The Luxe by Anna Godbersen

Have you ever seen My Super Sweet Sixteen?  Those girls get everything they've ever wanted.  Expensive cars, expensive clothes, expensive celebrites to entertain them, expensive everything.  And ponies too.  The Luxe is My Super Sweet Sixteen of the 1890s.  Elizabeth Holland rules Manhattan's social scene, but when Elizabeth dies suddenly, everyone starts to wonder whether life at the top was too much for her.  Maybe someone wanted to see Manhattan's most celebrated daughter disappear.  Scandal, luxury, deception and intrigue are front in center in this title.  

Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

If you lived through First Night, you might collect trading cards.  No, not baseball or football cards.  Cards like this.  Cards with bounty hungers and famous zoms.

Maybe I should back up a bit.  First Night was when the dead rose up.  Zombies took over.  Fast zombies.  That was fourteen years ago.  Now humans have kept safe by living in small settlements with massive fences.  Benny Imura just turned fifteen, which means he has to get a job.  He could be an erosion artist, a spotter, a carpet coat seller, or a fence tester.  Too bad he isn't good at any of those things.  The only thing he can do is join the family business. Zombie hunting.

Zombie Baseball Beatdown by Paolo Bacigalupi

Do you know where your food comes from?  That juicy hamburger loaded with ketchup and mustard?  Hopefully it doesn’t come from the meat packing plant in Delbe, Iowa.  You know, the one turning cows into zombies?  The one killing those cows and turning them into hamburger and shipping it out across the entire country and anyone who eats it turns into a rabid flesh-eating zombie?  Luckily Rabi, Joe and Miguel have lots of batting practice under their belts and are ready to kick some zombie butt!

Written in Bones edited by Paul Bahn

Anybody here watch Bones? The identification of a human being from skeletal remains seems like a miracle, but it isn’t. It’s science. Written in Bones shows how scientists reveal pictures of the lives, cultures, and beliefs of ancient societies just from studying their bones.

Winger by Andrew Smith

Ryan Dean West does not have it all. He doesn’t have a single room at boarding school. He doesn’t have a girlfriend. And he does not have the three years that would make him the same age as his classmates. What he does have is junior status at 14, the biggest bully on the rugby team for a roommate, and a huge crush on his best friend Annie. His rugby buddies and Annie can help him through this year, right?

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Two hundred million dollars.  What would you do with that kind of money?  When Samuel W. Westing died, that was the amount of money left to the rightful heir of his estate. But who is that rightful heir?  That’s exactly what sixteen people want to know – they’ve been invited to solve a mystery.  Figure out who killed Samuel Westing and win the inheritance!

This Star Won't Go Out by Esther Earl

One of the influences for Hazel Grace Lancaster in The Fault in Our Stars was Esther.  Esther Earl was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 12.  These are her journals, stories, letters, and sketches.  They tell the true story of how a young person lives with cancer.

Swagger by Carl Deuker

Jonas is on top of his game – with the help of a charismatic new coach, he is all set to go play college ball at the school of his choice.  But when something unthinkable happens, Jonas is faced with two choices – either turn a blind eye to what he knows is going on and get everything he’s ever wanted, or confront the problem at hand and lose a chance at his dreams.

The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

Josh Bennett has no friends.  Every person he has ever loved has been taken away from him.  When your name is synonymous with death, everyone tends to give you your space.  Everyone except Nastya.  She has a tragedy and a secret too and as they start spending more time together Josh realizes that he wants to know what hers is.

The Roar by Emma Clayton

For fans of Divergent, The Hunger Games, and Ender’s Game.  How many of you had pets?  Or know someone with pets?  Imagine what you would do if one day all of the animals on Earth went insane and started attacking humans?  Your dog, your cat, your rabbit.  In The Roar, the people pack up and pack in, everyone has to move into the top third of the planet, the only place surrounded by a wall the keeps the animals out and the people in.  Mika and Ellie were part of the first generation born behind the wall.  As twins, they had a deep connection.  So when a policeman came to tell Mika that Ellie is dead, he knows that it’s a lie.  He will do everything to find his sister.  Luckily she is already doing the same.

