Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan

The beginning chapters of this book are brutal as the main character is abused, raped, and struggles to survive in a cruel existance. Cornered in a hopeless existance, she finds sanctuary in magic when she is whisked into an alternate reality. Here the story gets interesting. She is raising two very innocent daughters in her safe but tiny world when reality begins to intrude in the form of visitors from the real world, some who are decent people, and some who are not. Eventually the bolder daughter escapes back into the real world, and her mother and sister follow. The story has a message about how life is full of brutality and evil existing side by side with love, integrity, and good. Does the existance of evil make the existance of good more precious?

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow

Marcus is computer wise, and outwitting school security is his ticket to a day off to play the real world component of his favorite online game. But Marcus and his friends pick the wrong day to escape school when they find themselves near ground 0 of a terrorist attack similar to 9/11. Picked up by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison (think Guantonimo), they are subjected to merciless interrogation for days. When finally released, Marcus discovers that San Francisco has been turned into a police state with every action watched, every move monitored by a DHS gone mad. His computer is bugged, he's under police surveilance, and he's on a mission - bringing down the DHS.
The author of Little Brother is a tech guru in his own right, and the story has implications that should make us all stop and think about where technology can lead us in the not that distant future.

The graveyard book, by Neil Gaiman

After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own. The story of Bod's childhood is a fresh story with surprises on every page. I liked Gaiman's Coraline, but I like this one even better. The illustrations add to the spooky atmosphere and help make this one just plain fun to read. The Newbery award folks got it right this year!

An abundance of Katherines, by John Green

I love guy humor, and this book has it in spades. Always being dumped by girls named Katherine, Colin Singleton, a washed-up child prodigy with a Judge-Judy obsessed best friend, embarks on a quest to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which will impact all of his future relationships and change his life. By the same author as Looking for Alaska, but this time John Green trades in the drama for humor, and does it every bit as well. And what is more fun than a road trip?

Lament, by Maggie Stiefvater / Wicked lovely, by Melissa Marr

These two books have essentially the same conflict, but the two authors have dealt with it in two very different ways. In both stories, a teen girl is chosen by the Summer King of Faerie to be his queen. How the girls react and respond to the situation makes for good romantic suspense. Both are engaging and fun to read. Wicked lovely has sequels that we will have to be getting, though we don't have them at CHS now. The author of Lament is working on a sequel, so we will be watching for that to come out next year.