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Video trailer for Jack Heath’s new novel Hit List, to be released September 1st.

Ash and Benjamin are teenage mercenaries. They find stolen artifacts and return them to the owners - for a fee.

But when they are hired to rescue an imprisoned girl, they realise they're in over their heads. Because there are others looking for the girl too. Corrupt governments. Ruthless corporations. Rogue assassins.

As these forces converge on the place where the girl is trapped - the headquarters of the world's biggest intelligence agency - Ash realises she's made a terrible mistake; one that may cost her and Benjamin their lives...

You can get an autographed copy here

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New for Young Adults – The Midnight Zoo

by Sonja Hartnett

Her muzzle wrinkled, and Andrej saw a glimpse of teeth and pale tongue. 'They smell the same, ' the lioness murmured. 'My cubs smelt as she does. Like pollen.' She breathed deeply again, and Andrej saw the missing cubs returning to her on the wings of the baby's perfume. 'All young ones must come from the same place,' she said: then sat down on her haunches, seemingly satisfied.
Under cover of darkness, two brothers cross a war-ravaged countryside carrying a secret bundle. One night they stumble across a deserted town reduced to smouldering ruins. But at the end of a blackened street they find a small green miracle: a zoo filled with animals in need of hope.
A moving and ageless fable about war, and freedom.

Read an extract here
Get more details or buy the book here

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For Young Adults – Paper Daughter

Paper Daughter
by Jeanette Ingold

Maggie Chen was born with ink in her blood. Her journalist father has fired her imagination with the thrill of the newsroom. But now Maggie’s father has been killed, and she is determined to keep their dreams alive by interning at the local newspaper. While assisting on her first story, suspicion of illegal activity falls on Maggie’s father, and she knows she must clear his name. Drawn to Seattle’s Chinatown, what she finds is far from what she expected: secrets, lies, and a connection to the Chinese Exclusion Era. Using all of her newspaper instincts and resources, Maggie is forced to confront her ethnicity—and a family she never knew.

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Books into Movies – Tomorrow when the war began

Tomorrow, When the War Began (The Tomorrow Series #1)
by John Marsden

Australian teenager Ellie and six of her friends return from a winter break camping trip to find their homes burned or deserted, their families imprisoned, and their country occupied by a foreign military force in league with a band of disaffected Australians. As their shock wears off, the seven decide they must stick together if they are to survive. After a life-threatening skirmish with the occupiers, the teens retreat to their isolated campsite in the bush country and make plans to fight a guerilla war against the invaders. Writing in a distinct voice and showing rare intelligence and sensitivity, Ellie recounts their courageous battles against the Goliath in control of their land. She also records her feelings and observations about the romantic partnerships that develop within her small circle of friends, and shows how they mature and blossom during this time of crisis. Though readers are left wondering whether these heroes and heroines will survive (one is severely wounded at the end of the novel), Ellie's uncommonly honest and clear narration makes this coming-of-age adventure a story they won't forget. Fast-paced and provocative, it's a natural for book talking.
Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San Diego
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A gripping tale, told with Marsden's customary incisiveness.

The movie is due for release on September 2nd 2010

Teaching with Tomorrow when the war began
Introducing and teaching Tomorrow, When The War
Year 10 Context study: Close study of a novel and its author
Tomorrow When the War Began Booktalk
2007 Student Essays Tomorrow, When the War Began

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Vampires and interactivity for the Young Adults

Slate Launches Interactive YA Serial

Tapping into teen trends--vampires and the push towards interactivity--novelists Laura Moser and Lauren Mechling have launched a YA serial on Slate.com with a parallel online world where their characters update their Facebook pages, tweet, and post videos on YouTube. The story, which went live today, and marks the first YA serial Slate has ever run, will unfold in 11 three-chapter segments posted every Friday through August.

