Bridge Street Books

Wicklow

Books for Teenagers ages 13+

Please remember this is just a small selection of books we love for teenagers. We have loads more titles in-store.  Please ask us for more information.

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

Helen Grant

On the day Katharina Linden disappears, Pia is the last person to see her alive. Terror is spreading through the town. How could a ten-year-old girl vanish in a place where everybody knows everybody else? Pia is determined to find out what happened to Katharina. But then the next girl disappears.

 
Gone

Michael Grant

In the blink of an eye, the world changes. The adults vanish without a trace, and those left must do all they can to survive. For Sam and Astrid, it is a race against time as they try to solve the questions that now dominate their lives. What is the mysterious wall that has encircled the town of Perdido Beach and trapped everyone within?

A modern day 'Lord of the Flies' for teenagers
'The Chaos Walking Trilogy'

Monsters of Men

Patrick Ness

Part 3 of 'The Chaos Walking' Trilogy - this promises to be a fast paced, action packed adventure thriller.  The first in the series (the knife of never letting go) won the Guardian book award 2008, and the second (the ask & the answer) is shortlisted for the Carnegie medal award 2010

'War', says the Mayor. 'At last'. Three armies march on New Prentisstown, each one intent on destroying the others.
Todd and Viola are caught in the middle, with no chance of escape. As the battles commence, how can they hope to stop the fighting? How can there ever be peace when they're so hopelessly outnumbered? And if war makes monsters of men, what terrible choices await? But then a third voice breaks into the battle, one bent on revenge - the electrifying finale to the award-winning "Chaos Walking" trilogy, "Monsters of Men" is a heart-stopping novel about power, survival, and the devastating realities of war.

No & Me

Delphine de Vigan

 

Lou Bertignac has an IQ of 160 and a good friend in class rebel Lucas. At home her father puts a brave face on things but cries in secret in the bathroom, while her mother rarely speaks and hardly ever leaves the house. To escape this desolate world, Lou goes often to Gare d'Austerlitz to see the big emotions in the smiles and tears of arrival and departure.
But there she also sees the homeless, meets a girl called No, only a few years older than herself, and decides to make homelessness the topic of her class presentation. Bit by bit, Lou and No become friends until, the project over, No disappears. Heartbroken, Lou asks her parents the unaskable question and her parents say: Yes, No can come to live with them.
So Lou goes down into the underworld of Paris's street people to bring her friend up to the light of a home and family life, she thinks.

This addresses all the teenage angst - fancying boys; wanting to be accepted, but not being cool enough - in a fantastically written, thoroughly enjoyable book.  A must for all teenagers

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Mary E Pearson

This is a chilling, page-turning psychological thriller set in a clinical future that may be closer than we think. A seventeen-year-old girl wakes from a year-long coma and is told her name is Jenna Fox. She doesn't remember the accident; she doesn't remember her life; she doesn't remember herself.
Her parents show her home movies of her past, but is she really the same girl she sees on the screen? When the memories start to come, they come with questions - questions no one wants to answer. How did the accident happen? Why does her own grandmother hate her so? And why does she feel her parents are hiding her away? Who is Jenna Fox?
The Prince of Mist

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

 

Max Carver's father - a watchmaker and inventor - decides to move his family to a small town on the coast, to an old house that once belonged to a prestigious surgeon, Dr Richard Fleischmann. But the house holds many secrets and stories of its own. Behind it is an overgrown garden full of statues surrounded by a metal fence topped with a six-pointed star.
When he goes to investigate, Max finds that the statues seem to consist of a kind of circus troop with the large statue of a clown at its centre. Max has the curious sensation that the statue is beckoning to him. As the family settles in they grow increasingly uneasy: they discover a box of old films belonging to the Fleischmanns; his sister has disturbing dreams and his other sister hears voices whispering to her from an old wardrobe.
They also discover the wreck of a boat that sank many years ago in a terrible storm. Everyone on board perished except for one man - an engineer who built the lighthouse at the end of the beach. During the dive, Max sees something that leaves him cold - on the old mast floats a tattered flag with the symbol of the six-pointed star.
As they learn more about the wreck, the chilling story of the Prince of the Mists begins to emerge
The Enemy

Charlie Higson

 

