The “Adult Books 4 Teens” blog is designed to replace the “Adult Books for High School Students” print column. It launched on the School Library Journal website in October 2010, and has offered four or five book reviews each week ever since. The purpose of AB4T is to help librarians learn about the best books published for the adult market that also have appeal to teen readers, including books in all genres and formats. Books are chosen for review through attendance at publisher previews, trade shows, and conferences; reading advanced reviews and catalogs; and by keeping one eye on twitter and the other on well-known authors whose works have exhibited crossover appeal in the past.

Currently, nearly 20 librarians review for the blog. All work with teens in either public or school libraries, in a variety of settings across the country, and participated in the selection of the Best list. The year of 2011 has been a particularly strong one for adult books with appeal to young adult readers. It was a challenge to narrow down our list to the titles displayed here. Genre fiction is well-represented, as are debut authors and literary fiction, likely to appeal to the most ambitious of teen readers. Full reviews can be found on SLJ’s website at http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/adult4teen.

Fiction

BIRCH

CAMPBELL, Bonnie Jo. Once Upon a River. Norton. Tr $25.95. ISBN 978-0-393-07989-0. Sixteen-year-old runaway Margo Green creates a new life on the river. Guided by a biography of Annie Oakley and an astounding ease with the natural world, Margo struggles to navigate the perils of human nature while she searches for the mother who abandoned her long ago. (July)

CLINE, Ernest. Ready Player One: A Novel. Crown. Tr $24.95. ISBN 978-0-307-88743-6. Imagine if Willie Wonka had been a video-game designer. Now imagine a world in which most people spend their time as avatars in a virtual reality. The founder of this virtual reality leaves his fortune to the first to win a contest, comprised of puzzles and tasks based on 1980s popular culture. Three teens compete to win against an evil conglomerate. (Aug.)

CUTTER, Kimberly. The Maid. Houghton Harcourt. Tr $26. ISBN 978-0-547-42752-2. This thrilling, visceral retelling of the life of Joan of Arc follows the rise of a poor, abused, illiterate girl who leaves her family and follows fervent belief and conviction to victory in battle and renown. Readers will yearn for a different story this time, to avoid the betrayal, abandonment, and death at its end. (Oct.)

DIFFENBAUGH, Vanessa. The Language of Flowers. Ballantine. Tr $25. ISBN 978-0-345-52554-3. Alternate chapters weave Victoria’s past as a foster child and her present as a semi-homeless 18-year-old in Diffenbaugh’s moving debut. Victoria finds her first job in a florist shop, putting to use the language of flowers she first learned from her only real family, the foster mother she lost 10 years earlier. (Aug.)

GRANT, Helen. The Glass Demon: A Novel. Bantam. pap. $15. ISBN 978-0-385-34420-3. In this creepy gothic novel, Lin’s family moves to a German village so her father can study the legend of the Allerheiligen Glass–medieval stained-glass windows said to have been cursed by a demon, bringing death to those who gaze upon them. A brilliant combination of horror, fairy tales, mystery, and romance. (June)

GROSSMAN, Lev. The Magician King. Viking. Tr $26.95. ISBN 978-0-670-02231-1. Fillory is a magical utopia. With little for a monarch to do, Quentin goes on a quest. Alternating chapters relate his old friend Julia’s backstory. While the king enjoys life at Brakebills, Julia learns magic on the streets. Her journey is powerful and horrifying in this follow-up to The Magicians (2009). (Sept.)

HARRINGTON, Laura. Alice Bliss: A Novel. Viking. Tr $25.65. ISBN 978-0-670-02278-6. Alice’s idyllic small-town life is interrupted when her father’s army reserve unit is called up for active duty in Iraq. After he is declared missing in action, she turns to her best friend, the boy next door, for support. (June)

HENDERSON, Eleanor. Ten Thousand Saints. HarperCollins. Tr $26.99. ISBN 978-0-06-202102-1. It begins with the drug-fueled last day in the life of 15-year-old Teddy McNicholas, and spirals from there into the lives of those who were closest to him. Henderson’s depiction of late-1980s New York is impressive–from the Straight Edge scene to the gay community’s grappling with HIV. (June)

HOWREY, Meg. Blind Sight. Pantheon. Tr $24.99. ISBN 978-0-307-37916-0. When he is invited to live with his biological father for the summer, 17-year-old Luke is amazed to discover that the man is a famous television star. Chapters begin with the teen’s wonderfully witty college application essays, which reflect a new understanding of family dynamics and the workings of the human brain. (Mar.)

JORDAN, Hillary. When She Woke. Algonquin. Tr $24.95. ISBN 978-1-56512-629-9. Reproductive freedom, racism, and the separation of church and state are only a few of the issues explored in this character-driven dystopian novel that bears parallels to The Scarlet Letter. (Oct.)

