| This week's eHighlights edition is all superhot YA content! On the heels of the new Divergent movie release, now is a great time to emphasize the young adult materials in your collection. There is plenty to be excited about! This week's offerings bring sci-fi, fantasy, and wonderful mystery narratives to front and center. The great thing about these novels is the authors' abilities to bring a great story with fantastic and sci-fi elements to fulfillment while also interweaving heartwarming tales of growth, discovery, and coming of age – subjects that teens often struggle with. Inspire some of the young adult readers at your library! Check out the titles below – many hot dystopian lit – or contact your collection development specialist today for recommendations. Happy Reading! 
To easily order any of the titles listed below, please go to: eHighlights Mar 13, 2014 Metered Access eHighlights Mar 13, 2014 One Copy/One User
Cecilia Bernard – Inside Divergent: The Initiate's World The #1 New York Times bestselling novel Divergent is soon to be a major motion picture in theaters March 2014! Illustrated with more than 100 photographs–many never before seen–this eye-catching volume takes you inside the film version of Divergent where you’ll discover the factions, meet the initiates, and enter the thrilling dystopian world. Companion to the movie.
Helene Boudreau – Real Mermaids Don't Sell Seashells A tropical vacation sounds like the perfect way to spend fall break, even for an aqua-phobic mer-girl like Jade. She can’t wait to enjoy the warm sunshine and all-you-can-eat buffet with her best friend Cori and boyfriend Luke. But when a body splashes into the water as a cruise ship enters the harbor, Jade realizes there might be trouble in paradise. And the mysterious boy selling conch shells in the market definitely knows more than he’s letting on. Jade promised herself: No mer drama on vacation! But it couldn’t hurt to check things out, right? Book 1 in the series won a Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Crystal Kite Award.
Heather Brewer – Third Strike Slayer Joss McMillan is assigned to his hometown to track down and take out a murderous vampire. But vampires aren’t the only things Joss has to deal with this summer. His girl-crazy cousin Henry is staying with him and hates Joss for trying to kill his best friend Vladimir Tod. Sirus, former mentor and supposedly dead vampire, is casting a shadow on Joss’s every turn. And Kat, Joss’s old friend, is in town and bent on revenge for past wrongs. Yet none of this even compares to the devastating secret Joss discovers about the murder of his sister, Cecile. In a story full of unexpected revelations, it is up to Joss to protect the ones he loves and discover the truth about his sister’s death – even if it means paying the ultimate price. Third in the Slayer Chronicles series. Brewer is a NY Times bestselling author.
T. Cooper & Allison Glock-Cooper – Drew Drew opens on the eve of Ethan Miller’s freshman year of high school in a brand-new town. He’s finally sporting a haircut he doesn’t hate, has grown two inches since middle school, and can’t wait to try out for the soccer team. At last, everything is looking up in life. Until the next morning, when Ethan awakens as a girl. Ethan is a Changer, a little-known, ancient race of humans who live out each of their four years of high school as a different person. After graduation, Changers choose which version of themselves they will be forever—and no, they cannot go back to who they were before the changes began. 1st in a 4-book series called Changers. PW starred review.
Jennifer Estep – Killer Frost 6th book in the Mythos Academy series, culminates with the final chapter in the story of Gwen and her time at Mythos Academy. Gwen must now face off against Loki as Nike's champion when someone she loves is put in grave danger. Gwen will wither succeed or die. Linus and the Protectorate show up at Mythos Academy with powerful magical artifacts that need protecting, but the evil God Loki needs one of the artifacts to restore him to his full strength and unleashes a full-scale attack at the Academy that will decide Gwen’s future–if she survives. NY Times and USA Today bestselling author.