Mechling, a culture editor at the Wall Street Journal, said the idea for the novel started unfolding after her coauthor, who writes for Slate, was approached by editors at the site to do something in the YA vein. The result, My Darklyng, is about a 10th grader named Natalie Pollock whose obsession with a popular vampire series takes a scary turn after she auditions to be a cover model for one of the new books. more...

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Award winner: Closed for the Season

Closed for the Season by Mary Downing Hahn has won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Juvenile Fiction

Another well-done, action-packed mystery from Hahn. This book starts off as seventh-grader Logan Forbes learns that a murder had been committed in his family's new house three years earlier.

Myrtle Donaldson, a bookkeeper accused of embezzling from the local amusement park, was found dead in her ransacked house and her killer is still at large.

Logan's next-door neighbor, Arthur Jenkins, a sixth grader with a bottomless stomach and a quirky personality, is convinced that Mrs. Donaldson was falsely accused, and he wants Logan to help him find the real perpetrator. The boys discover a letter and puzzle left among the woman's possessions that convinces them they are on the right track. Their investigation includes visiting the abandoned and overgrown Magic Forest amusement park, a reporter with secrets, shady property developers, a menacing convict, and purloined library materials.

It all culminates in a terrifying nighttime showdown among the kudzu at the Magic Forest where the truth is revealed. This is an enjoyable mystery with just the right amount of frightening and dangerous elements to entice readers. Logan is a sympathetic character—a new kid in town trying to find his place in the pecking order, almost immediately befriended by someone on the lowest rung who turns out the be the right friend for him.

It is available at Amazon for $10.88 reduced from $16.00.

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Brilliant, heart-wrenching – The Piper’s Son by Melina Marchetta

The Piper's Son


Melina Marchetta

Melina Marchetta's brilliant, heart-wrenching new novel takes up the story of the group of friends from her best-selling, much-loved book Saving Francesca - only this time it's five years later and Thomas Mackee is the one who needs saving.

Watch a video of the author Melina Marchetta

Read an extract

Buy the book

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If only he could unlock the dark secrets buried within his mind. Maze Runner by James Dashner

The
Maze Runner


James Dashner

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can
remember is his first name.

Watch the book trailer video

play the game

Read an excerpt

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Your chance to Vote for the best Young Adult Non Fiction

This is a new award, introduced in 2010.  Everyone is welcome to vote once for each award between now and January 15 at http://bit.ly/4uok4d
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A new Don Quixote? Going Bovine – for teens

Going Bovine (Hardcover)
~ Libba Bray (Author)
In this ambitious novel, Cameron, a 16-year-old slacker whose somewhat dysfunctional family has just about given up on him, as perhaps he himself has, when his diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jacob, "mad cow" disease, reunites them, if too late. The heart of the story, though, is a hallucinatory—or is it?—quest with many parallels to the hopeless but inspirational efforts of Don Quixote, about whom Cameron had been reading before his illness. Just like the crazy—or was he?—Spaniard, Cam is motivated to go on a journey by a sort of Dulcinea. His pink-haired, white-winged version goes by Dulcie and leads him to take up arms against the Dark Wizard and fire giants that attack him intermittently, and to find a missing Dr. X, who can both help save the world and cure him. Cameron's Sancho is a Mexican-American dwarf, game-master hypochondriac he met in the pot smokers' bathroom at school who later turns up as his hospital roommate. Bray blends in a hearty dose of satire on the road trip as Cameron leaves his Texas deathbed—or does he?—to battle evil forces with a legendary jazz horn player, to escape the evil clutches of a happiness cult, to experiment with cloistered scientists trying to solve the mysteries of the universe, and to save a yard gnome embodying a Viking god from the clutches of the materialistic, fame-obsessed MTV-culture clones who shun individual thought. It's a trip worth taking, though meandering and message-driven at times. Some teens may check out before Cameron makes it to his final destination, but many will enjoy asking themselves the questions both deep and shallow that pop up along the way.—Suzanne Gordon, Peachtree Ridge High School, Suwanee, GA END

Author Libba Bray talks about Going Bovine