Carry On

Carry On
By Rainbow Rowell

Simon Snow and Baz Pitch are pretty much opposites; Simon is the Chosen One, Baz is a vampire. Simon is full of magic but not a very controlled magician, Baz is super capable with a wand. Simon is an orphan, Baz is from a wealthy, old-school family of Mages. These two teens are sworn enemies, as well as long-time roommates Watford School of Magicks. They are also secretly in love with each other.
In Rainbow Rowell's silly, fun spin-off from Harry Potter, good and evil are not as black and white as they first appear. There are mysteries to be solved and secrets to be revealed! If you enjoyed Harry Potter, and like the genre of magic boarding school stories, you're in for a treat with this one.

Snow & Rose

Snow & Rose
By Emily Winfield Martin

Two sisters, Snow and Rose, once lived a fancy life with their loving parents in a fancy house with a beautiful garden. But their father disappears one day, and the girls and their grieving mom move to a tiny cottage in the mysterious and possibly dangerous woods. Snow and Rose meet a quirky boy named Ivo, who has a vast knowledge of mushrooms, and they discover a library in the woods filled with magical objects (instead of books!). There is also a bear who befriends the girls and helps them out of some trouble...
This fairy tale is illustrated with gorgeous pictures and is full of mystery, magic, and bonds of friendship and sisterhood.

Skellig

Skellig

By David Almond

In this mysterious story, a soccer-playing boy named Michael moves into an old fixer-upper house with his family. While his mother is in the hospital with his new baby sister--who is very sick--Michael discovers a strange, sickly, ghost-like man in their run-down garage. Michael takes care of this man, who has wings, by bringing him Chinese food and medicine as often as he can. With the help of a neighbor and new friend, Mina, Michael eventually moves "Skellig" to a  more secret, safer place so he can grow stronger. In this mystical novel there are many unanswered questions that make you think about the story long after it ends.

Turtles All the Way Down

Turtles All the Way Down
By John Green

From the author of A Fault in Our Stars, another heartbreaking story; this one about a teen with a mental health illness. But this book is both a romance and a mystery!
This review is from Publishers Weekly Annex:

Like many of Green's characters, Aza Holmes is whip smart, articulate, and tortured by worry. When she was eight, her father succumbed to a heart attack while mowing the lawn. Now 16, Aza takes meds (irregularly) to treat anxiety, which is manifesting in increasingly self-destructive ways. Her problems amplify when she reconnects with Davis, a boy she met years earlier at "Sad Camp," where both had gone to grieve their recently deceased parents. Now Davis's billionaire father is missing, running from a warrant for his arrest. Aza's best friend Daisy, in a classic sidekick role, pressures Aza to contact Davis, hoping they'll learn something about the disappearance-and maybe get a cut of the $100,000 reward. The reunion leads to romance, until Aza's anxiety won't allow it...

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library
By Chris Grabenstein

This is a fun and unusual adventure, perfect for puzzle and secret code lovers!
Set in a fantastic new high-tech library designed by famous game master extraordinaire Mr. Luigi Lemoncello, a group of kids must solve puzzles and follow clues to get out of the library and win the incredible prize being offered!
I think I read somewhere that this book is kind of a cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Mr. Lemoncello seems inspired by Willy Wonka, for sure) and The Hunger Games...but takes place in a library...
If you enjoy it, there are several sequels too.

The D.B. Cooper Hijacking

The D.B. Cooper Hijacking: Vanishing Act
by Kay Melchisedech Olson

This is an incredible true crime story that has never been solved!
In 1971 a man (maybe a woman?!), known to the media as D.B. Cooper, hijacked a Boeing 727 airplane and then escaped by jumping out with a parachute--and over a million dollars.
There was a major search for this hijacker involving hundreds of troops, spy planes, and a submarine...but no trace of the criminal was ever found.
D.B. Cooper would have been 90 years old last year, and the FBI finally just ended the hunt!
Read this book to learn all of the details of the crime, the investigation, and why the story continues to intrigue people to this day.

