Gwen Page has a life many musically talented teens would give their sheet music for, but it isn’t an easy one. The 17-year-old West Virginian is attending New York City’s Latham Academy of the Performing Arts on scholarship. As Andrew Clements’ new book, Things Hoped For, opens, graduation is nearing for Gwen, and if she wants to fulfill her dream of becoming a concert violinist, she’s going to have to be positively amazing at her upcoming auditions for three prestigious music schools. The pressure doesn’t let up at home, either; she lives in a brownstone with her 84-year-old grandfather, whose younger brother Hank has been showing up on a regular basis arguing and asking for money.

It’s hard to believe that things could get worse, but they do when her grandfather disappears, leaving behind a cryptic voicemail instructing Gwen to tell no one and to put Hank off until after her auditions. As the days slip by, Gwen begins to lose her musical focus worrying about her grandfather and Hank’s agitated visits.

That’s when a boy with a trumpet appears at her coffeehouse table and introduces himself his name is Robert Phillips, and he recognized Gwen from a summer program at the Tanglewood Institute that both attended. He’s flown in from Chicago to audition like Gwen, and Robert quickly proves to be a friend, cleverly putting off Uncle Hank so the two of them can practice for their respective tryouts. Robert is keeping a secret though (and fans of Clements’ previous novel, Things Not Seen, know what that incredible secret is), and Gwen’s already complicated life will soon take an unbelievable turn.

Clements is a compelling storyteller, and he has a real knack for creating realistic, believable characters. Gwen’s actions and reactions to both her everyday experiences and some admittedly incredible situations ring totally true. And while Things Hoped For is a sequel of sorts to Things Not Seen, it stands on its own as a novel well worth the time of any young reader. James Neal Webb is a copyright researcher at Vanderbilt University.

Was it a deer in the road, or a dog or the setting sun? What was it that caused Jenna’s mother to swerve across the Tappan Zee Bridge, killing herself and an oncoming driver and leaving Jenna critically injured? The teen can’t remember the details, but she’s certain that she’s to blame. Using fragmented, conversational sentences and occasional stream of consciousness, Joyce Carol Oates takes readers into the mind of 15-year-old Jenna Abbott in After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away.

After the swelling in Jenna’s brain has subsided, she finds herself in the blue, a dreamy state with little pain, no memories and no need for an estranged, workaholic father. But with more rehab, fewer meds and no place to call home, the blue fades away and Jenna begins to categorize the events in her life as either before the wreck or after the wreck. Resuming her life takes the teen from her New York City suburb to small-town New Hampshire to live with her aunt and start her sophomore year at a new high school. Desperate to return to the blue, she is drawn to Trina, a senior who abuses drugs and alcohol, purges, parties too hard anything to escape her own dark secrets. When one party gets out of hand, however, and Jenna faces tragedy once more, she finds herself wanting to become part of life again.

Another turning point for Jenna is meeting fellow student Crow, a mysterious, dark-haired biker who has survived a crash or two as well. Through their brief friendship, she confronts her guilt and learns to remember only what is important and forget the rest. So was it a deer, a dog or the setting sun that caused the accident? Through Jenna’s compelling story, Oates shows that what really matters is making the most of your life now.

The city of Ansul was once known as a place of learning, with its schools, libraries and temples to many gods, but that was before the Ald came out of the desert and conquered the city, destroying anything and anyone connected to books. Seventeen-year-old Memer despises the Ald, but she must be careful because the last cache of books is stashed in her house, hidden in a secret room only a few can enter.

The situation seems calm but hopeless until Orrec and his wife Gry arrive, along with their pet lion, to stay with Memer's family. Orrec has been invited to recite poetry a much revered talent before the court of the Gand, leader of the Ald. The son and priests of the Gand quickly demonstrate their dislike of anything not centered around their religion and their goal of destroying anything not of Ald. In contrast, the rebel forces in Ansul want Orrec to be their voice, to arouse the people to overthrow their oppressors and take back their city. Memer longs to join the rebels, but realizes this would put Orrec and Gry in danger and also could compromise the hidden books. As tensions rise in the city, Memer learns that something more than books lies hidden in the secret room, and that through her family, she is tied to this mysterious power.

