This is probably part 1 for this week’s new YA titles.

What World is Left, by Monique Polak (215 pages) – Anneke and her family are removed from Holland to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Anneke manages to survive through the darkest horrors by doing whatever it takes.

First line: ‘My bed is warm and cozy.‘

Sharp Beats : A Mickey Sharp Novel, by Dominic Barker (235 pages) – Mickey Sharp is a private eye for teenagers, but this time he may have bitten off more than he can chew. This is the latest in a series.

First lines: ‘Dum. Da da dum. Da da dum. Da da dum.‘

Envy : A Luxe Novel, by Anna Godbersen (403 pages) – This is the third Luxe novel, which are essentially ‘Gossip Girl  set in the 19th century’. In Envy Miss Diana Holland, whose family’s fall from grace two months previously so shocked New York’s  corset and crinoline-clad elite, has begun again to stir the waters of Victorian prudery.

First line: ‘“Surely a girl as lovely as you, a girl who personifies loveliness itself, should not be hidden away on a night like this, on a night when everyone wants to see a fine figure and starry eyes, and where yours are the starriest of all.”‘

Intensely Alice, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (269 pages) – It’s summer and Alice McKinley has a lot planned – she volunteers at a soup kitchen, does something wild and wonders about her visit to Chicago to see her boyfriend, Patrick. This is – I think! – the 24th Alice book.

First line: ‘“We’ve got to do something wild this summer.”‘

Along For The Ride, by Sarah Dessen (383 pages) – From the library catalogue’s description: ‘When Auden impulsively goes to stay with her father, stepmother, and new baby sister the summer before she starts college, all the trauma of her parents’ divorce is revived, even as she is making new friends and having new experiences such as learning to ride a bike and dating.’

First line: ‘The e-mails always began the same way. “Hi Auden!!!”‘

Dope Sick, by Walter Dean Myers (186 pages) – From the library catalogue’s description again (sometimes it’s easier to copy & paste) – ‘Seeing no way out of his difficult life in Harlem, seventeen-year-old Jeremy “Lil J” Dance flees into a house after a drug deal goes awry and meets a weird man who shows different turning points in Lil J’s life when he could have made better choices. ‘

First lines: ‘My arm was hurting bad. Real bad.‘

Dido, by Adele Geras (259 pages) – This is a retelling of a classical story, about a queen and a servant who both fall in love with the same chap. Adele Geras has written two other, similar retellings; Troy and Ithaka.

First line: ‘You knew that you were in a dream when the edges of everything you gazed at were blurred and when figures bent and blended into the background and arrived and disappeared magically, moving in a way that wouldn’t be possible in normal life.‘

Siggy and Amber, by Doug MacLeod (226 pages)
Taking The Plunge, by Helen Bailey (297 pages) – The fourth book about Electra Brown.