They call him "the weirdo," and no one knows anything about him except that he lives in the swamp and tracks bears. The same swamp where Samantha found the body and where she saw another body get dumped. Now she's met the weirdo and faced the horror of seeing his scarred face and tortured soul. Eventually they become  friends and together they begin the search for the killer lurking in the dangerous marshes of the swamp. An Edgar Award Winner and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

In this fact-based novel, Lasky uses court transcripts and contemporary accounts to explore the mass hysteria, ignorance, and violence that drove the New England community of Salem, Massacusettes to execute 24 people as agents of the devil. The focus of the story is twelve-year-old Mary Chase who tries desperately to save her mother after she is accused of witchcraft and condemned to death. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

In this hilarious parody of teen horror novels, a thoroughly obnoxious trio of self-centered and beauty-conscious girls who murdered a classmate the previous year are convinced that a beautiful exchange student from Norway is the girl's ghost come back to haunt them. Booklist Editor's Choice. IRA Children's Choice Award

In this retelling of the Cinderella story, Ella has been given the gift of obedience by an incompetent fairy. Ella soon realizes that this gift is little better than a curse, for how can she truly be herself if at any time anyone can order her to hop on one foot, or cut off her hand, or betray her kingdom--and she'll have to obey? Ella's quest to break the curse and discover who she really is, is both funny and poignant. A 1997 Newbery Honor Book.

"If boredom was a living, breathing thing, then its less interesting cousin would live in Billington." This is the way 14-year-old Jason describes his home town. Of course, that's before he discovers that he and his parents  are part of an advance force of aliens and are preparing for an imminent invasion of earth. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

In this funny and perceptive novel, fifteen-year-old Havenis dealing with a difficultsummer. Her father is acquiring a "trophy wife" by marrying the local weather woman, her sister is turning into a harpy as she prepares for her wedding to a "dull as dishwater" man, her best friend returns from summer camp chain-smoking and boy crazy, and her body is experiencing a growth spurt which leaves her almost 6 feet tall. Throughout it all, Haven can't help reminiscing about a summer five years ago when her family seemed happier. 

A fictitious African country is the setting for this tale of children involved in perpetual guerrilla warfare. Paul Kagomi is a young guerrilla warrior whose gun, an AK 47, is the only thing he trusts. When the war ends, his commando leader becomes part of the new goventment, and Paul gives up his gun and goes to school for the first time. But soon the war begins again. Winner of the 1990 Whitbread Prize. 

16 year-old Laura is living in London and attending an international school, where her main interest is getting a date not the politics of her classmates. But everything changes when her younger brother Billy accepts a package from a stranger on a subway and is killed when the package explodes. While her family mourns Billy's death, Laura becomes obsessed with finding her brother's killer.

Slave Day is a tradition at Robert E. Lee High School in Texas. But this year some of the African American students decide not to participate which leads some of the other students, as well as some of the teachers, to rethink their approaches to their lives. By the author of "Rats Saw God". 

In this classic young adult novel, a high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies. To read more about Robert Cormier, go to Author of the Month.

“Two old white ladies came to our village late one day…”And so begins Alicia’s story of the two American anthropologists who arrive to study the way of life of her tribe in the Amazonian jungle. While trying to educate the women about her people’s views on love, marriage, parties, thieving, and lying, Alicia also discovers some things about American culture in the 1970’s. Based on the author’s experiences as an anthropologist in South America.

Sixteen-year-old Jenna gets a job driving the elderly owner of a chain of successful shoe stores from Chicago to Texas to confront the son who is trying to force her to retire. Along the way, Jenna improves her driving skills, learns to recognize quality in people and products, and makes up her own “rules of the road”.  An ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

How does the gifted National Merit Scholar son of an                  over-achieving father become an alienated drug user who's flunking his senior year? In order to graduate, Steve agrees to complete a hundred-page writing assignment which helps him to sort out how he got to where he is and how he can get to where he wants to be.

How could someone like Mick die? He was the kid who put a ceramic eye in a defrosted chicken, the kid who tap danced on the piano at choir practice, the kid who asked for a fly swatter for Christmas--and the kid who, if only he had worn his bicycle helmet, would still be alive today. For eighth-grader Phoebe, remembering Mick and the crazy things he did is her way of coping with her heartbreaking loss. One of Publishers Weekly Best Books of 1996.

Fourteen-year-old Harper, an avid reader of  fantasy who must hide her books from her  fundamentalist parents, comes to realize that their public promotion of censorship threatens her freedom to make her own choices. Recommended by Booklist, Kirkus Review, and The Horn Book.
 