In Voices, acclaimed science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin returns to the universe she created in the award-winning Gifts (2004), allowing teen readers to see Orrec and Gry 20 years later and also to explore another part of their world. In a fascinating novel that focuses on a clash between two cultures, readers will be absorbed as one young woman learns that life is rarely black and white, and that your enemy can become your friend.

Colleen R. Cahill works at the Library of Congress where she is recommending officer of science fiction and fantasy.

<b>A boy’s quest springs eternal</b> Could Endymion Spring be a <i>Da Vinci Code</i> for kids? With a touch of Harry Potter thrown in? The young adult/middle school thriller certainly fits the bill. Like the adult bestseller, this novel is built on threads of historical fact and has a mystery at its heart. Young Blake is a boy ready to be bored. He and his little sister, Duck, are stuck hanging around hallowed halls while his mom is a visiting scholar at Oxford University. One day Blake is browsing through the stacks of old, boring books when one book somehow seems to bite him. When he examines the brown leather volume, he sees the name Endymion Spring on the cover, but inside, the pages appear to be blank. Soon a poem appears, and Blake eventually realizes he is on a quest, and the poem is his first clue.

Blake soon encounters a homeless man who provides more clues, and one of his mother’s old professors starts to help out, too. However, Blake is also warned that others with evil intentions are on this mission and it is difficult for him to know whom he can trust. First-time author Matthew Skelton has a doctorate in English Literature from Oxford, and his novel is full of authentic details. He bases his mystery on the fact that a man named Johann Fust was Johann Guttenberg’s financial backer when he invented movable type. A rumor arose that Fust was actually the original Faust, a German magician who made a deal with the devil to obtain knowledge. Skelton brings the past to life by weaving in short chapters set in Germany in 1452, as narrated by Guttenberg’s apprentice, Endymion Spring. The mystery and mood in these chapters sets the tone for the book’s core drama, and provides a rich historical backdrop for Blake and his modern-day experiences. This may all sound rather complicated and esoteric for kids, but Skelton weaves together a fast-paced, easy-to-read tale. The book is heavy on action and mystery, and the history is blended in lightly, as needed. (Warner Brothers has already bought movie rights.) Much is resolved during Blake’s many seat-of the-pants adventures, BUT, of course, I won’t reveal the details. The ending is a definite setup for a sequel, so you’re likely to hear more of this magical tale. <i>Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.</i>

Ten-year-old Moon Blake knows a lot. He knows where to find food in the forest, even in the middle of winter. He knows how to build a fire without a match, how to construct a simple shelter, how to shoot a deer from a hundred yards and how to make his own clothing from the hides. All these things Moon has learned from his father. Pap has also taught Moon to distrust the government just as he does. We never asked for anything and nobody ever gave us anything, Pap says. Because of that, we don't owe anything to anybody. Squatting in a one-room cabin in the middle of the Alabama forests, Moon and Pap have almost no other human contact. When Pap breaks his leg, he refuses to let Moon bring a doctor. Instead, he gives Moon just one piece of advice before he dies from the infection that sets into the wound: head to Alaska, where he'll be able to find other people who live off the land just as Moon has learned to do.

Alaska's a long way from Alabama, though, and Moon soon finds himself on the run from the law. When he lands in a juvenile detention center, Moon discovers that with the loss of his freedom, he gains good food and the first friends he's ever known. When he gets a chance to escape and live off the land once again, will he finally choose a lonely life in the wilderness, or can he learn to trust and live with other people who care for him

In most other wilderness survival novels, young people must travel to the natural world in order to grow up. In his debut novel, Watt Key turns this genre on its head. In spare, unsentimental prose, Key offers a convincing portrait of a young man who is practically a professional in the wilderness but still has a lot to learn when it comes to friendship. Although parts of Moon's story may seem over-the-top, its fast pacing, adventurous storyline and true-to-life details about the natural world combine to produce a strikingly new kind of adventure novel.

