By: Wil Brasher

 In Between Shades of Gray, Lina, a seventeen year-old girl, is about to start art school and trying to enjoy her summer. Until one night when the Soviet secret police break in and take her, her mom, and her brother, to be sent to Serbia. Her dad has been separated and sentenced to death.  She fights fearlessly for her life, vowing that if she survives she will honor her family and the thousands like her.  She risks everything using her art as messages, hoping they will make it to her father’s prison camp, to show him she is still alive.  It is only their incredible strength, love, and hope that pull Lina and her family through each day on their journey. Source: Novel Between Shades of Gray

 First novels tend to be hard hitting, and there's no exception here. Relocation camps, rape, gender issues, and illegal immigration are just some of the issues these first novels take on. These titles were chosen from books that were reviewed in Booklist over the last 12 months. Source: Booklist 108.4,: pg.57(1)  It has been nominated for the 2012 CILIP Carnegie Medal (a British literary award that annually recognizes one outstanding new book for children or young adults. ) Source: Wikipedia.com/wiki/Between_Shades_of_Gray

 The Road of Bones  Torn Thread  Under a Red Sky: Memoir of a Childhood in Communist Romania