Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier

1st in Ruby Red series.  Sequel is Sapphire Blue.  First published in Germany.

Gwen is 16 and lives with her mum, siblings, grandmother, aunt and cousin in an upperclass London neighborhood.  Her extended family doesn't pay much attention to her, focused on her cousin, believed to be the carrier of the time-travel gene that runs through her family and sure to show up very soon in the form of an abrupt trip to somewhere in the past.  But all is not as it seems.  Since a mathematical formula had worked out that Gwen's real birth  date was the birth date of the next time traveler, and her cousin was also born that day, Gwen's mum and (late) father secretly falsified her records to indicate Gwen was born the day before, allegedly in the hopes that she would be able to live a normal life (and since she was born at home with a midwife, no one was the wiser.

The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

Nora has a pretty good life - yes, her brother is still dead and her parents are still withdrawn into their own self-absorbed worlds, but she has made a new family of sorts, with bright, charming, boy-wonder Chris and his lovely, capricious girlfriend Adriane as her best friends, and moody, quiet, scholarly Max as her boyfriend.  She also has an engrossing translation project for a local professor to strengthen her link with Chris and Max - while they work on translating the "important" parts of an ancient mystical document the professor is obsessed with, Nora translates late 16th century letters from a young woman, stepdaughter to a great magician - busy work to the professor, but more and more fascinating to Nora.  When her translation of the letters leads to a new discovery, she never expects it to end with the professor insane, Chris dead, Adriane catatonic and Max gone and branded a murder...but that's what happens.

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Sequel to Divergent

Tris, now on the run as war erupts, attempts to figure out what information is so vital, or so dangerous, that some factions would destroy others just to contain it.  

Divergent by Veronica Roth

In dystopian Chicago, society has been divided into 5 factions, each dedicated to cultivating a certain value:

• Amity (the peaceful)
• Candor (the honest)
• Abnegation (the selfless)
• Erudite (the intelligent)
• Dauntless (the brave) 

Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

The early days of the Robin Hood story, told from the perspective of "Will" Scarlet.  Known to Robin, John, and a few others as just Scarlet, she is a young woman posing as a young man after running away from an arranged marriage.

Star Crossed, by Elizabeth Bunce

Escaping from Green Men soldiers after a botched theft results in her partner's death, Digger convinces a boat of young nobles to help spirit her away, thinking they are helping "Celyn" escape from convent school.  Willing to leave the city of Gerse behind for awhile, Celyn becomes a maid to one of the nobles, a younger girl named Merista who is about to be presented to the marriage mart, and goes with Meri to reunite with her parents, exiled for the last several years for their part in a plot to overthrow the king and the corrupt church. 

Crossed, by Allie Condie

Sequel to Matched.

Three Thieves series, by Scott Chantler

Book 1:  The Tower of Treasure:  Dessa, a 14-year old acrobat in a traveling circus, gets lured into helping Fisk, the scheming troupe juggler, and Topper, the gentle strongman, rob the royal treasury when she decides it will help her learn more about the mysterious man who kidnapped her twin brother several years before.  Caught in the act, they are able to escape from the tower prison but are followed by the grasping Queen's honorable, duty-bound captain of the guards, Drake.  Graphic novel, good for older elementary and middle school - mysteries, fantasy, adventure readers.

  Book 2:  The Sign of the Black Rock:  After escaping from the royal prison, Dessa, Fisk and Topper flee to the coast, where they seek shelter at an inn from a ferocious storm.  The Queen's Dragons and Captain Drake aren't far behind, though, and soon the thieves are hiding from the guards, held captive by the scheming innkeeper, and set free by his abused and silent wife, who also shares more information with Dessa about the sorcerer who kidnapped Dessa's brother and scarred the innkeeper's wife in an attempt to cut out her tongue before she could tell anyone about the spell book and odd word she discovered in his room.

Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs

Pie by Sarah Weeks

Alice's aunt Polly, world-famous pie maker, dies and leaves her recipe to her grumpy cat Lardo, and her cat to Alice.  Alice's mother is jealous of her sister's success with pies and people, someone is out to steal the cat in order to get the pie recipe, and suddenly everyone is trying to make pies to fill the pie-gap.  Includes recipes.

