THE BEST BOOKS OF FACEBOOK READERS 2010

Below is a list of the favorite books our Facebook friends have read in the past six months. We have included snippets from each book's synopsis to give you a true feel for what the book is about. The ranking number was from Barnes and Noble at the time we were researching each book. We learned through this process that the ranking can change in an hour.

Although we used the the Barnes and Noble ranking, we are friends and fans of all bookstores and have a tremendous appreciation for small, independant book shops as much as we do for the larger chains.

Please remember, anytime you purchase a book as a gift for yourself or someone else, send us your name through the Pledge Here page and we will write your name as the donor inside a used book that will be given to a homeless shelter or hospital ICU waiting room.  You can also use the same form to provide us with feedback about this project. We look forward to hearing from you!

 

ADULT BOOKS

(Listed alphabetically)

* A Million Little Pieces by James Frey   Ranked 1,353  

James Frey shook up Oprah's Book Club with A Million Little Pieces -- a detailed account of his battle with drug addiction and experiences in rehab. But it was the ensuing debate about the line between fiction and nonfiction that really rocked the literary world.

 

* Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein   Ranked 164 

On the eve of his death, the canine Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through: the sacrifices Denny has made to succeed professionally; the unexpected loss of Eve, Denny's wife; the three-year battle over their daughter, Zoë, whose maternal grandparents pulled every string to gain custody. In the end, despite what he sees as his own limitations, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift family, holding in his heart the dream that Denny will become a racing champion with Zoë at his side. Having learned what it takes to be a compassionate and successful person, the wise canine can barely wait until his next lifetime, when he is sure he will return as a man.

 

* The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver     Ranked 9,242

Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity of putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places.

 

* Biting the Sun  by Tanith Lee          Ranked 160,200        

It's a perfect existence, a world in which no pleasure is off-limits, no risk is too dangerous, and no responsibilities can cramp your style. Not if you're Jang: a caste of libertine teenagers in the city of Four BEE. But when you're expected to make trouble--when you can kill yourself on a whim and return in another body, when you're encouraged to change genders at will and experience whatever you desire--you've got no reason to rebel...until making love and raising hell, daring death and running wild just leave you cold and empty.

 

* The Book of Laughter and Forgetting  by Milan Kundera   Ranked 23,693    

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.

 

* The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly            Ranked 13,697         

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld.

 

* Can You Keep a Secret by Sophie Kinsell   Ranked 3,985

Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets: Secrets from her boyfriend: I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken. Secrets from her mother: I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur. Secrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world: I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is. Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger.…

 

* Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande     

Non-fiction     Ranked 6,312      A brilliant and courageous doctor reveals, in gripping accounts of true cases, the power and limits of modern medicine.  Finalist for the 2002 National Book Award, Nonfiction.

 

* Deception Point  by Dan Brown  Ranked 2,051

When a NASA satellite discovers an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory -- a victory with profound implications for NASA policy and the impending presidential election.

 

* Doomsday Book by Connie Willis     Ranked 24,673         

Kivrin, a history student at Oxford in 2048, travels back in time to a 14th-century English village, despite a host of misgivings on the part of her unofficial tutor. When the technician responsible for the procedure falls prey to a 21st-century epidemic, he accidentally sends Kivrin back not to 1320 but to 1348--right into the path of the Black Death.

 

* Dragonlance: Dragons of a Lost Star by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman  Ranked 55,246    

Usurpers are afoot. A mystical woman named Mina overruns the countryside with her army of fierce knights, and the great dragon Overlord Beryl devastates the population of her own realm. The elves of Qualinesti must choose between exile and death by dragon. Sure as a spell, a battle looms.

 

* A Game of Thrones ~ A Song of Ice and Fire #1 by George R. R. Martin  Ranked 2,449       

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister forces are massing beyond the kingdom's protective wall. To the south, the King's powers are failing, and his enemies are emerging from the shadows of the throne. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the King's new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but also the kingdom itself.

 

* The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson    Ranked 44 

Combine the chilly Swedish backdrop and moody psychodrama of a Bergman movie with the grisly pyrotechnics of a serial-killer thriller, then add an angry punk heroine and a down-on-his-luck investigative journalist, and you have the ingredients of Stieg Larsson's first novel.

 

* The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread by Don Robertson   Ranked 108,209   

On a quiet autumn afternoon in 1944, nine-year-old Morris Bird III decides to visit a friend who lives on the other side of town. So he grabs the handle of his red wagon and, with his little sister in tow, begins an incredible pilgrimage across Cleveland . . . and out of childhood forever.

