Nothing to envy: ordinary lives in North Korea

By Barbara Demick

A remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens.  Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years-a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.  Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today-an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life.  Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects-average North Korean citizens-fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.  Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.  TitlePeek

Thunder over Kandahar

By Sharon E. McKay

A powerful novel of enduring friendship set amid the terror and chaos of present-day Afghanistan.  Best friends Tamanna and Yasmine cannot believe their good fortune when a school is set up in their Afghan village; however, their dreams for the future are shattered when the Taliban burns down the school and threatens the teacher and students with death.  As Tamanna faces an arranged marriage to an older man and the Taliban targets Yasmine's western-educated family, the girls realize they must flee. Traveling through the heart of Taliban territory, the two unaccompanied young women find themselves in mortal danger. After suffering grave injuries, Tamanna from a fall and Yasmine from a suicide bombing, the girls are left without the one thing that has helped them survive -- each other.  Reunited years later in England, Tamanna and Yasmine discover that, despite the horrific events of the past, they are both driven to return home by memories of their families and a longing for their country.  The book features stunning photographs by award-winning photojournalist Rafal Gerszak (The New York Times, BBC World News) that bring readers an immediate sense of the faces and landscape of Afghanistan.  Filled with tension and drama, Thunder Over Kandahar paints a vivid portrait of the perils of contemporary Afghanistan.  TitlePeek

The reapers are the angels

By Alden Bell

Zombies have infested a fallen America, and a young girl named Temple is on the run. Haunted by her past and pursued by a killer, she moves back and forth between the insulated remnants of society and the brutal frontier beyond--seeking salvation and a place to make a home.  TitlePeek

Half brother

By Kenneth Oppell

Ben Tomlin was an only child for thirteen years. Then his parents brought home a baby chimp.

It isn't long before Ben is Zan's favourite, and Ben starts to see Zan as more than just an experiment. His father disagrees. Soon Ben is forced to make a critical choice between what he is told to believe and what he knows to be true -- between obeying his father or protecting his brother from an unimaginable fate.

Unbroken: a World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption

By Laura Hillenbrand

Survived the crash of the Army Air Force bomber into the Pacific Ocean; talented runner; made it to the Berlin Olympics; trying to stay alive in the Pacific Ocean with sharks, thirst and starvation, and enemy aircraft.  TitlePeek

Finnikin of the rock

By Melina Marchetta

Finnikin of the Rock and his guardian, Sir Topher, have not been home to their beloved Lumatere for ten years.  Not since the dark days when the royal family was murdered and the kingdom put under a terrible curse.  But then Finnikin is summoned to meet Evanjalin, a young woman with an incredible claim: the heir to the throne of Lumatere, Prince Balthazar, is alive.

Evanjalin is determined to return home and she is the only one who can lead them to the heir.  As they journey together, Finnikin is affected by her arrogance . . . and her hope.  He begins to believe he will see his childhood friend, Prince Balthazar, again.  And that their cursed people will be able to enter Lumatere and be reunited with those trapped inside.  He even believes he will find his imprisoned father.

But Evanjalin is not what she seems.  And the truth will test not only Finnikin's faith in her . . . but in himself.  www.penguin.com.au/products/9780670072811/finnikin-rock

Monsters of men

By Patrick Ness

Three armies march on New Prentisstown, each one intent on destroying the others.  Todd and Viola are caught in the middle, with no chance of escape.

As the battles commence, how can they hope to stop the fighting? How can there be peace when they’re so hopelessly outnumbered? And if war makes monsters of men, what terrible choices await?

But then a third voice breaks into the battle, one bent on revenge…  http://www.patrickness.com/

Heist society

By Ally Carter

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her to the Louvre...to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria...to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own--scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving "the life" for a normal life proves harder than she'd expected.  Soon, Kat's friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring her back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has good reason: a powerful mobster's art collection has been stolen, and he wants it returned. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat's father isn't just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat's dad needs her help.  For Kat there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it's a spectacularly impossible job? She's got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family's (very crooked) history--and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.  TitlePeek

Pathfinder

By Orson Scott Card

A powerful secret. A dangerous path. Rigg is well trained at keeping secrets. Only his father knows the truth about Rigg's strange talent for seeing the paths of people's pasts. But when his father dies, Rigg is stunned to learn just how many secrets Father had kept from him--secrets about Rigg's own past, his identity, and his destiny. And when Rigg discovers that he has the power not only to see the past, but also to change it, his future suddenly becomes anything but certain. Rigg's birthright sets him on a path that leaves him caught between two factions, one that wants him crowned and one that wants him dead. He will be forced to question everything he thinks he knows, choose who to trust, and push the limits of his talent or forfeit control of his destiny.  TitlePeek

