Just as Nick is getting confident that he can handle the straight and narrow life, ghosts from his old life as rich, upper east side Manhattan punk graffiti artist start beckoning him back with a spray can and a smile. Almost against his will, he’s getting drawn back into the gang life when he tries to help out the mixed-up little brother of his best friend and secret crush, Kris. Now he’s found himself in the middle of a turf war, when all he wanted to do was to see how close he could get to Kris before she pushed him away–again. Can Nick save himself a second time, and make Kris see how much he really cares about her? It feels like author Jake Coburn is channeling the voice of Ponyboy, the amazing narrator of S.E.Hinton’s classic The Outsiders, and giving that voice an urban spit and polish through Nick. This is an authentic and strongly felt first novel.

Percy Montmount is the ultimate loner. Ever since his dad, an anthropologist, died on the Congo three years ago from a tsetse fly bite, Percy’s been acting a little strange–not like he was Mr. Popularity before, but stranger than usual. He’s started keeping an extensive field journal of his observations of that exotic group known as Grade Twelve. He has identified several different strains of that larger group, including the Lipstick/Hairspray tribe, the Logo tribe, and the Madonna Cult. All this observation leaves very little time for actual human interaction, but Percy doesn’t mind. As long as he’s writing, he doesn’t have to think about his dad’s death, his mom’s weird hippie habits, or his best friend’s suicide that resulted from an unrequited love with a member of the Lipstick/Hairspray tribe. But then, Graduation, that huge Rite of Passage, approaches, and with it, a secret about Percy’s family that could be just what Percy needs to shock him out of observation mode and back into the real world.(and I don’t mean the TV show)

Just some good, James-Bond-ian fun, Point Blank is an exciting, thrill ride of a spy story, that grabs you from the first line of the first chapter, and rockets you all the way to the end. Alex Rider is a 14 year old spy who works for MI6, England’s version of the CIA. His latest assignment is to check out what’s going on behind the scenes of the posh, ultra-exclusive French boy’s boarding school, Point Blanc. Outfitted with all kinds of cool spy toys (including a single gold stud he wears in his ear that, if pulled out, becomes a tiny bomb that detonates into a big explosion!) Alex discovers that the evil, red-glasses wearing headmaster and his goony female assistant (who is built like WWF’s former Chyna, but has the face of a bulldog) are using the school in the remote French Alps as a cover-up for a much nastier, diabolical plot to take over the free world!! Evil clones, secret passageways and heart-stopping snowmobile chases are just a few of the close encounters Alex has as he searches for the truth hidden in the walls of Point Blanc. And the ending is a kick-ass cliff hanger that can only be answered in a follow-up sequel that I can’t wait to read! If you become as hooked on Alex’s “Alias”-like existence, be sure to read about how he first came to work for MI6 in Horowitz’s first Alex Rider book, Stormbreaker.

High school juniors McCallister, Beaterson and Deshutis are the four-man flag football team Three Clams and an Oyster, except there’s only three of them. There used to be four, but their best bud Cade Savage can’t be depended on anymore since he’s become so interested in drinking and partying. Now it’s the final weekend before the September deadline of listing your team members on the roster, and the three Clams are up a creek. Do they officially dump Savage for a.) Big Man on Campus Thor, who’s a local football legend, but smokes a little too much weed, b.) Tim Goon, he of the unfortunate last name, “man breasts,” and Wayne Newton resemblance, but also owner of a ski cabin he might let the guys use, c.) or Rachel Summerfield, the best jock of them all, but so pretty and confident that the guys aren’t sure they can deal with her upstaging them. Over the course of one weekend, these three dudes have some of the most realistic conversations and arguments I’ve ever read in a teen novel that range from hilarious to heart-breaking as they try to make the most mature decision, learning a lot about themselves and each other in the process. And if you’re not a huge fan of flag football, don’t worry about it. Because this super-smart, funny book is about just about everything else BUT football.

TJ, a high school senior of black, Japanese and white heritage, is tired of all the jocks making the rules at his school, especially when he’s just as gifted athletically—he just chooses not to be a “team player.” He decides to challenge all the muscle-heads by assembling a swim team made up of the school’s biggest “losers,” knowing it will just kill all the jocks to see the guys they make fun of on a daily basis sporting letter jackets. Can he handle the fallout and his own uncontrollable anger when the situation gets out of control? A great guy read full of flying fists, brave hearts and tough decisions.

Jason is a loner, and one of those sweet guys who likes babysitting and helping out with younger kids. Except now one of his little friends Alicia has been murdered and dumped in the woods, and Jason was the last one to see her alive. Now the local police have brought in their top interrogator, Trent, a mysterious man known for ALWAYS getting his confession. And Jason has a secret…or does he? Will Trent force Jason to confess, whether he’s guilty or not? Become a fly on the wall of the interrogation room in this tense, hyper-suspensful psychological thriller by the late, great Robert Cormier.