 

* Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom            Ranked 220   

What if our beliefs were not what divided us, but what pulled us together? In Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom offers a beautifully written story of a remarkable eight year journey between two worlds – two men, two faiths, two communities – that will inspire readers everywhere.

 

* The Help by Kathryn Stockett         Ranked 5       

Miss Eugenia Phelan ("Skeeter" to her friends) is a young woman of privilege who enjoys her fellow Junior Leaguers but finds their ways at odds with her own principles. Minny, Miss Celia, Aibileen, and Yule May are maids employed by Skeeter's friends. Each woman cooks, cleans, and cares for her boss's children, suffering slights and insults silently and sharing household secrets only among themselves. In the wake of the Junior League push to create separate bathrooms for the domestic help within private homes, Skeeter contacts a New York book editor with an idea. Soon she's conducting clandestine meetings with "the help" to capture their stories for publication. It is a daring and foolhardy plan, one certain to endanger not only the positions but the lives of the very women whose stories she transcribes -- as well as her own. There is a reason this book is ranked so high. It is simply wonderful.

 

* Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover  Ranked 71,474           

A gripping fantasy saga set partly on Earth and partly on a bizarre, alien world. When Hari Michaelson's wife disappears into the slums of Ankhana, he must face the greatest challenge of his life to save her. Heroes Die, is an intense, exciting, and an un-put-down-able read.

 

* The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri   Ranked 4,827

With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. A blackout forces a young Indian American couple to make confessions that unravel their tattered domestic peace. An Indian American girl recognizes her cultural identity during a Halloween celebration while the Pakistani civil war rages on television in the background. A latchkey kid with a single working mother finds affinity with a woman from Calcutta who, among other things, is struggling to learn to drive. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction

 

* It by Stephen King    Ranked 3,446 

The amazingly prolific King returns to pure horror, pitting good against evil as in The Stand and The Shining. Moving back and forth between 1958 and 1985, the story tells of seven children in a small Maine town who discover the source of a series of horrifying murders. Having conquered the evil force once, they are summoned together 27 years later when the cycle begins again.

 

* John Dies at the End by David Wong              Ranked 8,528        

Wong—Cracked.com editor Jason Pargin's alter ego—adroitly spoofs the horror genre while simultaneously offering up a genuinely horrifying story. JOHN DIES AT THE END has a cult following for a reason: it's horrific, thought-provoking, and hilarious all at once.

 

* Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry           Ranking 7,934          

A love story, an adventure, an American epic, Lonesome Dove embraces all the West -- legend and fact, heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers -- in a novel that recreates the central American experience, the most enduring of our national myths. Set in the late nineteenth century, Lonesome Dove is the story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana -- and much more. It is a drive that represents for everybody involved not only a daring, even a foolhardy, adventure, but a part of the American Dream -- the attempt to carve out of the last remaining wilderness a new life. If you only read one Western in your lifetime, it must be this one.

 

* Middlesex  by Jeffrey Eugenides     Ranked 4,088 

Middlesex is a book about a hermaphrodite, born a girl named Callie and later a teenage boy named Cal. Through Cal's narration, we learn the story of three generations of his Greek-American family and how a family secret made him who he is.  Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  Nominated for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award, Fiction.   2002 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Transgender

 

* Nation by Terry Pratchett    Ranked 6,581 

When a giant wave destroys his village, Mau is the only one left. Daphne—a traveler from the other side of the globe—is the sole survivor of a shipwreck. Separated by language and customs, the two are united by catastrophe. Slowly, they are joined by other refugees. And as they struggle to protect the small band, Mau and Daphne defy ancestral spirits, challenge death himself, and uncover a long-hidden secret that literally turns the world upside down.

 

* Nurtureshock  by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman      Non-fiction     Ranked 809   

In a world of modern, involved, caring parents, why are so many kids aggressive and cruel? Where is intelligence hidden in the brain, and why does that matter? Why do cross-racial friendships decrease in schools that are more integrated? If 98% of kids think lying is morally wrong, then why do 98% of kids lie? What's the single most important thing that helps infants learn language? With impeccable storytelling and razor-sharp analysis, the authors demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring--because key twists in the science have been overlooked.

 

* On The Road by Jack Kerouac       Ranked 2,630

On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance.  Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than forty years ago.

 

* Rats, Bats and Vats by Dave Freer and Eric Flint               Ranked 91,968

Class conflicts and the rights of clones and genetically engineered beings provided a serious core, but it's thoroughly enlivened with tweaked and twisted cliches, explosives military action, and plenty of interspecies banter to keep things fun.

