A
Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews 
``Half of our family, the better-looking half, is missing,''
Nomi tells us at the beginning of A Complicated Kindness.
Left alone with her sad, peculiar father, her days are
spent piecing together why her mother and sister have
disappeared and contemplating her inevitable career at
Happy Family Farms, a chicken slaughterhouse on the outskirts
of East Village-not the East Village in New York City
where Nomi would prefer to live, but a dull, oppressive
town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of
Manitoba, Canada. This moving, darkly funny novel is the
world according to Nomi Nickel, a bewildered and wry sixteen-year-old
trapped in a town governed by fundamentalist religion.
In Nomi's droll, refreshing voice, we're told the story
of her eccentric, touching family as it falls apart, each
member on a collision course with the only community they
have ever known
Swimming
in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai
The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it is the season of
monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the
life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he
is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly
Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life "before,"
when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith's holiday
plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school's
production of "Othello and he is learning to type
at Uncle Lucky's tropical fish business. Then, like an
unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada and
Amrith's ordered life is storm-tossed. He finds himself
falling in love with the Canadian boy. "Othello,
with its powerful theme of disastrous jealousy, is the
backdrop to the drama in which Amrith finds himself immersed.
How
I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
""Every war has turning points and every person
too."" Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan
to England to visit her aunt and cousins she's never met:
three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her
aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The
next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied
by an unnamed enemy. As power fails, and systems fail,
the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it's
a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules,
a place where Daisy's uncanny bond with her cousins grows
into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is
everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other
into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental
way.
Looking
for Alaska by John Green
In a stunning debut novel, Miles "Pudge" Halter
befriends some fellow boarding school students whose lives
are everything but boring. Pudge falls in love with Alaska,
the razor-sharp and self-destructive nucleus. But when
tragedy strikes, Pudge discovers the value of loving unconditionally.
The
Blue Girl by Charles De Lint
New at her high school, Imogene enlists the help of her
introverted friend Maxine and the ghost of a boy who haunts
the school after receiving warnings through her dreams
that soul-eaters are threatening her life.
A
Day of Tears by Julius Lester
Told through flashbacks, foreshadowing, and shifting first-person
points of view, this novel about slavery in America follows
young Emma, who along with readers will discover that
every decision has its consequences, and final judgment
is passed down not by man, but by his maker.
Twilight
by Stephenie Meyer
Isabella Swan's move to Forks, a perpetually rainy town
in Washington, could have been the most boring move she
ever made. When she meets the mysterious, alluring Edward
Cullen--a vampire--her life takes a thrilling and terrifying
romantic turn.