The Marbury lens

By Andrew Smith

Sixteen-year-old Jack gets drunk and is in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is kidnapped. He escapes, narrowly. The only person he tells is his best friend, Conner. When they arrive in London as planned for summer break, a stranger hands Jack a pair of glasses. Through the lenses, he sees another world called Marbury. There is war in Marbury. It is a desolate and murderous place where Jack is responsible for the survival of two younger boys. Conner is there, too. But he's trying to kill them. Meanwhile, Jack is falling in love with an English girl, and afraid he's losing his mind. Conner tells Jack it's going to be okay.  But it's not.  TitlePeek

The particular sadness for lemon cake

By Aimee Bender

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother — her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother — tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden — her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.  www.flammableskirt.com/home.html

Fall for anything

By Courtney Summers

From the author of Cracked Up to Be and Some Girls Are comes a gripping story about one girl's search for clues into the mysterious death of her father. When Eddie Reeves's father commits suicide her life is consumed by the nagging question of why? Why when he was a legendary photographer and a brilliant teacher? Why when he seemed to find inspiration in everything he saw? And, most important,why when he had a daughter who loved him more than anyone else in the world? When she meets Culler Evans, a former student of her father's and a photographer himself, an instant and dangerous attraction begins. Culler seems to know more about her father than she does and could possibly hold the key to the mystery surrounding his death. But Eddie's vulnerability has weakened her and Culler Evans is getting too close. Her need for the truth keeps her hanging on...but are some questions better left unanswered?  TitlePeek

The Radleys

By Matt Haig

Struggling with overwork and parenting angst, English village doctor Peter Radley endeavors to hide his family's vampire nature until their daughter's oddly satisfying act of violence reveals the truth, an event that is complicated by the arrival of a practicing vampire family member.  NoveList Plus

For the win

By Cory Doctorow

In the virtual future, you must organize to survive.  At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual “gold,” jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.  Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.  The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.  TitlePeek

Ten things I hate about me

By Randa Abdel-Fattah

Jamie wants to be the real thing. From the roots of her dyed blonde hair...

There are a lot of things Jamie hates about her life: her dark hair, her dad's Stone Age Charter of Curfew Rights, her real name – Jamilah Towfeek.

For the past three years Jamie has hidden her Lebanese background from everyone at school. It's only with her email friend John that she can really be herself. But now things are getting complicated: the most popular boy in school is interested in her, but there's no way he would be if he knew the truth. Then there's Timothy, the school loner, who for some reason Jamie just can't stop thinking about. As for John, he seems to have a pretty big secret of his own...

To top it all off, Jamie's school formal is coming up. The only way she'll be allowed to attend is by revealing her true identity. Will she risk it all? And does she know who she is... Jamie or Jamilah?  http://www.randaabdelfattah.com/

Blackout

By Connie Willie

Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place. Scores of time-traveling historians are being sent into the past, to destinations including the American Civil War and the attack on the World Trade Center. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser, Mr. Dunworthy, into letting her go to VE Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. And seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who has a major crush on Polly, is determined to go to the Crusades so that he can “catch up” to her in age. 

But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments for no apparent reason and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history—to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past.  www.fantasticfiction.co.uk

Cate of the Last Colony

By Lisa Klein

The greatest unsolved mystery of American history--what happened to all the colonists who landed on Roanoke Island in 1587? This novel traces the fortunes and misfortunes of one Cate Archer, banished to Virginia by a jealous Queen Elizabeth because of her dalliance with Sir Walter Ralegh. What will be her fate in this dangerous New World?   www.authorlisaklein.com/1.html

I am number four

By Pittacus Lore

In the beginning they were a group of nine. Nine aliens who left their home planet of Lorien when it fell under attack by the evil Mogadorian. Nine aliens who scattered on Earth. Nine aliens who look like ordinary teenagers living ordinary lives, but who have extraordinary, paranormal skills. Nine aliens who might be sitting next to you now.

The Nine had to separate and go into hiding. The Mogadorian caught Number One in Malaysia, Number Two in England, and Number Three in Kenya. All of them were killed. John Smith, of Paradise, Ohio, is Number Four. He knows that he is next.