They'll chase you. They'll rip you open. They'll feed on you ...When the sickness came, every parent, police officer, politician - every adult - fell ill.
The lucky ones died. The others are crazed, confused and hungry. Only children under fourteen remain, and they're fighting to survive.
Now there are rumours of a safe place to hide. And so a gang of children begin their quest across London, where all through the city - down alleyways, in deserted houses, underground - the grown-ups lie in wait. But can they make it there - alive?
Auslander

Paul Dowswell

When Peter's parents are killed, he is sent to an orphanage in Warsaw. Then German soldiers take him away to be measured and assessed. They decide that Peter is racially valuable.
He is Volksdeutscher: of German blood. With his blond hair, blue eyes, and acceptably proportioned head, he looks just like the boy on the Hitler-Jugend poster. Someone important will want to adopt Peter.
They do. Professor Kaltenbach is very pleased to welcome such a fine Aryan specimen to his household. People will be envious.
But Peter is not quite the specimen they think. He is forming his own ideas about what he is seeing, what he is told. Peter doesn't want to be a Nazi, and so he is going to take a very dangerous risk.
The most dangerous risk he could possibly choose to take in Berlin in 1942.

An eye-opener to life as a german boy during the war

Solace of the Road

Siobhan Dowd

Winner:

COSTA BOOK AWARDS 2009

Memories of Mum are the only thing that make Holly Hogan happy. She hates her foster family with their too-nice ways and their false sympathy. And she hates her life, her stupid school and the way everyone is always on at her.
Then she finds the wig, and everything changes. Wearing the long, flowing blonde locks she feels transformed. She's not Holly any more, she's Solace: the girl with the slinkster walk and the super-sharp talk.
She's older, more confident - the kind of girl who can walk right out of her humdrum life, hitch to Ireland and find her mum. The kind of girl who can face the world head on. So begins a bittersweet, and sometimes hilarious journey as Solace swaggers and Holly tiptoes across England and through memory, discovering her true self, and unlocking the secrets of her past.
Holly's story will leave a lasting impression on all who travel with her.

Also by Dowd:  'A Swift, Pure Cry' & ' Bog Child'.  For younger readers: 'The London Eye Mystery'

Chocolate Cake with Hitler

Emma Craigie

Fictionalised account of 11-year old Helga Goebbels' last days. The daughter of a leading Nazi, she spent the last 10 days of her life trapped in a bunker with Adolf Hitler.

Although a fictional account, this book is based on real findings and eyewitness accounts of the time.  This is a disturbing novel, but fascinating - we have all read 'Anne Frank' , this gives us the german side from the point of view of an innocent little girl.  Fabulous.

Out of Shadows

Jason Wallace

Zimbabwe, 1980s The war is over, independence has been won and Robert Mugabe has come to power offering hope, land and freedom to black Africans. It is the end of the Old Way and the start of a promising new era.

For Robert Jacklin, life in Zimbabwe offers a new start: new continent, new school, new independence. But he soon learns that not all his classmates are happy with the changes, especially clever, cunning Ivan, who is determined to fight until the very end. A timely novel, with Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe regularly in the news.

This is a fantastic first novel -thought provoking, bold and brilliantly written.  A must-read for all teenagers and young adults.

The Hunger Games Trilogy

Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games:  Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been close to death before - and survival, for her, is second nature. "The Hunger Games" is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present.
Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever...

Catching Fire:  After winning the brutal Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen returns to her district, hoping for a peaceful future. But Katniss starts to hear rumours of a deadly rebellion against the Capitol. A rebellion that she and Peeta have helped to create.
As Katniss and Peeta are forced to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. Unless Katniss and Peeta can convince the world that they are still lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

 

The Chaos Walking Trilogy

Patrick Ness

The Knife of Never Letting Go:  This is an unflinching novel about the impossible choices of growing up, by an award-winning writer.  Imagine you're the only boy in a town of men. And you can hear everything they think. And they can hear everything you think.
Imagine you don't fit in with their plans...Todd Hewitt is just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man. But his town has been keeping secrets from him. Secrets that are going to force him to run.  "The Ask and the Answer" is a tense, shocking and deeply moving novel of resistance under the most extreme pressure.

