Horror/Suspense. Seventeen-year-old Sara wants to be ridiculously famous, and yearns for plastic surgery to make her flawless. Sara also has some self-destructive tendencies. When one "accident" lands her in the hospital with a serious burn on her face, she gets a visit from aging rock star Jonathon Heat. Heat is himself ridiculously famous, in part due to his own repeated plastic surgeries--he's had so many that he now wears a mask at all times. He invites Sara to live at his palatial estate, promising to make her famous and give her all the cosmetic surgery she wants...but what does he want from her? A fresh, new face, perhaps? This chilling tale is related in the style of a true-crime thriller and is definitely not for the squeamish.

Graphic Novel. A bomb blows up a café in Metro City as Jane is walking by, and although she survives the blast, her parents are spooked and insist on moving the family to the suburbs...where Jane is "in hell." At her new school, Jane meets three offbeat girls, also named Jane, and convinces them to band together as P.L.A.I.N. (People Loving Art in Neighborhoods). They commit random acts of art--such as filling the town's fountain with bubbles, or creating a lawn gnome convention at the police department--and shake things up in the sleepy 'burb of Kent Waters. The police are not amused...but you will be!

Adventure. Peak--who wryly notes that "it could have been worse...my parents could have named me Crampon"--is arrested at the top of a NYC skyscraper after climbing it to leave his tag. He's saved from juvenile hall by his estranged father, who leads expeditions up Mount Everest and offers to whisk Peak away with him to China. Now Peak, who is 14, has a shot at being the youngest person ever to summit Everest--if he doesn't join the frozen corpses littering the climbing routes. Want to read a real-life account of similarly nail-biting vertical suspense? Try Within Reach by Mark Pfetzer or Aron Ralston's Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

High-school junior Clio Ford reluctantly gives up her dream job and a potential first kiss to take a working vacation with her estranged father on a yacht in Italy

Fantasy. Schuyler, a wealthy student at New York City's elite Duchesne School, is experiencing strange changes that have nothing to do with puberty: prominent blue veins visible beneath her skin, intense cravings for raw meat, and horrifying nightmares. Soon she learns that she is a Blue Blood, a vampire reincarnated from a line that extends back to the Mayflower. Worse, she may be the only one who can save the Blue Bloods from whoever (or whatever) is hunting them. Fans of Cecily von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl novels who want something a little darker, but just as fabulous, should give this series (Masquerade is next) a try.

Paranormal Romance. Zoe is almost unbearably lonely. Her mother is dying of cancer, her father is always either at the hospital or at work, and her best friend is moving away. Alone in the park late one night, melancholy Zoe meets and is captivated by a peculiar and devastatingly handsome young man, Simon, who perfectly understands her feelings. They keep seeing one another, they fall in love...and Zoe learns that Simon is a vampire with a centuries-old grudge. This broodingly romantic story has some twists you won't see coming, and is a great choice for those with a taste for long-standing revenge and forbidden love.

Adult Fiction. Rae Seddon (a.k.a. Sunshine), the daughter of legendary sorcerer Onyx Blaise, makes Cinnamon Rolls as Big as Your Head in her stepfather's coffeehouse. Her life is fairly simple until the night she is kidnapped by vampires who take her to a mansion and chain her alongside Constantine--also a vampire, also in chains. Sunshine becomes a friend, not prey, to this Creature of the Night...and he helps her realize that she, too, is gifted with magic. She'll need it: all hope for stopping the vampiric elite from controlling earth depends on her. Buffy devotees, this one's for you.

Science Fiction/Fantasy. What if an STD could infest you with a parasite that causes an extreme form of cannibalistic vampirism and, ultimately, madness? That's just what's happening in New York City, where 19-year-old Cal Thompson works for the secret organization Night Watch, hunting down those who are parasite-positive, or "peeps." While hunting for his ex-lover (who's now a peep), Cal meets Lace, a dedicated young journalism student who makes him curse his vow of celibacy...and seriously question his employers. Is there conspiracy afoot? If you like Peeps, don't miss its sequel, The Last Days.

Fiction. Eleven-year-old Palestinian Malaak Abed Atieh lives in Gaza City. It's 1988, and the Palestinians are rising up against Israeli occupation. After her father fails to return from a search for work in Israel, Malaak watches for him from the roof every day, talking only to the dove he gave to her. When she learns that her father was killed in a terrorist bombing, Malaak is stricken not only with grief, but with fear that her terribly angry older brother Hamid will defy their family and join the Islamic Jihadis.

Fiction. If you cannot fathom how some young people might be drawn--or driven--to militant religious extremism, this book may help you understand their point of view. Nadia, living in fear and chaos with her family in Damascus, is a 17-year-old devout Muslim. She wears the hijab, reads the Qur'an, fasts, and prays. Unlike most of her family, she has utter disdain for Western culture. After her cousin Fowzi, who shares Nadia's political and religious beliefs, is arrested, Nadia becomes increasingly radical and feels compelled to play a frighteningly serious role in the revolution. This "taut, suspenseful" novel (Kirkus Reviews) will definitely make you think.

Fiction. Baruch Ben Tov is a Holocaust survivor who gardens in order to forget his past. Vera Brodsky is traumatized by her boyfriend's suicide and her parents' failed marriage. German teenager Thomas Wanninger is searching for the truth about his grandfather, whom he suspects was a Nazi. Each of them is drawn to Kibbutz Broshim outside of Jerusalem ("kibbutz" is a Hebrew word for a communal settlement) for a different reason, but they become irreversibly connected in one violent and catastrophic moment and its aftermath.

Fiction. In the present, Maya Laor is a first-year astronomy student at the University of Virginia, doing her best to maintain her distance from the people around her. In the recent past that occupies her thoughts (to which readers are privy), Maya is back home in Israel during the days leading up to the suicide bombing in which her boyfriend was killed...while waiting to meet Maya, who was late. This story paints a vivid picture of Israel, as well as of the contrast between two cultures, the ache and terror of guilt and loss, and the healing power of love.