Young Adult Mystery Book List
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Blundell, Judy
Strings Attached
When she drops out of school and
struggles to start a career on
Broadway in the fall of 1950,
seventeen-year-old Kit Corrigan
accepts help from an old family friend, a lawyer
said to have ties with the mob, who then asks her
to do some favors for him. (Summary from
Follett Destiny, 2011)
Bloor, Edward
Crusader
After a violent virtual-reality
game arrives at the mall arcade
where she works, fifteen-yearold Roberta finds the courage
to search out the person who
murdered her mother.
Brookes, Kevin
Black Rabbit Summer
When two of sixteen-year-old
Pete's childhood classmates
disappear from a carnival the
same night, he is a suspect, but
his own investigation implicates other old
friends he was with that evening--and a tough,
knife-wielding enemy determined to keep him
quiet. (Summary from Hennepin County, Sept.
2008)
Brooks, Kevin
The Road of the Dead
Two brothers, sons of an incarcerated
gypsy, leave London traveling to an
isolated and desolate village, in
search of the brutal killer of their
sister. (Summary from Hennepin County
Library, 2008)
Libba Bray
The Diviners
Seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill is
thrilled when she is exiled from
small-town Ohio to New York City
in 1926, even when a rash of
occult-based murders thrusts Evie
and her uncle, curator of The Museum of
American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult,
into the thick of the investigation. (Summary
from Follett Destiny, January 2013).
Brennan, Sarah
Rees
Unspoken
The twin Lynburn sisters, whose
family has owned the sinister
manor that overlooks Sorry-in-theVale for centuries have returned with their sons,
one of which looks remarkably like the
imaginary boy in Kami's head, who she is in
love with, but with the twins return, strange
things begin to happen in Kami's small sleepy
town. (Summary from Follett Destiny, October
2013).
Bruchac, Joseph
A Skeleton Man
After her parents disappear and
she is turned over to the care of a
strange "great-uncle," Molly must
rely on her dreams about an old
Mohawk story for her safety and
maybe even for her life. (2001)
Cabot, Meg
Haunted
Sixteen-year-old Susannah
Simon is a mediator, one who
communicates with the dead,
and she also happens to be in
love with Jesse, a nineteenthcentury ghost. (2005)
Clement-Moore, Rosemary
Prom Dates From Hell
High school senior and yearbook
photographer Maggie thought she
would rather die than go to prom, but
when a classmate summons a
revenge-seeking demon, she has no
choice but to buy herself a dress and prepare to
face jocks, cheerleaders, and Evil Incarnate.
(Summary from Follett Destiny, Oct 2009)
*Unless otherwise noted, book summaries are from Hennepin County Library @ www.hclib.org.
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Cabot, Meg
Reunion
Donnelly, Jennifer
A Northern Light
The RLS Angels are out for blood,
and only Suze can stop them - since
she's the only one who can see them.
The four ghostly teenagers died in a
terrible car accident, for which they blame
Suze's classmate Michael... and they'll stop at
nothing until he's joined them in the realm of the
dead. (Summary from Hennepin County, 2006)
Carter, Ally
Heist Society
Fifteen-year-old Kat schemes her
way into the best boarding school,
hoping to leave the thieving antics
of her family behind her, but Hal,
a former co-conspirator, appears on campus to
tell Kat that a powerful mobster believes her
father stole art from a priceless collection, and in
order to save him, Kat will have to recover the
paintings. (Summary from Follett Destiny,
2011)
Cooney, Caroline
The Face on the Milk Carton
A photograph of a missing girl on
a milk carton leads Janie on a
search for her real identity.
Cooney, Caroline
Wanted
Alice Robie's father has been
murdered, and the police have an
e-mail message in which Alice
confesses to the crime. When her
own mother suspects her, Alice
has no choice but to flee in the hope of proving
her innocence.
Cormier, Robert
The Rag and Bone Shop
Trent, an ace interrogator from
Vermont, works to procure a
confession from an introverted
twelve-year-old accused of
murdering his seven-year-old friend in
Monument, Massachusetts.
Should sixteen-year-old
Mattie stay in her insular
community and become a wife
and mother, or should she
strike out for the freedom and intellectual
stimulation of the big city? A murder helps her
make up her mind. Set in upstate New York in
1906, this ambitious historical novel
incorporates the same real-life crime--the
murder of a pregnant young woman--that
inspired Dreiser's (An American Tragedy).
(Summary from Horn Book Guide online,
October 2003.)
Gagnon, Michelle
Don’t Turn Around
After waking up on an operating
table with no memory of how she
got there, Noa must team up with
computer hacker Peter to stop a
corrupt corporation with a deadly secret.
(Summary from Follett Destiny, January 2013).
Giberga, Jane Sughrue
Friends to Die For
Sixteen-year-old Cristina is
forced to evaluate her
sophisticated world of elegant
New York apartments, private
schools, and rich friends when a
girl she knows is murdered after a party they
both attended.
Gilstrap, John
Nathan’s Run
Twelve-year-old Nathan Bailey, an
escapee from a juvenile detention
center who has been accused of
killing a guard, becomes the center
of a national dialogue on violent
youth crime, the object of a nationwide
manhunt, and the target of a professional killer.
