Books, Movies, & More
All Time Faves: Adult Fiction for Teens
Printer friendly version
 |
Midnight at the Dragon Cafe Winner - 2006 ALA Notable Fiction Selection |
 |
Durable Goods On the hot Texas army base she calls home, Katie spends the lazy days of her summer waiting: waiting to grow up; waiting for Dickie Mack to fall in love with her; waiting for her breasts to blossom; waiting for the beatings to stop. Since their mother died, Katie and her older sister, Diane, have struggled to understand their increasingly distant, often violent father. While Diane escapes into the arms of her boyfriend, Katie hides in her room or escapes to her best friend's house--until Katie's admiration for her strong-willed sister leads her on an adventure that transforms her life. ...More |
 |
The Wolf Hunt Based on one of the Lais of Marie de France, "The Wolf Hunt" is a breathtaking adventure of romance and betrayal in the time of the Crusades that showcases Bradshaw's respectability as both a historian and as a novelist. ...More |
 |
Moloka'i Young Rachel Kalama, growing up in Honolulu in the 1890s, is part of a big, loving Hawaiian family but, at the age of seven, Rachel's dreams are shattered by the discovery that she has leprosy. ...More |
 
|
You Remind Me of Me You Remind Me of Me begins with a series of separate incidents: In 1977, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother's pet Doberman; in 1997 another little boy disappears from his grandmother's backyard on a sunny summer morning; in 1966, a pregnant teenager admits herself to a maternity home, with the intention of giving her child up for adoption; in 1991, a young man drifts toward a career as a drug dealer, even as he hopes for something better. With penetrating insight ...More |
 |
Bruiser In an accomplished first novel, Choro captures all the beauty, violence, and wonder of life as perceived by a ten-year-old boy in search of relief from the chaos of a shattered home. ...More |
 |
The House on Mango Street In celebration of the tenth anniversary of its initial publication, and with a new introduction by the author, here is Sandra Cisnero's greatly admired and best-selling novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children and their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics even as it depicts a new American landscape. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. ...More |
 |
The Book of Lost Things Alex Award Winner - 2008 |
|
It's Superman! The world's most popular and enduring super hero makes a smashing literary debut. This novel takes an entirely fresh approach to the emergence of his super-powers and his newspaper career, following him from Kansas to New York City. ...More |
 |
The Whistling Season Doig, Ivan 2006/06 - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) 9780151012374 Find It Winner - 2007 ALA Notable Fiction Selection |
 |
The Heroines Narrated by a spirited adolescent, this appealing debut novel features appearances by heroines from literature--from Emma Bovary to Scarlett OHara and Franny Glass--who take refuge at a Midwestern bed and breakfast when they need a break from their plots. ...More |
 |
Carter Beats the Devil Filled with historical references that evoke the excesses and enthusiasm of postwar, pre-Depression America, "Carter Beats the Devil" is the complex and illuminating story of one man's journey through a magical, and sometimes dangerous world. ...More |
|
Bee Season Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects never to fit into her gifted family: her autodidact father, Saul, absorbed in his study of Jewish mysticism; her brother, Aaron, the vessel of his father's spiritual ambitions; and her brilliant but distant lawyer-mom, Miriam. But when Eliza sweeps her school and district spelling bees in quick succession, Saul takes it as a sign that she is destined for greatness. In this altered reality, Saul inducts her into his hallowed study and lavishes upon her the attention previously reserved for Aaron, who in his displacement embarks upon a lone quest for spiritual fulfillment. When Miriam's secret life triggers a familial explosion, it is Eliza who must order the chaos. ...More |
 |
Water for Elephants Alex Award Winner - 2008 |
|
Color of the Sea Growing up in a time between wars, Sam Hamada finds that the culture of his native Japan is never far from his heart. Sam is rapidly learning the code of the samurai in the late 1930s on the lush Hawaiian Islands, where he is slowly coming into his own as a son and a man. But after Sam strikes out for California, where he meets Keiko, the beautiful young woman destined to be the love of his life, he faces crushing disappointment---Keiko's parents take her back to Japan, forcing Keiko to endure their attempts to arrange her marriage. It is a trial complicated by how the Japanese perceive her---as too Americanized to be a proper Japanese wife ...More |
 |
The God of Animals Alex Award Winner - 2008 |
 |
The Spellman Files Alex Award Winner - 2008 |
|
Black Swan Green Winner - 2007 ALA Notable Fiction Selection |
|
When the Emperor Was Divine Julie Otsuka's commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination--both physical and emotional--of a generation of Japanese Americans. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view--the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on the long train ride to the camp; the son in the desert encampment; the family's return to their home; and the bitter release of the father after more than four years in captivity--she has created a small tour de force, a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion. Spare, intimate, arrestingly understated, When the Emperor Was Divine is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for ...More |
 |
The Name of the Wind (the Kingkiller Chronicle: Day One) 2008 Alex Award |
|
The Joy Luck Club In 1949, four Chinese women--drawn together by the shadow of their past--begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club--and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades. A celebrated novel in the tradition of Alice Adams and Margaret Atwood from the bestselling author of The Kitchen God's Wife. ...More |