Young Adult Books

Eden West

Boy grows up on an insular cult compound in Montana. Boy meets girl from the other side of the fence. Big love, big sky.

Check out the unboxing video.

What Boys Really Want

What do boys really want? Lita blogs about it on her anonymous blog, while her best friend Adam decides to put the answers in a best-selling book. Funny things happen.

Visit Lita's secret blog.

The Big Crunch
Winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize

The Big Crunch is a love story, pure and simple. Well, okay, maybe not so pure and simple. It's about a year-long romance without vampires, dragons, secret societies, mysterious grandparents, unexplained deaths, violent psychopaths, drug addicts, or elves. I am putting all my elves in another book. Seriously, I am.

See the trailer here.

Rash
Michigan "Thumbs Up" Award Winner

Rash is set in the USSA (United Safer States of America) circa 2074, where french fries, football, and fighting are illegal, Bo Marsten must learn to live within the rules. He fails, and is sentenced to five years of making pizzas for McDonalds in a prison camp located near the arctic circle. There are polar bears.

Teacher's guide here.

Invisible

Dougie Hanson is the kid everybody loves to hate, but why? Dougie can't figure it out. He thinks there must be something wrong with them.

"I'm not only disturbed, I'm obsessed."

Godless
National Book Award Winner
Minnesota Book Award Winner

Godless won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2004. It's about some teens who start their own religion worshipping a water tower.

Godless is not what you think it is.

Teacher's guide here.

Why I wrote Godless.

Sweetblood
Minnesota Book Award Winner

Sweetblood is a vampire novel...only not really. It's the only "vampire novel" I know of that has no supernatural or science-fictional elements.

Teacher's guide here.

Also, here's an essay I wrote about the genesis of Sweetblood.

The Obsidian Blade

The first book in The Klaatu Diskos trilogy. Tucker Feye sees his father disappear and all sorts of freaky stuff happens.

Check out the video.

Mr. Was
Michigan "Thumbs Up" Award Winner

This was my first "YA" novel. I'm putting it up here by The Obsidian Blade because the two books are loosely connected. Both are time travel stories, both feature time-and-space portals, and both have a character named "Mr. Boggs."

Teacher's guide here.

Read the first chapter here.

Blank Confession
Minnesota Book Award Winner

Think of it as Shane set in a modern day high school, with motorcycles instead of horses, tasers instead of revolvers, and a five-foot-nothing Haitian-American overdresser named Mikey in place of Brandon De Wilde.

How to Steal a Car
This book didn't win anything. Can you believe it?

I love this book. It's about a fifteen-year-old girl who steals cars. Ever see Gone in 60 Seconds? Ever play Grand Theft Auto?

It's nothing like that at all.

Teacher's guide here.

Hole in the Sky
Arizona Young Adult Award Winner

A deadly Flu virus has ravaged the earth. Of those infected, only one in two thousand lives, and those who do—the "Survivors"—are forever changed.

Road Tripped

You could say that this is the story of a self-centered, unsympathetic, somewhat anomic teen who gets dope-slapped into a state of begrudging awareness. Or you could say it is a hopeful exploration of the grieving process. Either way, I think it’s a story that will resonate with teens, and mostly horrify their parents. You have been warned.

No Limit and All-In

No Limit is about a teen named Dennis Doyle who discovered within himself a talent for winning at poker.

Teacher's guide here.

All-In is the sequel.