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Combining elements of fantasy and romance, Cashore skillfully portrays the confusion, discovery, and angst that smart, strong-willed girls experience as they creep toward adulthood. Katsa also comes to know the real power of her Grace and the nature of Graces in general: they are not always what they appear to be (from the Amazon.com review). Check out THIS excellent video preview of the book.

Does District Twelve's 16-year-old contender stand a chance?

This is an honest look at a teen's journey to independence, self discovery and spiritual awakening, all the while forming a more open and loving relationship with her mother.
 

A year ago, Cal Thompson was a college freshman more interested in meeting girls and partying than in attending biology class. Now, after a fateful encounter with a mysterious woman named Morgan, biology has become, literally, Cal’s life.
  Cal was infected by a parasite that has a truly horrifying effect on its host. Cal himself is a carrier, unchanged by the parasite, but he’s infected the girlfriends he’s had since Morgan. All three have turned into the ravening ghouls Cal calls Peeps. The rest of us know them as vampires. It’s Cal’s job to hunt them down before they can create more of their kind.
  "an utterly original take on an archetype of horror" (from the publisher).
 

To be irrevocably in love with a vampire is both fantasy and nightmare woven into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Just when the frayed strands of Bella's life-first discovered in Twilight, then scattered and torn in New Moon and Eclipse-seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed... forever?

The astonishing, breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions. (from the publisher)
 

Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, lives a quiet life working at her stepfather's bakery. One night, she goes out to the lake for some peace and quiet, but is set upon by vampires, who take her to an old mansion, chaining her to the wall with another vampire, who is also chained. But that vampire, Constantine, doesn't try to eat her, instead, imploring her to tell him stories to keep them both sane. Sunshine transforms her pocketknife into a key and unchains herself--and Constantine. Surprised, he flees with her when she offers to protect him from the sun with magic. They escape back to town, but Constantine knows his enemies won't be far behind, which means that he and Sunshine will have to face them together. (Summary adapted from Booklist review.)
 

Is the voice of Titus Oates (former explorer of the South Pole) real or imagined? Symone has been obsessed with his doomed Antarctic expedition for years. Little did she know that she would find herself alone with her crazed uncle on their own wild expedition to the Antarctic. She finds herself in a nightmarish struggle for survival as her uncle appears willing to go to any means to pursue an unarticulated quest.  This book was named the 2008 Printz Award winner.  The Michael L. Printz Award is given to a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.
 

This landmark fantasy invites the reader into a dark and disturbing tale.  Lyra, a carefree orphan finds her existence changed forever when she and her daemon, Pantalaimon, prevent an assassination attempt against her uncle and then overhears a discussion about a mysterious substance.  Escape with Lyra on her journey to change the world and Pullman’s cast of captivating characters.

 

As special as The Kite Runner was, A Thousand Splendid Suns is more so, bringing Hosseini's compassionate storytelling and his sense of personal and national tragedy to a tale of two women that is weighted equally with despair and grave hope.  The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed. His tale is a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters.

In the land of Ingary, such things as spells, invisible cloaks, and seven-league boots were everyday things. The Witch of the Waste was another matter.  After fifty years of quiet, it was rumored that the Witch was about to terrorize the country again. So when a moving black castle, blowing dark smoke from its four thin turrets, appeared on the horizon, everyone thought it was the Witch. The castle, however, belonged to Wizard Howl, who, it was said, liked to suck the souls of young girls.  In this giant jigsaw puzzle of a fantasy, people and things are never quite what they seem. Destinies are intertwined, identities exchanged, lovers confused. The Witch has placed a spell on Howl. Does the clue to breaking it lie in a famous poem? And what will happen to Sophie Hatter when she enters Howl's castle?  Diana Wynne Jones's entrancing fantasy is filled with surprises at every turn, but when the final stormy duel between the Witch and the Wizard is finished, all the pieces fall magically into place.

Billy, recently deceased, keeps an eye on his best friend, fourteen-year-old Eddie, who has added to his home and school problems by becoming mute, and helps him stand up to a conservative minister and English teacher who is orchestrating a censorship challenge.  The author, Chris Crutcher, speaks at West High on October 11.
 

In 1973 in a small North Carolina town, a young Black veteran, Henry Marrow, was murdered. In the frenzied aftermath, young African-Americans took to the streets.  The author's father, the pastor of an all-white church in the town, urged townspeople to confront its bloody racial history.  However, the family was forced to leave.  Thirty years later,  Tyson returns to Oxford, trying to make sense of what happened and to reflect on how those events changed his life.  As he weaves together childhood memories with the realities of the present, he sheds new light on America's struggle for racial justice.  The author, Timothy Tyson, speaks at the UI on October 26. 
 

This epic tale follows a middle class family affected by the Russian Revolution. Doctor Yuri Zhivago finds himself separated from his family and his love, and vulnerable to the harsh Bolsheviks. This novel was first published in Italy in 1957, and not allowed publication in the Soviet Union until 1987. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but forced by the Russian authorities to decline it.
 

