Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince -- J. K. Rowling

At sixteen, Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts amidst chaos in both the wizarding and muggle (non-wizarding) communities. That the greatly feared evil wizard Lord Voldemort has returned is no longer a suspicion or a rumor, but is a known fact. Fear runs rampant as people are harmed and even killed. Despite these facts, Hogwarts opens for another yeark and Harry, Ron, and Hermoine return for their 6th year of schooling.

Classes are harder for everyone in their 6th year, but Harry finds help from the "Half-Blood Prince," a former Potions student who made generous and useful notes in Harry's borrowed Potions textbook. In addition to classes, has extra responsibilities, such as Quidditch team captain for the Griffendor House. Furthermore, he finds himself in private tutoring lessons with Professor Dumbledore, the school's headmaster. In time, Harry learns the beginnings of the evil Lord Voldemort and discovers a truth so horrible it almost seems impossible.

Harry's 6th year at Hogwarts is filled with mystery, frustration, love, loss, deceit, fear, and bravery. It is Harry's hardest year yet, and he will face horrors he never imagined.

Al Capone Shines My Shoes -- Gennifer Choldenko

Alcatraz Island is home to some of the nation's most notorious criminals in 1935, including Al Capone. In addition to the convicts on the island, several families also live on Alcatraz. These are the families whose fathers work at the prison. Twelve-year old Moose Flanagan's family, made up of himself, his father, his mother, and his sister Natalie (who "has her wires crossed"), has lived on Alcatraz for about 8 months. Natalie has recenlty been admitted to a special school on the mainland, known as the Esther P. Marinoff school. It is a school that specializes in helping people who are different and who think differently from everyone else. Natalie's admittance into the school is a relief to her mother and father, but for Moose, it also means something else. For Moose, it means Al Capone helped him by pulling some strings and getting Natalie admitted. And soon, Moose finds out that it also means Capone will expect repayment. Before long, Moose finds out just what it is he owes Al Capone to repay the favor.

While Moose tries to do the right thing for everyone and make everyone happy, he struggles with keeping himself and his family from getting into trouble. If anyone were to find out he was doing favors for a con -- or that a con had done a favor for him -- his dad would lose his job! So Moose goes about trying to secretly help Al Capone, because he fears what the other cons would do to him if he doesn't help Al. Meanwhile, Moose also has to deal with his inexplicable attraction to the warden's beautiful, but spoiled, daughter Piper; the hurt feelings of his two best friends on the island, Jimmy and Annie; a lie that threatens to destroy the jobs of both his dad and his friend Jimmy's dad; and an escape scheme the cons develop that employs Natalie as a bar-spreader smuggler. Is Moose in over his head, or will he figure out a way to make everything right, like he always does?

Join Moose as he matures through life on the small island of Alcatraz and comes to realize that not everybody can be trusted or taken at face-value; that sometimes girls make no sense at all; and that sometimes he can't just comply to make others happy -- sometimes he has to take a stand to protect the ones he loves.

Plum Spooky -- Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum is back in this "between-the-Plums" adventure full of bounty-hunting, danger, excitement, laughter, and monkeys... lots of monkeys!

Stephanie finds herself baby-sitting a monkey named Carl who seems to understand her every word and also knows the proper hand gesture to use when he's unhappy with what he's hearing. So Stephanie takes Carl with her while she's searching for her FTAs -- particularly Martin Munch, a geeky genius who stole a magnetometer from his workplace and failed to appear for his court date.

As luck would have it, Munch is working with a shady character who goes by the name of Wulf, who looks like a vampire, and who has scary abilities that lump him in with a group knowns as Unmentionables. Enter Diesel. Diesel is also an Unmentionable -- and Stephanie has a history with him. With Diesel back in her life -- at least temporarily -- Stephanie feels like she is juggling three men: Morelli, Ranger, and Diesel. But it just might take all three of them to keep Stephanie out of trouble!

Stephanie, Diesel, and Carl venture into the Pine Barrens of New Jersey -- a place where the geographical features all look the same, and where the residents all seem a few cards short of a full deck -- to find Munch and Wulf before they succeed in whatever plans require a stolen magnetometer and Munch's former boss to end up dead. And before it's all over, Stephanie will meet the Easter Bunny, deal with several more monkeys, and she will witness an actual fire-farter!

The Rules For Hearts -- Sara Ryan

The summer before her freshman year in college is one of change and maturing for eighteen-year-old Battle Hall Davies. She moves from her minister-father’s household in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to Portland, Oregon, where she moves into a house full of strangers, one of whom is her brother, Nick, who ran away from her family four years previously. As Battle adjusts to her new surroundings and new life, she must decipher her romantic feelings for a fellow female housemate, Meryl, and Meryl’s feelings for her. While struggling to keep her contact with her brother a secret from her parents as she reacquaints herself with him, she discovers some truths about her brother that cause her to experience misplaced guilt and force Battle to decide whether loving her brother means bailing him out of his trouble or making him accept responsibility for his own actions.

Using a setting that lacks order, Sara Ryan’s novel adequately exemplifies the confusion that can occur in teens’ lives as they leave the world of their childhood and enter the world of adulthood, where they must make decisions and deal with consequences, often alone. Through effective use of dialogue and description, Ryan creates characters and situations that come alive and are recognizable to the reader, thereby drawing the reader in until the final page.

The Time Traveller's Wife -- Audrey Niffenegger

The first time Clare met Henry DeTamble, she was six and he was forty-two. The first time Henry met Clare, she was eighteen and he was twenty-six. But this is to be expected when one is a time-traveller; and that is precisely what Henry is. He finds himself uncontrollably and unexpectedly hurled back and forth through time, visiting people, places, and events from his past and future - and never able to change what will happen, or rather, what already has. And Clare... Well, Clare waits. Always for Henry. And as she waits, she proves that love can overcome everything - even time.