Other books in the True Crime series:
The Black Dahlia: Shattered Dreams
The Great Train Robbery: History-making Heist
The Zodiac killer: Terror and Mystery

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
By Ransom Riggs

This is a real page-turner...and pretty spooky, too!
Jacob, 16 years old, was always been enchanted by his grandfather's crazy stories of growing up in an orphanage on a wind-swept island off the coast of Wales--along with a number of children with strange powers and abilities. Jacob has even seen the photos. But as he got older, his grandfather's stories seemed too fantastic to be true. After a mysterious "accident", Jacob is suddenly inspired to investigate the island and track down anyone still connected with the orphanage.
Set against the backdrop of World War II, this novel is a mix of fantasy, reality, mystery and horror...it will keep you guessing!!

This book is part of a trilogy; Hollow City and Library of Souls are the next two books. And Tales of the Peculiar is a collection of short stories that relates to the trilogy. Check them out!

The Lie Tree

The Lie Tree
By Frances Hardinge

The Lie Tree is part historical fiction, part fantasy--a mysterious, intriguingly dark story.
Fourteen year-old Faith Sunderly pretends to be a good, quiet girl because that's what is expected of her in Victorian England. But inside she is a gifted natural scientist, determined to win her famous scientist father's attention.
When he is mysteriously murdered, Faith does some detective work on her own. She discovers a fantastic tree her father has been hiding--a tree that feeds off of lies whispered to it in the dark. In order to learn more, and perhaps unable to resist the power of this strange specimen, Faith begins to spread her own lies. However, this becomes more dangerous that she ever could have imagined... 

All the Lovely Bad Ones

All the Lovely Bad Ones
By Mary Downing Hahn

It was fun to read this creepy ghost story, recommended to me by Fiona, an avid reader and regular in our middle school library.

Brother and sister Travis and Corey are spending the summer at their grandmother's inn in rural Vermont--and to make things a little more fun they decide to revive some old ghost stories by pretending to haunt the grounds. Little do they know they are awakening real ghosts with their pranks! A group of orphaned children inhabited the "poor farm" centuries ago and were treated cruelly by the farm's mistress, Miss Ada. The ghost-children, "the lovely bad ones," still long for justice and to be peacefully laid to rest. The horrible Miss Ada continues to mistreat them, though, even from beyond the grave...it's up to Travis and Corey to put an end to this head ghost, and to restore peace at the farm. Will they be brave enough?

The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Mysterious Benedict Society
By Trenton Lee Stewart 

This is a very fun book (and series!) for people who love puzzles, mysteries, and secret missions...
Four specially-chosen, quirky, and orphaned children are sent to the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened to help solve a mystery they don't completely understand but are supposedly well-equipped to tackle. The challenge is for them to work together--and think WAY out of the box--to stop evil forces from controlling the world's population...hard to explain, but read it and enjoy!

The Schwa Was Here

The Schwa Was Here
By Neal Shusterman

I really enjoyed this bizarre and fun story of a boy called the Schwa who is "partially invisible"; that is, no one seems to notice him--not his teachers, classmates, bus drivers...not even his own dad.
But one classmate, Antsy, who sometimes feels invisible himself, befriends the Schwa and they team up to use invisibility to their advantage. One adventure leads to another, and eventually there are some hard realities to face, and a real mystery to be solved so that the Schwa doesn't truly disappear.

Neal Shusterman wrote Downsiders, which I also loved.

Wonderstruck

Wonderstruck
By Brian Selznick

This thick, heavy book may look intimidating at first glance--but you will race through Wonderstruck, both because the plot is so compelling and because half of it is told through pictures!
I enjoyed trying to figure out the connections between the text-only story of a boy who just lost his mother (and his hearing, from a lightning strike) and the drawings of a deaf girl, many years before, who runs away from home to New York City.
Full of curious characters, unusual museum artifacts, and unexpected friendships, Wonderstruck is an unconventional half-graphic-novel you will no doubt enjoy!

Kepler's Dream

Kepler's Dream
by Juliet Bell

Unhappy Ella, 11 years old, is moving from California to New Mexico for the summer to live with a grandmother she's never met (or maybe she met her once, as a baby, who remembers?). Ella's mom has cancer, and needs a very serious blood treatment in Seattle, so Ella will be on her own--since her dad is pretty much never around.
While in her eccentric grandmother's isolated house, Ella learns a lot about a special, old book that her grandfather loved--he was an astronomer who died during a fishing accident when Ella's father was a young boy. When the book, Sonmium, written in 1608 by Johannes Kepler (!) goes missing, Ella is determined to unravel the mystery along with a new friend, Rosie.