A memoir of a very unconventional upbringing.  Jeannette Wells and her siblings were raised by a self-indulgent irresponsible mother, and a troubled father who dreamed, but could never make those dreams come true.  She describes the poverty and hunger, a nomadic life, and the taunts and bullying she survived.
 

On the night of July 16-17, 1918 Bolshevik revolutionaries murdered the Russian royal family. There is no one left to bear witness to what happened at the execution. Or is there? Alexander takes a very real, but forgotten and overlooked, potential witness, a young kitchen boy, and creates an amazing fictional account of what may have transpired.
 

This novel is the 2006 Johnson County Reads book.  A liberal "yuppie" couple in southern California find themselves challenged by immigrants who set up camp in their neighborhood.  Illegal immigration, social consciousness, environmental awareness, crime, and unemployment swirl about in this tale that raises the curtain on the dark side of the American dream.
 

Economists are not concerned with finance alone.  In this interesting non-fiction work, the authors examine everyday aspects of economics and patterns of behavior that are rooted in the realm of economics.

 

Willie Loman is convinced that being a salesman, following the American way as a man of business, is the road to riches and respect.  Unfortunately, success has eluded him, and at age 63, he reflects on where his life took a wrong turn, rendering him a failure.

Larson tells the parallel stories of Daniel Burnham, the main architect of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and serial killer Henry H. Holmes, discussing the challenges Burnham faced in creating the hugely successful White City, and looking at how Holmes used the opportunities afforded by the fair to lure victims to their deaths.
 

Maquire has taken our childhood memories of The Wizard of Oz and shoved them back inside the Crystal Ball. Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West has gotten a bum rap. She is a Munchkinlander, spending a tumultuous childhood with an alcoholic mother and a minister father. In college she is rejected by her roommate Glenda, a silly girl interested only in clothes, money and popularity. The insecure Elphaba learns that the Wizard of Oz is politically corrupt and takes radical steps in a quest to unseat him. The book has both idealism and cynicism in its discussion of social, religious, educational, and political issues present in Oz, and, more pointedly, present in our day and time.
 

Ishmael Chambers is covering the 1954 trial of a Japanese-American fisherman accused of murdering a fellow fisherman. The story unfolds on an island in the straits north of Puget Sound in a small fishing community. The residents are scarred by World War II and retain the deep and unresolved prejudices toward the island’s Japanese Americans, who were interned during the war. The scars are far reaching, and Guterson shares the impacting consequences in rich characters and a captivating story, a combination of love story, murder mystery, and painful history lesson.
 

Osuka shares the tragic story of one Japanese American internment in a Utah enemy alien camp during World War II. A young boy and girl are forced to leave their Berkeley home in 1942 to live in a dusty, barren desert camp with their mother. But even after the war, when they are putting their stripped, vandalized house back together, the family can never regain its pre-war happiness. Broken by circumstance and prejudice, they will continue to pay, in large and small ways, for the shape of their eyes.
 

This novel presents an untraditional love story of time traveler Henry DeTamble and artist Clare Abshire whose life takes a natural sequential course.  Henry and Clare's passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love.
 

These two short stories deal with the issues of homosexuality and tolerance--and have been at the center or a recent controversy at a middle school in a nearby community.

Considered one of the great war novels of all time, this is the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain. It is a story of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal.

In this classic from the 1960s, Vonnegut offers a satirical commentary on modern man and society. Humorous, quirky characters fill the pages of the apocalyptic tale. 
 

Ella Minnow Pea takes center stage on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina.  Ella finds herself in a position of trying to save family, friends, and fellow citizens as they succumb to the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s council.  Council members have instituted a ban of using certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from the immortal pangram.  As the letters progressively drop from the statue, so also they disappear from the novel.  A hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression against a backdrop of linguistic panoply. 
 

In order to develop a secure defense against any future hostile attacks, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his parents and siblings (who were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut) and finds himself drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.  Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the invaders.  Can he truly be the saving card for future generations?
 

This novel follows the story of friends, Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, Afghanistan and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant.  An unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither could have predicted. Their story spans over  40 years in Afghanistan's tragic history, from the last days of Kabul's monarchy--into the atrocities of the Taliban.
 

Owen is definitely a unique--a dwarfish, eccentric young boy who accidentally kills his best friend's mother (with a baseball).  He believes he is an instrument of God and will be a martyr.  Irving deals with themes of religion and faith, spirituality and fate.

This thriller introduces Harvard professor Robert Langdon who is called in to assist when a famous physicist is murdered, and it is feared that the Illuminati, a secret society, is again operating after years of silence. (Brown also wrote The Da Vinci Code which involves Langdon as well.)

A naive, young woman marries a dashing, wealthy man who whisks her off to his Cornwall estate, Manderley, where she is haunted by Rebecca--the ghost of his dead first wife.  This classic British novel of mystery and suspense was written in 1938.

McCracken's novel introduces us to a vaudeville comedy duo whose partnership spans over 30 years.  But cracks develop in their relationship, and their partnership unravels. 

This award-winning contemporary novel concerns a college professor in South Africa whose life has become purposeless, and who goes to live with his adult daughter.  A tragic incident causes them to face their ragged relationship.  Coetzee was the 2003 literature Nobel Prize winner.