 

* Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon    Ranked 110,118         

Ofelia is old, and content to live alone, the only remaining settler on an abandoned planet. Then new settlers arrive. And as Ofelia secretly listens, they are slaughtered to the last child by stone-age aliens no one had known were there. Now it is up to Ofelia to save the aliens from Earth's wrath.

 

* The Road  by Cormac McCarthy   Ranked 1,157 

The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece. A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other.  Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist.  A New York Times Notable Book

 

* The Robe  by Lloyd C. Douglas      Ranked 26,546          

A Roman soldier, Marcellus, wins Christ's robe as a gambling prize. He then sets forth on a quest to find the truth about the Nazarene's robe-a quest that reaches to the very roots and heart of Christianity and is set against the vividly limned background of ancient Rome.

 

* Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler    Ranked 52,807           

In 1965, the happy Bedloe family is living an ideal, apple-pie existence in Baltimore.  Then, in the blink of an eye, a single tragic event occurs that will transform their lives forever--particularly that of seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe, the youngest son, who blames himself for the sudden "accidental" death of his older brother.

 

* Same Kind of Different as Me by Denver Moore and Ron Hall  Ranked 705   

Meet Denver, a man raised under plantation-style slavery in Louisiana in the 1960s; a man who escaped, hopping a train to wander, homeless, for eighteen years on the streets of Dallas, Texas. No longer a slave, Denver's life was still hopeless-until God moved. First came a godly woman who prayed, listened, and obeyed. And then came her husband, Ron, an international arts dealer at home in a world of Armani-suited millionaires. And then they all came together. But slavery takes many forms.

 

* The Shack by William P. Young     Ranked 180    

A kidnapped daughter is presumed dead, and when her grieving father receives a letter, apparently from God, inviting him to the scene of the crime, he can't help but go.  What he finds there will change his world forever.

 

* Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure by Dan Baum  Ranked 327,320   

Non-fiction. Dan Baum interviewed more than 175 people - from John Ehrlichman to Janet Reno - to tell the story of how Drug War fever has been escalated; who has benefited along the way; and how the mounting price in dollars, lives, and liberties has been willfully ignored. Smoke and Mirrors takes you right into the offices where each new stage was planned and executed, then takes you to the streets where policies have produced bloody warfare. This is a tale of the nation run amok - in a way the American people are not yet ready to confront.

 

* Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach       Ranked 20,688           

This book might be best described as the logical sequel to Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. After probing autopsies, the funeral home business, and the implications of human composting, it seems only natural that the author would turn her attention to the afterlife. To learn what she can about the Other Side, she enrolls in an English school for mediums; banters with reincarnation researchers; and interviews a Duke University professor about a plan to weigh the consciousness of a leech.

 

* Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers  by Mary Roach      Ranking 6,910         

This strange footnote in the history of death and decay is recalled by Mary Roach in her surprisingly lively Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. We learn, among other notable macabre facts, that a detached human head is about the size and weight of a roaster chicken, that King Ptolemy I of Egypt first green-lighted autopsies in 300 B.C., that embalming-fluid companies once sponsored best-preserved-body contests, and that the French at the time of the Revolution were obsessed with discovering how long guillotined heads remained aware of their surroundings.

 

* The Straw Men by Michael Marshal            Ranked 95,943         

In Palmerston, Pennsylvania, two men in long coats walk calmly into a crowded fast-food restaurant--then, slowly and methodically, gun down sixty-eight people. They take time to reload.   On the Promenade of Santa Monica, California, a teenage girl gives sightseeing tips to a distinguished English tourist. She won't be going home tonight.  In Dyersburg, Montana, a grief-stricken son tries to make sense of the accident that killed his parents--then finds a note stuffed in his father's favorite chair. It reads, "We're not dead.”   Three seemingly unrelated events, these are the first signs of an unimaginable network of fear that will lead one unlikely hero to a chilling confrontation with The Straw Men.

 

* Subterranean by James Rollins         Ranked 17,148         

Beneath the ice at the bottom of the Earth is a magnificent subterranean labyrinth, a place of breathtaking wonders—and terrors beyond imagining. A team of specialists led by archaeologist Ashley Carter has been hand-picked to explore this secret place and to uncover the riches it holds. But they are not the first to venture here—and those they follow did not return.

 

*Thinner Than Thou by Kit Reed    Ranked 430,113         

Reed rips into the dangerous pursuit of body perfection at the expense of the soul in this stinging and mordantly witty satire. In the too-near future (watch out, Dr. Phil!), the Reverend Earl, a godlike "guru of the good life," broadcasts from his Glass Cathedral, promoting the nirvana of the "Afterfat," which can only be achieved by following his bible's formula of relentless exercise, cosmetic interventions and use of his special dietary supplement.

