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Holiday reading 2011

Every year Christchurch City Libraries publishes Holiday reading. Here are 2011’s best of the best for 13 to 18 year olds.

CoverAlexandra Adornetto Hades
Bethany Church is an angel sent to Earth to keep dark forces at bay. Falling in love was never part of her mission, but the bond between Beth and her mortal boyfriend, Xavier Woods, is undeniably strong. Angels battle demons, and the power of love is put to the test. Book 2 in the Halo series.
David Almond The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean Telt by hisself
I wos a secrit shy and tungtied emptyheded thing. I wos tort to read and rite and spell by my tenda littl muther & by Mr McCaufrey the butcha & by Missus Malone and her gosts. So I am not cleva, so please forgiv my folts and my mistayks. I am the won that glares into your harts & that prowls insyde yor deepist dremes. Wonce I was The Anjel Childe. Now I am The Monster. Just read and lissen and take note. Let the words enter yor blud & boans. I am Billy Dean. This is the truth. This is my tale.
CoverFleur Beale Heart of danger (New Zealand)
Juno and her family arrive at their new home, but almost immediately danger threatens Hera and they move to Willem’s protection in New Plymouth, the city Juno most hoped to avoid. Veers between scary situations and Juno’s discoveries about love and learning more about the powers of her own mind. The third book in the Taris series.
Martyn Bedford Flip
One December night, 14-year-old Alex goes to bed. He wakes up to  find himself in the wrong bedroom, in an unfamiliar house, in a different Coverpart of the country, and it’s the middle of June. Six months have disappeared overnight. The family at the breakfast table are total strangers. And when he looks in the mirror, another boy’s face stares back at him. Unless Alex finds out what’s happened and how to get back to his own life, he may be trapped forever inside a body that belongs to someone else.
Ilsa Bick Ashes
An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device, wiping out every computerized system, and killing billions. Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. It’s now a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human.
Harlen Coben Shelter
After tragic events tear Mickey Bolitar away from his parents, he is forced to live with his estranged Uncle Myron and switch high schools, where he finds both friends and enemies, but when his new girlfriend, Ashley, vanishes, he follows her trail into a seedy underworld that reveals she is not what she seems to be.
CoverAllyson Condie Crossed
Rules are different outside the Society. Chasing down an uncertain future, Cassia makes her way to the Outer Provinces in pursuit of Ky — taken by the Society to his death — only to find that he has escaped into the majestic, but treacherous, canyons.
Jennifer Donnelly Revolution
Andi is angry at her father for leaving, angry at her mother for not being able to cope, and heartbroken by the loss of her younger brother. And she’s about to be expelled from school when her father intervenes. Now Andi must accompany him to Paris for winter break. Alexandrine lived over two centuries ago. She dreamed of making her mark on the Paris stage, but a fateful encounter with a doomed prince of France cast her in a tragic role she didn’t want, and couldn’t escape. Two girls, two centuries apart. But when Andi finds Alexandrine’s diary, she recognizes something in her words and is moved to the point of obsession. Until, on a midnight journey through the catacombs of Paris, Alexandrine’s words transcend paper and time, and the past becomes suddenly, terrifyingly present.
Ruth Eastham The Memory Cage
Alex’s beloved grandfather is sick. His memory is failing, and Alex’s parents want to put him in a home. Alex has promised Granddad that he won’t let that happen But Alex has broken promises before. When he was growing up in the Bosnian War, he swore that he would protect his brother. It was a promise that he couldn’t keep, Alex can’t fail again.
CoverCornelia Funke Reckless
For the first time in his life, Jacob Reckless is afraid. For years he’s stolen across to another world. A dark enchanted place he’s loved for its treasure, secrets and dangers. Until now. Will, his younger brother, has followed him with terrible consequences: the boy will turn to beast; the girl he loves will break her heart and chaos will rule forever, unless Jacob can spin a fairytale to save them.
Michael Grant Plague : A Gone Novel
A deadly, flu-like epidemic and a plague of flesh-eating creatures threaten the lives of the children at Perdido Beach while Sam, Astrid, Caine, and Diana each struggle with doubts and uncertainties.
CoverKaren Healey The Shattering (New Zealand)
Summerton is perfect: gorgeous weather, stunning scenery, cute out-of-towners to meet. But sharp-tongued Keri has been left shattered with grief by her older brother’s suicide. She discovers her other friends have also lost brothers in suspicious circumstances. Does Summerton hold dark secrets?
Jane Higgins The Bridge (New Zealand)
