The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton

There are books that are impossible to put down because the story is compelling, the pacing is brisk, and the suspense is palpable.  In this case, reading The Quality of Silence, I felt I actually had to take breaks because it was too intense, combining the threats of two implacable enemies, an anonymous but very sinister trucker who is following Yasmin and her daughter Ruby as they drive deeper and deeper into the vast and empty interior of Alaska in search of their husband and father, and the weather, cruelly cold and building quickly into a ferocious blizzard.  For Yasmin and Ruby are on their own, driving a "borrowed" semi north towards Anaktue, an isolated native village recently destroyed by fire.  The village is where Matt Alfredson was last seen alive.  They know they are being followed, but they didn't know why.  All Yasmin believes is that despite the police report, her husband is still alive but is now at the mercy of the Alaskan winter and won't survive unless she finds him.  Great stuff.

Dead Wake: the last crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson

Erik Larson has a way of making history come alive.  Even though we know the ending,  it's almost impossible not to root for those passengers who have roles in the story.  Larson of course goes beyond the individual miracles and tragedies;  he sets the stage with the top secret British Room 40--a place where German wireless transmissions to its naval fleet were routinely captured and translated.  (The catch to having such a valuable trove of information was that if the British showed what they knew by their reactions, the Germans would soon realize their codes were broken.)    We can see inside of submarine U-20 as it travels from its home base around the Irish coast to take up a position along the highly traveled routes to Liverpool.  We become acquainted with life aboard ship, the degree of preparations for emergencies, and the general mood that no one could sink the Lusitania, one of the fastest  non-military vessels in service. News to me--Larson writes of how distracted President Wilson was at this point of the European War--mourning his dead wife and becoming involved with another woman.  How many American deaths would have to occur before he takes notice?  Tension builds as the strands of the story come together, and the details of the eventual torpedo attack and sinking are filled with drama and pathos.  This is a great way to absorb history.  Recommended

The Gospel of Winter by Brendan Kiely

It's one thing to read about the rash of sexual abuse cases in the Catholic church and quite another to see the looming tragedy through the life of one of its victims, sixteen-year-old Aiden Donovan. Trying to deal with his father's sudden abandonment of the family and his own loneliness, Aiden looks to his local priest for support.  Gradually he realizes that Father Greg's affections are not healthy, and he is not the only special boy in the priest's life.   Aiden's struggle to deal with his sense of betrayal, shame, and anger form the core of the book.  Related though Aiden, this is a thoughtful,  relevant, and eventually hopeful story.

These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

Jo Montfort lives a life of privilege in New York City during the Gilded Age.  For a young woman of her background, this means finishing her education at an elite, private academy and marrying a young man with an equivalent pedigree.  However, Jo is not like her friends; she loves to write and in her dreams she becomes the next Nellie Bly--a famous journalist.  When her father commits suicide, Jo is forced to face her future.  Does she marry her family's choice and assume her rightful place in society or does she start investigating her father's suspicious death  at the risk of ruining her reputation and, possibly, losing her life.  This mystery combines a complex and gripping plot with  glimpses of life amongst both the very rich and very poor in 1890's New York.  Author Donnelly seasons the story with romance, as Jo is drawn to a reporter, whom her family would never accept.  Great stuff.

After the Wind by Lou Kasischke

Most readers of adventure and outdoor nonfiction are familiar with Jon Krakauer's account, Into Thin Air,  about the disaster that unfolded on Mt. Everest in 1996.  Krakauer's book combines both his personal and journalist's perspective, covering the stories of all of the expeditions involved, including the one where he was embedded.  In contrast, Kassichke focuses solely on his own experience, from his training regimen and initial contacts with expedition head Rob Hall to his own suffering and near-death experience on the mountain.  This is an absolutely gripping book . . .  I was reading it during the Seahawks/Vikings game and it made the description of the cold on Everest all the more real.  (Btw, the football players had nothing to complain about, compared to what the climbers endured!!)  Kassichke is refreshingly honest on where he feels the blame lies for this tragedy.  His personal struggle to make the right decision on whether to summit and the strength of his analysis of the inevitable fate of the Hall expedition make this a very compelling story.  Strongly recommended.

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

At eighteen, Madeline Whittier remains a teenager who has never (within her memory) breathed fresh air, played outside, gone to school, or done anything a healthy teen might do.  Madeline has been diagnosed with severe combined immunodeficiency, or the "bubble baby disease."  She is allergic to many, if not most, things in the environment, any of which can trigger a fatal reaction.  So she reads, plays word games with her mom, and takes classes online.  Then Olly moves in next door.  What starts as sneaking peaks moves on to mime, then IM.  Madeline is falling in love.  The very things she wants--to meet Olly in person, to expand her universe, to live her life more fully, could also be her death warrant.  Beautifully told and illustrated, Everything, Everything is a moving love story.

The Doubt Factory by Paolo Bacigalupi

Alix Banks is a model teenager--successful in school, good at sports, responsible for her kid brother, and very, very rich.  The problem is, all of that wealth and privilege comes at a cost, the way her father earns his living.  Alix is stalked and eventually kidnapped by a group of kids--orphans--who want her to know about her father and to help them "get even" for the damage he has done to them and to others like them.  The book is a roller coaster of plots, back-up plots, con jobs, betrayals, and dangers as the kids take on the powers of the public relations industry, pharmaceutical companies, private security firms and more.  Bacigalupi wraps serious social problems in a plot filled with action and ethical dilemmas.  Great read!

