"I was dying, of course, but then we all are."

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
New York, N.Y. : Wendy Lamb Books, c2004.

A shockingly fresh and engaging book, ‘How I Live Now’ focuses on Daisy, a cool Manhattinite sent to stay with her English cousins in the countryside in the near future. She falls instantly and deeply in love with her cousins (each of them in slightly different ways). Shortly after her arrival, war breaks out, and with her cousins, she is forced to try and live through it. Taught, passionate, full and luminous, this is a modern classic.

May the odds be ever in your favour

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
New York : Scholastic Press, 2008.

15 year-old Katniss has grown up in a brutally poor district in the rigidly totalitarian Panem, a dystopian USA. When she volunteers in place of her sister to participate in the almost certainly fatal “Hunger Games’, she makes what might be the ultimate sacrifice for those she loves. Fortunately for Katniss, she is unimpeachably tough and has phenomenal skills with a bow and arrow. She’s a calm, cool heroine for her times.

Fast-paced and unrelentingly tense, this book (and the two that follow in the trilogy) will keep you reading far into the night.