The Afterlife –Gary Soto

Combing his hair in the dirty bathroom of a club, 17-year-old Chuy makes the mistake of telling the rodent-faced guy next to him that he likes his shoes. The young man returns the compliment by stabbing Chuy to death. The story follows Chuy for several days after his death, as the teenager recounts what he sees and experiences. His parents grieve, and his mother asks a cousin to kill Chuy's murderer; then Chuy goes to his school's basketball game and sees the effect of his death on his friends. He saves the life of a homeless man and finds his first girlfriend, Crystal, a ghost who died from an overdose.

Sarny – Gary Paulsen

Born into slavery and taught to read by the slave Nightjohn, she marries, bears two babies, and sees her husband worked to death. Her children are sold just as the Civil War ends. Accompanied by another freed slave, Sarny journeys toward New Orleans looking for her children, and meets Miss Laura, a light-skinned black woman with a shadowy occupation and lots of money. In New Orleans, Sarny finds her children and lives comfortably in Miss Laura's employ. She remarries, teaches black children to read, and sees her husband lynched. As the story ends, Sarny, a very rich woman, is living in Texas and waiting to die. Sarny's strong narrative voice is striking, as she remembers events in her own distinct way. Tthis is not meant to be a sweeping overview of history, but the highly individualized account of one woman's experiences.

The House of the Scorpion

Nancy Farmer

Matteo Alacrán was not born; he was harvested. He is the clone of El Patrón, the drug lord of a country called Opium lying between the United States and former Mexico. As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by El Patrón's family and a dangerous army of bodyguards. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape is no guarantee of freedom because Matt is marked in ways he doesn't even suspect.

Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters

Gail Giles

Sunny's sister, Jazz, has been dead for months when Sunny receives a letter from Jazz explaining that she was away working when her apartment burned to the ground. Then Jazz, or Not-Jazz as Sunny calls her, returns home. Her mother has become addicted to sleeping pills and Dad has been drinking since his daughter's "death." Sunny and her father soon realize that the young woman is indeed not Jazz, even though she knows a great deal about their family history and secrets. As Sunny investigates, she begins to discover who the imposter is and how she knows so much about the family.

A Step from Heaven – An Na

When she is five, Young Ju Park and her family move from Korea to California. During the flight, they climb so far into the sky she concludes they are on their way to Heaven. Heaven is also where her grandfather is. When she learns the truth, she is so disappointed she wants to go home. Trying to console his niece, Uncle Tim suggests that maybe America can be "a step from Heaven." Life in America, however, presents problems for Young Ju's family. Her father becomes depressed, angry, and abusive. Jobs and money are scarce. When her brother is born, Young Ju experiences firsthand her father's rejection as he favor the baby because he is a boy.

Red Rider’s Hood  - Neal Shusterman

Red arrives at Grandma's house in his red Mustang convertible, to deliver some money. When he gets there, he is confronted by a member of a gang called the Wolves. Grandma has been thrown in the basement and the Wolves take the money. Soon, Red finds out that the gang members are actually werewolves, and he's surprised to discover that his grandmother is a werewolf hunter, determined to eliminate them. At first, Red and his friend Marissa join forces with her, but problems arise when he infiltrates the gang to gather information and begins to feel a bond with them. Ultimately, it is his confusion about which side he is really on that could be his downfall.

Assassin – Anna Myers

Would you betray your president to win the heart of America’s most celebrated actor?   Bella isn’t evil. But even people can end up doing bad things, especially when they meet people like John Wilkes Booth, a charismatic and famous actor. When Booth sets his sights on Bella, an assistant seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln, to help with his plot to kidnap President Lincoln, he is able to persuade her to betray her president and turn her back on the boy she loves. Bella believes Booth will not harm Mr. Lincoln, but when the kidnapping plot fails, Booth will stop at nothing--even if it means harming Bella.

Romiette & Julio – Sharon M. Draper

Sixteen-year-old Julio Montague's parents have moved their family to Cincinnati, OH, in order to get their son out of his gang-ridden high school in Corpus Christi, TX. Romiette Cappelle, also 16, is the daughter of successful African-American parents and the granddaughter of college professors. When these two young people, both from proud heritages, begin a romance, they must deal not only with their parents' prejudices but also with the threats of a local gang.

The Last Book in the Universe

Rodman Philbrick

Spaz, a boy who lives on the fringes of his surreal future world sets out on a classic quest to save his ill foster sister. To do so, he must cross forbidden territory and face frightening gangs and their leaders. He picks up companions as he travels: Ryter, an old man whose treasure is the book; Littleface, a young child; and Linnea, a genetically improved person. In saving his sister, Spaz learns about himself and his parentage.

Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale

Art Spiegelman

A memoir by Art Spiegelman presented as a graphic novel. It recounts the struggle of Spiegelman's father to survive the Holocaust as a Polish Jew and draws largely on his father's recollections of his experiences. The book also follows the author's troubled relationship with his father and the way the effects of war impact the generations of a family.

47  - Walter Mosely

 The narrator, called simply by his number, 47, recalls his life as an enslaved teen on a Georgia plantation in 1832, occasionally interjecting the wisdom he has gleaned in the intervening years. At the "most likely" age of 14, 47 is sent to the fields to pick cotton. His life in the slave quarters begins with having his number literally branded on his shoulder. Mosley's novel is more than historical fiction, however, 47 starts off by explaining that these events "happened over a hundred and seventy years ago," and hints something supernatural is coming. It arrives in the person of "Tall John from beyond Africa," who masquerades as a runaway from a neighboring farm, but who is, in fact, an extraterrestrial searching the galaxy for 47. "Neither master nor nigger be," Tall John repeatedly tells 47, who must unlearn a lifetime of subservience in order to grasp the nature of freedom and its relationship to responsibility.

Acceleration – Graham McNamee

Seventeen-year-old Duncan is haunted by the fact that he was unable to save a drowning one fateful afternoon the previous September. This summer he has a job working underground at the Toronto subway lost and found, an opportunity to exorcise his own guilty demons. When business is slow, Duncan spends his time rummaging through dusty shelves and boxes of unclaimed items. During one of these sessions, he uncovers a strange, leather-bound book that turns out to be the diary of a would-be serial killer. Unable to tear himself from the gory descriptions of tortured animals and arson, he discovers that the writer has started to stalk women on the subway. When the police seem disinterested, the teen takes matters into his own hands, and with the aid of his two best friends, tries to track and trap the murderer before he can strike.

Autobiography of My Dead Brother – Walter Dean Myers

 Jesse and his friend C.J. are trying to come to terms with "the violence that blows through our community like the winds of winter." Jesse sees first-hand what drugs are doing to his Harlem home. "Sometimes," he says, "the corner of 149th Street looked like an ad for some desperate Third World country," or a vision of hell from Dante's Inferno, which Jesse is reading in school. The autobiography Jesse is making of his best friend Rise, with photographs, drawings and cartoons, shows Rise changing as he gets involved with gangs, and the cartoonish character of Spodi Roti represents Jesse himself as he questions his life and community, looking for answers. The innovative illustrated novel format is effective, essential to Rise's autobiography and to Jesse's own quest for understanding.

Notes From the Midnight Driver

Jason Sonnenblick

While his mother is out on a first date, 16-year-old Alex decides to get drunk, steal her car, and drive to his father's home, hoping to catch him romancing one of Alex's former teachers. His goal? Revenge. Reality? A damaged car, a decapitated gnome, a drunk driving charge, and 100 hours of community service visiting Solomon Lewis, the meanest, crankiest resident at Egbert P. Johnson Memorial Home for the Aged. Alex discovers that Solomon is also witty, intelligent, and a fighter--an old man who has lived all the joys, sorrows, and regrets of a long life.

Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie

David Lubar

Starting high school is never easy. Seniors take your lunch money. Girls you’ve known forever are suddenly beautiful and ignore you. And you can never get enough sleep. Could there be a worse time for Scott’s mother to announce she’s pregnant? Scott decides high school would be a lot less overwhelming if it came with a manual, so he begins to write down tips for the new baby. Meanwhile, he’s trying his best to capture the attention of Julia, the freshman goddess. In the process, Scott manages to become involved in nearly everything the school has to offer, good and bad.

Bang – Sharon Flake

Even though random shootings have become increasingly common in his neighborhood, Mann is horrified when his little brother is gunned down while playing on his own front porch. Two years later, the 13-year-old and his parents are still struggling with their grief. His father believes that if he had been less loving and protective, Jason might have been tougher and capable of avoiding the shot. Mann and his friend Kee-lee keep track of the shooting deaths around them, certain that their own time may come and make them nothing more than numbers on their list. Influenced by ancient African coming-of-age rituals in which young boys are sent into the wilderness to attempt to survive, Mann's father takes him and Kee-lee camping and abandons them far from home. For two urban teens with little food or money, this is a dangerous, frightening experience. After the boys make their treacherous way back home, Mann's father turns him out to live on the streets, determined he will not lose another son because he is too soft.