Sebold, Alice – The Lovely Bones

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumours about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his

tracks, her grief-stricken family unravelling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, THE LOVELY BONES succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humour, suspense, even joy.

Hulme, Keri - The Bone People

In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes, part Maori, part European, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon's feral charm, she also falls under the

spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality.

Angelou, Maya - I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother's side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age and has to live

with the consequences for a lifetime.

Williams, Michael - Who killed Jimmy Valentine

When the body of a young musician is found on the top of an abandoned, moving taxi, it appears that he is the latest victim of the taxi war. The murder provokes outrage from the local community, for whom Jimmy Valentine was a symbol of hope. The task of solving the case falls to Jake Mulligan, a new recruit to the Cape Town Murder and Robbery Unit. As his investigation progresses, Jake enlists the help of a journalist,

Kate Edwards. Together they find out that there's more to the case than meets the eye.

Steele, Danielle - Amazing Grace

In the earthquake’s aftermath, the lives of four strangers will converge.… Sarah Sloane, the wife of a financial whiz, watches her perfect world fall to pieces…. Grammy-winning singer Melanie Free comes to a turning point in her life and career…. Photographer Everett Carson finds new purpose amid the carnage…and Sister Maggie Kent,

a nun who works with the homeless, searches through the rubble–and knows that there is much to be done….

Rowling, J.K - Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban

For Twelve long years, the dread fortress of Azkaban held an infamous prisoner named Sirius Black. Convicted of killing thirteen people with a single curse, he was said to be the heir apparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Now he has escaped, leaving only two clues as to where he might be headed: Harry Potter's defeat of You-Know-Who was Black's downfall as well. And the Azkaban guards heard

Black muttering in his sleep, "He's at Hogwarts ... he's at Hogwarts." Harry Potter isn't safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends. Because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst.

Clare, Cassandra - The Mortal Instruments – City of Bones

 Clary Fray is seeing things: vampires in Brooklyn and werewolves in Manhattan. Irresistibly drawn to the Shadowhunters, a secret group of warriors dedicated to

ridding the earth of demons, Clary encounters the dark side of New York City – and the dangers of forbidden love. 

Singleton, Sarah - The Stranger

Charlotte is heading to a tiger sanctuary to do some voluntary work as part of her travels. But a fellow traveller working at the sanctuary starts to make her feel uncomfortable and she decides to ask Otto to visit her, pretending to be her boyfriend. When things start going wrong at the sanctuary, Charlotte fears a vendetta against her could be to blame. As tigers

come under attack from poachers, the local authorities threaten to replace the sanctuary's management. Mark the journalist reappears, ostensibly covering the poaching crisis, but also delving into the background of the traveller who is making Charlotte's life a misery. But by now Otto and Charlotte's 'fake' relationship seems to be developing into something a little more serious...and how will Mark, and Otto's ex, Jen, feel about that?

O’Brien, Tim - The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried is a set of connected short pieces that tell the stories of the men of the Alpha Company (foot soldiers in Vietnam) before, during, and after the Vietnam War. Among other things, it deals with the surreal and ambiguous nature of this war, the inadequacy of plain facts in communicating certain

essential truths, and the alienation of the Vietnam War vet.

Landy , Derek - Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing with Fire

Valkyrie Cain - once known to the world as twelve-year-old Stephanie Edgley - has learned a great deal since beginning her apprenticeship to Skulduggery Pleasant, the well-dressed, living-dead wizard-detective. But she hasn't learned nearly enough to defeat the horrors

massing against her and her friends: An old foe of Skulduggery's, Baron Vengeous, is bent on bringing back to life the horrible Grotesquery - an unkillable monster assembled from the most fearsome beasts of legend. It's up to the ingenious, fearless, and quick-witted Valkyrie and Skulduggery to stop the Grotesquery from coming fully to life. Because once the thing is alive, it will call to its masters, the evil Faceless Ones who return will mean the end of the world

Green, John - Looking For Alaska

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words–and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him

into the Great Perhaps.