Rats Saw God

Any Veronica Mars fans here? Rob Thomas, the creator of Veronica Mars is the author of Rats Saw God. Steve York is a former National Merritt Scholar, former holder of a 4.0 GPA, former good kid. Now he’s just a failing broken-hearted pothead. The only way he’ll graduate high school is by writing a 100 page paper about how he got from point A to point B.

Perloo the Bold

Scholarly, shy Perloo, member of the rabbit-like Montmers, is happy reading history books and sipping tea, but his quiet life is interrupted by a mysterious summons from the Montmer leader.  What follows is an incredible journey that will take him over snowy  mountains through underground tunnels and into enemy territory.

Nazi Hunters by Neal Bascomb

Adolf Eichmann was one of the engineers of the Final Solution, what Hitler called his plan to round up an exterminate all of the Jews in Europe.  He managed to slip out from under the Allies’ nose at the end of the war, but his plan and his crimes were never forgotten.  Neal Bascomb lays out the tangled path that intelligence agents followed to find Eichmann and bring him to justice.

(ALTERNATIVE: The Nazi: He commanded a network that stretched across Europe, targeting and delivering millions of people to the death camps.  He followed every order and was very good at his job, but when the war ended, he disappeared without a trace.  The Hunters: a teenage girl, her blind father, a secret agent, a lawyer, and a man who dedicated his life to tracking Nazis.  The mission: capture Eichmann and bring him to trial before the world.)

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Miles is obsessed with people’s famous last words.  He voluntarily heads to a boarding school in Alabama in search of what dying poet François Rabelais called The Great Perhaps.  What he finds instead are the Colonel and Alaska, friends who teach him that last words are only the beginning.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Christopher McCandless is dead. He died alone in a bus in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. A group of hunters found his body with this note: SOS I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is no joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me. Thank you, Chris McCandless. Into the Wild is Chris’s story: how he grew up, what drove him, and how he ended up in that bus in Alaska.

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

Ruby said I wouldn’t drown.  I didn’t.  But someone else did.  And now she’s back.  Trouble is, she doesn’t know she’s supposed to be dead.  Secrets never stay below the surface

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

An ace of diamonds with 3 addresses and 3 times written on it is mailed to Ed’s house.  No instructions, no map, no nothing.  Curiosity quickly gets the better of Ed and he visits the first address at the time given.  What he sees there spurs him into action.  Not to mention the three other aces he receives.

Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby

In 1964, Dr. Maurice Temerlin took Lucy home for the first time.  He and his wife raised her as if she was their own.  Only she wasn’t.  She wasn’t their child.  She wasn’t even the same species as the Temerlins.  Lucy was a chimpanzee.  The Temerlins were engaged in an experiment – an ape language experiment and once Lucy became older and harder to control, she was shipped off to a chimpanzee rehabilitation center in Gambia.  Joey Willis can empathize with Lucy.  Deaf since the age of six, Joey is unable to communicate.  Her mother has forbidden her from learning sign language and she isn’t very good at reading lips.  All of that changes when she meets Dr. Charles Mansell and his baby chimp Sukari.  With them, Joey secretly learns sign language.  The world seems to be opening up for her.  But as her opportunities are expanding, Sukari and Charles’ are closing up.  Joey will do almost anything to save Sukari.

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

Have you heard about Ebola?  Do you know what it is?  Richard Preston tells the true story of a “hot” virus – a virus that is extremely dangerous to humans, very infections, has a high fatality rate, and no known preventions, treatments or cures.  In 1989, a relative of the Ebola virus, the Reston virus, was discovered at a primate quarantine facility in Reston, VA, less than 15 miles from Washington, D.C.  The Hot Zone tells the story of the discovery and containment of that virus by brave doctors and scientists.

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

A hatchet, a ripped up windbreaker, and the clothes on his back.  Those are the only things Brian Robeson has to survive in the Canadian wilderness.  He is alone.  All alone.  Will he survive until he is rescued?