The Messengers by Edward Hogan

Since her brother Johnny disappeared after injuring a policeman in a bar fight, Frances has been experiencing blackouts.  When she starts to regain consciousness,  she begins to draw.  At first the drawings are meaningless scribbles, but increasingly they have become detailed scenes containing particular people whom she has seen in town.   Then she meets Peter, who recognizes her as someone like him, a "messenger,"  doomed to create sketches of death scenes and deliver them to the people who are going to die.  If Frances refuses to pass along the drawings, someone close to her will suffer. The Messengers follows how Frances and Peter try to deal with this curse.  Creepy, thought-provoking, suspenseful.

The Impersonator by Mary Miley

Vaudeville and Prohibition in the Roaring Twenties form the setting for this murder mystery in a small town in Oregon.  A young vaudeville performer bears a striking resemblance to a missing heiress, and the heiress's devious and unscrupulous uncle plots to use Leah to impersonate Jessie Carr, who reappears on her 21st birthday to claim her inheritance.  Leah has been on stage since her childhood, so becoming Jessie is no great challenge, but what if her secret is uncovered?  She could go to jail or worse, face the same fate as Jessie, who is probably dead.  Leah, as Jessie, has to fool her aunt, cousins and grandmother while exploring the family estate and asking questions to figure out the truth before Jessie's murderer makes her his next victim.

Burn by Walter Jury and Sarah Fine

Burn takes up where Scan, the story of a boy's fight to protect his father's invention, the scanner that can tell human from alien, leaves off.  The scanner is now in the hands of the H2 (alien) forces, but the enemy needs Tate to decipher his murdered father's coded files on how to use the technology and save the planet. Burn is a rollercoaster of a book, with Tate, a teenage version of television's MacGyver, struggling to outsmart his foes while evading capture himself.  There are action scenes galore, betrayals at the highest levels in the Fifty (the humans), arson, torture, and discovery of a new, even more lethal threat to earth's survival.  Impossible to put down.  

the impossible knife of memory by Laurie Halse Anderson

High school senior Hayley Kincain lives every day on edge.  She must walk on eggshells around her father, a veteran haunted by his wartime experiences whose escape through drinking and drugs leave him moody and unstable.  Her own past has taught her to fear trusting others and caring about anything or anyone except her dad.  Then into her life comes a charming, funny, persistent and thoughtful boy who wants to be with her and make her laugh.  Can Finn bring love and thoughts of a better future to Hayley, or is he just another distraction from her full time responsibilities trying to save her father from the ravages of his PTSD?  Great story!

The Porcupine of Truth by Bill Konigsberg

New Yorker Carson Smith and  homeless Aisha Stinson meet at the Billings Zoo and strike up an immediate friendship.  Both teens are struggling to cope with their totally dysfunctional families, mainly with their fathers.  Carson's disappeared from his life when Carson was a young child and is now dying and Aisha's dad kicked her out because he cannot accept that she is gay.  The two of them decide to solve the mystery of Carson's grandfather, whom they suspect is still alive, although he deserted Carson's dad decades earlier. They embark on a cross country road trip which tests their ingenuity, their resilience, their sense of humor, and the strength of their relationship.

Spare Parts by Joshua Davis

Davis tells the story of four Latino teens  from a disadvantaged community and high school in West Phoenix who compete in a national underwater robotics competition in the college division.  With a budget a fraction of MIT's, the teens design "Stinky," a funny-looking but remarkably effective underwater robot built with such materials as PVC pipe, string, a balloon and a milk container.  Confronted daily with issues of poverty, violence, and, in one case, the reality of being illegal, Oscar, Luis, Cristian and Lorenzo combine their various talents with the support of two dedicated teachers to qualify for the championship in Santa Barbara.  Alternately inspirational and sobering, Spare Parts is a compelling story.