The Ask & The Answer:  We were in the square, in the square where I'd run, holding her, carrying her, telling her to stay alive, stay alive till we got safe, till we got to Haven so I could save her - But there weren't no safety, no safety at all, there was just him and his men. Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd has carried a desperately wounded Viola right into the hands of their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss. Immediately separated from Viola and imprisoned, Todd is forced t learn the ways of the Mayor's new order.
But what secrets are hiding just outside of town? And where is Viola? Is she even still alive? And who are the mysterious Answer? And then, one day, the bombs begin to explode.

Finding Violet Park

Jenny Valentine

Narrated by the most compelling voice since Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, this is a quirky and original voyage of self-discovery triggered by a lost urn of ashes. The mini cab office was up a cobbled mews with little flat houses either side. That's where I first met Violet Park, what was left of her.
There was a healing centre next door, a pretty smart name for a place with a battered brown door and no proper door handle and stuck-on wooden numbers in the shape of clowns. The 3 of number 13 was a w stuck on sideways and I thought it was kind of sad and I liked it at the same time. Sixteen-year-old Lucas Swain becomes intrigued by the urn of ashes left in a cab office.
Convinced that its occupant -- Violet Park -- is communicating with him, he contrives to gain possession of the urn, little realising that his quest will take him on a voyage of self-discovery and identity, forcing him to finally confront what happened to his absent (and possibly dead) father!

Also by Valentine: 'The Ant Colony', 'Broken Soup'.  For younger readers: 'Iggy & Me'

Secret Countess

Iva Ibbotson

Anna, a young countess, has lived in the glittering city of St Petersburg all her life in an ice-blue palace overlooking the River Neva. But when revolution tears Russia apart, her now-penniless family is forced to flee to England. Armed with an out-of-date book on housekeeping, Anna determines to become a housemaid and she finds work at the Earl of Westerholme's crumbling but magnificent mansion.
The staff and the family are sure there is something not quite right about their new maid - but she soon wins them over with her warmth and dedication. Then the young Earl returns home from the war - and Anna falls hopelessly in love. But they can never be together: Rupert is engaged to the snobbish and awful Muriel - and anyway, Anna is only a servant.
Or so everybody thinks...

Also by Ibbotson:  A Song for Summer, Magic Flutes, The Morning Gift, Company of Swans

For younger readers:  The Dragonfly Pool, Journey to the River Sea, The Star of Kazan

  Bloodchild

Tim Bowler

Will lies in a deserted lane.  All he knows is that he's had an accident & that his life is slipping away.  Against all the odds he survives - but with an almost total loss of memory.  He does not even know himself.  And that is not all.  At night he is tormented by visions, in the daytime by hostile strangers.  Why does he have so many enemies?  And who is the stranger child who seems to have a story to tell him?  Something has happened in this town, something terrifying.  Will can sense it but he can't work out what it was.  Perhaps the old Will knew.  But that was before the accident.  The new Will must search for the answers again- and this is a dangerous task.  For the town has a secret & there are those who will do everything in their power to preserve it.
Does my Head Look Big in This?

10 Things I Hate about Me

Randa Abdul-Fattah

Abdul-Fattah manages to capture the everyday angst faced by teenagers today in a most interesting and readable way - boys, parents and being accepted and popular are all addressed.  Great books.

Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

Let the Circle be Unbroken

Mildred D. Taylor

 

Gossip Girl Series

It Girl Series

Cecily von Ziegesar

Light & quirky!  Fun to read

Twilight Series

also: The Host

Stephanie Meyer

The series taking the teenage, young adult world by storm.  Read the books, watch the film, buy the merchandise!!!

Cherub Series

Robert Muchamore

For 14+, this is a series of books about a boy living in an orphanage.  He becomes a secret agent, and ultimately the person every boy dreams of being

Alex Rider Series

Power of Five Series

Anthony Horowitz

For the lovers of adventure & young bond, this is an exciting series with lots of action & adventure

Maximum Ride Series

The Angel Experiment

School's Out Forever

Saving the World & Other Extreme Sports

The Final Warning

James Patterson

Genetically modified children - they have wings!-take on the world and all that is sent out to destroy them.  Great adventures with good writing, from the thriller master himself

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Bridge Street Books, Bridge Street, Wicklow. Open Mon-Sat 9.30am-6pm Ph/fax: +353(0)404 62240  email: hilary.hamilton@esatclear.ie