WISH YOU WERE DEAD by Todd Strasser

Str-S-d publishes a blog, talking about people at her high school who ridicule her, wishing they would die.  We soon realize that the people mentioned in the blog begin to disappear.  First Lucy, then Adam.  Madison, close friends with both of them, is the last person to talk to each of them before they disappeared.  When Courtney, another close friend, also disappears, panic sets in.  Madison turns to Tyler, a new boy at school, for comfort, but soon wonders if she should.

A good, suspenseful mystery story.

THE BOOK THIEF by Marcus Zusak

We first meet Liesel as her mother is taking both Liesel and her younger brother to Berlin in 1939 to live with foster parents.  When Liesel's brother dies on the train ride, we meet the narrator of the novel--Death.  At her brother's burial, Liesel finds the book THE GRAVE DIGGER'S HANDBOOK and takes it.  This is the first book she steals.  Liesel and her mother continue their journey to Berlin, and soon Liesel is living with her kind, accordian-playing foster father and gruff foster mother.  Death continues to tell us about Liesel's life:  her foster father teaching her to read, her friendship with Rudy Steiner, and her assistance in hiding a Jew in the basement.

This is a beautiful book--both depressing and uplifting.  Death is an intriguing narrator; he is funny, perceptive, even caring-- and VERY busy.