Mystery

Abrahams, Peter. Down the Rabbit Hole: An Echo Falls Mystery

Like her idol Sherlock Holmes, eighth grader Ingrid Levin-Hill uses her intellect to solve a murder case in her home town of Echo Falls.

Feinburg, Anna. Number 8

While hiding out from the mob in the suburbs with his mother, a singer, Jackson uses his fascination with math and numbers to make friends, but strange phone calls and even greater threats endanger not only Jackson and his mother, but his new girlfriend, as well.

Ferguson, Alane. The Christopher Killer

On the payroll as an assistant to her coroner father, seventeen-year-old Cameryn Mahoney uses her knowledge of forensic medicine to catch the killer of a friend while putting herself in terrible danger.

Giles, Gail. Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters

Fourteen-year-old Sunny is stunned when a total stranger shows up at her house posing as her older sister Jazz, who supposedly died out of town in a fire months earlier.

Hautman, Pete and Mary Logue. Snatched

Too curious for her own good, Roni, crime reporter for her high school newspaper, teams up with Brian, freshman science geek, to investigate the beating and kidnapping of a classmate.

Hiaasen, Carl. Hoot

Roy, who is new to his small Florida community, becomes involved in another boy’s attempt to save a colony of burrowing owls from a proposed construction site.

  

Klass, David. Dark Angel

When his older brother is released from prison, seventeen-year-old Jeff’s family secret is revealed, causing upheaval in his home, school and love life.

Madison, Bennett. Lulu Dark Can See Through Walls

When someone steals her purse and her identity, high-school junior and reluctant girl sleuth Lulu Dark investigates..

 

Pullman, Phillip. The Ruby in the Smoke

In nineteenth-century London, sixteen-year-old Sally, a recent orphan, becomes involved in a deadly search for a mysterious ruby.

Werlin, Nancy. Double Helix

Eighteen-year-old Eli discovers a shocking secret about his life and his family while working for a Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose specialty is genetic engineering

Adventure

 

Cole, Stephen. Thieves Like Us

A mysterious benefactor hand-picks a group of teen geniuses to follow a set of clues leading to the secrets of everlasting life, secrets which they must steal and for which they risk being killed.

Haddix, Margaret Peterson. Running Out of Time

When a diphtheria epidemic hits her 1840 village, thirteen-year-old Jessie discovers it is actually a 1996 tourist site under unseen observation by heartless scientists, and it’s up to Jessie to escape the village and save the lives of the dying children.

McKernan, Victoria. Shackleton’s Stowaway

A fictionalized account of the adventures of eighteen-year-old Perce Blackborow, who stowed away for the 1914 Shackleton Antarctic expedition and, after their ship Endurance was crushed by ice, endured many hardships, including the loss of the toes of his left foot to frostbite, during the nearly two-year return journey across sea and ice.

Miller, Kirsten. Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City

Life becomes more interesting for Ananka Fishbein when, at the age of twelve, she discovers an underground room in the park across from her New York City apartment and meets a mysterious girl called Kiki Strike who claims that she, too, wants to explore the subterranean world.

Moore, Perry. Hero

The teenage son of a disgraced superhero begins to discover his own super powers, starts working with a rag-tag bunch of misfits to save the world, and, afraid of disappointing him, struggles to find a way to tell his dad that he is gay.

Rosoff, Meg. How I Live Now

To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.

Updale, Eleanor. Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman?

In Victorian London, after his life is saved by a young physician, a thief utilizes the knowledge he gains in prison and from the scientific lectures he attends as the physician’s case study exhibit to create a new, highly successful, double life for himself.

Yancey, Rick. The Extraordinary Adventure of Alfred Kropp

Through a series of dangerous and violent misadventures, teenage loser Alfred Kropp rescues King Arthur’s legendary sword Excalibur from the forces of evil.  

Fantasy

Black, Holly. Tithe

Sixteen-year-old Kaye, who has been visited by faeries since childhood, discovers that she herself is a magical faerie creature with a special destiny.

Bray, Libba. A Great and Terrible Beauty.

After the suspicious death of her mother in 1895, sixteen-year-old Gemma returns to England, after many years in India, to attend a finishing school where she becomes aware of her magical powers and ability to see into the spirit world. 

Colfer, Eoin. Artemis Fowl

When a twelve-year-old evil genius tries to restore his family fortune by capturing a fairy and demanding a ransom in gold, the fairies fight back with magic, technology, and a particularly nasty troll.

Farmer, Nancy. Sea of Trolls

After Jack becomes apprenticed to a Druid bard, he and his little sister Lucy are captured by Viking Berserkers and taken to the home of King Ivar the Boneless and his half-troll queen, leading Jack to undertake a vital quest to Jotunheim, home of the trolls.

Gaiman, Neil. Stardust.  

In nineteenth century England, a young man named Tristan must travel into a world of magic to find a fallen star, in order to win the heart of a woman. Much to his surprise, the star turns out to be a live creature. (Illustrated  novel). 

Larbalastier, Justine. Magic or Madness

From the Sydney, Australia home of a grandmother she believes is a witch, fifteen-year-old Reason Cansino is magically transported to New York City, where she discovers that friends and foes can be hard to distinguish.

Marr, Melissa. Wicked Lovely

Seventeen-year-old Aislinn, who has the rare ability to see faeries, is drawn against her will into a centuries-old battle between the Summer King and Winter Queen, and the survival of her life, her love, and summer all hang in the balance.

Nix, Garth. Sabriel

Sabriel, daughter of the necromancer Abhorsen, must journey into the mysterious and magical Old Kingdom to rescue her father from the Land of the Dead.  

 

Oppel, Kenneth. Airborn

Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl traveling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence of mysterious winged creatures reportedly living hundreds of feet above the Earth’s surface.

 

Pierce, Tamora. Terrier

When sixteen-year-old Beka becomes “Puppy” to a pair of “Dogs,” as the Provost’s Guards are called, she uses her police training, natural abilities, and a touch of magic to help them solve the case of a murdered baby in Tortall’s Lower City.

 

Pullman, Philip. The Golden Compass

Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North. 

 

Watts, Leander. Beautiful City of the Dead

After joining a heavy metal band, high school student Zee learns that she is a god of water and is called upon to fight sinister forces that want her powers for their own.

 

Zevin, Gabrielle. Elsewhere

After fifteen-year-old Liz Hall is hit by a taxi and killed, she finds herself in a place that is both like and unlike Earth, where she must adjust to her new status and figure out how to “live.”

Historical Fiction

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Fever 1793

In 1793 Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sick mother, learns about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to cope with the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic.

 

Anderson, MT. Astonishing life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation

Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.

 

Brown, Don. The Notorious Izzy Fink

In the 1890’s, thirteen-year-old Sam copes with poverty and violence on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side.

Bruchac, Joseph. Code Talker: a novel about the Navajo Marines of World War Two

After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.

Larson, Kirby. Hattie Big Sky

After inheriting her uncle’s homesteading claim in Montana, sixteen-year-old orphan Hattie Brooks travels from Iowa in 1917 to make a home for herself and encounters some unexpected problems related to the war being fought in Europe.

Sayres, Meghan Nuttall. Anahita’s Woven Riddle

In Iran, more than 100 years ago, a young girl with three suitors gets permission from her father and a holy man to weave into her wedding rug a riddle to be solved by her future husband, which will ensure that he has wit to match hers.

Sharenow, Robert. My Mother the Cheerleader

Thirteen-year-old Louise uncovers secrets about her family and her neighborhood during the violent protests over school desegregation in 1960 New Orleans.

Zusak, Marcus. The Book Thief

Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel–a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.