Messidoro, Diane - How To Keep A Boy As A Pet

The Official Truth about dating the male human species!Can taming a gorgeous boy really be as easy as walking a dog? Circe Shaw is on a mission. She must transform into a fabulously sophisticated journalist and discover the amazing scientific truth about boys. Urgently. But life is beyond complicated. Circe has to deal with a poisonous

rival, her mum’s annoying ‘just friends’ men and her own Dark Past. Can Circe’s daring investigation really teach her the facts of love? Will it help her finally get a boyfriend? Or will it break her heart…?

Grisham, John - The Brethren

Three former judges (known as "The Brethren") incarcerated at Trumble, afictional, federal minimum security prison located in northern Florida, develop a scam to blackmail wealthy closeted gay men. With

the help of their lawyer, Trevor Carson, they transfer their ill-gotten money to a secret Bahamian bank account.

Child, Lee - Die Trying

Jack Reacher is in both the wrong and the right place at the same time when FBI Special Agent and daughter of the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Holly Johnson is abducted from a Chicago street. It is the wrong place because Reacher, a former army major drifting around the country, is kidnapped as well. It is the right place because only he has the instincts to foil the complex,

deadly plan of the kidnappers, a Montana militia group headed by a charismatic, brilliant, but psychotic leader.

Viviano, Frank – Blood Washes Blood

Viviano's great-great grandfather was a legendary bandit who travelled the countryside of Sicily by night in the robes of a friar and was known as "the Monk." His brutal murder has remained shrouded in mystery for four generations. Until now. Populated by an extraordinary cast of nineteenth-century Robin Hood brigands and twentieth-century underworld bosses,

here is a true-life Godfather, in which past and present finally merge into a single story with a shattering climax that ultimately changes the way the author views his immigrant family's complex legacy -- and himself.

Archer, Geoffrey - Honour Among Thieves

Spring 1994, Washington, D.C. - While the Clinton Administration grapples with its domestic policies, a sinister plot is being masterminded six thousand miles away in Baghdad. By using $100 million as bait and spinning a deadly web of corruption, forgery, and terror, Saddam Hussein seeks to embarrass the U.S. with the ultimate

revenge: to steal a treasured historical document and then destroy it before the world's media-on July 4, 1994.

Toltz , Steve - Fraction Of The Whole

The fact is, the whole of Australia despises my father more than any other man, just as they adore my uncle more than any other man. I might as well set the story straight about both of them . Anyway, you know how it is. Every family has a story like this one. Most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn't decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man

who over- analysed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son. But now that Martin is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the crackpot who raised him in intellectual captivity, and what he realizes is that, for all its lunacy, theirs was a grand adventure.

Tullock, Jonathan and Shirley - I Am A Cloud, I Can Blow Anywhere

Mulumbe's village is plagued by marauders, and then an elephant eats the last of her family's crop. She determines to save her family, and embarks on an adventure fraught with danger: travelling to the famed City of Gold to be reunited with her brother, Tom, and save her family by earning some money. Grandmother tells her many riddles

and it is these life lessons that carry her through the obstacles and dangers she encounters. Set in the beauty of the African forest and the ants' nest of a township, this is a story of hunger. it is also a celebration of hope, dreams and the unconquerable spirit of one African girl.

Coovadia , Imraan - The Wedding

Set in India and South Africa, The Wedding joins Ismet Nassin, a clerk of modest prospects from Bombay, and Khateja , a village beauty he marries on the very day he spies her from the window of his train. Matrimony happens fast, love lags behind. Khateja is willful, difficult, and misanthropic—in short, highly desirable. Ismet is in for the battle of his life.

Benaron, Naomi - Running the Rift

Running the Rift follows the progress of Jean Patrick Nkuba from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life. A naturally gifted athlete, he sprints over the thousand hills of Rwanda and dreams of becoming his country’s first Olympic medal winner in track. But Jean Patrick is a Tutsi in a world that has become increasingly

restrictive and violent for his people. As tensions mount between the Hutu and Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream that running might deliver him, and his people, from the brutality around them.