MORGENSTERN, Erin. The Night Circus. Doubleday. Tr $26.95. ISBN 978-0-385-53463-5. Le Cirque des Rêves appears without warning on the outskirts of cities around the world. Only open at night, it is filled with magic and theater, each tent a sensory experience, manipulated and sustained by two young people locked in a mysterious competition. (Sept.)

OBREHT, Téa. The Tiger’s Wife. Random. Tr $25. ISBN 978-0-385-34383-1. In a war-torn Balkan country, a young doctor remembers her grandfather and tells a series of interlinked tales both historical and magical featuring the tiger’s wife and the deathless man. In this account of love, loss, and war in the modern world, Obreht’s vivid writing creates unforgettable visions of unique settings. (Mar.)

RUSSELL, Karen. Swamplandia! Knopf. Tr $24.95. ISBN 978-0-307-26399-5. Mere months after their mother dies, the Bigtree family’s alligator-wrestling theme park and cafe, Swamplandia!, goes out of business, sending the abandoned siblings on individual perilous journeys away from home in this dazzling, affecting, funny novel. (Feb.)

SOLOMON, Anna. The Little Bride. Riverhead. pap. $15. ISBN 978-1-594-48535-0. In late-19th-century Russia, Minna, a 16-year-old servant, wishing for a new life in America, signs up with Rosenfeld’s Bridal Service. She is sent to the hardscrabble South Dakota Territory where both her devoutly Orthodox husband-to-be and his crude one-room dugout fall far short of her dreams. (Sept.)

VENDITTI, Robert & Mike Huddleston. Homeland Directive. Top Shelf. pap. $14.95. ISBN 978-1-603-09024-7. This tightly plotted thriller of a graphic novel probes the fine line between government protection and privacy invasion. The United States has determined that its residents can be investigated for suspicious activities by mining everyone’s data DNA, the sum of each person’s online transactions and activities. (June)

WALTON, Jo. Among Others. Tor. Tr $24.99. ISBN 978-0-7653-2153-4. As she recovers from the confrontation with her mother that killed her twin sister, Mori keeps a journal permeated by a love of reading in this mesmerizing fantasy novel. Sent to a boarding school where she is desperately lonely and abandoned by the fairies who once kept her safe, Mori finds refuge in books, which are her instruction manuals and her joy. (Jan.)

WILSON, Daniel H. Robopocalypse. Doubleday. Tr $25. ISBN 978-0-385-53385-0. In this artificial intelligence blockbuster, the heroic actions of a handful of characters are told in the form of briefing reports recovered after the Robot Wars that nearly exterminated humanity. This format with its emphasis on survival in battle and full-throttle action will appeal particularly to those who enjoy science-gone-wrong thrillers. (June)

WOODING, Chris. Retribution Falls. Spectra. pap. $16. ISBN 978-0-345-52251-1. Captain Darian Frey loves the Ketty Jay, his airship, and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep flying. After he and his crew of misfits take on a job that goes horribly awry, they find themselves aligned against a conspiracy and trying to save the day in this action-filled, steampunk adventure. (Apr.)

Nonfiction

BROWN, Mike. How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. Spiegel & Grau. Tr $25. ISBN 978-0-385-53108-5. Brown gives a charming account of the astounding series of discoveries that result in the downgrading of Pluto from planet status. The combination of engaging humor, accessible science, and personal anecdote makes for a lively glimpse into an extremely successful career in astronomy. (Jan.)

GRENNAN, Conor. Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal. HarperCollins/Morrow. Tr $25.99. ISBN 978-0-06-193005-8. What was intended to be a 90-day experience working in an orphanage became much more on the day Grennan learned that many of his young charges were actually the victims of a child trafficker. In this adventurous, funny, and even romantic book, he dedicates himself to reconnecting the children with their families in remote Nepalese villages. (Jan.)

LLOYD, Rachel. Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, an Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself. HarperCollins/Harper. Tr $24.99. ISBN 978-0-06-158205-9. Lloyd began working in the sex industry at age 17 (dancing in a club). In her memoir, she expands the narrative of her personal decisions into an understanding of the larger societal issues involved in women’s choices. (Apr.)

OTTAVIANI, Jim. Feynman. illus. by Leland Myrick. First Second. Tr $ 29.99. ISBN 978-1-59643-259-8. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was a researcher, professor, civilian scientist at the birth of the atomic bomb, and famed lecturer. His quirky personality and his passion for physics and for fun are presented in energetic, colorful images, as are his more important scientific theories. (Sept.)

TRAN, GB. Vietnamerica: A Family’s Journey. illus. by the author. Villard. Tr $30. ISBN 978-0-345-50872-0. In this intriguing graphic memoir, Tran, born and raised in the United States, returns to Vietnam to research his family’s history, especially their experiences of the Vietnam War and then adapting to life as immigrants living in the United States. (Jan.)