(2) YA Only an anti-anxiety medication and a rigid routine keep the "howling demon" of Elliot's fear at bay. When his mother goes out into a Christmas Eve blizzard for his medication and does not return, Elliot must venture out into the snow. The heart of this novel--a meditation on Elliot's relationship to fear as it paralyzes him, protects him, and eventually propels him to find courage--is compelling.

Reviewer: Christina L. Dobbs | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2018

(4) YA Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. Lili remembers her seventeenth year playing bass in a band with her boyfriend and falling in love with another bandmate involved with the dangerous Irish Republican Army. The memoir-like narrative uses insider details to bring 1976 London's nascent punk scene to life. Readers looking for an empowering story about a female bass player will be disappointed with the book's shallow (and few) female characters.

Reviewer: Amy Seto Forrester

(3) YA In a fictitious diary, sixteen-year-old English runaway Linus tells of his kidnapping and imprisonment in an underground bunker where he, along with five other captives who gradually fill the other cells, endures evil punishments. Gripping, terrifying, and full of abominable actions, this provocative contemporary-set Carnegie Medal–winner is not for the faint-hearted, but thrill-seekers and horror enthusiasts will find the sharply written narrative compelling.

Reviewer: Sian Gaetano

(4) YA A brutal act of violence results in an iPhone being lodged in narrator Tom's brain. Now armed with mental access to all of cyberspace, Tom takes vengeance on the people who raped his friend, Lucy. The premise requires much suspension of disbelief, but the moral ambiguities inherent in such power and Tom and Lucy's tentative journeys back from their trauma are compelling.

Reviewer: Katie Bircher

(2) YA One night Dawn's father, having turned into "something else...another dad," did the unpardonable; now he's been missing for two years. When Dawn, fifteen, is befriended by bad girls Taylor and Mel, past trauma and present danger begin to merge. Complex questions of forgiveness and loss of faith permeate the narrative, related in a spare, scattered voice that aptly reflects Dawn's fractured psyche.

Reviewer: Claire E. Gross | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2010

(2) YA Two teenagers go missing from Pete's small English town. One is a local celebrity, the other is Pete's best friend. With hallucinogenic imagery and inexorable pacing, Brooks's intricately constructed mystery is dense but navigable. The two-pronged conclusion unfolds with aching realism and biting social commentary: one mystery brought to brutal but satisfying completion, the other haunting in its open-ended ambiguity.

Reviewer: Claire E. Gross | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2008

(2) YA During Robert's routine endoscopy, a doctor finds metal filaments, pipes, and wires. Escaping the sinister men who order a doctor to "cut that thing open," Robert teams up with Eddi, a charismatic thief. The book operates at top speed, at once a conventional chase adventure, a psychological thriller, and a romance. Poetic descriptions of Robert's mysterious hardware are terrifying and beautiful.

Reviewer: Claire E. Gross | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2007

(3) YA Overweight outsider Moo Nelson witnesses a stabbing and becomes involved in a major criminal investigation. His bumpy train of thought may be challenging reading at first, but once drawn in teens will enjoy the mini-mob story and Moo's emotional and ethical crossroads.

Reviewer: Lauren Adams

(2) YA Brooks sets a young girl's coming-of-age in a romantic thriller, pitting good versus evil in an island village off the English coast. No one knows where Lucas comes from or why he is here, and while his secrets feed fifteen-year-old Caitlyn's dreams, they also make him a perfect target for the small-minded villagers. The well-paced, absorbing narrative alternates gentle scenes of tentative romance with gripping accounts of violence and fear.

Reviewer: Lauren Adams | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2003

(3) YA Martyn Pig, a lonely and abused teenager, hides the accidental death of his drunken father from the authorities with the help of his one friend Alex, an older teenage girl. An admirer of Sherlock Holmes, Martyn eventually works out that his supposed ally had been planning a larger swindle all along, including murder. Bleak and very (working-class) British, the novel is well constructed and compelling.

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano