X-Ray Reads - Look Before You Read

Author: Rahul Kanakia. Summary: Reshma is a college counselor’s dream. She’s the top-ranked senior at her ultra-competitive Silicon Valley high school, with a spotless academic record and a long roster of extracurriculars. But there are plenty of perfect students in the country, and if Reshma wants to get into Stanford, and into med school after that, she needs the hook to beat them all. What’s a habitual over-achiever to do? Land hersel...

Wings of Fire: Legends #1. Author: Tui T. Sutherland. Summary: Three dragons. One unavoidable, unpredictable destiny. This is the beginning… of the end. In the SeaWing kingdom, a young prince learns he is an animus — capable of wonderful magic that comes with a terrible price. In the mind of a NightWing dragonet, a thousand futures unfold — and almost all of them, she knows, lead to disaster and destruction. And under three f...

Riders #1. Author: Veronica Rossi. Summary: Eighteen-year old Gideon Blake is bound and drugged in a government facility. They want to hear his story, and it’s clear he’s not going anywhere until they do, so he begins to narrate the events of the past month of his life. After the parachuting accident where he should have died, Gideon woke up with strange powers no one can explain but a mysterious girl, who tells him he’s War, and he needs to r...

Glittering Court #1. Author: Richelle Mead. Summary: The Glittering Court tells the story of Adelaide, an Osfridian countess who poses as her servant to escape an arranged marriage and start a new life in Adoria, the New World. But to do that, she must join the Glittering Court. Both a school and a business venture, the Glittering Court is designed to transform impoverished girls into upper-class ladies who appear destined for powerful and wea...

Author: Lauren Miller. Summary: Parallel universes are a fun idea and all, but they’re not something Abby Barnes had ever really considered. She’s too busy keeping her life on track, straight to her life goals. Go to Northwestern college, major in journalism, and get a job with a national newspaper before 22 – she’s got it all figured out. But the parallel theory is forced to her attention when her life changes overnight, literally. Abby Barne...

Author: Orson Scott Card. Summary: The sphere is alien in origin, but has been controlled by man for millennia. A legend as old as the stars rules this constructed world; When the seventh seventh seventh human Heptarch is crowned, he will be the Kristos and will bring eternal salvation . . . or the destruction of the cosmos. Patience is the only daughter of the rightful Heptarch, but she, like her father before her, serves the usurper who has ...

Author: Andrea Seigel. Summary: Stella Parrish is seventeen, attractive, smart, deeply alienated, and unable to countenance life’s absurdities. She is not nihilistic; she is prematurely exhausted. Since her parents OD’d on designer drugs when she was eleven, she has lived with well-meaning but inexperienced foster parents, while her grandfather, her only living relative, tries ever more ingenious ways of committing suicide in his r...

Bernadette I’m not just a certified bookworm. I’m afraid I’m a bookwyrm, too. Which is just a nice way of saying book-hoarder. I can’t even say I’m letting you in on a secret, because honestly? All my friends and family know it. It’s hard to disguise an ever-growing collection of books as anything else, especially when it begins overflowing the bookshelf space and piling up across your room in stacks and mou...

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson. Summary: Melinda’s place in the high-school hierarchy was set before she ever set foot in the building. Because of the shame of calling the police on a wild summer party, none of her friends will speak to her, and Melinda is alone except for the friendly new girl. Confused by her own thoughts, wounded by past events and despairing of any hope for highschool, Melinda isolates herself further, withdrawing int...

A Discworld Novel. Author: Terry Pratchett. Summary: It’s bad enough being new on the job, but Teppic hasn’t a clue as to what a pharaoh is supposed to do. After all, he’s been trained at Ankh-Morpork’s famed assassins’ school, across the sea from the Kingdom of the Sun. First, there’s the monumental task of building a suitable resting place for Dad — a pyramid to end all pyramids. Then there are the m...