Billi’s lone wolf status is challenged when her childhood friend, Kay, returns from his psychic training in Jerusalem. Kay manages to stir things up quickly – he’s gorgeous, arrogant, and wants slide right back into his old place in Billi’s life. Billi is skeptical, but interested, until she meets Michael – an ethereally handsome guy who seems to understand her like no one before him, and effortlessly stakes a claim in her heart.

Just as Billi’s starting to enjoy this pleasant new twist to her life, Kay ruins everything. In a moment of bravado, Kay uses the last of the Templar’s treasures, King Solomon’s cursed mirror, and drawing the attention of one of the most dangerous of the Templars’ enemies-The Angel of Death.

Only with the mirror can the dark angel unleash his full powers, and now that he’s heard the call of the mirror, he’ll stop at nothing to get it. To save London from catastrophe, Billi will have to make sacrifices greater than she’d ever imagined.

Release date: September 29, 2009 from HarperTeen

Summary: Getting into Yale has been Kate Larson’s dream for years—and being overworked and under-rested is the price of admission. But when she opens her eyes after falling asleep on her keyboard one night, she comes face-to-face with, well, herself.

Meet Kate’s computer-generated twin. Kate doesn’t know why she’s here or how to put her back where she belongs, but she’s real. And she’s the last thing Kate has time to deal with right now. Unless. . .could having a double be the answer to Kate’s prayers?

Release date: September 2, 2008 from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Summary: 5:30 a.m., Brianna Pelletier gets ready for her daily pounding. As she lies on the couch, her dad beats her chest, then her back, coaxing the mucus out of her lungs. The pounding doesn’t take care of everything. Brianna’s held out for a long time, but a body with cystic fibrosis doesn’t last forever. It doesn’t matter that Brianna has a brilliant mathematical mind or that she’s a shoo-in for MIT. Or even that her two best friends are beautiful, popular, and loyal. In the grand scheme of things, none of that stuff matters at all. The standard life, lasting maybe seventy-five years, is no more than a speck in the sum total of the universe. At eighteen, and doubting she’ll make nineteen, Brianna is practically a nonentity. Of course she’s done the math. But in her senior year of high school, Brianna learns of another kind of math, in which an infinitely small, near-zero quantity can have profound effects on an entire system. If these tiny quantities didn’t exist, things wouldn’t make the same sense.

Release date: September 1, 2009 from HarperTeen

Summary: True tales of love, loss, good friends, and bad hair days filled Not Quite What I Was Planning, the New York Times bestselling first book in the Six-Word Memoir series—an international phenomenon. Some of the very best were by teens, so the editors decided to create a book written entirely by those bold, brash truth-tellers. From cancer to creativity, prom dates to promiscuity, and breaking hearts to breaking laws, the memoirs in this collection reveal that often the youngest writers have the most fascinating stories to tell.

Release date: October 13, 2009 from Bloomsbury

Summary: In alternating chapters, ambitious Lady Macbeth strives to bear a son and win the throne of Scotland for her husband, and their daughter Albia, banished due to a deformity, tries to deny her supernatural abilities as she is raised in the woods by three weird sisters, in this tale based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Release date: September 29, 2009 from Bloomsbury

Summary: Micah is different. She has always been a loner and freely admits to being a liar, but when her secret boyfriend dies mysteriously, her whole life comes under scrutiny. Now she plans to tell you the truth, the whole truth……or so she says.

Release date: September 1, 2009 from HarperTeen

Summary: Shelby’s summer plans go totally awry when her horrible stepmother sends her off to “brat camp” as punishment for one too many broken curfews. Camp is full of spoiled rich kids, obnoxious counselors wanting Shelby to talk about her feelings, and a totally inhumane “no cell phones” policy.

Things start looking up, though, when Shelby meets fellow camper (and son of a rock star) Austin Bridges III. But soon she realizes there’s more to Austin than crush material—his family has a dark secret, and he wants Shelby’s help guarding it. Shelby knows that bad boys get her into trouble…but who is she to turn her back on a guy in need, especially such a good-looking one?

Release date: August 11, 2009 from Hyperion

Summary: Patient Name: Leigh Nolan

Age: 18 years

Presenting Concerns:

Leigh Nolan has just started her first year at Stiles College. She has decided to major in psychology (even though her parents would rather she study Tarot cards than Rorschach blots), despite reporting that she thinks, “Psychology is a load of crap.”

Patient has always been very good at helping her friends with their problems, but when it comes to solving her own…not so much.

Patient has a tendency to overanalyze things, particularly when the opposite sex is involved. Like why doesn’t Andrew, her boyfriend of over a year, ever invite her to spend the night? Or why can’t she commit to taking the next step in their relationship? And why does his roommate Nathan dislike her so much? More importantly, why did Nathan have a starring role in a much-more-than-friendly dream?

Aggravating factors include hyper-competitive fellow psych majors, a professor who’s badly in need of her own psychoanalysis, and mentoring a middle-school-aged girl who thinks Patient is, in a word, nave.

Preliminary treatment will include Introduction to Psychology, but may require more if she’s going to answer these questions and make it through her freshman year.

Diagnosis:

Psych Major Syndrome

Release date: August 11, 2009 from Wendy Lamb Books

Summary: A wonderful YA debut full of drama for two very different sisters.

