As promised, here is my list. I've included some "bonus" titles at the end. These are high-demand titles that will be released soon, as well as a few highly anticipated stand-alone titles. You can also download the list in a Word file. (coming soon!)
Note: The book descriptions come from the CIP data provided by the LoC.
Best of the Best 2012
Young Adult Books
Prepared by Emily Davenport
Amir
and Khalil
Zahra's Paradise
Follows the efforts of Zahra and her oldest son, an Internet
blogger, to locate another son, Mehdi, after the young man vanishes during the
protests in the aftermath of Iran's fraudulent elections of 2009.
Jodi
Lynn Anderson
Tiger Lily
Fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily receives special protections from
the spiritual forces of Neverland, but then she meets her tribe's most
dangerous enemy--Peter Pan--and falls in love with him.
Jessica
Anthony
Chopsticks
Glory, having been raised by her father as a piano prodigy
after the death of her mother, is drawn to her new neighbor Frank and begins a
downward spiral into madness before disappearing.
Paolo
Bacigalupi
The Drowned Cities
Companion to Ship
Breaker. In a dark future America that has devolved into unending civil
wars, orphans Mahlia and Mouse barely escape the war-torn lands of the Drowned
Cities, but their fragile safety is soon threatened and Mahlia will have to
risk everything if she is to save Mouse, as he once saved her.
Leigh
Bardugo
Shadow and Bone
Orphaned by the Border Wars, Alina Starkov is taken from
obscurity and her only friend, Mal, to become the protege of the mysterious
Darkling, who trains her to join the magical elite in the belief that she is
the Sun Summoner, who can destroy the monsters of the Fold.
Rae
Carson
The Girl of Fire and Thorns
A fearful sixteen-year-old princess discovers her heroic
destiny after being married off to the king of a neighboring country in turmoil
and pursued by enemies seething with dark magic. Sequel will be published
September 18, 2012.
Kristin
Cashore
Bitterblue
Companion book to Graceling and Fire. Eighteen-year-old
Bitterblue, queen of Monsea, realizes her heavy responsibility and the futility
of relying on advisors who surround her with lies as she tries to help her
people to heal from the thirty-five-year spell cast by her father, a violent
psychopath with mind-altering abilities.
Cath
Crowley
Graffiti Moon
Told in alternating voices, an all-night adventure featuring
Lucy, who is determined to find an elusive graffiti artist named Shadow, and
Ed, the last person Lucy wants to spend time with, except for the fact that he
may know how to find Shadow.
emily
m. danforth
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
In the early 1990s, when gay teenager Cameron Post rebels
against her conservative Montana ranch town and her family decides she needs to
change her ways, she is sent to a gay conversion therapy center.
Huntley
Fitzpatrick
My Life Next Door
When Samantha, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy,
perfectionistic, Republican state senator, falls in love with the boy next
door, whose family is large, boisterous, and just making ends meet, she
discovers a different way to live, but when her mother is involved in a hit-and-run
accident Sam must make some difficult choices.
Madeleine
George
The Difference Between You and Me
School outsider Jesse, a lesbian, is having secret trysts
with Emily, the popular student council vice president, but when they find
themselves on opposite sides of a major issue and Jesse becomes more involved
with a student activist, they are forced to make a difficult decision.
Holly
Sloan Goldberg
I'll Be There
Raised by an unstable father who keeps constantly on the
move, Sam Border has long been the voice of his silent younger brother, Riddle,
but everything changes when Sam meets Emily Bell and, welcomed by her family,
the brothers encounter normalcy for the first time.
John
Green
The Fault in Our Stars
Sixteen year old Hazel, who has cancer, meets Augustus at a
kids-with-cancer support group and as they fall in love they both wonder how
they will be remembered.
Paul
Griffin
Stay With Me
Fifteen-year-olds Mack, a high school drop-out but a genius
with dogs, and Cece, who hopes to use her intelligence to avoid a life like her
mother's, meet and fall in love at the restaurant where they both work, but
when Mack lands in prison, he pushes Cece away and only a one-eared pit-bull
can keep them together.
Shannon Hale
Palace of Stone
Sequel
to Princess Academy. Miri goes to the
capital city to help Britta prepare for her marriage to the prince and to begin
her education at the Queen’s academy. The students she meets there are
preparing for something else--revolution.