Norah Piehl is a freelance writer and editor in the Boston area.

Unlike many of his fellow authors, John Green always intended to write books for young adults. " Most of the YA authors I know wrote a book and then were told it was YA, but I always wrote with that audience in mind," Green says. "I wanted to be a part of the process of broadening and deepening what it means to write for teenagers." If critical acclaim is any indication, he has certainly chosen the right career path. Green won the Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature for his first book, Looking for Alaska, a compelling portrait of the students at an Alabama boarding school. When he accepted the award at the American Library Association convention in June, Green says his parents brought along two books he wrote at the age of eight: It Just Isn't Fair, about a nerd who gets ridiculed, and Me and Mitch Learned a Lesson, an anti-bullying book.

Another bully appears in Green's new novel, An Abundance of Katherines, but he's a tiny part of a larger picture. The novel offers an offbeat, but ultimately wise, perspective on failed romance, even as it explores the challenges, hilarity and occasional moments of beauty on the path to adulthood. Green makes liberal use of footnotes and anagrams which, in the wrong hands, might be distracting. Not here; instead, his sly asides and wordplay-centric plot twists make the story even more fun, and the anagrammatic dedication to his wife, Sarah Urist Green, is an odd yet touching work of poetry. A snippet: Heart-reassuring/Signature Sharer/Easing rare hurts.

Though the couple lives in New York, the author spoke with BookPage from Chicago, where he and Sarah are spending a few months (she's working at the city's Museum of Contemporary Art). During an earlier stint in the Windy City, Green was on the staff of Booklist, an ALA publication, doing production and database management. "I was very fortunate that there was a great emphasis on everyone being book people, passionate readers," Green says of the experience. " I got the chance to review a lot of books, and it made a huge difference in my . . . writing life and reading life."

Green says he wrote An Abundance of Katherines while he was still working at Booklist, but adds, "it was really created after I left. The book took its form in revision." During that revision Green estimates 80 percent of the words changed over several additional drafts the novel assumed its final, unusual shape.

At the book's core is Colin, a recent high school graduate and former child prodigy who attempts to apply mathematical principles to his checkered romantic history. Colin is determined to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which will help him understand why he's been dumped by 19 girls named Katherine.

Colin's friend Hassan is a clever sort who gets impatient with Colin's mooning about, so the two teenagers set off in search of a little edification and a lot of adventure. They find it in Gutshot, Tennessee, where they befriend a girl named Lindsey and her mother, the local tampon-string factory owner who offers them a job and a place to stay for the summer. Two obvious questions might be: 1. Tampon-string factory? and 2. Does the theorem work? Green says he knew a girl in high school whose father owned just such a factory, and yes, it does.

Getting the theorem to make sense was a bit challenging, so he sought the help of his friend Daniel Biss, a 28-year-old Green describes as a genius, one of the best mathematicians in the world. (He's also an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and a research fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute.) The two worked on the theorem together, starting with the idea that a relationship can be represented by a graph in which the x-axis represents time, and key events a date, a vacation, a breakup can be plotted track the relationship's highs and lows, beginning and end. Green and Biss tested the theorem with their own ex-girlfriends as well as famous celebrity couples such as Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson.

"It's right 100 percent of the time," Green says. He emphasizes, though, that " I wrote [the theorem] to be beautiful. It's meant to be something to look at, with gorgeous clean lines. It was important to me to write a book a math idiot like me could enjoy completely without ever stopping to look at the math." Green isn't selling short his YA audience, though. The author routinely hears from his teenaged readers, "who are an amazingly smart and interesting bunch of people. I've been really impressed by the quality of their thinking." It is for those readers as well as any mathematicians inclined to pick up Katherines that Green worked to ensure the book's math is correct. "I wanted people who have the inclination to be able to look more deeply and to show readers that math can become a language, and a graph can tell a story."