I am number four is the thrilling launch of a series about an exceptional group of teens as they struggle to outrun their past, discover their future—and live a normal life on Earth.  www.iamnumberfourfans.com/pittacus-lore/

Out of darkness: the Jeff Healey story

By Cindy Watson

From the moment three-year-old Jeff Healey first laid a guitar across his lap in what was to become his signature style, it was clear he was no ordinary kid. Losing both eyes to retinoblastoma, a rare form of cancer, opened a door to another world for Jeff, a newly adopted infant. Out of darkness he created music, becoming one of the most influential blues-rock and jazz performers of our time, beginning with his first hit album, See the Light.

In this up-close and personal account, loaded with never-before-seen photographs, memorabilia, and intimate recollections of family, friends, and fellow musicians, we discover this unique music icon's dynamic career, which saw him collaborate with everyone from George Harrison and Eric Clapton to B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan. From Jeff's lonely start one snowy night at St. Joseph's Hospital in Toronto to his untimely end in the same building, we come away with a potent message of empowerment and a renewed sense of hope.  www.amazon.ca/

Not that kind of girl

By Siobhan Vivian

Seventeen-year-old Natalie Sterling, a B-minus-meets-type-A student, has just been elected student council president. It's not quite as glamorous as it sounds, but it definitely gets interesting when she tries to "rehabilitate" a pack of hyper-sexualized freshmen girls whose pep rally prank tarnishes their school’s reputation. Natalie wants to teach them that sex isn’t important--while at the same time she gets involved in her first relationship (and tries to keep it a secret). As her public life and secret romance intertwine, Natalie has to learn how to live in the real world--and discover the difference between sex as a ploy and sex as something meaningful.What Mean Girls did for girl bullying, Not That Kind of Girl does for girls’ empowerment.  TitlePeek

All clear

By Connie Willis

In Blackout, award-winning author Connie Willis returned to the time-traveling future of 2060 - the setting for several of her most celebrated works - and sent three Oxford historians to World War II England: Michael Davies, intent on observing heroism during the Miracle of Dunkirk; Merope Ward, studying children evacuated from London; and Polly Churchill, posing as a shopgirl in the middle of the Blitz. But when the three become unexpectedly trapped in 1940, they struggle not only to find their way home but to survive as Hitler's bombers attempt to pummel London into submission. Now the situation has grown even more dire. Small discrepancies in the historical record seem to indicate that one or all of them have somehow affected the past, changing the outcome of the war. The belief that the past can be observed but never altered has always been a core belief of time-travel theory - but suddenly it seems that the theory is horribly, tragically wrong. Meanwhile, in 2060 Oxford, the historians' supervisor, Mr. Dunworthy, and seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who nurses a powerful crush on Polly, are engaged in a frantic and seemingly impossible struggle of their own - to find three missing needles in the haystack of history. Told with compassion, humor, and an artistry both uplifting and devastating, All Clear is more than just the triumphant culmination of the adventure that began with Blackout. It's Connie Willis's most humane, heartfelt novel yet - a clear-eyed celebration of faith, love, and the quiet, ordinary acts of heroism and sacrifice too often overlooked by history.  TitlePeek

Crusade

By John Wilson

This riveting tale begins in 1209, as zealous Catholic knights prepare to storm the walls of the heretic Cathar city of Beziers. "Kill them all," they are told. "God will know his own." The Crusaders took the advice to heart and slaughtered 10,000 people. Two childhood friends find themselves trapped in the horror. One, Peter, is an assistant to the mysterious priest who leads the Crusade; the other, John, with the help of a heretic woman, barely escapes the doomed city with his life. As the brutal war against the Cathars expands, Peter and John are caught up on opposite sides of a search for a secret that might change the world.  TitlePeek

Grail

By John Wilson

In Crusade (The Heretic's Secret, Book I), John Wilson introduced readers to a world literally on fire. As childhood friends John and Peter struggled to make sense of the upheaval around them, zealous Catholic knights rampaged across France, burning Cathar heretics and the cities they called home. Torn apart by their increasingly different beliefs, the two young men found themselves on opposite sides of a search for a secret that has the power to change the world. In Grail (Book II) the search continues. Cities are falling to the brutal northern Crusaders and the smoke of the Cathar funeral pyres drifts across the land as Peter, John, and John's friend Adso set off on journeys into the unknown. Adso takes to the hills with a band of soldiers, intent on revenge against Oddo and the Falcons. John and Isabella travel to Al-andalus in search of peace and the ancient wisdom preserved by the Moors. Peter travels to Rome, following a clue that Arnaud Aumery believes might lead to the mysterious Cathar treasure.  None of the three quests turns out as expected. Adso's band is ambushed and he is forced to wander the country alone until he meets a young monk who offers him a remarkable, yet dangerous, way to get back at his enemies. John and Isabella's peaceful life of learning is cruelly disrupted as the Crusade spills south and they are caught in a battle that will determine the future of Al-andalus. Peter finds clues, but they only lead him farther away and deeper into a mystery that is becoming ever more complex.  In the end, however, all three men unknowingly find a piece of a puzzle, a puzzle that will only become clear if the pieces are ever brought together.  TitlePeek