The City is divided. The bridges gated. In Southside, the hostiles live in squalor and desperation, waiting for a chance to overrun the residents of Cityside. Nik is still in high school but destined for a great career with the Internal Security and Intelligence Services, the brains behind the war. Then the school is bombed and the hostiles take the bridges. Nik and Fyffe are on the run and ISIS hot on their trail. They cross the bridge, and Nik finds answers to questions he’d never dared to ask.
Will Hill Department 19
After watching his father’s brutal murder, sixteen-year-old Jamie Carpenter joins Department 19, a secret government agency, where he learns of the existence of vampires and the history that ties him to the team destined to stop them.
CoverMargo Lanagan Yellowcake
Yellowcake brings together another ten short stories from this extraordinarily talented writer — each of them fiercely original and quietly heartbreaking.
Robert Muchamore Grey Wolves
Spring, 1941. With the Royal Navy losing the war at sea, six young agents must sneak into Nazi-occupied Europe and sabotage a submarine base on France’s western coast. One of the Henderson’s Boys Series.
Lauren Myracle Shine
When her best friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, sixteen-year-old Cat sets out to discover the culprits in her small North Carolina town.
CoverPatrick Ness A Monster Calls
An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor.
Lauren Oliver Delirium
Lena looks forward to receiving the government-mandated cure that prevents the delirium of love and leads to a safe, predictable, and happy life, until ninety-five days before her eighteenth birthday and her treatment, she falls in love.
Christopher Paolini Inheritance
The Rider and his dragon have come further than anyone dared to hope. But can they topple the evil king and restore justice to Alagaësia? And if so, at what cost? The conclusion to the Inheritance cycle.
CoverMel Peet Life: An exploded diagram
A gripping family portrait that interweaves the stories of three generations and the terrifying crises that define them.
Annabel Pitcher My sister lives on the mantelpiece
My sister lives on the mantelpiece. Well, some of her does. Everyone kept saying it would get better with time, but that’s just one of those lies that grown ups tell. Five years on, it’s worse than ever: Dad drinks, Mums gone and Jamie’s left with questions that he must answer for himself.
Terry Pratchett I shall wear midnight
For Tiffany Achiny being a good witch mostly means tending to the locals minor aches and kerfuffles, which she does with as much aplomb as anyone could be expected to muster, but to become a great witch, she’ll have to contend with the malevolent ghost of an ancient witch-burner.
CoverPhilip Reeve Scrivener’s Moon
In a future land once known as Britain, nomad tribes are preparing to fight a terrifying enemy — the first-ever mobile city. Before London can launch itself, young engineer Fever Crumb must journey to the wastelands of the North. She seeks the ancient birthplace of the Scriven mutants.
Beth Revis Across the universe
Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon. Her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn’t do something soon, her parents will be next.
CoverMeg Rosoff There is no dog
In the beginning, Bob created the heavens and the earth, but mostly he prefers eating junk food and leaving his dirty clothes in a heap at the side of his bed. Every time he falls in love, Earth erupts in natural disasters, so humankind is going to be very sorry that Bob ever ran into a completely irresistible girl called Lucy.
Veronica Roth Divergent
Society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue. On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is.
CoverAnt Sang Shaolin Burning (New Zealand)
In ancient China, martial arts have been outlawed. When the Qing Emperor’s army attacks the dissident monks of the Shaolin Temple, only five escape the resulting inferno. The fugitives flee, vowing to spread their forbidden knowledge. Shaolin Burning is a graphic novel about two very different kung-fu fighters, whose lives intersect as they are offered self-discovery through the wisdom of martial arts, in a masterful interweaving of kung-fu myths and legends.
Marcus Sedgwick Midwinterblood
In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumour has it that no one ages and no children are born, a visiting journalist, Eric Seven, and a young local woman known as Merle are ritually slain. Their deaths echo a moment ten centuries before, when, in the dark of the moon, a king was slain, tragically torn from his queen. Their souls search to be reunited, and as mother and son, artist and child, forbidden lovers, victims of a vampire they come close to finding what they’ve lost.
CoverMaggie Stiefvater The Scorpio Races
It happens every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish. Some riders live. Others die.
Tim Wynne-Jones Blink & Caution
Two teenagers who are living on the streets and barely getting by become involved in a complicated criminal plot, and make an unexpected connection with each other.
Moira Young Blood red road
In a distant future, eighteen-year-old Lugh is kidnapped, and while his twin sister Saba and nine-year-old Emmi are trailing him across bleak Sandsea they are captured, too, and taken to brutal Hopetown, where Saba is forced to be a cage fighter until new friends help plan an escape.

Explore our holiday reading lists for teens