Get those teens reading this summer. Here's the High School Summer Reading List

19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult
In nineteen minutes the world can change. This stark story of a high school shooting shows how those minutes changed the lives of an entire town.

Acceleration by Graham McNamee
17 year old Duncan and his friend find the diary of a serial killer in a bus terminal and decide to try to stop him in this exciting thriller.

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
In this science fiction novel, Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl traveling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence of mysterious winged creatures reportedly living hundreds of feet above the Earth's surface.

Autobiography of My Dead Brother by Walter Dean Myers
Jesse pours his heart and soul into his sketchbook to make sense of the loss of a close friend life in his troubled Harlem neighborhood.

Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed by J. C. Bradbury
Is being left-handed really a disadvantage for a catcher? What role, really, do steroids play in being a home-run king? (You may be surprised at the answer.) How can we effectively evaluate a player's value to his team? Ball fans may be shocked at how relevant economics is to their favorite game.

Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
On a remote outpost of the Galapagos, where Darwin received his first inklings of the theory of evolution, two scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, have spent 20 years measuring the beaks of generations of finches--to prove that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory.

Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima enters his life. She is a curandera, one who heals with herbs and magic. Under her wise guidance, Antonia will probe the family ties that bind him, and he will find in himself the magical secrets of the pagan pasta mythic legacy equally as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America in which he has been schooled. At each turn in his life there is Ultima who will nurture the birth of his soul.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcom Gladwell
How do we make decisions--good and bad--and why are some people so much better at it than others? That's the question Malcolm Gladwell asks and answers in BLINK. Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology, examining case studies as diverse as speed dating, pop music, and the New Coke, Gladwell shows how the difference between good decision making and bad has nothing to do with how much information we can process quickly, but rather with the few particular details on which we focus.

Born to Rock by Gordon Korman
High school senior Leo Caraway, a conservative Republican, learns that his biological father is a punk rock legend.

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
The story of an Antarctic researcher on earth and the "lives" of spirits in the afterlife are interwoven in this dark and compelling novel.

Cubanita by Gabby Triana
Seventeen-year-old Isabel, eager to leave Miami to attend the University of Michigan and escape her over protective Cuban mother, learns some truths about her family's past and makes important decisions about the type of person she wants to be.

Dear John by Nicholas Sparks
After he is released from the Army, John Tyree plans to spend the rest of his life with Savannah Lynn Curtis, but the events of September 11 change everything.

Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
Cryptographer Susan Fletcher finds herself fighting for her country, her life, and the life of the man she loves when she is called in by the National Security Agency to decipher a mysterious code and discovers a plot that has the power to cripple U.S. intelligence.

The Double Bind by Chris Bohjaljian
After a tragic attack, biker and college student Laurel Estabrook, withdraws into her photography and becomes fascinated with one of the inhabitants at the homeless shelter where she volunteers. She begins to explore a mystery which could lead her into danger again.

Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama
Barack Obama tells the story of his life as the son of a black African father and a white American mother, searching for a workable meaning to his life as an African American.

Emako Blue by Brenda Woods
Monterey, Savannah, Jamal, and Eddie have never had much to do with each other until Emako Blue shows up at chorus practice, but just as the lives of the five Los Angeles high school students become intertwined, tragedy tears them apart.

Eragon by Chistopher Paolini
In this first novel of the Inheritance trilogy a young boy finds a mysterious stone that brings him into a fantasy world of wonder and danger.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close byJonathan Safran
Foer Oskar Schell encounters a number of interesting characters as he searches for information about his father who died in the World Trade Tower and tries to find the lock that fits the mysterious key that was found with his fathers belongings.

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
Fast food has become a veritable American institution, with restaurants serving a quick bite in every strip mall and roadside rest area across the country. But, according to Fast Food Nation, the fast food establishment has been serving up much more than just cheap hamburgers and greasy fries. In compelling fashion, author Eric Schlosser traces the growth of fast food chains after World War II and condemns the industry for giving rise to such cultural maladies as obesity, classism, American global imperialism, and environmental devastation.

Flags of our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima by James Bradley
James Bradley examines the lives of the six young men who raised the American flag over Iwo Jima in February 1945 and were immortalized by a famous photograph--one of whom was Bradley's father.

Floor of the Sky by Pamela Carter Joern
In rural Nebraska, nothing is more important than the family and the farm. When an older woman faces losing both, she comes to terms with her closest relationships.

Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares
As their lives take them in different directions, Lena, Tibby, Carmen, and Bridget discover many more
things about themselves and the importance of their relationship with each other.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an econo-mist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday lifefrom cheating and crime to sports and childrearing and whose conclusions turn conventional wisdom on its head.

Friday Night Lights by H. G. Bissinger
This football story shows how the game can become important to an entire community. It also draws attention to the sometimes difficult relationship between sports and education in high schools.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The author recalls her life growing up in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and distant mother and describes how she and her siblings had to fend for themselves until they finally found the resources and will to leave home.

Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger
After starting to publish a magazine in which he writes his secret feelings about his lonely life and his parents' divorce, sixteen-year-old John meets an unusual girl and begins to develop a healthier personality.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
In this long awaited final installment of the Harry Potter series, we learn what becomes of Harry Potter and his friends.

Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming by Al Gore
In this book based on the award winning documentary of the same title, Former Vice President Al Gore examines the climate crisis that is threatening the future of the planet, describes what the world's governments are doing to correct the problem, and explains why the problem should be taken more seriously.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Somali-born author Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the most controversial women on earth. For years, she has been forced to live in hiding; her life has been threatened numerous times; an anti-Koran script that she wrote provoked the assassination of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh; and a dispute over her citizenship indirectly brought down the Dutch government. Her feminist memoir reflects upon the role of women in the Islamic world.

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
In this story set in the Dominican Republic during the brutal Trujillo regime, three sisters known as the Mariposas, risk their lives by getting involved in a plot to overthrow the government.

It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
New York City teenager Craig Gilner succumbs to academic and social pressures at an elite high school and enters a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide.

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
Isolated from friends who believe the worst because she has not been truthful with them, sixteen-year old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face and share what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life.

Liseys Story by Stephen King
This horror story tells of the wife of a deceased author who learns more about him and the dark world that he wrote about as she explores his work.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Mrquez
A classic love story that spans decades, tracing the lives of three people and their entwined fates.

Love Walked in by Marisa de Los Santos
Eleven-year-old Clare Hobbes takes her life into her own hands after her mother disappears, setting out to find her estranged father, and along the way befriends Cornelia, a coffee shop waitress struggling to realize her dreams.

No Right Turn by Terry Trueman
After three years of wanting only to be invisible, sixteen-year-old Jordan begins to recover from his father's suicide and start living again when a neighbor's vintage Corvette Stingray opens up new possibilities for him.

Notes from a Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick
After being assigned to perform community service at a nursing home, sixteen-year-old Alex befriends a cantankerous old man who has some lessons to impart about jazz guitar playing, love, and forgiveness.

Paradise by Toni Morrison
A small town in Oklahoma that has been a haven for African Americans in becomes the scene of horrific violence. As the story behind the violence unfolds, the dark history of the town reveals itself.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Unfolding in a terrifying future where Armageddon has been waged and lost, The Road traces the odyssey of a father and his young son through a desolate landscape of devastation and danger.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes 'unstuck in time' after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See
Friends Snow Flower and Lily find solace in their bond as they face isolation, arranged marriages, loss, and motherhood in nineteenth-century China.

Sold by Patricia McCormick
Lakshmi, in order to help her family, undertakes a long journey and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope, but she soon discovers the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution. Son of the Mob Gordon Korman Seventeen-year-old Vince's life is constantly complicated by the fact that he is the son of a powerful Mafia boss, a relationship that threatens to destroy his romance with the daughter of an FBI agent.

The Greatest: Muhammad Ali by Walter Dean Myers
An illustrated biography of boxing great Muhammad Ali that addresses his politics, his fight against Parkinson's disease, and the dangers of boxing.

The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
Set in the near future, America has become a puritanical theocracy and Offred tells her story as a Handmaid under the new social order whose function is to breed.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Dr. David Henry, forced to deliver his own twins during a snowstorm in 1964 with only a nurse to help him, makes a decision that has far-reaching effects on his life, and the lives of his wife and son, when his infant daughter is born with Down Syndrome, and in a vain attempt to protect his wife, he orders the nurse to take the baby to an institution.

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios
This comic book lover and author explores the scientific theory behind the super feats of those superheroes we know and love.

The Sledding Hill by Chris Crutcher
Billy, recently deceased, keeps an eye on his best friend, fourteen-year-old Eddie, and helps him stand up to a conservative minister and English teacher who is orchestrating a censorship challenge.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyers
When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Tally is faced with a difficult choice when her new friend Shay decides to risk life on the outside rather than submit to the forced operation that turns sixteen year old girls into gorgeous beauties, and realizes that there is a whole new side to the pretty world that she doesn't like.

Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen
Ninety-year-old Jacob Jankowski finds himself haunted by memories of his past in the circus; the freaks, exotic animals, and other people he encountered as a performer.

Word Freak: Heartbreak,Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis
Since the game of Scrabble was created in the 1940s, more than 100 million sets have been sold in 121 countries. Because Scrabble requires a unique combination of luck, strategy, and word skills, even "friendly" games can end up in heated battles for "bragging rights. Competitive Scrabble, though, as Fatsis makes clear, is fought at a much higher level of intensity. Fatsis is a regular commentator for NPR's All Things Considered.

Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now by Maya Angelou
Fans of Angelou will devour this collection of essays that offer the reflections of a wise woman and gifted writer.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
In 1666 an attack of the bubonic plague came upon a small English town. The inflicted quarantine themselves in order to save the rest of the countryside from being infected. Anna Frith, a housemaid, becomes an unlikely hero as she helps neighbors try to survive the terrible plague.

Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris
A saga of three generations of Indian women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of kinship. Starting in the present day and moving backward, the novel is told in the voices of the three women: fifteen-year-old part-black Rayona; her American Indian mother, Christine, consumed by tenderness and resentment toward those she loves; and the fierce and mysterious Ida, mother and grandmother whose haunting secrets, betrayals, and dreams echo through the years, braiding together the strands of the shared past.

Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
Learn how to approach Zen philosophy through the understanding archery. Improve your game and
your mind.