*Unless otherwise noted, book summaries are from Hennepin County Library @ www.hclib.org.
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Green, Jacqueline
Truth or Dare
Landy, Derek
Skulduggery Pleasant
In the affluent seaside
town of Echo Bay, Massachusetts,
mysterious dares sent to three very
different girls--loner Sydney
Morgan, Caitlin "Angel" Thomas, and beautiful
Tenley Reed--threaten both their reputations and
their lives. (Summary from Follett Destiny,
October 2013).
When twelve-year-old
Stephanie inherits her weird
uncle's estate, she must join
forces with Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeleton
mage, to save the world from the Faceless Ones.
(Follett, 2009)
Hautman, Pete and Logue,
Mary
Snatched
After the death of her husband in a
hit-and-run accident, police officer
Claire Watkins and her daughter
Meg move to the small, quiet town of Fort St.
Antoine, Wisconsin, but Claire's quiet life is
shattered when she discovers her neighbor has
been murdered.
Too curious for her own good,
Roni, crime reporter for her high
school newspaper, teams up with
Brian, freshman science geek, to investigate the
beating and kidnapping of a classmate.
Henry, April
The Night She Disappeared
Told from various viewpoints,
Gabie and Drew set out to prove
that their missing co-worker Kayla
is not dead, and to find her
before she is, while the police search for her
body and the man who abducted her.
Johnson, Maureen
The Name of the Star
Rory, of Boueuxlieu, Louisiana, is
spending a year at a London
boarding school when she
witnesses a murder by a Jack the
Ripper copycat and becomes
involved with the very unusual investigation.
(Summary from Follett Destiny, 2012).
Johnson, Maureen
The Madness
Underneath
After her near-fatal run-in with the
Jack the Ripper copycat, Rory
Devereaux is back in London to
help solve a new string of inexplicable deaths
plaguing the city. (Summary from Follett
Destiny, October 2013).
Logue, Mary
Blood Country
Lyga, Barry
I Hunt Killers
Seventeen-year-old Jazz learned
all about being a serial killer
from his notorious "Dear Old
Dad." Believing he can fight his
own urges and right some of his
father's wrongs, Jazz helps the police catch the
town's newest murderer, "The Impressionist,"
but, in doing so, he discovers he may have more
in common with his father than he thought.
(Summary from Destiny Follett, January 2013).
Lyga, Barry
The Game
After solving a deadly
case in the small town of
Lobo's Nod, seventeen-year-old
Jazz, the son of history's most
infamous serial murderer, travels to New York
City to help the police track down the Hat-Dog
Killer. (Summary from Destiny Follett, October
2013).
McNish, Cliff
Breathe: A Ghost Story
When he and his mother move
into an old farmhouse in the
*Unless otherwise noted, book summaries are from Hennepin County Library @ www.hclib.org.
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English countryside, asthmatic, twelve-year-old
Jack discovers that he can communicate with the
ghosts inhabiting the house and inadvertently
establishes a relationship with a tormented,
malevolent spirit that threatens to destroy both
his mother and himself. (2006)
Michaels, Rune
Genesis Alpha: A Thriller
Max and Josh are extremely
close brothers despite a severalyear age difference. When Max
was a young child, he was
diagnosed with cancer, and Josh
was conceived in order to give Max his lifesaving stem cells. Thirteen years later, the two
brothers stay in touch while Max is at college by
playing Genesis Alpha online late at night. Their
lives change forever when Max is accused of
murdering a girl and goes to jail. Josh is
heartbroken knowing his idol is locked up and
begins to wonder whether or not all of this is
somehow his fault. (Summary from
mackin.com, January 2008)
Mitchard, Jacquelyn
What We Saw Night
After glimpsing an older
man in a room with a dead girl,
sixteen-year-old Allie, who has a
life-threatening allergy to sunlight,
discovers she is the lone key to stopping a serial
killer. (Summary from Follett Destiny, October
2013).
Mulligan, Andy
Trash
A group of fourteen-year-old boys,
who make a living picking garbage
from the outskirts of a large city,
finds something special and
mysterious that brings terrifying
consequences. (Summary from Follett Destiny,
September 2011).
Patrick, Cat
Forgotten
Sixteen-year-old London Lane
forgets everything each night and
must use notes to struggle through
the day, even to recall her
wonderful boyfriend, but she "remembers"
future events and as her "flash-forwards"
become more disturbing she realizes she must
learn more about the past lest it destroy her
future. (Summary from Follett Destiny,
November 2011).
Patrick, Cat
The Originals
Seventeen-year-olds
Lizzie, Ella, and Betsy Best are
clones, raised as identical triplets
by their surrogate mother but living
as her one daughter, Elizabeth, until their
separate abilities and a romantic relationship
force a change. (Summary from Follett Destiny,
October 2013).
Peet, Mal
The Penalty
As the city of San Juan pulses to
summer's sluggish beat, its
teenage soccer prodigy, El
Brujito, the Little Magician,
vanishes without a trace -- right after he misses a
penalty kick and loses a big game for his team.
