Running In The Family, Michael Ondaatje; Vintage International

“An autobiographical journey of discovery gathers together fragments of memory, experience, and family history in order to understand the meaning of his parents’ legacy and his own heritage.”
Robin’s Note: Michael Ondaatje is famous for writing the novel The English Patient, bu this is his memoir of childhood and his own family’s quirks and secrets.  As with all of his writing, the language is rich and absorbing, and his fondness for his homeland shines through even with the breakdown of his family.  His sense of place is unmatched.

Harriet And Isabella, Patricia O'Brien; Touchstone

“A novelization based on a nineteenth-century sex scandal traces how the downfall of Henry Ward Beecher divided the nation and severed the loving relationship between his sisters, author Harriet Beecher Stowe and suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker.”
Robin’s Note: For anyone interested in American culture and history.  It’s part history, part gossip, and part biographical portrait.  The conflict of appearances versus fact and between two headstrong sisters (who are famous each in their own right) makes for a dramatic story.  The courtroom scenes as well as family betrayals are suspenseful, moving the story along, and the depth of the history lends weight to what could be just a scandal-driven tale.

A Live Coal In The Sea, Madeleine L'Engle; Farrar, Straus, And Giroux

“Three generations of a family struggle with loyalty, commitment, and identity when Camilla Dickinson is confronted by her granddaughter, Raffi, with the news that her father has hinted that Camilla is not really her grandmother.”
Robin’s Note: Another read-alike for Irving, L’Engle’s adult works are often eclipsed by her reputation as a writer for children.  That is a shame: her adult novels beautifully explore characters in depth and she has a knack for making the ordinary evocative and special.  She tends toward the spiritual, but she’s neither preachy nor judgmental.

Son Of The Mob, Gordon Korman; Hyperion Books For Children

“Seventeen-year-old Vince’s life is constantly complicated by the fact that he is the son of a powerful Mafia boss, a relationship that threatens to destroy his romance with the daughter of an FBI agent.”
Robin’s Note: Korman’s entertaining Son of the Mob is a wild ride through how difficult it would be to date the daughter of the man determined to bring down your own father for his many crimes.  Korman is always funny, and this book is no exception, and you end up rooting for both sides because they genuinely appealing.

Fighting Ruben Wolfe, Markus Zusak; Arthur A. Levine Books

“Partly because of their family’s poor finances and partly to prove themselves, brothers Ruben and Cameron take jobs as fighters and find themselves reacting very differently in the boxing ring.”
Robin’s Note: Markus Zusak got a lot of attention recently for his later book, The Book Thief, but this title was his first and is very different though equally good.  It covers everything from boxing to peer pressure to being brothers, and Zusak has a great ear for how conversations actually sound.  The energy of the book is infectious, even as the consequences of getting into illegal boxing start piling up.

Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, Sherri L. Smith; Delacorte Books For Young Readers

“Disaster strikes when Ana Shen is about to deliver the salutatorian speech at her junior high school graduation, but an even greater crisis looms when her best friend invites a crowd to Ana’s house for dinner, and Ana’s multicultural grandparents must find a way to share a kitchen.”
Robin’s Note:This title is Sherri Smith’s most recent, and features delectable food mixed with family drama, but all of her titles are different and inviting stand alone novels with strong, intelligent teen girls at the core.  I’d very much recommend Lucy the Giant for a different take on needing to be the adult in a family, and the excellent historical novel Flygirl, about a young woman who decides to pass as white in order to become a Women’s Air Service Pilot (or a WASP) during World War II.

Kendra, Coe Booth; PUSH

“High schooler Kendra longs to live with her mother who, unprepared for motherhood at age fourteen, left Kendra in the care of her grandmother.”
Robin’s Note: Coe Booth burst onto the teen novel scene with her first book, Tyrell, which is excellent, and this book follows Kendra’s life as she deals with boys, sex, an overprotective mom, and trying to make her imperfect family be more what she needs.  It can get gritty and is not a fairy-tale type story, but it definitely offers hope by the end.  Booth is another author for those who like Jacqueline Woodson and Sharon Draper.

Make Lemonade, Anthony Euwer; H. Holt

“In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother.”
Robin’s Note: Virginia Euwer-Wolff writes prose poetry novels (so, they are poetry, but the stories are novel-length), and her sense of character and voice are engaging and honest.  Make Lemonade is the beginning of a trilogy, followed by True Believer and This Full House, and each takes place during one year (so by the finish, LaVaughan is 16.)  Other similar authors to check out in terms of voice, realism, and setting,  include Angela Johnson (First Part Last), Rita Garcia-Williams (Jumped), and Nikki Grimes (Bronx Masquerade).

The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie; Little, Brown Young Readers

“Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.”
Robin’s Note: Sherman Alexie is an extraordinary storyteller—he goes from being hilariously funny to heartbreaking in only a few paragraphs.  This is his first novel aimed at teens, and its incredibly charming.  Junior, the lead, has a strong, sarcastic voice, which leads to many a laugh out loud scene, but the circumstances of his life show you why he needs it: alcoholism is rampant on the reservation where he lives, and the pressure of being perceived as betraying his friends and community at the same time as trying to fit in to an new school is crushing at times.  If you like his style, you should also check out his short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and novels for adults.

The Foreshadowing, Marcus Sedgwick; Wendy Lamb Books

“Having always been able to know when someone is going to die, Alexandra poses as a nurse to go to France during World War I to locate her brother and to try to save him from the fate she has foreseen for him.”
Robin’s Note: This is a relatively short but evocative title and gives a strong sense of what it was like both on the homefront and in the trenches during World War I.  There’s a touch of the supernatural in Alexandra’s ability to sense who will die, and the suspense comes from whether she can change what she has seen, but the real story is in the conflict, especially between what the people at home believe is necessary in war and what the soldiers (and Alexandra, as a nurse) witness as the reality of modern battle.

Jellicoe Road, Melina Marchetta; HarperTeen

“In this absorbing new novel by the award-winning author of “Saving Francesca,” nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor Markham tries to put together the pieces of her past.”
Robin’s Note: If you enjoy rich language, intense drama, and building suspense, this novel is outstanding.  This one takes a bit of time to get into, so you may have to push yourself to get through the first fifty pages (the novel is purposefully disorienting at the start), but once you get into the story and the characters, it’s unforgettable.  The setting is Australia, although it takes a while to figure out quite where you are, and the interlocking tales of these teens current lives and past connections are slowly unraveled.  I’ve rarely read a more haunting book about past incidents pushing forward unexpected consequences on the current generation, and the power of friends to both hurt and save you.

A Curse Dark As Gold, Elizabeth C. Bunce; Arthur A. Levine Books

“Upon the death of her father, seventeen-year-old Charlotte struggles to keep the family’s woolen mill running in the face of an overwhelming mortgage and what the local villagers believe is a curse, but when a man capable of spinning straw into gold appears on the scene she must decide if his help is worth the price.”

Robin’s Note: Appealing for a strong sense of a historical setting and a clever reworking of the Rumplestiltskin tale, this book includes a steadily building romance, a strong heroine, and a well-built world.  Great for fans of fairy tale retellings as well as historical fantasy.