Dreadnought

By Cherie Priest

Nurse Mercy Lynch is elbows deep in bloody laundry at a war hospital in Richmond, Virginia, when Clara Barton comes bearing bad news: Mercy’s husband has died in a POW camp. On top of that, a telegram from the west coast declares that her estranged father is gravely injured, and he wishes to see her. Mercy sets out toward the Mississippi River. Once there, she’ll catch a train over the Rockies and—if the telegram can be believed—be greeted in Washington Territory by the sheriff, who will take her to see her father in Seattle.  Reaching the Mississippi is a harrowing adventure by dirigible and rail through war-torn border states. When Mercy finally arrives in St. Louis, the only Tacoma-bound train is pulled by a terrifying Union-operated steam engine called the Dreadnought.  Reluctantly, Mercy buys a ticket and climbs aboard.  What ought to be a quiet trip turns deadly when the train is beset by bushwhackers, then vigorously attacked by a band of Rebel soldiers. The train is moving away from battle lines into the vast, unincorporated west, so Mercy can’t imagine why they’re so interested. Perhaps the mysterious cargo secreted in the second and last train cars has something to do with it?  Mercy is just a frustrated nurse who wants to see her father before he dies.  But she’ll have to survive both Union intrigue and Confederate opposition if she wants to make it off the Dreadnought alive.  TitlePeek

Matched

By Ally Condle

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate . . . until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.  TitlePeek

The replacement

By Brenna Yovanoff

Mackie Doyle is not one of us. Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, he comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement; left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is fighting to survive in the human world. Mackie would give anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with his crush, Tate. But when Tate's baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world, or theirs.  Edward Scissorhands meets The Catcher in the Rye in this wildly imaginative and frighteningly beautiful horror novel about an unusual boy and his search for a place to belong.  TitlePeek

Girl in translation

By Jean Kwok

Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, an inspiring debut about an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures. When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition-Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles. Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant-a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.  TitlePeek

Women in love

By D.H. Lawrence

Two of D. H. Lawrence’s most renowned novels—now with new packages and new introductions widely regarded as D. H. Lawrence’s greatest novel, Women in Love continues where The Rainbow left off, with the third generation of the Brangwens. Focusing on Ursula Brangwen and her sister Gudrun’s relationships—the former with a school inspector and the latter with an industrialist and then a sculptor—Women in Love is a powerful, sexually explicit depiction of the destructiveness of human relations.  TitlePeek

Playing with fire: the highest highs and lowest lows of Theo Fleury

By Theo Fleury with Kirstie McLellan Day

Theo Fleury, at 5'6" made a name for himself in a game played by giants. A star in junior hockey, he became an integral part of the Calgary Flames’ Stanley Cup win in 1989. Fleury’s talent was such that despite a growing drug habit and erratic, inexplicable behaviour on and off the ice, Wayne Gretzky believed in him. He became a key member of the gold medal–winning men’s hockey team at the 2002 Olympics.

The Colorado Avalanche picked up Fleury for the playoffs, and when he signed with the New York Rangers, he was a kid in a candy store. After one season of his next multi-million-dollar deal, this time with the Chicago Blackhawks, Fleury suddenly called it quits and wouldn’t explain why.

In Playing with Fire, Theo Fleury takes us behind the bench during his glorious days as an NHL player and talks about growing up devastatingly poor and in chaos at home. Dark personal issues haunted him, with drinking, drugs, gambling and girls ultimately derailing his Hall of Fame–calibre career.  www.harpercollins.ca/

The mistress of nothing

By Kate Pullinger

Lady Duff Gordon is the toast of Victorian London society. But when her debilitating tuberculosis means exile, she and her devoted lady's maid, Sally, set sail for Egypt. It is Sally who describes, with a mixture of wonder and trepidation, the odd menage (marshalled by the resourceful Omar) that travels down the Nile to a new life in Luxor. When Lady Duff Gordon undoes her stays and takes to native dress, throwing herself into weekly salons, language lessons and excursions to the tombs, Sally too adapts to a new world, which affords her heady and heartfelt freedoms never known before. But freedom is a luxury that a maid can ill-afford, and when Sally grasps more than her status entitles her to, she is brutally reminded that she is mistress of nothing.  TitlePeek