Paul Faustino, South America's top sports
reporter, is reluctantly drawn into the mystery of
the athlete's disappearance. (Mature) (2007)
Plum-Ucci, Carol
The Body of Christopher
Creed
Torey Adams, a high school
junior with a seemingly perfect
life, struggles with doubts and
questions surrounding the
mysterious disappearance of the
class outcast. (2002)
*Unless otherwise noted, book summaries are from Hennepin County Library @ www.hclib.org.
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Price, Charlie
Dead Connection
A loner who communes with the
dead in the town cemetery hears
the voice of a murdered
cheerleader and tries to convince
the adults that he knows what happened to her.
(Summary from Follett Destiny, November
2010).
Qualey, Marsha
Close to a Killer
Seventeen-year-old Barrie finds
herself involved in a string of
murders that are somehow
connected to her mother's hair
salon.
Rosoff, Meg
Picture Me Gone
Twelve-year-old Mila
travels with her father to
upstate New York to visit friends
and family, who may lead them
to clues to the whereabouts of her father's best
friend, who has gone missing. (Summary from
Destiny Follett, November 2013).
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos
The Prince of Mist
Max and Alicia Carver enlist the
help of their friend Roland to
explore the circumstances
surrounding the mysterious
haunting of a spirit named Jacob,
the previous owner's son who drowned; but their
search uncovers a sinister character who returns
from beyond in order to collect a debt from the
past. (Summary from Follett Destiny, November
2010).
Sebold, Alice
The Lovely Bones
Looking down from
heaven, 14-year-old Susie
Salmon recounts her rape
and murder and watches
her family as they cope with their grief and "the
lovely bones" growing around her absence.
(2004)
Sedgwick, Marcus
Midnight Blood
Seven linked vignettes unfold on a
Scandinavian island inhabited-throughout various time periods-by Vikings, vampires, ghosts, and a
curiously powerful plan. (Summary from Follett
Destiny, November 2013).
Shepard, Megan
The Madman’s
Daughter
Dr. Moreau's daughter, Juliet,
travels to her estranged father's
island, only to encounter murder,
medical horrors, and a love triangle.
(Summary from Follett Destiny, October
2013).
Stead, Rebecca
When You Reach Me
As her mother prepares to be a
contestant on the 1980s television
game show, "The $20,000
Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New
York City girl tries to make sense of a series of
mysterious notes received from an anonymous
source that seems to defy the laws of time and
space. (Summary from Follett Destiny,
November 2009).
Stevenson, James
The Unprotected Witness
After the murder of his father,
who has been hiding under the
Witness Protection Program,
Pete finds himself the target of sinister men who
seem to think he knows where a large sum of
money is hidden. (1997)
Stewart, Trenton Lee
The Mysterious Benedict Society
After passing a series of mindbending tests, four children are
*Unless otherwise noted, book summaries are from Hennepin County Library @ www.hclib.org.
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selected for a secret mission that requires them
to go undercover at the Learning Institute for the
Very Enlightened, where the only rule is that
there are no rules. (Summary from Hennepin
County, Sept. 2008)
Strasser, Todd
The Accident
After four of his friends leave a
beer party and suffer a fatal
accident, eighteen-year-old Matt
senses something peculiar about
the police investigation and
suspects a cover-up to hide the
identity of who was really responsible. (1988)
Roberts, Willo Davis
Nightmare
When a falling body strikes Nick's
car as he drives under an overpass,
the police call the man's death a
suicide, but Nick suspects murder
and finds his life in danger when he tries to
investigate. (1992)
Werlin, Nancy
The Killer’s Cousin
After being acquitted of
murder, seventeen-year-old
David goes to stay with
relatives in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where he finds
himself forced to face his past as he learns more
about his strange young cousin Lily. (1998)
Winspear, Jacqueline
Birds of a Feather
It is now the early Spring of 1930.
[Detective Inspector] Stratton [of
Scotland Yard] is a investigating a
murder case in Coulsdon, while
Maisie [Dobbs] has been summoned to Dulwich
to find a runaway heiress. The woman is the
daughter of Joseph Waite, a wealthy self-made
man who has lavished her with privilege but
kept her in a gilded cage. His domineering ways
have driven her off before, and now she's bolted
again. Waite's instructions are to find his
daughter and bring her home. When Maisie
looks into the disappearance she's finds a
chilling link to Stratton's murder case, and to the
terrible legacy of The Great War. (2004)
Winspear, Jacqueline
Elegy for Eddie
Maisie Dobbs takes on her most
personal case yet, a twisting
investigation into the brutal
killing of a street peddler that
will take her from the workingclass neighborhoods of her childhood into
London's highest circles of power. Set in
London between the two world wars. (Summary
from Follett Destiny, January 2013).
Whitley, David
Midnight Charter
In the city of Agora, where
everything can be bought and sold,
two children stumble upon the
mysterious and dangerous
Midnight Charter and play their unique part in
their society's future as they learn who they can
trust. (Summary from Follett Destiny, November
2010).
*Unless otherwise noted, book summaries are from Hennepin County Library @ www.hclib.org.
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