Rachel
Hartman
Seraphina
In a world where dragons and humans coexist in an uneasy
truce and dragons can assume human form, Seraphina, whose mother died giving
birth to her, grapples with her own identity amid magical secrets and royal
scandals, while she struggles to accept and develop her extraordinary musical
talents
Geoff
Herback
Stupid Fast
Just before his sixteenth birthday, Felton Reinstein has a
sudden growth spurt that turns him from a small, jumpy, picked-on boy with the
nickname of "Squirrel Nut" to a powerful athlete, leading to new
friends, his first love, and the courage to confront his family's past and
current problems.
Faith
Erin Hicks
Friends With Boys
After an idyllic childhood of homeschooling with her mother
and three older brothers, Maggie enrolls in public high school, where
interacting with her peers is complicated by the melancholy ghost that has
followed her throughout her entire life.
Patrice
Kindl
Keeping the Castle
In order to support her family and maintain their ancient
castle in Lesser Hoo, seventeen-year-old Althea bears the burden of finding a
wealthy suitor who can remedy their financial problems.
Jo
Knowles
See You At Harry’s
Twelve-year-old
Fern feels invisible in her family, where grumpy eighteen-year-old Sarah is
working at the family restaurant, fourteen-year-old Holden is struggling with
school bullies and his emerging homosexuality, and adorable, three-year-old
Charlie is always the center of attention, and when tragedy strikes, the
fragile bond holding the family together is stretched almost to the breaking point.
Nina
LaCour
The Disenchantments
Colby is dismayed when his best friend, Beth, announces her
post-high school plans, sharing her intentions to start college after her
band's tour instead of spending a year in Europe with Colby, and as Colby
struggles to understand why she changed her mind, he begins to question what
losing Beth would mean for his future.
R.
L. LaFevers
Grave Mercy
Seventeen-year-old Ismae avoids an arranged marriage by
making a place for herself at the convent of St. Martin, where she learns of
her unique gifts and must determine whether she will be trained as an assassin
and serve as a handmaiden to Death.
David
Levithan
Every Day
A
wakes up everyday inside the mind and body of a different person. One day he
meets and falls in love with Rihannon, and despite the obstacles, tries to
return to her every day.
Mark
Long
Silence of Our Friends
A black family and a white family in 1960s Texas find common
ground during the Civil Rights Movement.
Marie
Lu
Legend
In a dark future, when North America has split into two
warring nations, fifteen-year-olds Day, a famous criminal, and prodigy June,
the brilliant soldier hired to capture him, discover that they have a common
enemy. The sequel Prodigy will be
released January 29, 2013.
Barry
Lyga
I Hunt Killers
Seventeen-year-old Jazz learned all about being a serial
killer from his notorious "Dear Old Dad." Believing he can fight his
own urges and right some of his father's wrongs, Jazz helps the police catch
the town's newest murderer, "The Impressionist," but, in doing so, he
discovers he may have more in common with his father than he thought.
Maile Meloy
The Apothecary
Fourteen-year-old Janie Scott, newly
arrived in London from Los Angeles in 1952, becomes friends with a mysterious
apothecary and his son, Benjamin Burrows, and is drawn into a dangerous
adventure with Benjamin when his father is kidnapped and Russian spies try to
steal his book of secrets.
Patricia
McCormick
Never Fall Down
When soldiers arrive in his hometown in Cambodia, Arn Chorn
Pond is separated from his family and sent to a labor camp, where he works in
the rice paddies until he volunteers to learn to play an instrument--a decision
that both saves his life and lands him in battle. Fictionalized account of a
true story.
Morgan
Matson
Second Chance Summer
After Taylor Edwards' family gets devastating news, they
decide to spend one last summer all together at their lake house in the Pocono
Mountains, they get to know each other again and bond, and Taylor remembers her
past friends and crush.
Walter
Dean Meyers
All the Right Stuff
The summer after his absentee father is killed in a random
shooting, Paul volunteers at a Harlem soup kitchen where he listens to lessons
about "the social contract" from an elderly African American man, and
mentors a seventeen-year-old unwed mother who wants to make it to college on a
basketball scholarship.
Marissa
Meyer
Cinder
Cinder, a gifted mechanic and a cyborg with a mysterious
past, is blamed by her stepmother for her stepsister's illness while a deadly
plague decimates the population of New Beijing, but when Cinder's life gets
intertwined with Prince Kai's, she finds herself at the center of an
intergalactic struggle.
Jennifer
Nielsen
The False Prince
In the country of Carthya, a devious nobleman engages four
orphans in a brutal competition to be selected to impersonate the king's
long-missing son in an effort to avoid a civil war.