Lara Ardeche, Homecoming Queen and winner of beauty pagents, is perfect. She’s smart, beautiful, and talented. She has great parents and a cool boyfriend. She’s even a nice person! But when a rare condition causes her to gain over 100 pounds, she finds that the world is a very different place for a fat girl. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults.
 

After meeting at their private school in New York, fifteen-year-old Jeremiah, who is black and whose  parents are separated, and Ellie, who is white and whose mother has twice abandoned her, fall in love and then try to cope with peoples' reactions. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
 

Thirteen-year-old Nita, tormented by a gang of  bullies because she won't fight back, finds the help she needs in a library book on wizardry which guides her into another dimension. If you liked the Harry Potter books, try this one!
 

Fourteen-year-old Marina and sixteen-year-old  Jed accompany their parents' religious cult, the Believers, to await the end of the world atop a  remote mountain, where they try to decide what they themselves believe. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults.
 

In this suspenseful and unpredictable story, thirteen-year-old Dylan worries that his father seems to be obsessed with the idea that he encountered a Sasquatch while hunting on the slopes of Mount St. Helens. With the volcano on the brink of another eruption, Dylan follows his father into the woods in an attempt to protect the resident Sasquatch from ruthless hunters. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

After being acquitted of the murder of his girlfriend, 17-year-old David goes to stay with relatives in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he tries to build a new life for himself.  But his young cousin Lily is hostile and threatening and the longer he stays in the house and the more he learns about her, the harder it is to avoid thinking about his own past. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

Fourteen year old Liyana is uprooted from her St. Louis home and moved half way across the world to Jerusalem, her father's birthplace. At first Liyana resents the move and the changes she is forced to make, but eventually she begins to appreciate her new home and to understand the privilege of knowing two cultures.
 

Her acting ability leads to terror when 17-year-old Sarah, who is posing as a fortune-teller for a school fair, begins to see actual visions that can predict the future. Her visions frighten the other students in her school and they brand her a witch, setting off a chain of events that mirror the centuries-old Salem witch trials in more ways than one.
 

During World War Two, a group of girls at an Irish boarding school begin to suspect that their German teacher is a Nazi spy. They begin to watch her movements, which becomes a much more dangerous activity when a German-hating Polish refugee comes to  their school. Winner of the ALA Booklist Editor's Choice Award. Publisher's Weekly Pick of the List. 
 

Ten-year-old Kenny and his family, the “Weird Watsons” from Flint, Michigan, travel to Birmingham, Alabama during the summer of 1963 where they intend to leave the oldest son, an “official juvenile delinquent”, with his grandmother. But Birmingham, Alabama is a very dangerous place for African-Americans in 1963, and the Watsons arrive in time to experience one of the darkest moments in American history. A 1996 Newbery Honor Book, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book, an ALA Notable Book, and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

Sixteen-year-old Korean American Chan’s family is forced to move from Los Angeles to a small town in Minnesota which he expects will be the “Land of a Thousand Hicks”. Once there he uses his soccer skills to join the football team as a kicker, but he has to cope with the racism of his team-mates. He also has to cope with the tensions in his relationship with his strict and traditional Korean father, who doesn't understand Chan’s desire to live like an “American”.
 

In 1962, Mia is growing up in Beirut, but longing to live in America and have a "normal" life. When her eccentric parents disappear suddenly at sea, Mia is sent to live with her aunt in Tennessee. While she tries to fit in with the family and the American culture that she thought she knew, she also begins to appreciate the life she left behind in Beirut. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year.
 

Ben is the second-best wrestler in his weight class in Sturbridge, Pennsylvania, a small town where no one ever leaves and where civic pride revolves around the wrestling team. Relegated by his wrestling coach to sit on the bench while his best friend becomes state champion, Ben decides he can't let his last high school wrestling season slip by without challenging his friend and the future. An ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults.
 

Mikey and Margolo meet on the first day of school in a new classroom and find that they have a lot in common. Both are smart, sarcastic, headstrong, and determined to shake things up. No one knows what to expect from two girls who never behave the way they are supposed to and they soon turn their classroom into a minefield.  In the words of the author, “these are girls with an attitude, and girls up to no good.” A Publisher's Weekly Best Book of ’96.

During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, Joey and his sister Mary Alice make yearly visits to their eccentric grandmother in rural Chicago. Soon they become involved in her “one-woman crime wave” which involves seeing their first corpse, trespassing, extorting local bullies, poaching, feeding hobos, and catching the sheriff and the chamber of commerce in their underwear! The 1999 Newbery Honor Book.
 

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune, which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats (his name is a palindrome) finds himself wrongfully convicted of theft. He is sentenced to a detention camp in the Texas desert where he spends his days digging holes in this "stunningly circular novel about bad luck, justice, friendship, and fate". The 1999 Newbery Medal Winner.