This week is officially Teen Read Week here at Turner Memorial Library and nationwide. This is a great time to check out new YA books and get excited about reading! This year's theme is 'Read Beyond Reality!', so you could start with...

1. The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld Call #: YA FIC WES
From scottwesterfeld.com: Uglies is the first book of the trilogy. The second book is Pretties and the third is Specials, [the fourth is Extras]. It's about a world in which everyone has an operation when they turn sixteen, making them supermodel beautiful. Big eyes, full lips, no one fat or skinny. This seems like a good thing, but it's not. Especially if you're one of the uglies, a bunch of radical teens who've decided they want to keep their own faces. (How anti-social of them.)

2. Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin Call #: YA LE G
From School Library Journal: In this well-realized fantasy, the people of the Uplands have unusual and potentially dangerous abilities that can involve the killing or maiming of others. Gry can communicate with animals, but she refuses to use her gift to call creatures to the hunt, a stance her mother doesn't understand. The males in Orrec's line have the power of unmaking–or destroying–other living things. However, because his mother is a Lowlander, there is concern that this ability will not run true to him. When his gift finally manifests itself, it seems to be uncontrollable. His father blindfolds him so that he will not mistakenly hurt someone, and everyone fears him. Meanwhile, Ogge Drum, a greedy and cruel landowner, causes heartache for Orrec and his family.

3. Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr Call #: YA FIC MAR
From the Washington Post: Melissa Marr adds elegantly to the sub-genre of Urban Faery with this enticing, well-researched fantasy for teens. Wicked Lovely takes place in modern-day Huntsdale, a small city south of Pittsburgh whose name evokes the Wild Hunt of mythology. High school junior Aislinn and her grandmother have followed strict rules all their lives to hide their ability to see faeries because faeries don't like it when mortals can see them, and faeries can be very cruel. Only the strongest faeries can withstand iron, however, so Aislinn prefers the city with its steel girders and bridges. She takes refuge with Seth, her would-be lover, who lives in a set of old train carriages.

But now Aislinn is being stalked by two of the faeries who are able to take on human form and are not deterred by steel. What do they want from her?

4. Seeker by William Nicholson (Book 1 of the Noble Warriors) Call #: YA FIC NIC

From School Library Journal: The Noble Warriors (Nomana) are dedicated to protecting the All and Only god who, according to prophecy, will be killed by the Assassin. Once a year, pilgrims are allowed on the island of Anacrea and accepted into the Nomana. Seeker after Truth, 16, has wanted to join the Noble Warriors all of his life even though his father is intent on him being a scholar. When he enters an open door into the monastery, he sees his brother being publicly humiliated and cast out of the Nomana. Soon two pilgrims arrive who will change Seeker's life forever: Morning Star, who can sense a person's colors and interpret what they mean, and The Wildman, a spiker (outlaw) who is looking for power and peace. After all three teenagers are rejected by the Nomana, Seeker formulates a plan to ensure their acceptance.

5. Graceling by Kristin Cashore Call #: YA FIC CAS

From Harcourt Books: Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight—she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug.

She never expects to fall in love with beautiful Prince Po.

6. Feed by M.T. Anderson Call #: YA FIC AND

From Publishers Weekly: In this chilling novel, Anderson (Burger Wuss; Thirsty) imagines a society dominated by the feed a next-generation Internet/television hybrid that is directly hardwired into the brain. Teen narrator Titus never questions his world, in which parents select their babies' attributes in the conceptionarium, corporations dominate the information stream, and kids learn to employ the feed more efficiently in School. But everything changes when he and his pals travel to the moon for spring break.

7. The Goodness Gene by Sonia Levitin Call #: YA FIC LEV

From School Library Journal: Sixteen-year-old twins Will and Berk believe that they are the sons of Hayli, the Compassionate Director of the Dominion of the Americas. As the founder of The Goodness, a movement to save humanity following nuclear disaster, plague, and environmental collapse, Hayli rules a world in which babies are born in sterile labs, food is manufactured to optimal nutritional standards, and the fortunate live under atmosphere-controlling domes and exchange their ration of pleasure stamps to experience everything from travel to sex in carefully controlled situations.

8. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow Call #: YA FIC DOC

From School Library Journal: When he ditches school one Friday morning, 17-year-old Marcus is hoping to get a head start on the Harajuku Fun Madness clue. But after a terrorist attack in San Francisco, he and his friends are swept up in the extralegal world of the Department of Homeland Security. After questioning that includes physical torture and psychological stress, Marcus is released, a marked man in a much darker San Francisco: a city of constant surveillance and civil-liberty forfeiture. Encouraging hackers from around the city, Marcus fights against the system while falling for one hacker in particular.

9. Airborn by Kenneth Oppel Call#: YA FIC OPP

From School Library Journal: An original and imaginative Victorian-era fantasy. Matt, 15, only feels alive when he's aloft working as a cabin boy aboard the Aurora,a luxury airship that is part dirigible, part passenger cruise ship. When wealthy Kate and her chaperone come aboard, Matt soon discovers that she is determined to prove her grandfather's claims that he saw strange creatures flying in the sky in that area the year before.

10. House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer Call #YA FIC FAR

From Amazon.com: Fields of white opium poppies stretch away over the hills, and uniformed workers bend over the rows, harvesting the juice. This is the empire of Matteo Alacran, a feudal drug lord in the country of Opium, which lies between the United States and Aztlan, formerly Mexico. Field work, or any menial tasks, are done by "eejits," humans in whose brains computer chips have been installed to insure docility. Alacran, or El Patron, has lived 140 years with the help of transplants from a series of clones, a common practice among rich men in this world. The intelligence of clones is usually destroyed at birth, but Matt, the latest of Alacran's doubles, has been spared because he belongs to El Patron.

And there's plenty more! Stop by the library this week to check out what we have to offer!

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