9th and 10th Grade
Fiction
F SMI Lockdown: Escape from Furnace. By Alexander Gordon Smith.
When fourteen-year-old Alex is framed for murder, he becomes an inmate in the Furnace Penitentiary, where brutal inmates and sadistic guards reign, boys who disappear in the middle of the night sometimes return weirdly altered, and escape might just be possible.
F AND Speak. By Laurie Halse Anderson.
A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.
F CRU Whale Talk. By Chris Crutcher.
Intellectually and athletically gifted, TJ, a multiracial, adopted teenager, shuns organized sports and the gung-ho athletes at his high school until he agrees to form a swimming team and recruits some of the school's less popular students.
F DOC Little Brother. By Cory Doctorow.
Interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus is released into what is now a police state, and decides to use his expertise in computer hacking to set things right.
F CAR Ender's Game. By Orson Scott Card.
Young Ender Wiggin may prove to be the military genius Earth needs to fight a desperate battle against a deadly alien race that will determine the future of the human race.
F COL The Hunger Games. By Suzanne Collins.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen accidentally becomes a contender in the annual Hunger Games, a grave competition hosted by the Capitol where young boys and girls are pitted against one another in a televised fight to the death.
F ALL City of the Beasts. By Isabel Allende
When fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold accompanies his individualistic grandmother on an expedition to find a humanoid Beast in the Amazon, he experiences ancient wonders and a supernatural world as he tries to avert disaster for the Indians.
F MCC The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. By Alexander McCall Smith.
The cunning and engaging Precious Ramotswe sets up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, hoping to become a private detective, and she soon has more business than she expected, including a disturbing case involving a missing child.
F MAR Life of Pi. By Yann Martel.
Pi Patel, having spent an idyllic childhood in Pondicherry, India, as the son of a zookeeper, sets off with his family at the age of sixteen to start anew in Canada, but his life takes a marvelous turn when their ship sinks in the Pacific, leaving him adrift on a raft with a 450-pound Bengal tiger for company.
F FOR A Room With a View. By E.M. Forster.
The love of a young British woman named Lucy Honeychurch for a British expatriate living in Italy is condemned by her stuffy, middle-class guardians, who prefer an eligible man of their own choosing.
F HIN The Outsiders. By S.E. Hinton
Three brothers struggle to stay together after their parents' death, as they search for an identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society in which they find themselves "outsiders."
F PIC My Sister’s Keeper. By Judi Picoult
Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Anna begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body.
F MOR The Year of Secret Assignments. By Jaclyn Moriarty.
Three female students from Ashbury High write to three male students from rival Brookfield High as part of a pen pal program, leading to romance, humiliation, revenge plots, and war between the schools.
F REN Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging. By Louise Rennison.
Presents the humorous journal of a year in the life of a fourteen-year-old British girl who tries to reduce the size of her nose, stop her mad cat from terrorizing the neighborhood animals, and win the love of handsome hunk Robbie.
F QUA A Door Near Here. By Heather Quarles.
Four siblings struggle to maintain a semi-normal home life when their single mother's alcoholism becomes debilitating.
F AVI Wolf Rider: A Tale in Terror. By Avi
After receiving an apparent crank call from a man claiming to have committed murder, fifteen-year-old Andy finds his close relationship with his father crumbling as he struggles to make everyone believe him.
F ZIE Gossip Girl. By Cecily von Ziegesar
When the beautiful Serena van der Woodsen returns to Spenford after mysteriously getting kicked out of boarding school, the gossip flies among the privileged students at the Upper East Side private high school.
F ALP The Perfect Shot. By Elaine Marie Alphin.
Brian uses basketball to block out memories of his girlfriend and her family who were murdered; however, the upcoming trial and a high school history assignment forces him to face the past.
F HOF A Stir of Bones. By Nina Kiriki Hoffman.
After discovering the secrets that lie in an abandoned house, fourteen-year-old Susan Backstrom, with the help of some new friends, has the ability to make a safe, new life for herself.
F AND Prom. By Laurie Halse Anderson
Eighteen-year-old Ash wants nothing to do with senior prom, but when disaster strikes and her desperate friend, Nat, needs her help to get it back on track, Ash's involvement transforms her life.
F ATW Midnight Predator. By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Turquoise Draka, a mercenary trained to fight vampires, witches, and shape-shifters, infiltrates a vampire stronghold, but ghosts from her past and new possibilities for her future threaten to distract her from the work at hand.
F DEL The Blue Girl. By Charles de Lint
Seventeen-year-old Imogene decides to reinvent herself after moving to a new town with her family, hoping to leave behind her tough, rebellious nature, befriending the high school outcast and trying her best to avoid trouble, but when she gets on the wrong side of a gang of malicious fairies, Imogene finds herself in more trouble than ever before.