Green, John - The Fault in Our Stars

Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten. It’s Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny,

thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love. 

Stieg , Larsson - Girl With The Dragon Tatoo

Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of

grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves

Vonnegut , Kurt - Cat’s Cradle : A Novel

Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.

.Kallentoft,Mons - Autumn Killing

It is Autumn in Linkoping and the heavens have opened, but not even these biblical rains can wash away the blood of crimes past and present. Then the brutally-stabbed body of self-made Internet billionaire Jerry Petersson is discovered floating facedown in the moat surrounding his home, the imposing Skogsa Castle. Malin Fors, the brilliant but flawed star of the Linkoping police force, is already struggling to keep her

life together following the recent murder attempt on her teenage daughter, Tove. Now, as the Petersson case forces Malin to delve deep into Linkoping's history and her own family's past, the secrets she uncovers threaten to drown her too ...

Ngan, Natasha - The Elites

Hundreds of years into the future, wars, riots, resource crises and rising sea-levels have destroyed the old civilisations. Only one city has survived: Neo-Babel, a city full of cultures – and racial tension. Fifteen-year-old Silver is an Elite, a citizen of Neo-Babel chosen to guard the city due to her superior DNA. She’d never dream of leaving – but then she

fails to prevent the assassination of Neo Babel’s president, setting off a chain of events more shocking and devastating than she could ever have imagined.

Eve , Helen – Stella

Seventeen-year-old Stella Hamilton is the star blazing at the heart of Temperley High. Leader of the maliciously

exclusive elite, she is envied and lusted after in equal measure. And in the Hamilton tradition, she is in the final stage of a six-year campaign to achieve her destiny: love with her equally popular male equivalent, and a triumphant election to Head Girl.

Knowles, Jo - See You At Harry’s

Twelve-year-old Fern feels invisible. It seems as though everyone in her family has better things to do than pay attention to her. Mum helps Dad run "Harry's," the family restaurant; Sarah is taking a gap year after high school, and Holden pretends that Mum and Dad and everyone else don't know he's gay, even as he fends off bullies at school. If it wasn't for Ran, Fern's calm and positive best

friend, there'd be nowhere to turn. But then tragedy strikes – and Fern feels not only more alone than ever, but also responsible for the accident that has wrenched her family apart. All will not be well. Or at least all will never be the same.

Maas , Sarah J - Crown of Midnight

After a year of hard labour in the Salt Mines of Endovier, eighteen-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien has won the king's contest to become the new royal assassin. Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown – a secret she hides from even her most intimate confidantes. Keeping up the deadly charade—while pretending to do the king's

bidding—will test her in frightening new ways, especially when she's given a task that could jeopardize everything she's come to care for.

Rowling, J.K - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

The heart of Book 7 is a hero's mission--not just in Harry's quest for the Horcruxes, but in his journey from boy to man--and Harry faces more danger than that found in all six books combined, from the direct threat of the Death Eaters and you-know-who, to the subtle perils of losing faith in himself. Attentive readers would do well to remember Dumbledore's warning about

making the choice between "what is right and what is easy," and know that Rowling applies the same difficult principle to the conclusion of her series.

Choo , Yangsze - The Ghost Bride

Seventeen-year-old Li Lan lives in 1890s Malaya with her quietly-ruined father, who returns one evening with a proposition - the fabulously wealthy Lim family want Li Lan to marry their son. The only problem is, he's dead. After a fateful visit to the Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also her desire for the Lims' handsome new

heir. At night she is drawn into the Chinese afterlife - a world of ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, monstrous bureaucracy and vengeful spirits. Enlisting the help of mysterious Er Lang (a dragon turned clerk) Li Lan must uncover the secrets of the ghost world - before she becomes trapped there forever.