Dramatic Real Life Fiction

Try these books if you're looking for:

• fiction
• dramatic stories
• real-life stories
• books that are similar to White Oleander or Sarah Dessen novels

The Summer I Turned Pretty 
By Jenny Han
YA F HAN
Belly spends the summer she turns sixteen at the beach just like every other summer of her life, but this time things are very different.

Miracle 
By Elizabeth Scott
YA F SCOTT
Rising senior and star soccer player Megan Hathaway, unable to remember the plane crash of which she was the sole survivor, feels like an empty shell and loses all interest in her life and her friends, but unlikely friends help her face life as a "miracle."

The Language of Flowers 
By Vanessa Diffenbaugh
F DIFFENBAUGH
The story of a woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own past.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet 
By Jamie Ford
F FORD
When artifacts from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War II are uncovered during renovations at a Seattle hotel, Henry Lee embarks on a quest that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti-Japanese sentiment.

Scientific Thrillers

Try these books if you're looking for:

• scientific fiction
• thrillers

Ice Station 
By Matthew Reilly
F REILLY Shane #1
On Antarctica, special forces from several countries battle each other for control of what is believed to be an alien space ship buried in the ice. Non-stop action and treachery galore.

The Alexander Cipher 
By Will Adams
F ADAMS
Daniel Knox's first love is archaeology, more specifically Alexander the Great. In this adventure, he competes with rival archaeologists, Egyptian officials, and Macedonian nationalists in the hunt for one of the greatest archaeological prizes in the world--the tomb of Alexander the Great.

The Atlantis Code 
By Charles Brokaw
F BROKAW Thomas #1
When the ancient ruins of Atlantis are discovered along the Spanish coast, linguist and archaeologist Thomas Lourds joins a violent competition to be the first of its explorers, an effort marked by a series of puzzles that must be solved in order to gain entry into the lost civilization.

Multicultural Books with Female Protagonists

Try these books if you're looking for:

• female protagonist
• focus on characters and relationships
• multicultural
• characters face difficult circumstances
• explicit content

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 
By Stieg Larsson
MYSTERY LARSSON Millenni #1
Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pieced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

Farishta 
By Patricia McArdle
F MCARDLE
An American diplomat is forced to confront the devastation of her past when she is assigned to remote northern Afghanistan.

A Tale for the Time Being 
By Ruth Ozeki
F OZEKI
Nao Yasutani is a Japanese schoolgirl who plans to kill herself as a way of escaping her dreary life. First, though, she intends to write in her diary the life story of her great-grandmother Jiko, a Zen Buddhist nun. But Nao actually ends up writing her own life story, and the diary eventually washes up on the shore of Canada's Vancouver Island, where a novelist called Ruth lives.

Sold 
By Patricia McCormick
F MCCORMICK
When she is tricked by her stepfather and sold into prostitution, thirteen-year-old Lakshmi becomes submerged in a nightmare where her only comfort is the friendship she forms with the other girls, which helps her survive and eventually escape.