Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Subjects:
Magic Fiction.
Elves Fiction.
Pregnancy Fiction.
Teenage mothers Fiction

NIX PIX- An fairly interesting genre-bending story with typical YA themes.

Publishers Weekly (July 28, 2008)
Werlin (The Rules of Survival) melds fantasy and suspense in a contemporary setting for a romance with plenty of teen appeal. Lucy Scarborough, raped on prom night, is pregnant. Committed to keeping the baby, she nonetheless sees disturbing parallels to her mentally ill mother, Miranda, who had Lucy as a teen, then left her in the care of the Markowitzes--Soledad, a nurse-midwife, and her husband, Leo. Boy-next-door-type Zach, home from college and living with the Markowitzes, happens upon Mirandaís teenage diary, which outlines a curse placed on Lucyís family generations earlier by the evil Elfin Knight: the women all give birth as teens before descending into madness.
Lucy can break the curse only by performing three impossible tasks set forth in a variant of the ballad "Scarborough Fair." None of her forebears have come even close, but then none of them had help from the selfless Markowitzes, the love-struck and self-sacrificing Zach or the Internet, where items like goat horns can be easily located: Lucy is the luckiest accursed girl ever. Werlin disguises the retro elements by creating feminist male leads, and even though the outcome is never in doubt, she builds nail-biting tension. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

Insurgent / Veronica Roth

"As war surges in the dystopian society around her, sixteen-year-old Divergent Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves--and herself--while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love"-- Provided by publisher.

Subjects:

Science Fiction

Girls and Women

Courage

Families

Identity

Social Classes

Adolescence

Hedy's folly : the life and breakthrough inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the most beautiful woman in the world by Richard Rhodes.

I love this book because we don't often hear about super intelligent women and their inventions particularly ones who are also movie stars!
Presents the life of legendary film star Hedy Lamarr, including her involvement in the breakthrough invention spread-spectrum radio alongside composer George Antheil. c2011
Subjects:
Lamarr, Hedy, 1913-2000.
Actresses -- United States -- Biography.
Motion picture actors and actresses -- United States -- Biography.
Spread spectrum communications.

WHAT IS SPREAD-SPECTRUM RADIO? Spread-spectrum techniques are methods by which a signal (e.g. an electrical, electromagnetic, or acoustic signal) generated in a particular bandwidth is deliberately spread in the frequency domain, resulting in a signal with a wider bandwidth. These techniques are used for a variety of reasons, including the establishment of secure communications, increasing resistance to natural interference, noise and jamming, to prevent detection, and to limit power flux density (e.g. in satellite downlinks).
from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_spectrum

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Nineteen-year-old returning champion Sean Kendrick competes against Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to ride in the annual Scorpio Races, both trying to keep hold of their dangerous water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.  c2011
Subjects:
Fantasy Fiction.
Racing. -- Fiction.
Orphans -- Fiction.
Horses -- Fiction.
Love -- Fiction.

Virals by Kathy Reichs.

Reichs makes a solid YA debut with this spinoff of her Bones series. -Publishers Weekly
 
The niece of famed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, fourteen-year-old Tory and her three friends are exposed to a rare strain of canine parvovirus that gives them special powers which they use to try to solve a murder. c2011

Subjects: Supernatural -- Fiction.

Wolfdogs -- Fiction.

Virus diseases. -- Fiction.

Fathers and daughters -- Fiction.

Single-parent families -- Fiction.

Islands -- Fiction.
Science fiction.
Morris Island (S.C.) -- Fiction.

The Rule of Won by Stefan Petrucha

Caleb Dunne, the quintessential slacker, is pressured by his girlfriend to join a high school club based on The Rule of Won, which promises to fulfill members' every "crave," but when nonbelievers start being ostracized and even hurt, Caleb must act. c2008
Subjects:
Success. -- Fiction.
Supernatural -- Fiction.
Clubs -- Fiction.
Social groups. -- Fiction.
High school -- Fiction.
Books and reading -- Fiction.

THE POWER OF SIX by Pittacus Lore

SEQUEL to I AM NUMBER FOUR

In a Spanish convent, seventeen-year-old Marina longs to join forces with her fellow Loriens to prepare for battle with the Mogadorians who destroyed their home planet, while in the United States, John, Six, and Sam elude authorities who think John is a terrorist. c2011
Subjects: Extraterrestrial beings -- Fiction.
Convents -- Fiction.
Fugitives from justice -- Fiction.
Friendship -- Fiction.
Science fiction

I AM NUMBER FOUR by Pittacus Lore

In rural Ohio, friendships and a beautiful girl prove distracting to a fifteen-year-old who has hidden on Earth for ten years waiting to develop the Legacies, or powers, he will need to rejoin the other six surviving Garde members and fight the Mogadorians who destroyed their planet, Lorien. 2011 Subjects:

Extraterrestrial beings -- Fiction.
High schools -- Fiction.
Friendship -- Fiction.
Love -- Fiction.
Moving, Household -- Fiction. Ohio -- Fiction.

Forks over knives : the plant-based way to health edited by Gene Stone ; foreword by T. Colin Campbell and Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr.

Check out the life-altering movie trailer here.
Introduces a whole-foods, plant based diet, including information on how to adopt and maintain this way of eating, details about the benefits of these foods, success stories, and 125 recipes. c2011
Subjects: Vegetables in human nutrition.
Fruit in human nutrition.
Vegetarian cooking.
Nutritionally induced diseases.

