Booklists: suggested reading

 

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General Fiction
Adult Books for Teens Booklist

 

General Fiction for ages 12+
Not all books on this list are suitable for all readers, parental guidance should be used.

 

 

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

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Fiction

• The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories
  Author: Almond, Steve
  Publisher: Algonquin $ 22.95 ISBN: 1565124227 Date: 2005
  LJ
  The bestselling writer who took readers on a cross-country journey that revealed his long love affair with chocolate in Candyfreak has produced a funny, bracing, sometimes shocking, always imaginative collection of stories and characters for this new compilation.
  Updated 3.10.05
• The Wonder Spot
  Author: Bank, Melissa
  Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670034118 Date: 2005
  PW
  Through the eyes of a compelling outsider, this title captures the life cycle of a family and watches their lives--and the outsider's--unfold over the ensuing two decades.
  Updated 3.14.05
• Dear Zoe
  Author: Beard, Philiip
  Publisher: Viking $ 21.95 ISBN: 0670034010 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  Beard's stunning debut is an epistolary novel written from 15-year-old Tess DeNunzio to her little sister Zoe. After Zoe's accidental death on September 11, 2001--a day so many others died--Tess's family is numbed by their personal tragedy. Not since The Lovely Bones has there been a study of grief, adolescence, and healing that rings as true as Dear Zoe.
  Suggested Reading: 9/11 Stars | Debuts
  Updated 2.15.05
• Sisters Mortland
  Author: Beauman, Sally
  Publisher: Warner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0446578193 Date: 2006
  Kirkus
  This powerful and haunting story about three sisters and a tragedy that becomes the center of their lives is from the acclaimed "New York Times" bestselling author of Destiny.
  Updated 11.9.05
• It's Superman!
  Author: De Haven, Tom
  Publisher: Chronicle $ 24.95 ISBN: 0811844358 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  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. With worldly Lois Lane and political boss Lex Luthor, the Man of Steel battles against criminal masterminds, mad scientists, and supervillains inspired by fascist Germany. A fun and fast-paced novel of thrilling invention, heroic escapades, and supersized coming-of-age angst. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Cartoon & Comics Stars
  Updated 9.26.05
• An Egg on Three Sticks
  Author: Fischer, Jackie
  Publisher: Griffin $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0312317751 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Finally Abby is thirteen. A real teenager who only wants to pierce her ears, have a boyfriend, and run her own life. But when her mother suffers a nervous breakdown, Abby faces a life far different from what she hoped for. Set in the Bay Area in the '70s, An Egg on Three Sticks is Jackie Moyer Fischer's emotional, funny, and extraordinarily heartfelt novel about Abby's struggle to hold her family together, find love from a mother who has little to give, and simply try to be thirteen. With a voice completely fresh and honest, Abby takes us on a journey that is often hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, and overwhelmingly hopeful. But a journey no thirteen-year-old should have to take. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 5.7.04
• Pigtopia
  Author: Fitzgerald, Kitty
  Publisher: Miramax $ 22.95 ISBN: 1401352510 Date: 2005
  LJ
  Holly, a lonely adolescent, and Jack, an older man isolated from society due to physical deformities, develop an unlikely friendship built around Jack's obsession with the pigs he rears in secret. Society and fate threaten their secret world.
  Updated 10.24.05
• The Water Dancers
  Author: Gamble, Terry
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060542667 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  Told in a voice as clear and cool as lake water, The Water Dancers is a luminescent tale of love, loss, and redemption, and heralds the arrival of a remarkable new talent.
  Suggested Reading: Summertime Stars
  Updated 5.14.03
• Something Blue
  Author: Giffin, Emily
  Publisher: St Martins $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312323859 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  From the "New York Times" bestselling author of Something Borrowed comes a novel that shows how someone with a "perfect life" can lose it all--and then find everything.
  Suggested Reading: Chick Lit
  Updated 5.20.05
• The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time
  Author: Haddon, Mark
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385509456 Date: 2003
  PWKirkus
  Narrated by a 15-year-old autistic savant obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, this dazzling novel weaves together an old-fashioned mystery, a contemporary coming-of-age story, and a fascinating excursion into a mind incapable of processing emotions.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts | Reading Group Stars