Sarah
Ockler
Bittersweet
Hudson Avery gave up a promising competitive ice skating
career after her parents divorced when she was fourteen years old and now
spends her time baking cupcakes and helping out in her mother's upstate New
York diner, but when she gets a chance at a scholarship and starts coaching the
boys' hockey team, she realizes that she is not through with ice skating after
all.
Kenneth
Oppel
This Dark Endeavor
Victor and Konrad Frankenstein are inseparable twin brothers
who stumble upon The Dark Library, where secret books of alchemy and ancient
remedies are housed, but after their father forbids them to ever return to the
library Konrad falls gravely ill and Victor seeks out a cure for his brother
beyond traditional medicine. The sequel, Such
Wicked Intent, will be released on August 21, 2012.
Stephanie Perkins
Lola and the Boy Next
Door
Budding costume designer Lola Nolan
has big plans for the future but is pretty content with her life right now,
until the Bell twins move back in next door and Lola must deal with a lifetime
of feelings for Cricket and her longtime rivalry with his twin sister.
Matthew
Quick
Boy 21
Finley, an unnaturally quiet boy who is the only white player
on his high school's varsity basketball team, lives in a dismal Pennsylvania
town that is ruled by the Irish mob, and when his coach asks him to mentor a
troubled African American student who has transferred there from an elite
private school in California, he finds that they have a lot in common in spite
of their apparent differences.
Veronica
Roth
Insurgent
Sequel to Divergent. Tris Prior survives the Erudite
simulation attacks that occur during the time she expected to be celebrating
her achievement of being ranked first among the initiate class of her chosen
faction, Dauntless. Even though the Dauntless have been freed from Erudite mind
control, a war develops and secrets emerge.
Benjamin
Alire Saenz
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets
of the Universe
Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother
in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask
questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked
before.
Laini
Taylor
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Seventeen-year-old Karou, a lovely, enigmatic art student in
a Prague boarding school, carries a sketchbook of hideous, frightening
monsters--the chimaerae who form the only family she has ever known. The sequel
Days of Blood and Starlight will be
released November 6, 2012.
Siobhan
Vivian
The List
Emily and seven other high school girls struggle with the way
they see themselves and the way others see them after a list ranking the
prettiest and ugliest girls is posted.
Robin
Wasserman
The Book of Blood and Shadow
While working on a project translating letters from
sixteenth-century Prague, high school senior Nora Kane discovers her best
friend murdered with her boyfriend the apparent killer and is caught up in a
dangerous web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all searching for a
mysterious ancient device purported to allow direct communication with God.
Elizabeth
Wein
Code Name Verity
In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied
France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great
courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that
she can.
Jacqueline
Woodson
Beneath a Meth Moon: An Elegy
Laurel Daneau, having lost her mother, grandmother, and home
in Hurricane Katrina, thinks things are going well with her new life as a
cheerleader and the girlfriend of basketball start T-Boom, but after T-Boom
introduces her to meth and she finds the drug helps her deal with her past, she
must rely on the help of an artist named Moses and her friend Kaylee to
overcome the addiction.
High-Demand Sequels
Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver
Crossed by Ally Condie
The City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare
Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
The Sorceress by Michael Scott
Fever by Lauren DeStefano
Rapture by Lauren Kate
Coming Soon (Release dates subject to
change)
Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride
Adventure by James Patterson (August
6, 2012)
UnWholly by Neal Shusterman (Unwind, #2) (August 28, 2012)
The Rise of Nine (Lorien Legacies Trilogy #3) by Pittacus Lore (August
21, 2012)
Tilt by Ellen Hopkins (September 11, 2012)
The Diviners by Libba Bray (September 18, 2012)
Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan (Heroes of Olympus, #3) (October 2,
2012)
Ask the Passengers by A. S. King (October 23, 2012)
Beautiful Redemption by Kami Garcia (Beautiful Creatures #4) (October 23,
2012)
The Crimson Crown by Cinda Williams-Chima (Seven Realms Trilogy #4)
(October 23, 2012)
Finale (Hush, Hush #4) by Becca Fitzpatrick (October 23, 2012)
Rebel Heart by Moira Young (Dust Lands #2) (October 30, 2012)
Reached by Allie Condie (Matched, #3) (November 13, 2012)
Shades of Earth (Across the Universe, #3) by Beth Revis (January 15,
2013)
Requiem (Delirium #3) by Lauren Oliver (March 5, 2013)
The Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare (The Infernal Devices, #3) (March
19, 2013)
