We All Fall Down.  Robert Cormier.  They enter the house at 9:02 p.m. and trash their way through the Cape Cod cottage.  After throwing Karen down the stairs, the trashers slip away.  But the avenger has seen it all. (M/S)

*Lucky.  Alice Sebold.  A real-life thriller.  At the end we are left standing in the wake of devastating violence, and like the writer, we have come to know what it means to survive. (RLD) (NF)

*A Life for A Life.  Ernest Hill.  D’Ray must save his little brother.  He has one hour to get $100 or his brother is dead.  A lesson on forgiving! (D)

*Gangsta Rap.  Benjamin Zephaniah.  When teenage Ray and his friends Prem and Tyrone, form a successful rap band in the London’s East End where they live, they soon find themselves embroiled in increasingly violent gang warfare. (D/S)

*She’s Come Undone.  Wally Lamb.  A series of tragedies, leaves Dolores Price wounded mentally and physically but she miraculously finds the strength to give herself one more chance at life and love. (RLD)

*Honey Baby, Sweetheart.  Deb Caletti.  In the summer of her junior year, Ruby McQueen and her mother, both nursing broken hearts, embark on a journey to reunite an elderly woman with her long-lost love and along the way discover much about the ties that binds people to one another. (RLD)

*A Hope in the Unseen:  An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League.  Ron Suskind.  The story of Cedric Jennings, a talented black teenager struggling to succeed in one of the worst public high schools in Washington, D.C.  (NF)

*Darkness Before Dawn.  Sharon Draper.  When an older man seduces Keisha into an exciting adult world, she realizes the value of her true friends. (RLD)

*Copper Sun.  Sharon Draper.  Amari’s perfect life is shattered when her family is murdered.  She is dragged aboard a slave ship, sent to the Carolinas and purchased by a plantation owner as a birthday present for his son.  Now all she dreams about is escape.(HF)

Knights of the Hill Country.  Tim Tharp.  In his senior year, high school star linebacker Hampton Green finally begins to think for himself and discovers that he might be interested in more than just football.  (D)