 

*Twilight by Stephenie Meyer  12 to adult  Ranked 951

Isabella Swan's move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. But once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Isabella's life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. Up until now, Edward has managed to keep his vampire identity a secret in the small community he lives in, but now nobody is safe, especially Isabella, the person Edward holds most dear. The lovers find themselves balanced precariously on the point of a knife -- between desire and danger.

 

* Watchmen  by Alan Moore  Ranked 2,829 

The would-be heroes of Watchmen have staggeringly complex psychological profiles: beneath his mask, the hard-nosed vigilante Rorschach is not a billionaire Bruce Wayne-like playboy but a troubled loner with a sociopathic streak. The gadget-dependent Nite-Owl is a sexually impotent pushover. Dr. Manhattan, the lone character who genuinely possesses supernatural powers (gained from a quantum physics experiment gone horribly wrong), is so close to godhood that he can appreciate human affairs only at a subatomic scale.

 

* World War Z by Max Brooks         Ranked 1,393 

In the wake of the great zombie war, Brooks's fictional alter ego travels around the world to ask tough questions of individuals and leaders about their experience and actions before, during and after the undead menace decimated the human population. Brooks remarkably identifies and articulates the nuances and unconsidered realities of what a zombie war would look like. This intriguing "oral history" stands apart from his previous zombie-related book, The Zombie Survival Guide, as Brooks uses the postwar culture here to provide political and social commentary on a wide range of real-life individuals and institutions.

 

* The Worst of Evils: The Fight Against Pain by Thomas Dormandy    Non-fiction    Not ranked.

This riveting book takes the reader around the globe and through the centuries to discover how different cultures have sought to combat and treat physical pain. With colorful stories and sometimes frightening anecdotes, Dr. Thomas Dormandy describes a checkered progression of breakthroughs, haphazard experiments, ignorant attitudes, and surprising developments in human efforts to control pain.

 

 

 

CHILDREN'S

(listed by age group)

 

* Goodnight, Goon by Michael Rex    Infants through pre-school    Ranked 20,841

It's bedtime in the cold gray tomb with a black lagoon, and two slimy claws, and a couple of jaws, and a skull and a shoe and a pot full of goo. But as a little werewolf settles down, in comes the Goon determined at all costs to run amok and not let any monster have his rest. A beloved classic gets a kind-hearted send up in this utterly monsterized parody; energetic art and a hilarious text will have kids begging to read this again and again.

 

* Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi    Ages 18 mos to 4 yrs     Ranked 4,687          

Okay, so everyone does it--does everyone have to talk about it? True, kids at a certain stage of development may find the subject riveting--but their parents may well not want to read to them about it. Here we learn that birds do it, bees do it, kids with bended knees do it. We are told about big poop and little poop, animals that poop while moving and animals that poop from a stationary position, why and where people poop--in short, we get the scoop on poop.

 

* Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? By Dr. Suess  Ages 3-6    Ranked 7754       

The talented Mr. Brown displays his virtuoso art through a variety of noises. Not only can he moo like a cow, but he can blurp like a horn, sizzle like an egg in a frying pan, pop like a cork , eek eek like a creaky shoe, and even imitate the sound of a hippopotamus chewing gum (grum, grum, grum)! The silly rhyming text makes this a wonderful book to read aloud and giggle along with the listeners!

 

* Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss   Ages 3-6  Ranked 2,142       

Another favorite from Dr. Seuss filled with enough silly rhymes and verse to keep kids coming back for more and more, as they have for over 50 years.

 

How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague  Ages 4-8  Ranked 2,252    

The whole “How Do Dinosaurs….” series was picked as his favorite by a young Austin boy, but this one had the highest ranking from B&N.

 

* The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein    Ages 4 to adult    Ranked 713    

A classic book for all ages—for mothers and fathers! A moving parable about the gift of giving and the capacity to love, told throughout the life of a boy who grows to manhood and a tree that selflessly gives him her bounty through the years.

 

* A Story for Bear by Dennis Hasley   Ages 5-8 yr olds     Ranked 130,772         

Never underestimate the power of reading: Like a mother and child, a bear and a woman meet at a summer cabin and become friends through the world of books.

