New Teen Fiction
Rash by Pete Hautman.
In the late twenty-first century Bo Marsten is unjustly accused of a causing a rash that plagues his entire high school. He loses it, and as a result, he's sentenced to work in the Canadian tundra, at a pizza factory that's surrounded by hungry polar bears. Bo finds prison life to be both boring and dangerous, but it's nothing compared to what happens when he starts playing on the factory's highly illegal football team. In the meantime, Bork, an artificial intelligence that Bo created for a science project, tracks Bo down in prison. Bork has spun out of control and seems to be operating on his own. He offers to get Bo's sentence shortened, but can Bo trust him? And now that Bo has been crushing skulls on the field, will he be able to go back to his old, highly regulated life?
Sand dollar summer by Kimberly K. Jones.
Twelve-year-old Lise watches her safe world fall apart when her strong, self-reliant mom is injured in a car accident. To recuperate, Mom takes Lise and her bright little brother to live in a rattletrap house on the beach in Maine for the summer. Although her mother grew up there, this is Lise's first experience with the ocean. She's terrified by what may be lurking in the cold depths and confused by the ways that Maine is changing her mother.
Water Shaper by Laura Williams McCaffrey.
Margot is the daughter of a king, but she is beloved by neither his court nor his kingdom. She has "water in her blood," a trait associated with magic and looked upon with distaste and suspicion. When she meets Orrin, a foreign king who is respectful, not scornful, of her affinity for water, she flees with him to his castle by the sea, though she soon realizes he is not as benevolent as she first thought. Intertwined with Margot's story is that of Bird, a storyteller who must tell stories for Orrin, though he can barely stand him. When Orrin steals the Book of the Sea, a magical gift given to Margot by her mother, Margot knows she must run away once again, and the threads of the two stories begin to intertwine. A convincing and beautifully realized world, a strong-minded female protagonist, and elements of Celtic folklore mark this rich, multilayered fantasy.