  Updated 4.8.03
• House of Thieves
  Author: Hemmings, Kaui Hart
  Publisher: Penguin $ 22.95 ISBN: 1594200483 Date: 2005
  KirkusLJ
  These unique stories of upper-class Hawaiian families reveal with unsentimental insight and straightforward prose the complex forces that bind family members together in love and hate.
  Updated 6.29.05
• Where the River Runs
  Author: Henry, Patti Callahan
  Publisher: NAL $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0451215052 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  From the author of Losing the Moon comes an engaging new novel following the emotional path of a woman who goes back home to face the past--only to discover herself.
  Updated 5.9.05
• A Long Way Down
  Author: Hornby, Nick
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573223026 Date: 2005
  KirkusBooklist
  In four distinct and riveting first-person voices, Hornby tells a story of four individuals confronting the limits of choice, circumstance, and their own morality. This is a tale of connections made and missed, punishing regrets, and the grace of second chances.
  Updated 3.25.05
• Drive Like Hell
  Author: Hudgens, Dallas
  Publisher: Scribner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0743251638 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  Set in the 1979 outside Atlanta, this "thoroughly enjoyable" ("Publishers Weekly") debut tells the story of 16-year-old Luke Fulmer, who grows up in a difficult family with a stockcar-racing, absentee father, an alcoholic mother, and a delinquent brother.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts | Driven
  Updated 11.25.04
• As Hot As It Was You Ought To Thank Me
  Author: Kincaid, Nanci
  Publisher: Back Bay $ 12.95 ISBN: 0316009148 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  From a place where you don't have to run away to find yourself, this novel's young heroine, Berry, joins the ranks of other memorable and spirited girl narrators such as Bone in Bastard Out of Carolina, Kaye Gibbon's Ellen Foster, Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees, Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird.
  Suggested Reading: Summertime Stars
  Updated 11.2.04
• Crossing California
  Author: Langer, Adam
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573222747 Date: 2004
  KirkusPWBooklist
  Poignant, ambitious, and tremendously fun, this fiction discovery of the season is a novel about two generations of family and friendship in Chicago from November 1979 through January 1981.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 6.1.04
• The Washington Story: A Novel in Five Spheres
  Author: Langer, Adam
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573223247 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  The irresistible follow-up to Langer's debut hit, Crossing California is described as "the most vivid novel about Chicago since Saul Bellow's Herzog and the most ambitious debut set in Chicago since Philip Roth's Letting Go" ("Chicago Tribune").
  Updated 6.9.05
• The Highest Tide
  Author: Lynch, Jim
  Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 1582346054 Date: 2005
  PW
  While the sea continues to offer him discoveries from its mysterious depths, such as a giant squid, a teenaged boy struggles to deal with the difficulties that come with the equally mysterious process of growing up.
  Updated 7.18.05
• The Outside World
  Author: Mirvis, Tova
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 1400041619 Date: 2004
  KirkusBooklist
  From the author of the bestselling The Ladies Auxiliary comes a hilarious comedy of manners about two Orthodox Jewish families brought together by the marriage of their children.
  Updated 4.27.04
• Center of Everything
  Author: Moriarty, Laura
  Publisher: Hyperion $ 22.95 ISBN: 1401300316 Date: 2003
  LJ
  In Moriarty's extraordinary first novel, a young girl tries to make sense of an unruly world spinning around her. Growing up with a single mother who is chronically out of work and dating a married man, ten-year old Evelyn Bucknow learns early how to fend for herself.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 5.19.03
• A Taxonomy of Barnacles
  Author: Niederhoffer, Galt
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312334834 Date: 2006
  Booklist
  "Rich in poignant detail, Niederhoffer paints a fascinating portrait of six sisters engaged in the merciless age-old fist-fight, struggling to love and best each other in turn."--Nicola Kraus, co-author of The Nanny Diaries.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 11.14.05
• Halfway House
  Author: Noel, Katherine
  Publisher: Atlantic $ 23 ISBN: 0871139340 Date: 2006
  LJ
  Set in a small town in New Hampshire, this novel is the story of a girl's psychotic break and her family's subsequent turmoil. With grace and precision rarely seen in a first novel, Noel guides readers through a world where love is imperfect, and where longing for an imagined ideal can both destroy one family's happiness and offer redemption.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 12.27.05