John Green rearranged the letters in Linda M. Castellitto's name, and came up with the anagrams A slim, not little, cad and Maniac dolt tells it, among others.

David Case was doomed. Everywhere he looked he saw threats: plane crashes, car crashes, bird flu, serial killers, nuclear waste, alien invasions. The dark malevolence of it weighed on him and wrapped itself around him. This preoccupation with impending tragedy started when he caught his little brother about to leap out the window, attempting flight. Had David been two seconds slower to the rescue, little Charlie would be dead.

Hence, David's new preoccupation with Fate. What do you do when Fate has it in for you? If you're David, you change your name and maybe Fate won't find you. So David Case becomes the more tentatively named Justin Case. Nothing bad can happen to him because he really doesn't even exist. Little does he know that Fate is a character in the novel Just in Case, too, appearing every now and then in short, bold-faced chapters, just to remind us of its existence. In case we forget. Just in case.

Meg Rosoff won the 2005 Michael L. Printz Award for young adult literature for her first novel, How I Live Now, the story of a 15-year-old girl who goes to live with relatives in England, only to find herself caught up in the outbreak of the third world war. The first-person voice she created was perfect for putting readers right in the head of her self-absorbed teenager. David Case is self-absorbed, too, but the third-person voice here provides more space for the working out of this rich tale not just David's story or Justin's story, but Fate's, too.

In escaping Fate, Justin attaches himself to a band of quirky characters who will help him move beyond his self-absorption into the fold of family and friends. But that's how David's tale is resolved. Before he gets there is the heart of the book, a quest of sorts, including an invisible dog, a first sexual encounter, a plane crashing into the airport right where Justin had been standing moments before, and an almost fatal disease. Fate plays a particularly rough game of cat and mouse with David, whose mouse's tale is notable for electric prose, ruminations about life, death and fate, and characters who are larger than life, larger than fate.

Dean Schneider is an English teacher in Nashville.

"The first time I met my grandfather, he was laid up on a porcelain prep table at the Hamilton-Johnston Funeral Home. His eyes were wide open and he had a grin on his face, but he was as dead as doornail." So begins newcomer Helen Hemphill's engaging novel, a story of love and redemption, judgment and forgiveness, life and death . . . and Las Vegas.

Harlan Q. Stank, the 14-year-old protagonist, is working at the funeral home because he has left his own home after giving up on religion. This did not sit well with his father, Harlan P. Stank, the pastor of Sunnyside Savior Church. Harlan Q took up residence with the owners of the funeral home where the body of one Harlan O. Stank now rests. Got that genealogy? The middle initials are important: O is oldest, P is next and Q is the youngest. Harlan O and Harlan P have not been in touch with each other for 20 years, so it is quite a surprise when Harlan O shows up in Beans Creek, checks into the Wayfarer Motel, and ups and dies, before even so much as a phone call to his estranged son.

All the younger Stanks know is that Grandfather was worth quite a bit of cash, owned a Cadillac and lived in Las Vegas, far from boring Beans Creek. Mr. Stiletto, Grandfather's accountant, has everything in order and Harlan Q convinces the reverend that he can use the inheritance to start a radio mission, if only they could get to Las Vegas. So, they pack up the casket and start on the road trip of a lifetime.

Hemphill brings a fresh, humorous voice to her tale of travel, the big city, deception and forgiveness. Young Harlan Q, trying to leave Beans Creek behind, nearly loses himself. But in the end, he not only finds his own way, but gains insight into the mind and heart of his father. For readers who bemoan the violence and sordid storylines in many novels for teens, Hemphill's lively tale and memorable characters will be a breath of fresh air.

David Almond, who has become known for his haunting, sometimes surreal novels for young people (Skellig, Kit’s Wilderness), returns with Clay, possibly his eeriest and most thought-provoking novel to date.

