Hoops Walter Dean Myers
A young man with a talent for basketball hopes that his game will be his ticket out of the ghetto.

Tenderness   Robert Cormier
Lori has a "fixation" on 18 year-old Eric, even though she knows he is a serial murderer and will probably kill again. The two troubled teens embark on a journey that will either save them or destroy them.

A Wrinkle in Time Madeleine L'Engle
A trio of unheathly visitors changes the lives of Meg, Charles and their scientist mother.

Hate You Graham McNamee
The hatred for the father who choked her and damaged her voice as a child makes 17 year-old Alice write songs that she cannot sing.  She tries to come to terms with her feelings.

Al Capone Does My Shirts   Gennifer Choldenko
When Moose's family moved to Alcatraz Island,  he left behind his friends and his winning baseball team but this would be worth the sacrifice for his sister to get the help she needed and their family would finally be moved.

A Room on Lorelei Street Mary Pearson
In a small town in Texas, Zoe, the daughter of an alcoholic, is trying to find her own way.  All her life she has cared for others.  Now it's time to think about her own future.

Red Kayak   Priscilla Cummings
Hailed as a hero for his dramatic rescue, thirteen year old Brady Parks, makes a startling discovery that puts him at the heart of an enormous tragedy. Brady is forced to choose between life long friends and doing what's right.

Speak Laurie H. Anderson
Melinda Sordino busted an end of the year party by calling the cops, so her old friends won't talk to her and people she doesn't know hate her from a distance.  Something about the night of the party could surface and blow her disguise and she would have to speak the truth.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven Mitch Albom
An astounding story that will change everything you've ever thought about the afterlife and the meaning of our lives here on earth.

Hole in My Life Jack Gantos
The author relates how as a young adult he became a drug user and smuggler, was arrested and did time in prison, and eventually went on to college, all the while hoping to become a writer.

Burning Up Caroline B Cooney
A high school student researches the history of a burned out barn for a school project and uncovers the destructive forms of hatred and prejudice hidden in the past.

The Body of Christopher Creed   Carol Plum-Ucci
When the class scapegoat vanishes without a trace, speculation as to what happened runs rampant in town and causes accusations that change several lives forever.

If I Should Die Before I Wake Han Nolan
While in a coma, a NeoNazi initiate slips into another patient's memory and is transported back to Poland at the onset of WWII into the life of a Jewish teenager.

Within Reach, My Everest Story
Mark Pfetzer and Jack Galvin
In this suspenseful first-person narrative, 16 year old Mark Pfetzer relates his experiences as the youngest climber to attempt Everest, an unwilling witness to the tragedy documented in Krakauer's Into Thin Air.

Swallowing Stones Joyce McDonald
When Michael fires his new rifle into the air on his seventeenth birthday, he never imagines that the bullet will end up killing someone. But it does and he must deal with the consequences.

Stuck in Neutral Mary Trueman
Cerebral palsy traps fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel in a world where he can't speak or control his movements. No one knows he is more than he seems - that he thinks, reads, or understands that his dad wants him dead.  An intense and thought provoking story.

The Outside Shot Walter Dean Myers
In this involving sequel to Hoops, a Harlem youth on a basketball scholarship finds himself unprepared for the pressures of classes, college sports, and love.