SLJ: grades 4-6

The Agency: A Spy in the House, by Y.S. Lee, Bk 1

The Poison Eaters, by Holly Black

Five Flavors of Dumb, by Antony John

Piper is a senior in high school - quiet, keeps to herself, captain of the chess team, gets good grades, the usual stuff expected from a "good girl" character in teen novels, but Piper's behavior is due in large part to her feeling isolated from her fellow students because she is deaf.  With hearing aids she can hear some things, but her hearing is not perfect, especially in crowds or when she can't also lip-read.  Her best friend, also deaf, has moved away, Piper's younger brother, a freshman, seems embarrassed by her desire for him to sign with her, and her parents have raided the college fund her deaf grandparents set up especially for Piper to attend a college for hearing impaired students - to pay for cochlear implants so her baby sister can hear and not be disabled like Piper.  She's frustrated with being different and that her parents, her dad in particular, seem to see her as broken.  In a moment of very frustrated, very un-Piper-like behavior, she challenges the lead singer of her school's Teen Battle of the Bands winner - she'll become their manager and get the band, named Dumb, a paying gig within 30 days. 

Close to Famous, by Joan Bauer

13-year old Foster McFee and her mother leave Memphis in a hurry when her mom's Elvis-impersonator boyfriend gives mom a black eye.  Leaving with only the items they can fit in their car, which is pretty much everything they own, they end up randomly stopping in Culpepper, West Virginia.  With no other destination in mind, they decide to stay in Culpepper, at least for the rest of the summer, and meet and befriend some of the town's inhabitants.  Because it is a small town, of course many of the inhabitants are eccentric and quirky, but at least their quirks are a different than the usual fare:  Miss Charleena is a former movie star who is hiding out after losing her confidence when her husband left her for a younger woman, Angry Wayne, owner of Angry Wayne's Bar and Grill is...if not angry, at least crotchety and a bit cranky, and Macon is a budding documentarist, just a tweenage one without a camera. 

The False Princess by Eilis O'Neal

Nalia spends the first 16 years of her life thinking she is the princess and heir to the throne of Thorvald, only to be told that she was only a decoy, switched at birth with the real princess to try to avoid a prophecy made during the queen's pregnancy that the princess would be murdered horribly before her 16th birthday.  The king and queen, having averted their real daughter's death, send the false princess, named Sinda at birth, unceremoniously away from the castle to live in a small village with her only living relative, an aunt who is less than delighted to have a fully grown niece with no domestic skills sprung on her with no means of support.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz, by A. S. King.

This book evoked mixed feelings in several friends, but overall, I liked it.  Vera seemed pretty realistic in terms of not wanting to/not being able to talk about her feelings about her mom leaving, her dad withdrawing and especially her best friend's abandonment and then death.  She also seemed realistic in her self-destructive behavior, needing an outlet for the things she couldn't figure out how to express otherwise.  My main quibble is that Vera seemed to get over her dabbling with alcohol pretty easily - maybe she wasn't a full-fledged alcoholic, but she was definitely using it as a crutch, and that need seemed to evaporate after getting blotto and beaten up at the work Christmas party.  That struck me as a pat way of dealing with her developing problem.

Paranormalcy, by Kiersten White

One in a spate of paranormal-themed YA books, this one held my interest more than many of the others I've read lately.  Evie is a teen who has been fostered with the International Paranormal Containment Agency since she was 8 years old, working for them during that time as the only person able to see through any glamour from any paranormal.  It's not breaking new ground in terms of content or teen angst, but it does have some nice "surprises". 

Only the Good Spy Young, by Ally Carter, Bk 4 in the Gallagher Girls series

In the previous three books in the series Cammie aka Chameleon Morgan has found out how serious being a Gallagher Girl is.  In the beginning it was fun knowing that she was a spy-in-training, sneaking out to meet a townie boy in Book 1 and using their special skills at detection, evasion, invention and deception to learn more about the mysterious boys from Blackthorne Academy in Book 2. 

Incarceron, by Catherine Fisher

Finn is a "cell-born" member of a Scum gang in Incarceron, the living prison with millions of electronic eyes and torture chambers, designed to recycled and re-use everything, even the people who are imprisoned there.  Finn remembers nothing before waking up in a cell, apparently remade from DNA of others who died, but his flashes of memory of the outside world convince him that he belongs outside.

It's a Mall World After All by Janette Rallison

Charlotte has a grudge against her best friend's boyfriend because of how he treated her in middle school, teasing her and making her life miserable.  As seniors now, Charlotte is convinced that Bryant is cheating on Brianna, and spies on him to prove it.  Instead of finding hard evidence of cheating, she keeps getting herself in embarrassing (and messy) situations, usually involving Colton, a guy in many of her classes, president of the National Honor Society club she belongs to, and also the guy who is Bryant's best friend and convinced he isn't cheating.  Charlotte has to face her own prejudices against Bryant and hope Colton and Brianna can get past their preconceived notions of Bryant's honesty in a light and fluffy book about high school and friendships.  A sub-plot in which Charlotte helps a little boy get shoes for his mom by organizing a Christmas gift drive offers some real heart, and Rallison's writing offers real opportunities for laughing out loud.

SLJ recommendation for grades 6-10