New Fiction for March 2009
Abdel-Fattah, Randa. Ten Things I Hate About Me. YA/ ABD
Lebanese-Australian Jamilah, known in school as Jamie, hides her heritage from her classmates and tries to pass by dyeing her hair blonde and wearing blue-tinted contact lenses, until her conflicted feelings become too much for her to bear.
Brashares, Ann. 3 Willows: the sisterhood grows. YA/ BRA
Ama, Jo, and Polly, three close friends from Bethesda, Maryland, spend the summer before ninth grade learning about themselves, their families, and the changing nature of their friendship.
Godbersen, Anna. Envy. YA/ GOD
Manhattan's most envied residents appear of have everything they desire: wealth, beauty, happiness. But sometimes the most practiced smiles hide the most scandalous secrets.
Jones, Carrie.
Depressed after the death of her stepfather, high school junior Zara goes to live with her grandmother in a small Maine town, where new friends tell Zara the strange man she keeps seeing may be a pixie king, and that only "were" creatures can stop him from taking souls.
Lanagan, Margo. Tender Morsels. YA/ LAN
A young woman who has endured unspeakable cruelties is magically granted a safe haven apart from the real world and allowed to raise her two daughters in this alternate reality, until the barrier between her world and the real one begins to break down.
Schrefer, Eliot. The School for Dangerous Girls. YA/ SCH
Sent to a remote, run-down reform school in Colorado, fifteen-year-old Angela is placed with the better girls, but upon learning that her "dangerous" friends are being isolated and left to live as animals, she takes radical steps to join them and help them escape.
Stoffels, Karlijn. Heartsinger YA/ STO
Smee was born with a great gift: the ability to sing other people's stories and heal their pain. But Smee also carries his own pain -- his failure to reach his deaf mother and heal her grief at his father's death. As he travels the country, he eases many people's sorrows, but he cannot connect with anyone himself.
Stork, Francisco X. Marcelo in the Real World. YA/ STO
Marcelo Sandoval hears music no one else can hear--part of the autism-like impairment no doctor has been able to identify--and he's always attended a special school where his differences have been protected. But the summer after his junior year, his father demands that Marcelo work in his law firm's mailroom in order to experience "the real world." There Marcelo meets Jasmine, his beautiful and surprising coworker, and Wendell, the son of another partner in the firm. He learns about competition and jealousy, anger and desire. But it's a picture he finds in a file -- a picture of a girl with half a face -- that truly connects him with the real world: its suffering, its injustice, and what he can do to fight.
Tan, Shaun. Tales From Outer Suburbia. YA/ TAN
Fifteen illustrated short stories, some humorous and some haunting, set in the Australian suburbs.
Weingarten, Lynn. Wherever Nina Lies. YA/ WEI
Two years after the disappearance of her older sister, sixteen-year-old Ellie goes on a quest to find her.
