Taylor Markham isn't just one of the new student leaders of her boarding school, she's also the heir to the Underground Community, one of three battling school factions in her small Australian community (the others being the Cadets and the Townies). For a generation, these three camps have fought "the territory wars," a deadly serious negotiation of land and property rife with surprise attacks, diplomatic immunities, and physical violence. Only this year, it's complicated: Taylor might just have a thing for Cadet leader Jonah, and Jonah might just be the key to unlocking the secret identity of Taylor's mother, who abandoned her when she was 11. In fact, nearly every relationship in Taylor's life has unexpected ties to her past, and the continual series of revelations is both the book's strength and weakness; the melodrama can be trying, but when Marchetta isn't forcing epiphanies, she has a knack for nuanced characterizations and punchy dialogue. The complexity of the backstory will be offputting to younger readers, but those who stick it out will find rewards in the heartbreaking twists of Marchetta's saga.

Two tragic stories come together in this carefully constructed novel set in the Australian bush. At the Jellicoe School, seventeen-year-old Taylor pieces together the truth about her past, through broken memories of life with her drug-addicted mother and dream visits from a mysterious boy. Suspenseful plotting, slowly unfolding mysteries, and generations of romance shape the absorbing story.

Just when Taylor's only guardian, Hannah, disappears from the Jellicoe School campus, she must lead her classmates in secret war games against neighboring locals (Townies) and a camp of military kids (Cadets). While the gripping boundary battles among the three factions raise the reader's pulse, Taylor's search for Hannah and her relationship with Jonah, the stoic cadet commander, charge the story with unwavering intrigue. Taylor reads Hannah's autobiographical manuscript for clues and finds surprising links to her own life: Jellicoe students, cadets, war games and even Taylor's long-absent, drug-addicted mother all surface in the book, which recounts events 22 years old. Marchetta plows into a complicated story line head first, shifting between Hannah's narrative and Taylor's trials as Jellicoe School's war commander. Time flashes forward and back, histories bleed together and two generations of friends bear uncanny resemblances to one another. Readers may feel dizzied and disoriented, but as they puzzle out exactly how Hannah's narrative connects with Taylor's current reality, they will find themselves ensnared in the story's fascinating, intricate structure. A beautifully rendered mystery. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Gr 8 Up-For years, three factionsTownies, Cadets (city kids doing a six-week outdoor education program), and Jellicoe School studentshave engaged in teen war games in the Australian countryside, defending territorial borders, negotiating for assets, and even taking hostages. Taylor Markham, a 17-year-old who was abandoned years ago by her mother, takes on leadership of the boarding school's six Houses. Plagued with doubts about being boss, she's not sure she can handle her Cadet counterpart, Jonah Griggs, whom she met several years before while running away to find her mother. When Hannah, a sort of house mother who has taken Taylor under her wing, disappears, Taylor puzzles over the book manuscript the woman left behind. Hannah's tale involves a tragic car accident on the Jellicoe Road more than 20 years earlier. Only three children survived, and Taylor discovers that this trio, plus a Cadet and a Townie, developed an epic friendship that was the foundation of the many mysteries in her life and identity, as well as of the war games. While the novel might put off casual readers, patient, thoughtful teens will remain to extract clues from the interwoven scraps of Hannah's narrative, just as Taylor does, all the while seeing the collapse of the barriers erected among the three groups over the years. Elegiac passages and a complex structure create a somewhat dense, melancholic narrative with elements of romance, mystery, and realistic fiction. Suzanne Gordon, Peachtree Ridge High School, Suwanee, GA

Taylor Markham has been living at the Jellicoe School since her mother abandoned her at a gas station when she was eleven. Taylor's whole life is a mystery to her-from what happened to her mother and who her father was to why certain people in town are so interested in her well-being. As the Jellicoe School students begin their annual territory wars with the Townies and military school cadets, Taylor is thrown together with Jonah Griggs, the leader of the Cadets. Although they are sworn enemies, Taylor and Jonah have a history and find themselves drawn to one another. Together they begin to unravel the tragic story of the five teenagers who started the territory wars a generation before and how their lives are tightly linked with Taylor's own. Marchetta, author of the highly acclaimed Looking for Alibrandi (Orchard, 1999/VOYA June 1999) and Saving Francesca (Knopf, 2004/VOYA October 2004), provides yet another great story. The interwoven lives of Taylor and the doomed teenagers from the past create a complex tale with some great twists that readers will not see coming. It is a great choice for more sophisticated readers and those teens who like multifaceted stories and characters.-Stephanie Petruso. 3Q 4P M J The Moon Shadow Campground is perfectly positioned for eclipse chasers. Ally, her brother Kenny, and her parents have been waiting years for three minutes of sheer amazement-one of the rare times when the moon passes between the sun and the earth, creating a total solar eclipse. So have hundreds of other people-in the weeks before the eclipse, the Moon Shadow begins to overflow with eclipse chasers. Although most of the chasers are giddy with excitement, Bree, a self-proclaimed wanna-be-model craves fashion, color, and lipstick and not the stars, planets, and other amazing things just a telescope glance away. So when Bree and Ally's parents conspire to "switch places," Bree is devastated to learn that she will be staying in country bumpkin land and Ally is terr