Our teen book spotlight this week is on some of our favorite staff pick reads!!! To help us kick off these summer months filled with reading, we are sharing some of our favorite books so you can have some amazing titles to help you get started or to help you get out of a reading slump if that is where you find yourself. We have a great mixture of nonfiction, realistic, first in a series and more so there is something for everyone or maybe something to read outside of your book comfort zone! These books and more can be found by searching the catalog using the search tag #yastaffpicks as well as on Libby and Hoopla. Check back next week for a new teen book spotlight and if you have any book suggestions, please let us know!!
Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers--In 15th-century Brittany, 17-year-old Ismae flees an abusive father and an unwanted arranged marriage, making her way to the Convent of St. Mortain where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Soon after arriving, Ismae is contacted directly by Mortain, the god of death himself, who reveals he has selected her to be his handmaiden. In order to fulfill this role – and remain within the Convent's secure walls – Ismae must become an assassin and instrument of Mortain's will. Ismae reluctantly accepts, and soon after is sent on her first mission: to observe the Breton noble Duval and kill him if he proves to be a traitor. The task at first seems rather straightforward, but is made all the more difficult by the pair's sudden and growing attraction to each other.
The Serpent King By Jeff Zentner--Dill, Lydia, and Travis are three outcast friends who are just trying to make it through their senior year. With a Pentecostal minister father imprisoned for child porn, Dill finds a certain peace in music. Travis escapes the realities of his abusive father and the pain he feels over his brother's death in a fantasy book series. And Lydia, a successful fashion blogger with plans to attend NYU, is the joyful glue that holds the three together. But when an act of violence shatters the peace they've managed to find, they'll need each other more than ever.
Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles--Kiera Westing is newly single and Del Rainey, who's been crushing on Kiera since kindergarten knows this is his chance to make his move. Despite his reputation as a player, Del's clumsy advances don't appeal to Kiera so he does something drastic--he follows her to a church function where he inadvertently signs up for an eight-week Purity Pledge class. He asks for help from fellow pledger Jameer who offers to talk him up to Kiera in return for answers to some practical sex questions that the pledgers aren't allowed to ask, which then forces Del to ask some uncomfortable questions in his school's sex-ed class.
1789 by Marc Aronson--Collects ten stories of men and women at the forefront of social and political change in the year 1798, a time when democracies and revolutions were being solidified and enacted around the world, from the United States to France to the Caribbean. Includes stories of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Marie Antoinette, the former slave Olaudah Equaino, and painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.
Sabotage by Neal Bascomb--In 1939, a Norsk Hydro plant in Vemork was the world's sole producer of “heavy water,” the key ingredient in developing a nuclear fission bomb. The Nazis invaded the country, and quickly took over Vemork to start making Hitler's very own nuclear bomb. It could have ended the war, but the Allies discovered the plan. After a group of British operatives failed to take down the industrial fortress, the task fell to a band of young Norwegian commandos, armed only with skis and explosives. With great courage, they pulled off probably the greatest act of sabotage of World War II.
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes--Homeless teen Avery Grambs is summoned to the will reading of Tobias Hawthorne, a man she's never heard of. Curious, she attends and learns she will inherit the bulk of the billionaire's estate, much to the chagrin of his daughters and grandsons. The only catch is that she will have to live in his mansion, alongside his family, for one year. Avery can handle the hostility of his family who think she is either a con-woman or a joke inflicted by their puzzle-loving grandfather, but she's not sure what to make of the secret passageways throughout the castle or the feeling that someone is out to kill her.