Descriptions of the twenty books chosen for the 2016-2017 Georgia teen Peach reading list.

1. 2016-2017

2. When Maddie Fynn was small and drew pictures, the
people in her drawings always had numbers on their
foreheads. When her father, a police officer, died on
duty her mother realized the dates were Maddie saw
were the dates on which people were to die. Always
short of money, her mother made her use her strange
gift to make extra money.
Maddie gets tangled up in a homicide investigation.
The police think she may have been involved. Was
she? Or was she a target too? Read When to solve the
mystery.

3. When Kristin Lattimer is voted homecoming queen, she is thrilled.
Even though her mother passed away when she was younger, her
life is going pretty well. She is a cheerleader, champion hurdler with
a college scholarship already in the offing, and thinks she is madly
in love with her boyfriend. But then she learns she is intersex,
meaning she outwardly looks like a girl but has male chromosomes.
Her issues become common knowledge at school and her great life is
turned upside down on every front.

4. Teen prostitution and human trafficking seem like
something that shouldn’t and couldn’t happen in
America. But Dime’s foster mother is only after the
check and doesn’t much care what Dime does. She
gradually slips into a life with ‘daddy’ and two other
women. Before she knows it, school is a distant memory
and Dime is a working girl helping pay the bills. When
another young girl becomes part of the ‘family,’ Dime
starts to question her life and wonders if she has the
courage to escape…or even if it is possible.

5. Sixteen year old African-American Tariq Johnson is shot to
death by a white man and his community struggles to make
sense of it all. Everyone who witnessed the tragedy has
something different to say about it. Tariq’s friends and family
as well as the community try to understand exactly ‘how it
went down’.
Given news stories of the past year or two, this book is a
timely exploration of how events and reasons that seem
obvious can be obscure.

6. Mercy Legowski-Gracia, known as Sugar,
considers herself the ‘fat Puerto-Rican-Polish girl
who doesn’t feel like she belongs in her skin, or
anywhere else for that matter’. Ridiculed
wherever she goes because of her size, she takes
care of her even heavier mother who rarely gets
out of bed any more.
When Even, a new boy, moves to town, they
become friends, despite her size. Sugar’s new
relationship with Even has her rethinking her
life.

7. Set in a fantasy empire similar to ancient Rome, Laia
and her family manage to survive. When Laia’s
brother is arrested for treason, Laia becomes a spy to
try to save him.
It is a militaristic world and Elias is considered one of
the finest soldiers at the military academy. Laia
works as a slave at the academy to learn about her
brother and encounters Elias. The two connect and
learn maybe they aren't so different after all.
This book has action, a little romance, and rebellion.
The sequel, A Torch Against the Night, comes out in
August, 2016.

8. After devastating nuclear war, the world has
changed and the survivors have an uneasy truce
with one another. Sons and daughters of feuding
families are to marry one another. Ivy is to kill her
new husband so her family will become powerful.
Can she do it?

9. Disguising themselves as boys, runaway slave Annamae and
Chinese orphan Samantha run from the authorities in Missouri
and head West on the Oregon Trail. It’s not safe for girls to
travel alone in the 1840s and the country is gripped with Gold
Rush fever so the trail is crowded and the girls are being
tracked by the long arm of the law.

10. Naila has grown up in Florida but her Pakistani parents have
forbidden her to date or even be friends with a boy. After she
sneaks out to go to the prom and gets caught, the family
whisks her off to Pakistan—she isn’t even allowed to go to her
high school graduation.
The vacation keeps getting extended and then Naila discovers
her parents have arranged a marriage for her. Immediately.
And she will stay in Pakistan. Read the book to find out if she
manages to escape before it’s too late!

11. Samantha appears to ‘have it all’ and be well adjusted. She’s
popular and always invited to all the big events at school. But
she is hiding a secret from her friends. She has OCD and sees
her psychiatrist regularly.
When she finds a new friend named Caroline, she visits Poet’s
Corner with her—a hidden room at school full of ‘misfits’ who
love poetry. Sam starts to write poetry and feel more at ease
with herself…until she discovers that she has mislead herself.
Then she really begins to wonder if she is sane.

12. Simon is gay, but it’s his secret. He’s in the school
musical and has some good friends. When his secret
is leaked by someone who is blackmailing him,
Simon has to decide how to handle it all while at the
same time keeping his friends.
Simon didn’t expect to be outed and has an
interesting time dealing with the consequences
without ruining his life. (Read it before it gets made
into a movie…the book is always better!)