Davie and Geordie are good kids, altar boys in the small, Catholic town of Felling. The two friends make good tips when they work the altar for weddings and funerals, they only occasionally nick their fathers’ cigarettes, and they usually manage to steer clear of Martin Mould, the brutal bully from the neighboring Protestant town. When Stephen Rose, an oddly intense boy with a troubled past, moves to Felling, Geordie is quick to dismiss the new boy as loony, but Davie grows more and more fascinated by Stephen’s magnetic personality and by the uncannily lifelike small clay creatures he makes. When Davie discovers that Stephen has the power to bring the clay creatures to life, he is drawn into a plot that may bring revenge on Martin Mould but may also draw the town and Davie himself into a force of evil beyond anything he could have imagined. Clay is rich in Biblical and literary imagery, drawing on such stories as the creation of Adam and the birth of Frankenstein’s monster. Images of the natural world are also vivid and disquieting, as when a dog is brutally mauled or a sunbathing bullfrog is devoured headfirst by a snake. Almond uses these images, as well as strong characterizations of Davie and his friends, to draw readers into the story and urge them to consider its broader philosophical questions about such topics as art, theology and the gray areas between good and evil. Almond’s greatest gift, though, is couching these genuinely thought-provoking questions in a fantasy story that is compelling in its own right. Clay may at times seem fanciful and far-fetched, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold great truths as Davie himself learns, crazy things might be the truest things of all. Norah Piehl is a freelance writer and editor in the Boston area.

Tony Abbott’s quietly powerful new novel, Firegirl, draws the reader in from the very first sentence because of what it doesn’t say. When the narrator, Tom Bender, announces that the whole Jessica Feeney thing wasn’t a big deal, we immediately realize that it was a very big deal indeed, especially for Tom. We find out why in short order, for Jessica is a survivor of a tragedy; she has been horribly burned, and her appearance is both frightening and fascinating to the seventh-graders at St. Catherine’s school.

Jessica’s arrival in Mrs. Tracy’s classroom is a pivotal moment for Tom, who is given to flights of fancy over a girl named Courtney, loves his superhero comics, and dreams of riding in the Ford Cobra that belongs to his buddy Jeff’s uncle. When he meets Jessica, however, Tom’s perspective begins to change. He recognizes that Jessica’s arrival in his class could be a great experience for all, but events take a sad and all-too-realistic turn.

Firegirl is a departure for Abbott, best known for the popular Secrets of Droon fantasy series. Here, through Tom’s marvelously understated voice, he presents a realistic story of middle schoolers struggling to accept a disfigured girl. Tom’s sympathy enables him to overcome the cruel speculation of his classmates to find out what really happened to the reclusive Jessica, and it affects him in ways that he doesn’t anticipate. His relationships with those around him change; he sees his best friend Jeff in a different light, and his crush Courtney sees him differently, as well, as a result of Jessica’s presence. Jessica herself changes through Tom’s halting efforts to understand her.

Understated, beautifully written and deeply moving, Firegirl is a book that young readers will treasure for its ability to illuminate the elements of the human spirit that we all have in common.

There are some kinds of trouble you never see coming, begins Elise Broach’s Desert Crossing, a young adult thriller and departure from her previous tween mystery and picture books. The narrator is Lucy Martinez, a high school freshman traveling with her older brother, Jamie, and his annoying best friend, Kit. Their drive from Kansas City to Phoenix to spend spring break with Lucy and Jamie’s father appears uneventful until they reach a long stretch of highway through the New Mexico desert.

A sudden, blinding rain. A few chugs of beer. A bump in the road. While Jamie thinks he saw he saw a coyote dart away from the car, Lucy insists that they investigate the cause of the bump. The teens cross a line between Ôthen’ and Ônow,’ as they discover a dead girl lying on the side of the road.

With the help of Beth, a local 30-something artist, the teens are able to call the police and find a place to stay when they are ordered to remain in the area during the initial investigation. Just as the rain turns dusty browns into lush greens, the seemingly lifeless desert holds more surprises for Lucy, Jamie and Kit. The three unexpectedly find themselves not wanting to leave.

