy.

The hook is irresistible: it’s the near future, a time when love has long since been identified as a disease called amor deliria nervosa, and 17-year-old Lena is 95 days away from the operation that everyone gets to cure themselves. Can you feel the swoon coming?

Enter Alex, a rakish daredevil who, as it turns out, is one of the Invalids—a tribe of uncured who live on the lam in the surrounding wilderness. With the clock ticking down to her surgery, Lena is drawn into Alex’s world, one of passion and freedom, while her emotionally castrated family members hope to turn her into yet another complacent zombie.

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SILVER PHOENIX:

FIRST LINE: The book lay heavy in Ai Ling's lap, so massive it covered her thighs.

First-time novelist Pon has a screenwriter’s talent for producing a sweeping saga, and in this, the first of two books set in ancient China, 17-year-old Ai Ling faces demons, monsters, and gods as she tries to fulfill her destiny.

Frightened after a local man tries to blackmail her into marriage, Ai Ling resolves to journey to the emperor’s palace, where her missing father was last seen. Along the way, she meets the handsome Chen Yong, who is of mixed parentage and on a quest to find answers to questions about his family that have haunted him his whole life.

Ai Ling is a clever and determined heroine, Chen’s younger brother is a witty teen whose girl-crazy ways transcend the centuries, and even the monsters have dimension.

(Sources: Amazon, School Library Journal, Kirkus)

CURRENTLY READING: LIKE MADARIN and DEMONGLASS. How about you?

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HAPPY MONDAY!