Vango

Vango: Between Sky and Earth
 By Timothée de Fombelle

This is a cliff hanger, no doubt...good thing the second book is now out (Vango: A Prince Without a Kingdom)!
An action-packed adventure that includes some WWII history--and even a photograph of the giant "airship" blimp, the Graf Zeppelin--this is the story of one very interesting boy, Vango. Mysteriously orphaned as a toddler, he travels the globe seeking refuge from enemies while trying to uncover his past. Along the way he meets and befriends some colorful characters: a pirate/priest on a secret island, an orphaned girl who lives in a castle in Scotland, the captain of the Graf Zeppelin in Germany, and many others. Always running (or scaling buildings or trains or the Eiffel Tower or other tall structures), Vango somehow manages to survive one crazy adventure after another!

Tokyo Heist

Tokyo Heist
By Diana Renn

Nothing like a good mystery for summer reading!
I enjoyed the twists and turns in Tokyo Heist, and I liked the teenage characters a lot. Violet, especially, is creative and smart; I loved her ideas for her own super-hero manga story about Kimono Girl...
The plot in this novel is clever, and includes cool manga-related details and background, along with the art-theft-Japanese-mafia theme!
And since I spent a few hours in the Tokyo airport earlier this summer, I especially enjoyed the reference to some interesting, unusual toilets...
A fun story!

Doll Bones

Doll Bones
By Holly Black

I thought Doll Bones was just as great as it looks and sounds!
A creepy underlying story about a supposedly-murdered-girl-turned-into-a-ceremic-doll really makes for an excellent plot.
And the three middle school-aged friends, Zach, Poppy and Alice are very endearing and believable. Dealing with their own issues about growing up and getting too old to "play dolls", they embark upon an exciting adventure with many twists and turns, and some unexpected disappointments too.
An excellent book that truly kept me up--reading--at night!

P.S. I had to look up whether bone china is really made from bones...It is...!

Charlie Bone

Midnight for Charlie Bone
By Jenny Nimmo

I have heard for a while about how the Charlie Bone series is great for people who loved Harry Potter (like me)...but I haven't seen these books checked out much in the library for some reason...

So I thought I'd read the first one to see what it was all about.

And it was great! And I do think Harry Potter fans would enjoy the magic and mystery Charlie encounters in his bizarre boarding school for kids with "special (magical) abilities".

The series, called Children of the Red King, includes 8 books, beginning with this one. Give it a try! And let me know what you think of it!

The True Adventures of Nicoló Zen

The True Adventures of Nicoló Zen
By Nicholas Christopher


"Magic, danger, and an unstoppable hero..."

Taking place in 18th-century Italy, and including the composer  Antonio Vivaldi as one of the characters, this fun novel is full of intrigue and romance.

I especially enjoyed the beginning, when 14-year-old Nicoló dresses up as a girl in order to get into a an all-girls orphanage, where he can play his enchanted clarinet in a prestigious orchestra.

With magicians, gangsters, lovers, fame and fortune--this story has a lot of twists and turns!

Hold Fast

Hold Fast
By Blue Balliett

A great mystery to kick off the summer vacation! Set in wintery Chicago, this story poetically chronicles the search for a missing dad by a determined daughter, her 4-year-old brother, and her distressed mother.

While trying to prove her father's innocence, Early Pearl (11 years old) uncovers a bizarre book-and-library-related crime and experiences the hardship of life in a homeless shelter.

This book came in our school's Junior Library Guild subscription box, and was an intriguing read!

I've heard great things about Blue Balliett's Chasing Vermeer and look forward to reading that one soon... 

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales
By Chris Van Allsburg
AND Lemony Snicket, Tabitha King, Jon Scieszka, Sherman Alexie, Gregory Maguire, Cory Doctorow, Jules Feiffer, Linda Sue Park, Walter Dean Myers, Lois Lowry, Kate DiCamillo, M.T. Anderson, and Louis Sachar

 An "esteemed collection of highly decorated authors" have written short stories to accompany Chris Van Allsburg's intriguing and bizarre pictures from the original Mysteries of Harris Burdick...and the stories are just as intriguing and bizarre!
If you were ever inspired by Harris Burdick to think of your own stories to accompany those black-and-white drawings, you will probably enjoy this collection. The stories range from strange to funny to creepy, and beyond...