13. Written in part by the daughter of Malcom X, this
novel based tells of his early life. He dreamed of
becoming a lawyer, but with his father murdered
and a mother institutionalized, he ends up in the
murky and dangerous underworlds of New York
City and Boston.
At the age of twenty, he finds himself sentenced to
ten years in prison. He uses the time to educate
himself and converts to the Muslim religion. This
fictionalized story of his life, unlike most
accounts, tells of his childhood.

14.  Meet Stewart. He’s geeky, gifted and sees things a
bit differently to most people. His mum has died and
he misses her all the more now he and Dad have
moved in with Ashley and her mum.
 Meet Ashley. She’s popular, cool and sees
things very differently to her new family. Her dad has
come out and moved out – but not far enough. And
now she has to live with a freakazoid step-brother.
 Stewart can’t quite fit in at his new school, and Ashley
can’t quite get used to her totally awkward home,
which is now filled with some rather questionable
decor. And things are about to get a whole lot more
mixed up when these two very different people attract
the attention of school hunk Jared. . .

15. Minnow moves with her parents to a religious cult when
she is five years old. When she is seventeen, Kevin, the cult
leader and prophet, is murdered and the camp set on fire,
Minnow is put in juvenile detention and questioned by the
FBI. She has to adjust to a totally different way of life than
she has learned. If she tells what she knows, she may be
able to make a deal and get out of detention. Then she will
just have to learn to live in the ‘real world’. And adjust to
everyone seeing she has no hands.

16.  It's his senior year and Will Shea has conned his way into one of
the country's most elite prep schools. But he soon runs into
Andrea, a fellow con-artist. With the school not big enough for
the both of them, they make a bet that whoever can con Brandt
Rush, the richest, most privileged student in the school out of
$50K, gets to stay at the school. Will starts setting up his con
(an online poker scam) with his uncle who's one of the best
grifters in the business, but also with the unwanted help of his
father.. The plot thickens as Will starts falling for fellow student
Gatsby, and some of Will's lies start to catch up with him.
 In this twisty tale of scams, secrets, lies and deception, it hard
to figure out who's conning who!

17. Libby and May were fifth grade best friends in Seattle who
wrote and drew comics together about their imaginary heroine,
Princess X. After Libby and her mom are killed in a car
accident, May gives up Princess X.
At sixteen, May starts to see Princess X stickers, patches, and
even a website. The ONLY other person who knew anything
about Princess X was Libby, but she was dead…wasn’t she?
I am Princess X is a bit of a hybrid book with elements of
graphic novels as well as the more traditional format. It is a
fun mystery read.

18. The first book in a trilogy, orphaned Fletcher is working as a
blacksmith’s apprentice when he realizes he can summon
demonic creatures from another world.
When Fletcher must flee his village of Pelt after he and his
demon attack the local bully, he encounters a mage and ends up
in a special school being trained as a Battlemage to help wage
war against the orcs.
This book is a fast-paced read with a lot of action.

19. Tackling the subject of eating disorders, this book is about
seventeen year old Stevie who is confined to a treatment center
on the outskirts of the New Mexico desert. She is accompanied
everywhere by nurses and therapists who are encouraging her
to gain weight.
Stevie feels responsible for her brother’s death and plans to
take her own life on the anniversary of his death. Her mother
has left the family and moved to Paris. Back home in Atlanta,
her father has her signed in for sixty days. But Stevie knows
she only has 27 days until the anniversary of Josh’s death.

20. M.T. looks like the other blondish, American girls in her
New Jersey high school, but she is really an illegal
immigrant named Monserrat Thalia. She’s a senior in
high school with great grades who knows her hopes for
college aren’t going to work out.
As the year progresses, M.T. become hopeless and angry
and doesn’t feel she fits with her American friends, or her
Argentinian family any more.
This book is based on the author’s personal experience.

21. Josh got out of Creek View by joining the Marines. But he’s back
and working at the Paradise Motel after losing a leg in
Afghanistan. Skylar is planning on getting out of the small
California town too by going to art school in San Francisco. She’s
been saving forever. But when Skylar’s mother loses her job at
Taco Bell, Skylar is afraid she will have to stay home to help
financially.
Skylar starts working at the Paradise Motel too where she and
Josh fall for each other and have to figure out what kind of
relationship they will have. And where.