Sally Green – Half Bad In modern-day England, witches live alongside humans: White witches, who are good; Black witches, who are evil; and fifteen-year-old Nathan, who is both. Nathan’s father is the world’s most powerful and cruel Black witch, and his mother is dead. He is hunted from all sides. Trapped in a cage, beaten and handcuffed, Nathan must escape before his sixteenth birthday, at which point he will receive three gifts from his father and come into his own as a witch—or else he will die. But how can Nathan find his father when his every action is tracked, when there is no one safe to trust—not even family, not even the girl he loves? Booklist and PW starred reviews.
Kathleen Hale – No One Else Can Have You The Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepard meets the cult-classic film Fargo in this gripping and darkly humorous murder mystery by debut author Kathleen Hale. A quiet town like Friendship, Wisconsin, keeps most of its secrets buried . . . but when local teen Ruth Fried is found murdered in a cornfield, her best friend, Kippy Bushman, decides to uncover the truth and catch the killer. Since the police aren’t much help, Kippy looks to her idol, journalist Diane Sawyer, for tips on how to conduct her investigation. But Kippy soon discovers, if you want to dig up the truth, your hands have to get a little dirty. Starred reviews from Kirkus and The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. “A super-duper mystery…snort-inducingly funny, from start to finish.”—Booklist
Shannon Hale – Dangerous Maisie ‘Danger’ Brown needs excitement. When she wins a harmless-sounding competition to go to astronaut boot camp, that’s exactly what she gets. But she never imagined it would feature stumbling into a terrifying plot that kills her friends and might just kill her too. Now there’s no going back. Maisie has to live by her middle name if she wants to survive, and she’ll need to be equally courageous to untangle the romance in her life too. A clever, suspenseful thriller-adventure by New York Times bestselling author and master storyteller Shannon Hale. First in a new series. Hale is a Newberry Honor winner.
Christine Johnson, Amanda Hocking, Julie Kagawa et al. – Grim Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a dark and sinister twist, Grim contains short stories from some of the best voices in young adult literature today: Ellen Hopkins, Amanda Hocking, Julie Kagawa, Claudia Gray, Rachel Hawkins, Kimberly Derting, Myra McEntire, Malinda Lo, Sarah Rees-Brennan, Jackson Pearce, and more.
Amber Kizer – Pieces of Me When high school oddball and introvert Jessica Chai is killed in a car accident, her parents decide that Jessica would have wanted her organs donated to those who so desperately need these gifts of life. But Jessica is angry about dying and being dismembered. Taking the idea of cell memory to the next level, not only do the recipients get pieces of Jessica, but gets pieces of their memories and lives moving forward–she knows what they know and keeps tabs on their growth, recovery, and development. This begins her journey to learn her purpose as she begins to grasp that her ties to these teenagers goes beyond random weirdness. It’s through their lives that Jessica learns about herself, as she watches the lives she literally touched continue to interlock. Kirkus starred review.
Sarah J. Maas – The Assassin's Blade Celaena Sardothien is her kingdom’s most feared assassin. Though she works for the powerful and ruthless Assassin’s Guild, Celaena yields to no one and trusts only her fellow killer for hire, Sam. When Celaena’s scheming master, Arobynn Hamel, dispatches her on missions that take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, she finds herself acting independently of his wishes and questioning her own allegiance. Along the way, she makes friends and enemies alike and discovers that she feels far more for Sam than just friendship. But by defying Arobynn’s orders, Celaena risks unimaginable punishment, and with Sam by her side, he is in danger, too. They will have to risk it all if they hope to escape Arobynn’s clutches, and if they fail, they’ll lose not just a chance at freedom but their lives. 5 prequel novellas to the bestselling Throne of Glass series.
Ian McDonald – Empress of the Sun The airship Everness makes a Heisenberg Jump to an alternate Earth unlike any her crew has ever seen. Everett, Sen, and the crew find themselves above a plain that goes on forever in every direction without any horizon. There they find an Alderson Disc, an astronomical megastructure of incredibly strong material reaching from the orbit of Mercury to the orbit of Jupiter. Then they meet the Jiju, the dominant species on a plane where the dinosaurs didn’t die out. They evolved, diversified, and have a twenty-five million year technology head-start on humanity. War between their kingdoms is inevitable, total and terrible. Book 3 of the Everness series. Kirkus starred review.