The invention of Hugo Cabret : a novel in words and pictures by Brian Selznick.

Check out the 2011 movie trailer here. 
When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.
Copyright c2007.

Subjects:
Méliès, Georges, 1861-1938.
Railroad stations -- France -- Paris.
Robots -- Fiction.
Orphans -- Fiction.
Paris (France) -- History -- 1870-1940.
France -- History -- Third Republic, 1870-1940 -- Juvenile fiction.
Paris (France) -- History -- 1870-1940 -- Fiction.

It gets better: coming out, overcoming bullying, and creating a life worth living Edited by Dan Savage and Terry Miller

A collection of testimonials written to teenagers from celebrities, political leaders, and other individuals on the happiness they found in life after they suffered through bullying and torment in their youths because of their sexual orientation. Copyright 2011
Subjects:
Gay teenagers.
Coming out (Sexual orientation)
Bullying.
Quality of life.
Happiness.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Check out the movie trailer 2011.
Follows nine-year-old Oskar Schell as he encounters a number of interesting characters in his search for information about his father who died in the World Trade Tower and tries to find the lock that fits the mysterious key his father had. Copyright 2005.
Subjects:
Fathers -- Death -- Fiction.
September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001.
New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction.

HATE LIST by Jennifer Brown

 

Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junior year, struggles to cope with integrating herself back into high school life, unsure herself whether she was a hero or a villain.



Subjects:
School shootings -- Fiction. Juvenile fiction.
High schools -- Fiction.
Schools -- Juvenile fiction.
Emotional problems of teenagers -- Juvenile fiction.
Forgiveness -- Juvenile fiction.
Emotional problems -- Fiction.
Family problems -- Fiction.
Forgiveness -- Fiction.

Flight of Shadows by Sigmund Brouwer

I enjoyed this series with a strong female protaganist.  Mr. Brouwer was almost a guest speaker at Metro Tech in December of 2010 but poor weather trapped him in Montana and he never made it to Phoenix.  We look forward to his visit sometime in the future.
In a future world where the fundamentalist government distorts true Christianity, a winged girl named Caitlyn escapes to the Outside, but she soon finds herself on the run from an organizationseeking her body's genetic information.  Copyright 2010.
Sequel to: Broken angel.
Subjects:
Christian life -- Fiction.
Genetic engineering -- Fiction.
Survival -- Fiction.
Science-Fiction.
Christian fiction.

Planting the Trees of Kenya by C. Nivola

A children's books tells the story of Wangari Maathai, a native Kenyan who taught the people living in the highlands how to plant trees and care for the land.
Subjects:
Maathai, Wangari.
Biography -- Juvenile literature.
Women conservationists.
Kenya.
Kenyans.
Women politicians.
Conservationists.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Murakami's latest novel is powerfully intriguing with all the fantasy and mystery of a novel written within the genre of magical realism. He is my most favorite author- capturing all the elements that make reading novels worthwhile.

BOOKLIST: Murakami writes two kinds of novels: short, intimate, crystalline portraits of lovers, often trapped in alternate worlds or struggling between secret selves that submerge the reader in a tidal wave of story. When Murakami melds fantasy and realism, mystery and epic, it is no simple genre-bending exercise; rather, it is literary alchemy of the highest order. This foray into what is unquestionably Murakami's most vividly imagined parallel world begins simply, with two seemingly ordinary events: two lonely 10-year-olds, a boy and a girl, Tengo and Aomame, hold hands in an empty classroom, and for the next 20 years, while never seeing one another, they dream of meeting but are strangely paralyzed to make it happen.
Then Aomame, a 30-year-old woman in 1984 and an assassin who kills men who abuse women walks down an emergency exit from a Tokyo expressway and finds herself in another world, which she calls 1Q84, a world overseen by two moons and ruled, apparently, by the quixotic little people.
Meanwhile, Tengo has rewritten a novel by an enigmatic 17-year-old girl that accurately describes the world of 1Q84. As the lives of Tengo, Aomame, and a Dostoyevskian private investigator, who works for a religious cult that worships the little people, swirl closer and closer together, Murakami draws the reader deeper and deeper into this utterly baffling universe, switching narration between the three principal characters, each of whom grasps only a small part of their two-mooned world. Gradually but inexorably, the tension builds, as we root passionately for Tengo and Aomame to find one another and hold hands again, so simple a human connection offering a kind of oasis in the midst of the unexplainable and the terrifying.
Subject:
Love story.
Mystery -- Fiction.
Fantasy -- Fiction.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia

Don't be fooled by the pretty cover- this is a book for guys!! 
Living in a small South Carolina town, sixteen-year-old Ethan is powerfully drawn to Lena, a new classmate with whom he shares a psychic connection and whose family hides a dark secret that may be revealed on her sixteenth birthday.  Copyright 2009.

Subject:
Supernatural -- Fiction.
Psychic ability -- Fiction.
Love -- Fiction.
High schools -- Fiction.
Dreams -- Fiction.
Recluses -- Fiction.
Psychics -- Fiction.
Love -- Fiction.
High schools -- Fiction.
Dreams -- Fiction.
Hermits -- Fiction.
South Carolina -- Fiction.
South Carolina -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction.

DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth 2011

In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomoly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.

Subject:
Identity -- Fiction.
Families -- Fiction.
Courage -- Fiction.
Social classes -- Fiction.
Science fiction.