Enhance your summer vacation with tales adventurous, sometimes humorous, tales of survival, autobiographical and historical, romantic, or gruesome. A dozen-plus new audiobooks are on the shelves in the Young Adult area.
The following titles are audio award winners:
Beauty Queens,
Dead End in Norvelt,
Okay For Now,
Daughter of Smoke and Bone,
Rotters. (Descriptions below are from the
EBSCO database, NoveList Plus.)
Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray. When a plane crash strands 13 teen beauty
contestants on an island, they struggle to survive, to get
along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical
occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in
time for the competition.
Genre: humorous, satire, action/adventure.
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, & Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins. In a future N. America, the rulers of Panem maintain control
through an annual televised survival competition that pits young people
from each of twelve districts against one another, 16-year-old
Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her
younger sister's place.
Genre: science fiction, survival.
Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos.
In the historic town of
Norvelt, PA, 12-year-old Jack
spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is
assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving
the newly dead
, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl
Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and
countless bloody noses.
Genre: autobiographical, humorous.
The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted
her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer
support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and
life.
Genre: witty realism, romance, death/dying.
Rotters, by Daniel Kraus. Sixteen-year-old Joey's life takes a very strange turn when his mother's
tragic death forces him to move from Chicago to rural Iowa with the
father he has never known, and who is the town pariah.
Genre: gruesome realism.
A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness, Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Down.
13-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster
outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring
nightmare that began when his mother became ill --an ancient, wild
creature that wants him to face truth and loss. (Includes 1 bonus disc with illustrations from the book with accompanying audio excerpts.)
Genre: horror, urban fantasy
Mastiff, by Tamora Pierce. Book 3 in Beka Cooper series. Beka, having just lost her fiance in a slaver's raid, is able to
distract herself by going with her team on an important hunt at the
queen's request, unaware that the throne of Tortall depends on their
success.
Genre: fantasy, adventure.
Okay For Now, by Gary D. Schmidt. While Doug struggles to be more than the thug that his teachers and the
police think him to be, he finds an unlikely ally in Lil Spicer, as they
explore Audubon's art.
Genre: historical fiction, friendship.
The Ring of Solomon, by Jonathan Stroud. Wise-cracking djinni Bartimaeus finds himself at the court of
King Solomon
with an unpleasant master, a sinister servant, and King Solomon's
magic ring
.
Genre: fantasy, adventure, magic.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor. Seventeen-year-old Karou, a lovely, enigmatic art student in a Prague boarding school, carries a sketchbook of
hideous, frightening monsters--the chimaerae who form the only family she has ever known.
Genre: urban fantasy, supernatural, romance.
The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson. Rory, of
Boueuxlieu, Louisiana, is spending a year at a London boarding school when she witnesses a murder by a Jack the
Ripper copycat and becomes involved with the
very unusual investigation.
Genre: mystery, paranormal.
Leviathan, Behemoth, & Goliath, by Scott Westerfeld. In an alternate 1914 Europe, fifteen-year-old Austrian Prince Alek, on
the run from the Clanker Powers who are attempting to take over the
globe using mechanical machinery, forms an uneasy alliance with Deryn
who, disguised as a boy to join the British Air Service, is learning to
fly genetically-engineered beasts.
Genre: science fiction, steampunk, adventure.
Blood Red Road, by Moira Young. In a distant future, eighteen-year-old Lugh is kidnapped, and while his
twin sister Saba and nine-year-old Emmi are trailing him across bleak
Sandsea they are captured, too, and taken to brutal Hopetown, where Saba
is forced to be a cage fighter until new friends help plan an escape.
Genre: science fiction, dystopia, adventure.