Sura has been thrown into a hard core juvie center for “clipping hoodies.” His cock-sure, sensitive, yet unsentimental voice chronicles the abuses and brutal conditions he suffers in authentic sounding street slang that sounds like The Clockwork Orange meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. While madness and rage swirl all around him and threaten to beat him down, Sura manages to keep the evil of the place at bay by concentrating on the sanctity of his home, which he never plans to take for granted again. With more instinct than intellect, he knows how to keep his head low even as both of his roommates get sucked in and destroyed by the system. With a perfect ear, Adam Rapp has done the nearly impossible–written a book about a boy that sounds like it was written by a boy and not a well-meaning adult. He joins the ranks of Laurie Halse Anderson and E.R. Frank as one of my all-time, stand-out YA favs.

Hardcore skater Grady Grennen isn’t too thrilled about what life’s been dishing out to him lately. First, his heavy metal rock star mom overdosed a year ago, leaving him high and dry with his grandma. His half-brother, Louie, while loveable, is developmentally disabled, which doesn’t exactly make him the greatest sounding board for Grady’s thoughts and feelings concerning his mom’s death. Now, he’s been sucker-punched with more bad news: his grandma wants to take off across America in a Winnebago with her octogenarian lover, so Grady has to decide if he wants to go to school abroad on his mom’s remaining fortune, or live with Louie and his rigid, religious-right stepmom (and she’s no Julia Roberts!) Plus, there’s going to be this big concert in honor of the first anniversary of his mom’s death, and the band wants Grady to say a few words. But all Grady can do is wonder what the hell he’s going to say about his absentee mom who toured constantly and died choking on her own vomit. This book is just too cool for school. I recommend reading it as soon as possible before it is watered down and made into a CW Wednesday night series.

Everybody’s good at something. Most of us have a talent for stuff like soccer, playing the piano, or even geometry. In the book Stone Cold, 16 year old Denn finds out what he’s REALLY good at–playing poker. And not just for matchsticks, either. Denn is so good that he’s winning thousand dollar pots from adult players and buying cars and jewelery with no problem, because money talks. But the more Denn wins, the colder he feels–towards his parents, his friends, even his best girl. Denn may be raking in the dough, but he’s selling his soul doing it. Everybody’s good at something. But the thing you’re good at isn’t always good for you. If you liked the movie Rounders, give the reading roulette wheel a spin with Stone Cold–you’ll come out a winner.

Rock Kindle is a Revolutionary War buff. He knows every battle, general, and weapon. But all those facts and figures don’t always help Rock when it comes to the war he wages with his father. Rock’s dad is a militaristic control freak who enjoys snapping orders at his two sons and his fearful wife, who rarely leaves the house. When Rock and his brother Cliff help their friend Liza run away from her abusive home, Rock starts to wonder if he should start making plans to leave his own. But Rock doesn’t know if he has the courage to turn traitor against his father, even it means saving his brother, his mother and even himself. A good read for the teenage underdog in all of us.

The plot of this book is so stuffed full of murder, mayhem, suicide, ghosts, romance and redemption that I hardly know where to start. So here goes–17 year old David, after being accused and acquited of his girlfriend’s murder, moves out of his house and in with his aunt and uncle, in an attempt to forget all the crap he’s been through in the past year. But its hard to deal with his own pain when his aunt and uncle are giving each other the silent treatment and his freaky little cousin Lily is giving him the evil eye. Then, to make things even worse, he starts to see a lighted form that may or may not be the ghost of his other cousin, Lily’s big sister who supposedly committed suicide. In the middle of all this creepiness, David still finds time to fall in love with the artsy hippie chick who lives in the front apartment of his uncle’s house. So, what’s a guy to do? David starts sluething around in his family history to try and learn a little more about his cousin’s death and why Lily is such a little weirdo. What he finds out will make your toes curl as this novel comes to a crashing climax. A satisfyingly scary, psychologically thrilling read.

Paul Fisher may be a geek with glasses, but he can see a lot of stuff that his clueless parents seem to miss. For one thing, Paul is the only one who notices that his older brother Eric is a registered psycho, who tortures his classmates with his goonish buddy. But dear old dad is too caught up in the “Eric Fisher Football Dream” to notice that his place-kicking son is also a wacko, and Paul’s too busy trying to get in good with the soccer-jocks to try and explain. It’s going to take a bolt of lightening and a lost memory to finally make his family see what he’s seen all along. A gripping, suburban gothic read.

Robbie Jones has just shot the local convenience store owner with his father’s gun and nobody really knows why, least of all Robbie himself. Robbie’s story is told by all the bystanders of this crime that jumps right out of the headlines: his parents, his one good friend, the store owner’s wife and the girl that he wanted as his girlfriend, but who wanted nothing to do with him. The only way Robbie communicates at all after the shooting is through drawing his comic strip of Megaboy, superhero and protector of Earth. Was Robbie pretending to be Megaboy when he shot the gun? Or did he imagine that his crush, Tara, would be impressed with his actions? The reader has to come to his own conclusions about why Robbie did it, which is really the greatest strength of this slim, graphic-packed novel. You can read it over lunch, then think about it all day.