Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Released August 1, 2009

Shiver was recommended by a library staff member, who got the advanced reader’s copy at ALA.  She said it was quick-paced like Twilight, and also featured a supernatural boy and a down-to-earth girl who fall in love.  It is fairly a fast read, especially the beginning and the end.  It drags slightly in the middle, but not too bad.  The story is set in Minnesota and is about Grace, a 17-year-old who, as a child, was attacked by wolves in her backyard.  She would have died, except for the gentle, yellow-eyed wolf who rescued her and got her back to safety.  Grace never forgot that wolf, and through her encounters with him in the woods behind her house, Grace realized that maybe her wolf wasn’t just a wolf.  She was right of course; Sam is werewolf, human in the summer and wolf in the winter.  He has the same yellow eyes as a human, and the same love for Grace as he did several years ago when he rescued her.  But in Shiver, wolves only change into summer humans for so long, and this is most likely Sam’s last year.  What can he and Grace do to stay together now that they’ve found each other?  –Becky Fermanich, Youth Services Librarian

Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel

Released March 2009

This is the third book in the series by Kenneth Oppel that started with Airborn and Skybreaker. I loved Airborn when I first read it. It was like a high seas pirate adventure but in the sky on an airship. It had adventure, suspense, action, and a little romance. Skybreaker was good but I didn’t like it as much as Airborn, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from Starclimber. However it only took me a couple of pages and I was off and running into the unique world that Oppel has created with this series. The book hooked me right away and I didn’t quit reading until the end. Starclimber reunites us with Matt Cruse, the former cabin boy who’s now attending the Airship Academy, and Kate de Vries, the fiesty and brilliant girl who’s more interested in discovering new lifeforms than living her family’s wealthy lifestyle. Matt and Kate are going on a new airborn adventure this time around – they’re traveling in the first attempt at reaching outer space. (Oppel’s series is set in a kind of alternate reality – it feels like it’s in the past, but it is also very futuristic. A time and place where space travel hasn’t happened yet, but it’s completely normal to travel in giant airships.) Going to outer space isn’t so strange, but the way they are getting there is. And you can be sure there are several exciting and action-filled sequences and daring circumstances along the way. If you haven’t read any of Oppel’s books, I’d start with Airborn, then keep reading in this fun adventure series.  –Becky Fermanich, Youth Services Librarian

Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud

Released January 2009

“Stroud turns from an alternative future London to a more traditional hero quest in this epic fantasy. Halli Sveinsson, short, squat, and dark-haired, has never truly felt a part of his tall, handsome family. He excels at harmless pranks, but when one of them sickens the arrogant son of visiting dignitaries from the house of Hakonsson, he unwittingly sets in motion events that will prompt him to leave home to avenge the murder of his uncle at the hands of Olaf Hakonsson. His revenge is achieved almost by chance, and Halli is forced to return home a fugitive. With the assistance of a girl named Aud, who shelters him on his homeward journey and whose skills he wildly underestimates, Halli must become a leader and rally his people. In his quest, he learns the truth behind the tales of heroic exploits perfomed by his ancestor Sven Sveinsson, who defeated flesh-eating creatures called Trows and set up a barrier protecting his people from their threat. Tales of Sveinsson’s exploits frame each chapter and serve to point out how Halli is also creating his own legend, one that will surely be retold and embellished over the course of time. Stroud shows that the trope of the hero’s journey is as sturdy as ever in this compelling novel. Fans of his ‘Bartimaeus’ trilogy will, like the hungry Trows of valley legend, devour this book whole.”  –School Library Journal

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

Released November 11, 2008

Starred Review. Most of these 13 tales show him at the top of his game, molding the themes and set pieces of horror and suspense fiction into richly nuanced blends of fantasy and psychological realism. The Things They Left Behind, a powerful study of survivor guilt, is one of several supernatural disaster stories that evoke the horrors of 9/11. Like the crime thrillers The Gingerbread Girl and A Very Tight Place, both of which feature protagonists struggling with apparently insuperable threats to life, it is laced with moving ruminations on mortality that King attributes to his own well-publicized near-death experience. Even the smattering of genre-oriented works shows King trying out provocative new vehicles for his trademark thrills, notably N., a creepy character study of an obsessive-compulsive that subtly blossoms into a tale of cosmic terror.  - Publisher’s Weekly

The Lost Island of Tamarind by Nadia Aguiar

Released: Sept. 30, 3008

“Stranded on a lost island, a teen faces nail-biting adventures searching for her missing parents in this fantasy cliffhanger. Maya has lived her 13 years aboard the Pamela Jane sailing through the Caribbean with her marine biologist parents, her brother Simon and baby sister. Until recently Maya loved life at sea, but now all she wants is to live with her grandmother in Bermuda, go to school and have friends. During a freak storm, Maya’s parents are washed overboard while winds propel the Pamela Jane to Tamarind, an unknown island populated by fantastical plants and creatures. In breathtaking succession, Maya and Simon encounter carnivorous vines, flying fish, treacherous pirates, a mad zoologist, giant turtles, warring soldiers, a tribe living in treetops, a mysterious lady riding a jaguar, singing mermaids, giants and a glowing substance called ophalla. As she bounces from one adventure to the next, Maya forgets all about having a normal life and longs just to have her family reunited. Spunky kids, perilous pursuits and marine mystery make for a smashing good read.”  –Kirkus

The Unnameables by Ellen Booraem

Released: Oct. 1, 2008

“On Island, ‘thou art thy name.’ At age 14, residents receive their names and their vocations from the Council. A cook becomes Cook, a tanner becomes Tanner and everyone follows the rules set forth in Capability C. Craft’s Frugall Compendium of Home Arts and Farme Chores (1680). Thirteen-year-old foundling Medford Runyuin hopes to be designated Carver, like his foster father. He also hopes no one will discover the Unnameable objects he’s created and hidden under his bed: They could cause his exile to Mainland forever. The Council puts off naming him, however, and he must continue to work hard for acceptance. When someone nameless and possibly Unnameable enters his life, all his plans—and the islanders’ way of life—could be in for drastic changes…but after 300 years, is that necessarily a bad thing? Booraem’s debut is an ever-surprising, genre-defying page-turner. Realistic characters deal with philosophical problems in vivid, flowing prose that is evocative and often funny. A sort of combination of witch-trial–era Salem and The Giver, this book offers a treat with nearly every page turn.  (Ages 10-14).”  –Kirkus

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Released: Oct. 1, 2008

“An assured fantasy debut grapples with questions of identity, authenticity and autonomy. Lady Katsa is a Graceling, with an inborn magical gift marking her as both feared outcast and exploitable resource. While her peculiar Grace—the unsurpassed ability to kill—has been honed over the years by her uncle the king to bully and punish, Katsa has also secretly used it to bring a measure of justice to the Seven Kingdoms. When she encounters a strange prince whose mysterious Grace may just be a match for her own, she learns the corrosive seduction of power corrupted, but also the courage to trust others—and herself. Katsa is an ideal adolescent heroine, simultaneously confident of her strengths yet unsure of her place in the world. Every character is crafted with the same meticulous devotion to human comprehensibility, making the villain all the more appalling in his understated, twisted madness. In a tale filled with graphic violence and subtle heartbreak, gentle passion and savage kindness, matter-of-fact heroics and bleak beauty, no defeat is ever total and no triumph comes without cost. Grace-full, in every sense.”  –Kirkus