Written in 1852, this classic novel depicts the progress from slavery to fugitive to freedom.  Stowe addresses the issues of slavery, race, women, and religion.

Set in the south during the Civil Rights movement, this novel involves a young teen, her black surrogate mother, their journey, and learning about life and relationships from a trio of black bee-keeping sisters.

During a lavish party, hosted by a South American country trying to entice a Japanese electronic firm to build a factory in their country, a group of terrorists break into the mansion, intending to take the country’s president hostage.  But he’s not there!  They release all of the women, except a famous American opera singer, and some of the men, leaving 40 or so hostages, and make various demands.  Despite intervention from a Swiss negotiator, the terrorists and their hostages remain in the mansion for months.  During this period, interesting relationships are forged—among and between the captives and captors.
 

Israeli novelist David Grossman spent time on the West Bank talking to Palestinians and Jews about how their lives have been affected by a constant state of hostility and frustration.  He doesn’t waste much ink on the complex political forces at work;  instead, he gives the issues a human face.

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person." At an engagement bash for one of her multiple stepdaughters, Rebecca  finds herself questioning everything about her life: "How on earth did I get like this? How? How did I ever become this person who's not really me?"

Set in Nebraska in the late 1800s, this classic novel tells the story of a strong, spirited immigrant girl.  Narrated by Jim Burden, who was a childhood friend of Antonia, the story is quietly, yet magnificently vivid.

The world of the geisha is revealed through this biographical novel that chronicles the life of Sayuri--from being sold as a child slave through her rigorous training and fascinating life as a geisha.

Cunningham pay homage to author Virginia Woolf, his literary idol, in this novel that intertwines the story of Woolf and her work Mrs. Dalloway, with a woman in 1949 and a present-day woman.

This modern (1962) American drama takes place one evening in a living room, and involves two couples.  Their mean-spirited games, insults, humiliations, and eventual painful confrontations reveal secrets and sorrows in their lives.
 

This contemporary non-fiction work focuses on race relations in and between two Michigan towns.

Elizabeth Bennet, our heroine, is alternately disgusted and enchanted by the enigmatic Mr. Darcy.  But does she know his true character--or has her pride gotten in the way of her chance for true romance?  This classic novel provides an entertaining glimpse of class-conscious society in 18th century England.

With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.

This is a compelling novel told by 16-year-old Nick, who is facing accusations by his girl friend that he has twice assaulted her.  The story is about his rehabilitation, and the flashbacks through which the story is told is in the form of a journal he has to write.

This book, also about dating violence, is told by 14-year-old Leslie who describes the brutal relationship in which she finds herself.

Written by a University of Iowa professor, this non-fiction book describes the cultural conflicts and challenges in Postville, Iowa, after a group of Hasidic Jews open a kosher slaughterhouse in this small town. 

This memoir recounts in stark detail the horrors that Ung and her family suffered under the Pol Pot Regime of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia which killed an estimated 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.

The time is 1975; the place is India, in an unnamed city by the sea. The corrupt and brutal government has just declared a State of Emergency, and the country is on the edge of chaos. In these precarious circumstances, four strangers are forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

Brat Farrar has been carefully coached to assume the identity of Patrick Ashby, heir to the Ashby fortune who disappeared when he was 13. Just when it seems that Brat will pull off the deception, he discovers the truth about Patrick's disappearance, a dark secret that threatens to tear apart the family and jeopardize Brat's carefully laid plans. Tey's classic is a tale of unrelenting suspense and tension.

Lost in the chill deeps of space between the galaxies, it sails on forever, a flat, circular world carried on the back of a giant turtle----a land where the unexpected can be expected. Where the strangest things happen to the nicest people.  "Unadulterated fun...witty, frequently hilarious...Pratchett parodies everything in sight."  ~ San Francisco Chronicle

A unicorn, a haphazard wizard, and a spunky scullery woman journey to the dreaded kingdom of Haggaard, an evil ruler who, with the help of a bull-shaped demon, imprisons all the unicorns of the world.  "This is a book no fantasy reader should miss; Beagle argues brilliantly the need for magic in our lives and the folly of forgetting to dream." ~ Nona Vero

Barbara Moss chronicles her own coming of age in an abusive and dirt-poor environment of the South in the 1960’s.  As if poverty and her father's mistreatment weren't enough of a burden, Moss also had to contend with a face disfigured by malnutrition.

The Last Summer of Reason was written by the Algerian author Tahar Djaout, whose May 1993 death was linked to an Islamic fundamentalist group.  Djaout's 145-page novel was found after his death and is the story of a small bookstore owner, Boualem Yekker, who struggles under a ruling fanatical religious state. 

This Celtic legend reigns among the warring Brit and Irish factions. A mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love...  Sorcha must leave the only safe place she has ever known and embark on a terrifying journey to reclaim the lives of her brothers.

Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer is  considered one of the great enigmas of 17^th century art.  With little known about either his artwork or his life, author Tracy Chevalier has created a fictionalized portrayal of his life and the subject of his painting “Girl With a Pearl Earring.”