REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Little Cockroaches is the nickname for the group of samurai students led by Sensei Ki-Yaga.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Lenis and Missy are twins, and slaves, aboard the airship the Hiryu. When the captain steals the airship from the Emperor for an ostensibly noble cause, Leni and Missy find themselves caught up in something beyond their understanding.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Clary Fray is back in New York after the life-changing events in the Shadowhunter world of Idris. She's training to be a Shadowhunter herself, she has a superhot boyfriend, and things appear to be looking up.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Tessa is new to London; fresh off the boat, and expecting to meet her brother, who had written to her to bring her from New York.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

There is a new set of sci-fi teen action heroes. Set far in the future, the world and indeed the galaxy, is a different place. Corporate dictatorships control the planets with ruthless efficiency. Rake is a teenage trainee in the Gladiator School in Nu-Topia, Earth's main centre. The story idea uses a familiar format: an all-controlling organisation holding everyone in thrall, a group of teenage friends, special weapons and armour, and an older mentor who helps open their eyes to the world around them and provides a channel for their dissatisfaction.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

In case you didn't know, some readers have a thing for the paranormal romance – myself included.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

The main setting is a vast rubbish dump on the edge of a major city in an unspecified country. The main characters in the story are three boys who are part of the ragged community who scratch a living from the trash.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is round two for Adam Adlar and his father. First featured in Z-Rex, they once again get involved with living dinosaurs.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Set in a small town on the West Coast, this is an excellent Kiwi kid sci-fi novel. Very Maurice Gee and very enjoyable.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Oscar Ogilvie is 11 years old and living in Cairo, Illinois. The year is 1931 and his life is affected by the Depression: his home repossessed, his father away seeking work in California and him living with his strict, joyless aunt. His life is enlivened by a friendship with a down and out and this friendship leads to a fateful visit to the town bank on the night of a robbery.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

Maori mythology and Gothic/fantasy, set in modern-day New Zealand and the mystical parallel universe of Aotearoa where magic, warlocks, taniwha and tipua hold sway and where modern weapons do not work.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

After a scroll through the internet, I found that Jesse O is the pseudonym of Jessica le Bas, an award-winning poet and author of Walking to Africa, an account of her own teenage daughter's mental illness.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

In order for mankind to survive, Amy, her parents and a select number of people have agreed to be cytogenetically frozen for three hundred years, in order for mankind to repopulate on another planet. Elder is the future leader of the people living onboard the ship that is transporting the frozen bodies.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

There are nine teenage aliens living on Earth. Three have died. John Smith is number four and he knows they will be coming for him next.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

Ken Catran may be familiar to some readers for his work on television series Under the Mountain and Shortland Street, or as 2007 recipient of the esteemed Margaret Mahy Award for services to children's literature. I know Catran as the author of the Deepwater Black series for young adults. I was completely enthralled by that series back in my younger days, so picking up a new book by Catran came as a complete honour for me.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Susan Brocker lives in Tauranga and is a veteran author with many titles under her pen, one notable one being the best-selling Saving Sam.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Des Hunt is one of my favourite New Zealand authors for young people and this book did not disappoint.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

ristan and Grace are lying upside down in a car, in a ditch. The car skidded on ice and rolled off the edge of a cliff.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

I've thoroughly enjoyed several books from Stacy Gregg's other series, Pony Club Secrets.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Vladimir Tod is an American grade eight student. He lives with his aunt Nelly, has a best friend called Harry and has trouble trying to ask out the girl he likes.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth novel in the young adult series featuring young witch Tiffany Aching.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is the next instalment in the Daniel X series. Daniel is an alien with extraordinary powers.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

Joining the countless number of paranormal romances now available, The Eternal Ones is a young adult story from author Kirsten Miller.