• My Sister's Keeper
  Author: Picoult, Jodi
  Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 0743454529 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Written with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity, this novel is about a teen who was conceived as a bone marrow match for her sister Kate, and what happens when she begins to question who she really is.
  Updated 1.10.04
• The Professor's Daughter
  Author: Raboteau, Emily
  Publisher: Holt $ 24 ISBN: 0805075062 Date: 2005
  LJ
  A daughter's future and her father's past converge in this explosive first novel exploring identity, assimilation, and the legacy of race, and marking the arrival of an astonishingly original voice that surges with energy and purpose.
  Updated 2.16.05
• Circle of Five
  Author: Riccio, Dolores Stewart
  Publisher: Kensington $ 14 (paper) ISBN: 0758203004 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  Now that her children are grown, her lout of an ex-husband is gone, and her herbal remedy business has taken off, Cass Shipton is free to enjoy the simple comforts of her grown-up life. But Cass's idyllic, small-town life changes after she bumps carts at the local supermarket with a stranger in a green cap.
  Suggested Reading: Magic & Magicians
  Updated 3.13.03
• Like the Red Panda
  Author: Seigel, Andrea
  Publisher: Harcourt $ 13 (paperback) ISBN: 0156030241 Date: 2004
  LJ
  Beneath Stella's mordantly funny take on her life is the decisiveness with which she disengages from it, planting clues and providing explanations for those who will try to understand the act she is about to commit. With perfect pitch, remarkable wit, and a spare, vivid prose, Stella turns her farewell to suburbia into a wry philosophical inquiry.
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 2.2.04
• The Ruins of California
  Author: Sherrill, Martha
  Publisher: Penguin $ 24.95 ISBN: 1594200807 Date: 2006
  KirkusBooklist
  As Inez progresses through high school, readers are witness to the preoccupations of Californians of the 1970s: drugs, sex, art, surfing, love beads, Nixon, motorcycles, and the goal of not making a big deal out of anything.
  Updated 11.14.05
• Pretty Birds
  Author: Simon, Scott
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400063108 Date: 2005
  KirkusPW
  This mortal chess game of guile and manipulation plays out against the backdrop of beautiful, war-torn Sarajevo as two high school friends--one Muslim, one Christian--struggle to survive the Serbs' ethnic cleansing.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts | Child Soldiers | Former Yugoslavia
  Updated 4.19.05
• The Miracles of Santo Fico
  Author: Smith, D.L.
  Publisher: Warner $ 22.95 ISBN: 0446531030 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  Smith chronicles a series of romantic and religious shenanigans in his debut novel set in the tiny Italian village of Santo Fico, where residents capitalize on the local tourist trade by diverting buses to a religious fresco depicting the miracles of St. Thomas.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 11.12.02
• The Myth of You and Me: A Novel of Friendship
  Author: Stewart, Leah
  Publisher: Crown $ 21.95 ISBN: 1400098068 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  After a ten-year absence from each other's lives, childhood friends reconnect with their once inseparable other halves. The tale will appeal to anyone who has ever loved and lost a best friend.
  Updated 7.11.05
• Maybe a Miracle
  Author: Strause, Brian
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 21.95 ISBN: 1400064643 Date: 2005
  LJ
  Comic and heartbreaking, intimate and universal, familiar and extraordinary, Strause's captivating debut novel about a family in crisis takes readers on a miraculous emotional journey into America's heartland.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 8.24.05
• Everything Changes
  Author: Tropper, Jonathan
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 20 ISBN: 0385338074 Date: 2005
  BooklistLJ
  Tropper's novel The Book of Joe dazzled critics and readers alike with its heartfelt blend of humor and pathos. In Everything Changes, the author delivers a touching, wickedly funny new tale about love, loss, and the perils of a well-planned life.
  Updated 4.7.05
• The Song Reader
  Author: Tucker, Lisa
  Publisher: Pocket/Downtown $ 12 (paper) ISBN: 0743464451 Date: 2003
  PW
  When two sisters are left alone after the death of their mother and the disappearance of their father, Mary Beth becomes the hero of both her younger sister and their entire town. She is a "song reader." She doesn't read palms or tarot cards; she reads people's secrets and desires from the songs they can't get out of their minds.
  Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction | Debuts | Reading Group Stars
  Updated 3.17.03