For Jamie, the lure of the desert is a steamy romance with Beth. Although Lucy and Kit find themselves attracted to each other as well, Lucy’s biggest desire is solving the dead girl’s mysterious death. Their investigation goes where the police probe fails, as they find hidden evidence, risk their lives and lead the authorities to the real killer.

On the surface, Broach pens a suspenseful page-turner. What lies beneath her masterful storytelling is the loss of innocence and the pain of never being able to return. When the teens are finally able to leave the desert, they realize that their once normal lives have become a faade for the secrets they now carry. Angela Leeper is an educational consultant and freelance writer in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

Remember those after-school TV specials where the misunderstood, misfit high school student overcame all odds, learned how to be cool and discovered true love, all in 90 minutes? Well, King Dork is pretty much the total opposite of that. Antihero Tom Henderson (aka King Dork) doesn’t really care about succeeding in high school all he wants is to survive the daily hazing and humiliations that mark his days in the halls of seriously dysfunctional Hillmont High School: We attended our inane, pointless classes, in between which we did our best to dodge random attempts on our lives and dignity by our psychopathic social superiors. Tom’s deeply cynical attitude about life extends not only to his peers but also to his teachers. Most of them, according to Tom, belong to what he dubs the Catcher cult, and they are convinced that, since Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye changed their lives when they were in high school, they will dedicate their lives to bringing the novel to as many other troubled, misfit youth as possible. As it turns out, when Tom discovers a secret code hidden in a copy of The Catcher in the Rye that belonged to his dead feather, the novel might end up changing his life after all but not in ways anyone would have expected. About the only thing Tom isn’t cynical about is music. He and his best friend front a whole series of bands, although their musical activities are mostly limited to coming up with a series of creative band names (Tennis with Guitars), stage names (Love Love and the Prophet Samuel), and album titles ( Amphetamine Low ).

King Dork‘s musical slant, which may remind some readers of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, shouldn’t be any surprise, given that its author is the lead singer/songwriter of punk band The Mr. T Experience. Tom’s expletive-laden narration ( In my head, I’m like a late-night cable comedy special ) walks the fine line between absurdity and brutal honesty and will certainly draw the attention of readers whose own high school experiences are more like a horror movie than an after-school special. Norah Piehl is a freelance writer and editor in the Boston area.

Sixteen-year-old D.J. (short for Darlene Joyce) Schwenk’s family knows a lot about two things: football and farming. Dairy farming, to be exact. D.J.’s dad even names his cows after famous NFL players and coaches. D.J.’s two older brothers, football legends in their small Wisconsin town, are now in college on football scholarships, but they no longer talk to D.J.’s family after an argument that led to the silent treatment. Silence is actually a big problem in D.J.’s family: If there’s a problem or something, instead of solving it or anything, we just stop talking. Just like cows. D.

J. herself is getting frustrated with the whole farming thing. Her dad’s too stubborn to have surgery on his hip, so D.J.’s stuck with the milking and haying. D.J.’s mother and younger brother aren’t much help, either; they seem to have secrets of their own, and of course no one’s talking to anyone else.

Then, out of the blue, Brian Nelson enters D.J.’s life. The quarterback for a rival high school, Brian is sent to the Schwenk farm by his coach to learn a little discipline and hard work. At first, D.J. can’t stand Brian, who seems to spend all his time talking on his cell phone, shirking his duties and blaming other people for his problems. When D.J. uses her own football knowledge to train Brian, though, she discovers another side to him, a side that gets D.J. talking and thinking about her own life like never before.

This funny, heartfelt first novel features a heroine and a setting unlike most other novels for teens. D.J. is honest and smart, a normal-sized girl who can value her strength and her skills without obsessing about her weight, her clothes or her makeup. Humorous details about farm work and small-town life, recounted in D.J.’s own down-to-earth tone, help to paint a realistic picture. The novel doesn’t shy away from portraying small-town prejudices and loyalties in equal measure, giving readers a glimpse into a way of life that’s virtually invisible in most other young adult fiction. Norah Piehl is a freelance writer and editor in the Boston area.