Upcoming YA dystopian lit for 2011 and 2012

First half of 2011

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis
Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone—one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship—tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn’t do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now, Amy must race to unlock Godspeed’s hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there’s only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

Razorbill. January 11,2011

Read the exciting first chapter at http://www.acrosstheuniversebook.com/

And don't forget to check out the books of the other debut authors in the League of Extraordinary Writers that I profiled earlier this month.

WITHER by Lauren DeStefano
The first in THE CHEMICAL GARDEN trilogy. Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb—males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out.

When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape—to find her twin brother and go home.

But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant she trusts, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limted time she has left.

Simon & Schuster. March 22, 2011

Visit the author’s website at http://www.laurendestefano.com/

BUMPED by Megan McCafferety
Described in Publishers Weekly as “a sharply funny and provocative dystopian novel set in a world where only teens are able to have babies, and are contracted by adults to carry them to term.” A cross between HEATHERS and THE HANDMAID’S TALE. Harper Collins. April 26, 2011

Visit the author’s website at http://www.meganmccafferty.com/

DARK PARTIES by Sara Grant
About a country that generations ago closed its borders to people and ideas. No one knows what exists outside their protected society. Neva and her best friend secretly plot to force the government to open its borders. Anyone who threatens the government seems to disappear mysteriously. Neva receives a message from her grandma who vanished without a trace 10 years ago, inviting her to escape to the outside. Now she has a choice–stay and save her country or leave and save herself. Little, Brown. April 2011.

AWAKEN by Katie Kacvinsky
In the year 2060, everything is done digitally. Kids no longer go to schools. They stay home and take classes online. Adults work from home, too. Even dating is no longer done in person. Why walk on a real beach when you can stroll down a digitally remastered one instead? No bad weather, no seagulls, nothing real to ruin a perfectly fine time.

Though she's grown up in this digital world, something about being cut off from everyone doesn't sit right with seventeen-year-old Madeline. Her favorite activity--the only one she does off line--is soccer. She likes the physicality of it and the comradery with the other girls.

Then she meets Justin. He, too, prefers life off line. It's all he talks about. He even takes her out to a real coffee shop and an underground club. Maybe it's his attentiveness, or the physical closeness of actually being with someone, or just that he's very good looking, Madie is definitely drawn to him. But there's also something very aloof about him, like perhaps he's hiding something.

When Madie uncovers the truth, she's faced with the question: What's more important, fighting for what you believe in or love? Houghton Mifflin. May 23, 2011.

Sometime in 2011

FOR DARKNESS SHOWS THE STARS by Diana Peterfreund
A post-apocalyptic retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Balzer & Bray.

Why Diana loves Persuasion http://www.dianapeterfreund.com/why-i-love-persuasion/

ALL THESE THINGS I’VE DONE by Gabrielle Zevin
Start of the BIRTHRIGHT trilogy. Set in a dystopian future where chocolate and caffeine are contraband while water and paper are carefully rationed, the series relates the ascension and ultimate downfall of a 16-year-old girl, the heir apparent to an important and dangerous New York City crime family. FSG.

ASHES by Ilsa Bick
Begins when an electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky, killing the vast majority of the world population and zapping every electronic device. Everyone still alive has changed considerably -- some for the better (those who acquired a superhuman sense) while others for the worse (those who acquired a taste for human flesh). Egmont.

THE DARK INSIDE Jeyn Roberts

Pitched as THE ROAD meets 28 DAYS LATER, in which four teenagers must travel different roads to find safety and each other, after earthquakes trigger the emergence of murderous ‘Baggers’, ordinary people turned crazy killers, in a world descended into apocalyptic chaos. Simon & Schuster. Fall 2011.

More info at http://greenhouseliterary.com/index.php/books/the_dark_inside/  

THE UNWANTEDS by Lisa McMann

 This is a dystopian fantasy about a society where strength and intelligence are rewarded in 13 year olds and creativity is punished by death. Alexander Stowe is an unwanted and is “purged” from his community. Simon & Schuster. Fall 2011.

Coming in 2012

THE SHADOWS CAST BY STARS by Cat Knutsson
Two hundred years from now, the great cities of the west coast of the United Americas are under water. Blood has become the most valuable commodity on the planet – especially the blood of aboriginal peoples, for it contains antigens that protect them from the plagues that ravage the rest of the world.

Sixteen year old Cassandra Mecredi might be aboriginal by blood, but without a totem animal, she cannot make sense of her visions or walk the paths of the spirit world. When her family is forced to leave their reservation, they flee east to the Island: a mysterious and idyllic territory free from the depredations of industry and sickness and under the control of the Band, a group of guerrilla warriors. There, Cassandra will become the apprentice to a wise woman, fall in love, and find her destiny when the creatures of spirit claim her as their own. For the spirit world is angry... and they have chosen Cassandra to be their voice and instrument. Simon and Shuster.

Visit the author’s blog http://catknutsson.wordpress.com/  

CYBERNETIC by Laura Riken
About a 16-year-old girl who lives in a walled city surrounded by bloodthirsty beasts, and also threatened by rival armies of cybernetic soldiers who want to enslave humanity.

THE SELECTION by Kiera Cass
A trilogy pitched as "The Hunger Games" meets "The Bachelor," following 17-year-old America Singer, one of the eligible young women selected to compete to become the next queen, who finds herself falling in love despite only wanting to break her family out of the lower castes and leaving her boyfriend at home. 2012.

EYE OF THE STORM Kate Messner
Set in a dystopian world with killer tornadoes, corporations that profit from them, and a group of teens at an elite science camp who risk everything to expose their society's dark secrets and find a way to stop the storms. Middle Grade. Walker Books. 2012.

THE WAY WE FALL by Megan Crewe
A triology in which a 16-year-old challenges her fears, finds a second chance at love, and fights to keep her family and friends safe as a deadly new virus devastates her island community. Disney-Hyperion. 2012

Which 2011 and 2012 dystopian books are you super excited about?