Wildlife by Fiona Wood

Australian author Wood sets this drama about teen relationships and challenges in an isolated wilderness camp for privileged youth. There are two main protagonists who tell their stories in alternating chapters: Sibylla, newly popular but uncomfortable with the way her friend Holly pushes her to hook up with the school's most dreamy guy, and new girl, Lou, who is attending the program as a way to reconnect with the world following the death of her boyfriend. The girls' stories intersect as Lou observes how Holly manipulates Sib and wonders how or whether to intervene. Lou, in turn, is a mystery to others in her cabin, and Sib tries to protect her against Holly's bullying. Supporting characters Holly and Michael challenge Sib to learn what friendship really means. There's a lot of entertaining stuff about life in an outdoor education school--learning to get along with your bunkmates, griping about food and chores, and playing pranks on other cabins. The events and personal struggles ring true; I totally enjoyed Wildlife.

The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey

The girl in this grisly story is a member of the "hungries," zombies who are driven to feed on human flesh.  Melanie is different, however.  Like the others, she is drawn to humans by their scent and is gripped with an almost uncontrollable urge to attack.  However, Melanie, though just a child, understands who she is and has desires and values that go beyond her baser instincts.   The plot revolves around a small group of survivors fleeing from an attack by another band of killers, the junkers.  Two soldiers, a "mad scientist" who wants to cut up Melanie's brain, Melanie, and a beloved teacher are struggling to work their way across lawless and dangerous terrain to reach a place of refuge.  The tension is unrelenting and the consequences for being discovered are beyond nightmarish.  I couldn't put it down.

Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman and Deadly Design by Debra Dockter

These two exciting books deal with death-defying challenges for two teens, one who is facing a complete psychotic breakdown and the other who knows his heart is programmed to fail and he won’t live beyond his seventeenth birthday.

In Challenger Deep, Caden Bosch is becoming increasingly unstable and unpredictable. In his more cognitively aware moments he knows his parents are really his parents, that no one at school wants to kill him, but forces beyond his control have created a bizarre world driving him further and further away from his family and friends. The author draws on the experiences in his own family with his own son to describe the descent into mental illness and the process of healing.

Deadly Design takes on the idea of genetic manipulation of eggs in a fertility clinic to create seemingly perfect children. Kyle McAdams and his identical twin brother (but born 2 years earlier) are two of these children. Connor becomes a star football and basketball player, track star and honor student while Kyle lags behind--spending most of his time playing video games. Then Connor and several other astonishingly beautiful and talented teens die of heart failure upon their eighteenth birthday. After tracing all of them back to the same fertility lab, Kyle needs to figure out why they died and how he can avoid the same fate. Full of intrigue and evil scientists,

Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton

Seeker is a nail-biter of a book, full of action, hints of romance, and agonizing moral choices as three teens, Quinn, Shinobu, and John, struggle for control of time- and place-bending powers.  Quinn and Shinobu, upon taking their oaths as seekers, discover the darker side of their new responsibilities and want nothing more to do with them.  Escape is seen as betrayal and carries its own consequences, and John's desire to restore his family's legacy ultimately threatens to destroy Quinn, even though he loves her.  Great stuff!!

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.

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Theodore Finch meets Violet Markey when both climb to the school's bell tower to contemplate what it would mean to jump.  Forever searching for a way to justify living, Finch combines two projects--a geography class assignment to visit special places in the state (Indiana) and helping Violet to deal with her despair at the recent loss of her older sister.  The pair's developing relationship is told in alternating viewpoints that contrast Finch's irrepressible nature and attraction to Violet with her reluctance to be associated with someone commonly known as Freak.  The dialog is witty and the teens are sympathetic and engaging. The book deals with  love, responsibility,  family dysfunctions, school bullying and peer pressure, and mental illness.  This is both a satisfying and heart-wrenching story.

Alice & Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis by Alexis Coe

Coe explores Southern society in the 1890's from the perspective of sensationalist coverage of the trial that followed Alice Mitchell's murder of her former fiancee Freda Ward.  The public and doctors of the day were incapable of understanding the same-sex attraction that compelled nineteen-year-old Alice to propose marriage to seventeen-year-old Freda and then drove Alice to desperation when Freda's family discovered the affair and forbade any future contact between the two.  Terms such as deviancy, perversion, and insanity appeared often during the trial. Coe delves into the limited roles and possibilities of girls and women during the Victorian era.  The author also compares the type of justice applied to genteel white women to the lynching of three black men. The narrative is enhanced with primary source materials, particularly the impassioned love letters between Alice and Freda.  This is a fascinating glimpse of social mores in a distant place and time.  Recommended.

The Thicket by Joe. R. Lansdale

About 10 years ago HBO carried a series called Deadwood about the wild west as lived in Deadwood, South Dakota in the 1870's.   The series was memorable for its depiction of the squalor, ugliness, violence, and random acts of kindness in a free-wheeling frontier town .  The Thicket gives much the same feel, only this time in East Texas.  The story revolves around 16-year-old Jack Parker who loses his parents to smallpox, his grandfather to murder, and his sister to kidnapping by a band of low-lifes, all in a matter of days.  Determined to rescue his sister, Jack joins forces with a dwarf bounty hunter, his sidekick--a huge black man with an oversized shotgun, and, eventually, a prostitute, newly retired.  Their adventure has more than its share of evil doings by evil doers, all described in excruciating detail.  Nonetheless--or maybe because of--the slaughter and ever-present dangers, the book is hard to put down.  Jack tells his story with much dark humor and understatement, and he makes his partners at once engaging and ruthless.  Trigger warning:  some sex and frequent violence.