 

* The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamilla   7 and up  Ranked 2,840

Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a china rabbit named Edward Tulane. The rabbit was very pleased with himself, and for good reason: he was owned by a girl named Abilene, who treated him with the utmost care and adored him completely. And then, one day, he was lost.
Kate DiCamillo takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the depths of the ocean to the net of a fisherman, from the top of a garbage heap to the fireside of a hoboes' camp, from the bedside of an ailing child to the bustling streets of Memphis. And along the way, we are shown a true miracle — that even a heart of the most breakable kind can learn to love, to lose, and to love again.  Child magazine's Best Children's Book Awards 2006

 

* Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl Ages 8-12   Ranked 4,725     

Fantastic Mr. Fox is on the run! The three meanest farmers around are out to get him. Fat Boggis, squat Bunce, and skinny Bean have joined forces, and they have Mr. Fox and his family surrounded. What they don’t know is that they’re not dealing with just any fox–Mr. Fox would never surrender. But only the most fantastic plan ever can save him now.

 

* The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart    Age 8-12 yr olds  Ranked 3,820

Dozens of children respond to this peculiar ad in the newspaper and are then put through a series of mind-bending tests, which readers take along with them. Only four children-two boys and two girls-succeed. Their challenge: to go on a secret mission that only the most intelligent and inventive children could complete.

 

* Poppy  by Avi             Age 8-12 yr olds    Ranked 8,555  

Newbery Honor author Avi turns out another winner with this fanciful tale featuring a cast of woodland creatures. At the very edge of Dimwood Forest stood an old charred oak where, silhouetted by the moon, a great horned owl sat waiting. The owl’s name was Mr. Ocax, and he looked like death himself. With his piercing gaze, he surveyed the lands he called his own, watching for the creatures he considered his subjects. Not one of them ever dared to cross his path. . .until the terrible night when two little mice went dancing in the moonlight. . .

 

* Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt     Age 9-12           Ranked 48,733           

Not only is Turner Buckminster the son of the new minister in a small early 1900’s Maine town, he is shunned for playing baseball differently than the local boys. Then he befriends smart and lively Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from Malaga Island, a poor community founded by former slaves. Lizzie shows Turner a new world along the Maine coast from digging clams to rowing a boat next to a whale. When the powerful town elders, including Turner’s father, decide to drive the people off the island to set up a tourist business, Turner stands alone against them. He and Lizzie try to save her community, but there’s a terrible price to pay for going against the tide. 2005 Newberry Honor Medal

 

* Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan    Ages 9-12 yr old         Ranked 202    

Once I got over the fact that my Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour, though I was careful not to walk behind him." For Percy, a wisecracking 12-year-old with ADHD, discovering his teacher is really a centaur is just another clue that the Greek gods are alive, well, and causing all kinds of mayhem in modern-day America.  Child magazine's Best Children's Book Awards 2005

 

* Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer   Ages 9-12   Ranked 46,912           

When a twelve-year-old evil genius tries to restore his family fortune by capturing a fairy and demanding a ransom in gold, the fairies fight back with magic, technology, and a particularly nasty troll.

 

* Bridge to Terabithia Katherine Paterson   Ages 9-12        Ranked 3,536 

All summer, Jess pushed himself to be the fastest boy in the fifth grade, and when the year's first school-yard race was run, he was going to win. But his victory was stolen by a newcomer, by a girl, one who didn't even know enough to stay on the girls' side of the playground. Then, unexpectedly, Jess finds himself sticking up for Leslie, for the girl who breaks rules and wins races. The friendship between the two grows as Jess guides the city girl through the pitfalls of life in their small, rural town, and Leslie draws him into the world of imagination-a world of magic and ceremony called Terabithia.

 

* The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series #5) by Rick Riordan Ages 9-12  Ranked 31   All year the half-bloods have been preparing for battle against the Titans, knowing the odds of a victory are grim. Kronos’s army is stronger than ever, and with every god and half-blood he recruits, the evil Titan’s power only grows. While the Olympians struggle to contain the rampaging monster Typhon, Kronos begins his advance on New York City, where Mount Olympus stands virtually unguarded. Now it’s up to Percy Jackson and an army of young demigods to stop the Lord of Time.

 

* Take the Reins ~ Canterwood Crest Series #1 by Jessica Burkhart   Ages 12 and up   Ranked 33,962   When Sasha Silver and her horse, Charm, arrive on the campus of the elite Canterwood Crest Academy, Sasha knows that she's in trouble. She's not exactly welcomed with open arms. One group of girls in particular is used to being the best, the brightest, and the prettiest on the team, and when Sasha shows her skills in the arena, the girls' claws come out.

*******

If you want to read more about any of these books, the Barnes and Noble web site is: www.bn.com