Emily Murdoch – If You Find Me Fifteen-year-old Carey and six-year-old Jenessa have been living in the woods with their mother for as long as they can remember; the sheltering trees and a broken-down camper are all they know. But what they’ve never been told is that Carey vanished from the real world ten years ago, when their mother took her, causing an uproar in the media and in her father’s life. Now, abandoned by the mother they trusted, they’re often left alone for long periods of time to fend for themselves, but in one moment, everything changes. They’re found by Carey’s father and thrust into a bright and perplexing new world, one of shopping malls, shiny appliances, new clothes, and mouth-watering food. Carey desperately wants to believe in this new reality but is held back by a deep and painful loyalty to her mentally ill mother, who gave Carey her violin. Booklist, Kirkus, and School Library Journal starred reviews.
Lauren Oliver – Panic Panic began as so many things do in Carp, a dead-end town of twelve thousand people in the middle of nowhere: because it was summer, and there was nothing else to do. Heather never thought she would compete in Panic, a legendary game played by graduating seniors, where the stakes are high and the payoff is even higher. She’d never thought of herself as fearless, the kind of person who would fight to stand out. But when she finds something, and someone, to fight for, she will discover that she is braver than she ever thought. Dodge has never been afraid of Panic. His secret will fuel him, and get him all the way through the game; he’s sure of it. But what he doesn’t know is that he’s not the only one with a secret. Everyone has something to play for. Kirkus starred review. Hunger Games readalike.
Marie Rutkoski – The Winner's Curse As a general’s daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, seventeen-year-old Kestrel has two choices: she can join the military or get married. But Kestrel has other intentions. One day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in a young slave up for auction. Arin’s eyes seem to defy everything and everyone. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him with unexpected consequences. It’s not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin. But he, too, has a secret, and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for a fellow human is much higher than she ever could have imagined. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and Publishers Weekly starred reviews.
Andrew Smith – Grasshopper Jungle In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend, Robby, have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things. Funny, intense, complex, and brave, Grasshopper Jungle brilliantly weaves together everything from testicle-dissolving genetically modified corn to the struggles of recession-era, small-town America in this groundbreaking coming-of-age stunner. An Amazon Best Book of the Month. Good review in the NY Times. Compared to Kurt Vonnegut.
Dan Wells – Ruins As the clock ticks closer and closer to the final Partial expiration date, humans and Partials stand on the brink of war. Caught in the middle, thousands of miles apart, are Samm and Kira: Samm, who is trapped on the far side of the continent beyond the vast toxic wasteland of the American Midwest; and Kira, now in the hands of Dr. Morgan, who is hell-bent on saving what’s left of the Partials, even if she has to destroy Kira to do it. The only hope lies in the hands of the scattered people of both races who seek a way to prevent the rapidly escalating conflict. But in their midst appears a mysterious figure, neither human nor Partial, with solemn warnings of a new apocalypse, one that none of them may be able to avert. Final entry in the post-apocalyptic Partial Sequence trilogy. By the Hugo and Campbell Award nominee.
Kiersten White – Perfect Lies The wickedly smart sequel to Sister Assassin — a tale of two sisters trapped in a web of deceit. Annie and Fia have battled to survive within the sinister Keane Foundation for years, using their powers to defend each other. Now the sisters have allies; friends who might help them escape. But Annie’s visions of the future are never certain and Fia’s flawless instincts can’t always tell her who to trust. With only each other truly to rely on, their extraordinary gifts may not be enough to save them. Sequel to Mind Games. Bestselling author of the Paranormalcy series.
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Thursday, March 13, 2014
eHighlights: Your Guide to What’s New at OverDrive – YA Edition
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