REVIEWED BY LESLEY SOPER - © Fairfax NZ News

For anyone looking for a young adult novel to add to the reading list of the lovers of Harry Potter, this is a very good candidate.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Aimed at the teen market, Tripwire is a teenage James Bond-style adventure complete with special gadgets, secret agent skills and evil bad guys.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

This young adult novel has something unique; it is written by one.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is a great book for younger teenagers who perhaps like to read about real life.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Ellie Spencer thinks of herself as an ordinary girl: she goes to school; hangs out with her best friend, and has the same body issues as every other 17 year old girl.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Ellie Spencer thinks of herself as an ordinary girl: she goes to school; hangs out with her best friend, and has the same body issues as every other 17 year old girl.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

Monsters of Men wraps up Patrick Ness' debut Young Adult Chaos Walking trilogy, begun in The Knife of Never Letting Go, and continued in The Ask and the Answer.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Jack Lasenby's latest offering is an absolute winner.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is a bit of science fiction for young readers. Tom is the new owner of his grandfather's magic stopwatch, a watch that takes the wearer to new and strange lands. Tom has had one adventure with the watch already, in the land of Kur, from where he returned home with a catlike pet who talks and thinks, called Bilby.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is superb adolescent fiction by Australian author Elsbeth Edgar.

REVIEWED BY NADINE HEMA - © Fairfax NZ News

Max Cassidy is a 14-year-old struggling to juggle his school life with his career as a famous escapologist.

REVIEWED BY JILLIAN ALLISON-AITKEN - © Fairfax NZ News

James Paterson must be the most prolific writer out there, this time coming up with Witch & Wizard, a fantasy novel for younger readers.

REVIEWED BY KEN MACKAY - © Fairfax NZ News

As the cannon ball smashed the main mast far below him, Henry, in the crow's nest gulped a lungful of air and jumped.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Constantinople in the 600s was a bastion of European civilisation with most of Europe in its period of the dark ages.

REVIEWED DARREN BROWN - © Fairfax NZ News

Slide the Corner is the story of a boy who stands up to his parents to follow his dream – and that dream is rally driving.

REVIEWED NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Here's the beginning of a new series that is sure to be popular with young horse hovers everywhere. The themes involve dreams, goals, determination, friendship and spectacular horsemanship. The protagonist is 14-year-old Suzy who is asthmatic and lost her mother when she was 4.

REVIEWED F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Mary Quinn at age 12 was taken into the care of Miss Scrimshaws Academy for Girls. Now 17, Mary finds that the Academy is also used as a training school for the Agency, a secretive investigation body, and she has been picked to be one of their agents.

REVIEWED GWEN CHALONER - © Fairfax NZ News

Written for young adults but relevant for all ages, this is the story of a teenager who has to cope with a sudden and devastating loss.

REVIEWED BY EMILY MASON - © Fairfax NZ News

As a teenager in the 1970s, Jackie Simms loved Abba, her brother's friend Davey and roller-skating.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Here's the latest girl crime-fighter heroine. A little like Miss Marple, only decades younger, she innocently stumbles across murder sprees and uses her people-reading skills and powers of intuition to finally stop and catch the perpetrators.

REVIEWED NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Each new David Hill title is now a must read for me and Fire on High did not disappoint.

REVIEWED F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

For those who cant believe there can be an interesting story based on soccer, well heres evidence to the contrary.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

After reading The Tooth last year, I have been avidly awaiting Des Hunt's next novel. Cry of the Taniwha does not disappoint.

REVIEWED BY NATHAN BURDON - © Fairfax NZ News

I didn't realise at the start that this was a children's book.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

The battle of Stalingrad in World War II is the setting for Sniper. As the German invasion of Russia starts to edge nearer to Stalingrad, the war becomes very real for Tania. The 16-year-old soon becomes part of the Soviet army and, by a series of escapades, becomes part of a special sniper squad.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

This trilogy sits quite happily in the young adult/urban fantasy niche, cosying up to other series like Twilight, Harry Potter and, oddly, Star Wars.

REVIEWED BY GWEN CHALONER - © Fairfax NZ News

Young adult fiction never appealed to me much, not since I was a young adult anyway and that was so long ago I forget what I used to read.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

North Islander Susan Brocker is a veteran children's author but has written mainly for the American book market. This is only her second novel for Kiwi teens, and we can certainly hope that it's not her last.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is superb adolescent fiction and the first novel for young adults by veteran Auckland novelist Tina Shaw.

REVIEWED BY MAREE FIELD - © Fairfax NZ News

At 17, Jenna Fox wakes out of a coma, with no memory of who she is, or what happened.

REVIEWED BY F MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

Fifteen year old Matiu Douglas is an ordinary youth living in Napier. Ordinary that is until he is drawn to the bone tiki.

REVIEWED BY NAIDA MULLIGAN - © Fairfax NZ News

This is superb New Zealand young teen fiction by Auckland writer Tania Hutley.