F JOH The First Part Last. By Angela Johnson
Bobby's carefree teenage life changes forever when he becomes a father and must care for his adored baby daughter.
PB HIN (YA) A Kestrel for a Knave. By Barry Hines
Life is tough for Billy Casper, a disillusioned teenager growing up in a small Yorkshire mining town. Yet he is determined to be a survivor and when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk he discovers a passion in life.
F BRO The Moves Make the Man. by Bruce Brooks
As Jerome, a black athlete, shares his skills and interest in basketball with Bix, a white baseball player, their friendship grows and the game becomes a reflection of both their lives.
F MYE Monster. By Walter Dean Myers
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
F PUL The Golden Compass. By Philip Pullman
Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North.
F LAW Crow Lake. By Mary Lawson
Kate Morrison, orphaned at the age of seven, grows up seeing her brilliant older brother Matt's failure to further his education as a tragedy, and feeling somewhat guilty about her own accomplishments, and it is not until years later that she finally sees the damage her faulty thinking has caused.
F COE The Alchemist. By Paulo Coelho
Tells the story of an Andalusian shepherd boy who follows his dream and meets an alchemist.
F ADA The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. By Douglas Adams
The hilarious journey of Arthur Dent and his friend Ford Prefect, a space hitchhiker, who escape from earth seconds before it is demolished. They travel to a variety of galactic civilizations while gathering information for a hitchhiker’s guidebook.
F PIE Trickster's Choice. By Tamora Pierce
Alianne must call forth her mother's courage and her father's wit in order to survive on the Copper Isles in a royal court rife with political intrigue and murderous conspiracy.
F WEL Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. By Rebecca Wells.
Siddalee Walker, a successful theater director, is thrown into a void of uncertainty when she has a falling out with her mother, Vivi, over a New York Times article in which Vivi is characterized as an abusive parent, and the Ya-Yas, Vivi's gang of lifelong girlfriends, conspire to restore the mother-daughter relationship.
PB OAT (YA) Freaky Green Eyes. By Joyce Carol Oates.
Fourteen-year-old Frankie relates the events of the year leading up to her mother's mysterious disappearance and her own struggle to discover and accept the truth about her parents' relationship.
F DUM Rebecca. By Daphne du Maurier.
For months after her death, the memory of Rebecca de Winter continues to dominate everyone at her former home, Manderley, one of the most famous English country houses.
F STO Dracula. By Bram Stoker.
Presents the classic macabre tale of a vampire, Count Dracula of Transylvania, and the small group of people who vowed to rid the world of him.
F AND Feed. By M.T. Anderson.
In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble.
F HAD The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. By Mark Haddon.
Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.
F BRA Going Bovine. By Libba Bray.
Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen-year-old diagnosed with mad cow disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.
F WES Peeps. By Scott Westerfeld
Cal Thompson is a carrier of a parasite that causes vampirism, and must hunt down all of the girlfriends he has unknowingly infected.
F BRA The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. By Ann Brashares.
Carmen decides to discard an old pair of jeans, but Tibby, Lena, and Bridget think they are great and decide that whoever the pants fit best will get them. When the jeans fit everyone perfectly, a sisterhood and a memorable summer begin.
Nonfiction
940.53 SPI Maus: A Survivor's Tale. By Art Spiegelman.
An autobiographical and biographical cartoon in which the author explores his strained relationship with his father, an Auschwitz survivor, while also relating the story of his parent's experiences as Jews in wartime Poland, as told to him by his dad during a series of conversations they had years later in New York and Vermont.
921 ARM It's Not About the Bike. By Lance Armstrong
Champion cyclist Lance Armstrong describes his triumph over cancer.
796.33 BIS Friday Night Lights. By H.G. Bissinger
Follows the 1988 season of the Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, Texas, exploring the lives of the players and the impact of the championship team on the small town.
919.404 BRY In a Sunburned Country. By Bill Bryson
Travel writer Bill Bryson chronicles the experiences he had and profiles the people and wildlife he encountered while traveling through Australia.
796.5 KRA Into Thin Air. By Jon Krakauer
The author relates his experience of climbing Mount Everest during its deadliest season and examines what it is about the mountain that makes people willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense.
659.2 KLE No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. By Naomi Klein.
Examines the largely underground system of information, protest, and planning forming throughout the world in response to Western corporate exploitation of the Third World, and argues that as more people discover the brand-name secrets of the global logo web, their outrage will fuel the next big political movement.
975 GRI Black Like Me. By John Howard Griffin.
Presents the true story of journalist John Howard Griffin who, in the 1950s, had his skin medically darkened and traveled through the Deep South in order to experience first hand the cruelty and injustice of segregation.
741.5 SAT Persepolis. By Marjane Satrapi.
Contains black-and-white comic strip images in which the author shares the story of her life in Tehran, Iran, where she lived from ages six to fourteen while the country came under control of the Islamic regime.