'Over a thousand hills I walk with you' by Hanna Jansen

"Based on the true story of Jeanne, an 8-year old girl who survived the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the only member of her family who did. Her her adoptive mother Hanna Jensen retells her story with a clarity and honesty that is at once moving and inspiring. It was one of the world's most recent and bloody periods of history."

Ribbons of Grace by Maxine Alterio

A good read if especially if you are looking for something from a different cultural perspective for NCEA. Ming Yuet travels from China to the goldfields of Otago. In the nineteenth century Chinese were openly discriminated against and worse. So, when Ming Yuet and Conran (from Scotland's Orkney Islands) fall in love, the affair must be kept very secret.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

This is a children's book first published in 1911, so it's not for everyone but it really is a good story. Spoilt and neglected Mary is orphaned and sent from India to live with her uncle in a mansion on the wild Yorkshire moors.

She is miserable - disliked by everyone, lonely and alone.

The mansion is vast and secretive. Someone cries in the night, and there's a garden she must never go in. But slowly, Mary adjusts and then she meets Dickon and Colin and together they pull off a miracle.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Would you like to look like a supermodel? No matter what you did, you'd always look stunning. At 16, in Tally's world, everyone has an operation which turns them from an Ugly into a Pretty and Pretties have it easy - parties, clothes and fun. Sounds good, until Tally meets Shay and Shay doesn't want a surgically enhanced face and body. Shay is happy as she is and wants to run away.

But running away puts Tally into a dreadful situation and she discovers life in the Pretty world isn't quite as charmed as she imagined.

This is the first book in a trilogy.

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

When he was ten Gerald Durrell went with his mother, brothers and sister to live on the Greek island of Corfu. Later in life, Gerald was to become a famous collector of animals and an early conservationist. He had his own zoo on Jersey. He wrote this book to tell about how he discovered the wild life of Corfu, but as he says, he " made the grave mistake of introducing his family into the book, and then having got themselves on paper, they proceeded to establish themselves and invite various friends to share the chapters." What follows is a very funny book.

The Devil's Breath by David Gilman

It's night and you are out running, training for a triathlon, when you hear a click, a strange metallic click. Luckily, Max Gordon recognises the sound - otherwise he'd be dead. In next to no time, Max not only evades the assasin's bullet but he discovers his father is missing believed dead.

Thus begins a story of non-stop action as Max goes to search for his father and to discover the secret his father had discovered. This journey takes him to Namibia in Africa where he meets the legendary Bushmen.

First Crossing ed. Donald R Gallo

Each year thousands of families move to the United States. Some arrive as refugees, forced to leave their home countries; others move for a better life.

Being a teenager is hard enough without having to leave your friends and everything you know to start life anew in a land where you may not even speak the language.

The authors of the stories in this book come from a huge variety of backgrounds. All the stories are fiction but they have their basis in real-life events.