It’s off-season at the Jersey shore, when the boardwalk belongs to the locals. Rosie is 15 and her sister Skate is 16. Their dad, an amiable drunk, is spending a few weeks in jail while their cousin Angie looks after them in their falling-down Victorian on the beach. Skate and her boyfriend Perry are madly in love, inseparable—until now, when Perry goes off to Rutgers. Rosie is shyer than Skate, but she’s drawn to Nick, a boy in their Alateen group. What happens to Rosie and Skate in a few tumultuous weeks is deftly shaded, complex, and true. Readers will be caught up in each girl’s shifting feelings as the story plays out within the embrace of their warmhearted community.

Release date: October 1, 2009 from HarperTeen

Summary: An eccentric new girl. A brooding socialite. The scion of one of New York’s wealthiest families. A promising filmmaker. As students at the exclusive Chadwick School, Phoebe, Lauren, Nick, and Patch already live in a world most teenagers only dream about.

They didn’t ask to be Society members. But when three of them receive a mysterious text message promising success and fame beyond belief, they say yes to everything. Even to the harrowing initiation ceremony in a gritty warehouse downtown, and to the ankh-shaped tattoo they’re forced to get on the nape of their necks. Once they’re part of the Society, things begin falling into place for them. Week after week, their ambitions are fulfilled. It’s all perfect—until a body is found in Central Park with no distinguishing marks except for an ankh-shaped tattoo.

Release date: 2009 from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Summary: If Nina Khan were to rate herself on the unofficial Pakistani prestige point system – the one she’s sure all the aunties and uncles use to determine the most attractive marriage prospects for their children – her scoring might go something like this:
+2 points for getting excellent grades
–3 points for failing to live up to expectations set by genius older sister
+4 points for dutifully obeying parents and never, ever going to parties, no matter how antisocial that makes her seem to everyone at Deer Hook High
–1 point for harboring secret jealousy of her best friends, who are allowed to date like normal teenagers
+2 points for never drinking an alcoholic beverage
–10 points for obsessing about Asher Richelli, who talks to Nina like she’s not a freak at all, even though he knows that she has a disturbing line of hair running down her back.

Release date: October 27, 2009 from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Summary: What’s your drink of choice? Is it a small pumpkin spice latte? Then you’re lots of fun and a bit sassy. Or a medium americano? You prefer simplicity in life. Or perhaps it’s a small decaf soy sugar-free hazelnut caffe latte? Some might call you a yuppie. Seventeen-year-old barista Jane Turner has this theory that you can tell a lot about a person by their regular coffee drink. She scribbles it all down in a notebook and calls it Espressology. So it’s not a totally crazy idea when Jane starts hooking up some of her friends based on their coffee orders. Like her best friend, Em, a medium hot chocolate, and Cam, a toffee nut latte. But when her boss, Derek, gets wind of Jane’s Espressology, he makes it an in-store holiday promotion, promising customers their perfect matches for the price of their favorite coffee. Things are going better than Derek could ever have hoped, so why is Jane so freaked out? Does it have anything to do with Em dating Cam? She’s the one who set them up! She should be happy for them, right?

Release date: July 14, 2009 from Hyperion

Summary: For the past nine years, Helena Waite has been returning to summer camp at Southpoint. Every year the camp and its familiar routines, landmarks, and people have welcomed her back like a long-lost family member. But this year she is returning not as a camper, but as a counselor, while her best friend, Katie Bell remains behind. All too quickly, Helena discovers that the innocent world of campfires, singalongs, and field days have been pushed aside for late night pranks on the boys’ camp, skinny dipping in the lake, and stolen kisses in the hayloft. As she struggles to define herself in this new world, Helena begins to lose sight of what made camp special and the friendships that have sustained her for so many years. And when Ransome, her longtime crush, becomes a romantic reality, life gets even more confusing.

Release date: October 2, 2007 from Hyperion

Summary: Mary Seymour is the daughter of the great Katherine Parr–the last Queen of Henry VIII. Orphaned at a young age because of her mother’s bad marriage to Thomas Seymour, Mary determines early on that love is a sentiment that causes foolishness at best, and death at worst. She is sent to be raised by Lady Strange, a mysterious noblewoman who informs her of her destiny: Mary is to be a white magician who will join Queen Elizabeth’s court and ensure her safe reign. After spending her early years honing her education and learning the arts of the white magician, Mary is indeed invited to join Elizabeth’s court as a Lady in Waiting. There is she is met with warm welcome from the Queen, but soon realizes that the court is also rife with ambitious men and women who are jockeying for power. The most dangerous of these is Edmund Seymour, Mary’s cousin. The moment she meets the dark, mysterious courtesan, Mary is drawn to him despite herself. Edmund is a black magician–the mirror image of Mary’s own powers. When Edmund becomes embroiled in a plot to overthrow the Queen, Mary has to risk everything she believes to fulfill her calling. But playing this dangerous game could cost her more than she ever imagined.

The bought:
Hacking Harvard by Robin Wasserman
The Bridesmaid by Hailey Abbott
Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks
Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn
Wicked: Resurrection by Nancy Holder and Debbie Vigue
Labor Of Love by Rachel Hawthorne (already read)

Wow, that was a long IMM post. I got so many books this week I don’t even know where to start. Also, one of them was my WOW post this week. I picked Never Cry Werewolf and I actually got it later that day. It was such a great surprise. I can’t wait to read it. Also, Secret Society was one of my WOW posts awhile back so it was cool to get that one too. Of course, it was cool to get all the others also. What did you have in your mailbox this week and where do you think I should start with mine?

Also, if you didn’t already know, my two contests are closing tonight at midnight and the winners will be announced tomorrow. If you haven’t already entered, now is your chance!