09/30/2013
In an intense CSI-type thriller, Barnes (Nobody) lets readers inside the mind of 17-year-old Cassie Hobbes, a “Natural” profiler with the uncanny ability to piece together an individual’s motives, backgrounds, and patterns of behavior. After her mother’s gruesome abduction, and with her father overseas, Cassie is recruited for a special FBI program for teens like her to help solve cold cases. Cassie immediately realizes that being a Natural may be more than she bargained for, and her fellow gifted teens take getting used to, including Michael, an emotional expert who seems fascinated with Cassie’s, and Dean, who just looks pissed off—mostly at her. Barnes is in her wheelhouse with this story of keenly powered teens and covert ops, and she provides an enticing inside look at the world of crime-solving through Cassie’s hyperaware eyes. Cassie’s pursuit by an unknown serial killer keeps things tense, as do creepy narratives from the killer. Barnes shows every card at just the right moment, catching readers off-guard at the final reveal. It’s a stay-up-late-to-finish kind of book, and it doesn’t disappoint. Ages 12–up. Agent: Elizabeth Harding, Curtis Brown. (Nov.)
Con artists, sociopaths, revenge junkies…there’s nothing like following the twisted exploits of a great thriller, and it’s all the more fun when there are teens at the helm or in the hot seat. This summer is rife with all kinds of thrillers, from the high-octane to the slow-burn destructive to the psychologically twisted. Here are […]
November is a love letter to YA fantasy fans! If you’re into queer fantasy, as well as fantasy based on Greek, Chinese, and Japanese legends, consider this a monthlong opportunity to give thanks. Contemporary fans also have plenty to be grateful for, with tales of friendships lost and recovered, life on the factory line in […]
Blast off this week with two sci-fi adventures set among the stars, three fantasies inspired by Chinese, Japanese, and Irish folktales, and a futuristic character study set in a world without boys and men. In contemporary YA, a budding paleontologist gets a taste of professional rivalry, and a female mechanic tries to solve a mystery […]
Meet the Young Adults, the B&N Teen Blog’s swat team of awesome teenaged bloggers. YA literature is a strange and wonderful landscape of books that should be read by everybody, but each month we highlight the perspective of the teens reading the best of the best books written for and about them. Check back monthly to see what they’re […]
Combine clones, top-secret organizations, government coverups, more clones, weird cults, mad science, family relationships, and even more clones, and you get the brilliance that is BBC America’s Orphan Black. The show opens on Sarah Manning, just returned home after running away from motherhood, drugs, and other troubles. When she witnesses a woman who looks exactly like her committing […]
