Looking for Alaska, by John Green

Miles Halter is tired of his dull, ordinary life and is ready for a change when he begins school at Culver Creek prep school. His life does change as he becomes part of a tight group of friends led by beautiful, sexy, smart and screwed up Alaska Young. With her guidance, Miles experiences his first drink, his first smoke, first prank, and some other great firsts. Then one more first - first death of a loved friend. This is a hard hitting story with equal parts humor and tragedy.

The summer king, by O. R. Melling

This is the perfect kind of book for a hot July afternoon spent inside, lost in fantasy. The author, O.R. Melling knows her Irish legends and lore and knows modern Ireland as well. The main characters in The summer king flip back and forth between modern day Ireland locations and Faerie with ease, taking the reader along for a fast ride. The plot concerns twin American teens Laurel and Honor. As the book opens Honor is dead, having fallen off a cliff the previous summer while tracking a faerie being near their grandparents' home in Ireland. Laurel is now returning to Ireland searching for answers to her sister's mysterious death. The search sweeps her into the alternate reality of Faerie, full of beutiful and dangerous beings who care little for the humans they encounter. But where Laurel and Honor find love as well...

Three cups of tea, by Greg Mortenson

Good non-fiction account of what one person can do to change the world for the better with determination, and at what cost to his personal life. Greg Mortenson was a mountain climber, who attempted climbing K2 in the Himalayans. The attempt failed, but he was so moved by witnessing Pakistani children being schooled in the open air and without the benefit of trained instructors that he returned to the US determined to raise the money needed to build one school. One school turned into many schools, and the account is a great reality check. We really don't know how good we have it here in the United States. A friend lent my this book this summer, knowing that I would like it. I do, and only later realized that it is an Abe book for 2009.

Hawksong, by Amelia Atwater Rhodes

Ok, you all knew this before I did - this is a great fantasy book. I've seen this go off the shelf over and over and be talked about word of mouth for a couple of years now, and I finally have gotten around to reading it this summer. Danicae Shardae, the main character, is a princess of a shape-shifter society - a delicate blonde beauty of a girl whose avian form is a golden hawk. Her avian race has been in a devastating war with the serpent race for as long as anyone can remember. On the eve of her ascension to queen, the prince of the Serpiente comes to her with a bold and risky plan for peace. Zane Cobriana suggests they marry and join their two kingdoms. It's a plan as frightening as it is bold. Danicae is desperate for peace, but there is a natural revulsion between bird and snake, and the romance is tense and dangerous for all.

Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith

I bought this book this summer to read myself, and have to add it to the high school library!

This is historical fiction set in Stalinist Russia in the 1950's. In Stalin's Russia there is no crime - crime is the product of Western capitalism. But children are disappearing, and Leo Demidov of the State Security Force secretly suspects a mass murderer is preying on innocent children. Leo risks his job, his family, and his life in his attempt to stop the murders.I couldn't put this down - it's interesting for the inside look at Stalinist Russia and the paranoid terror the state imposed on it's citizens. Leo's awakening conscience leads him to discover that the murderer isn't a stranger....