The book Cory Doctorow was born to write:

Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

It's YA, has a teen protagonist and is about taking on the system. I can't imagine a better book for this author. If you are a YA reviewer, bookseller or librarian, you need to be reading Little Brother this year.

F. Paul Wilson gives us the teenage years of Repairman Jack with Jack: Secret Histories:

Here's where it starts: when Jack and his best friends, Weezie and Eddie, discover a rotting corpse - the victim of ritual murder - in the fabled New Jersey Pine Barrens. Beside the body is an ancient artifact carved with strange designs. What is its secret? What is the secret of the corpse? What other mysteries hide in the dark, timeless Pine Barrens? And who doesn't want them revealed?

Smart, deeply thought out suspense/horror written by a master for young adults for the first time. I'm very excited to see Jack's teen years written actually for teen readers.

The sequel to Mainspring is due from Jay Lake with Escapement. Booklist reviewed Mainspring as, "Lake's steampunk-esque alternative nineteenth century is an astonishing, marvelous place." This go round we have Paolina Barthes trying to get off the Wall and over to England without being killed in the process:

Paolina Barthes is a young woman of remarkable intellectual ability - a genius on the level of Isaac Newton. But she has grown up in isolation, in a small village of shipwreck survivors, on the Wall, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She knows little of the world, but she knows England rules it, and must be the home of people who possess the learning that she so desperately wants. And so she sets off to make her way off the Wall, not knowing that she will bring her astounding unschooled talent for sorcery to the attention of those deadly factions who would use or kill her for it.

I'm planning an Alt History column this summer and Escapement would fit perfectly in that; can't wait to read it.

The Court of the Air from Stephen Hunt combines magic and science and adventure in the best sort of ways and is set "in a fantastical Dickensian clockwork universe". (I love clockwork stories.) Here's more:

A hugely engaging adventure set in a Victorian-style world -- a fantastical version of Dickens -- that will appeal to fans of Susanna Clarke and Philip Pullman. Two orphans are more than they seem. And one megalomaniac will stop at nothing to find them! When Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has just been apprenticed to, her first instinct is to return to the poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was in fact the real target of the attack. For Molly carries a secret deep in her blood, a secret that marks her out for destruction by enemies of the state. Soon Molly will find herself battling a grave threat to civilization which draws on an ancient power thought to have been quelled millennia ago. Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered life in the home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only relative's murder he is forced to flee for his life. He is accompanied by Harry Stave, an agent of the Court of the Air -- a shadowy organization independent of the government that acts as the final judiciary of the land, ensuring that order prevails.Chased across the country, Oliver finds himself in the company of thieves, outlaws and spies, and gradually learns more about the secret that has blighted his life.

Soon Molly and Oliver find themselves battling a grave threat to civilization, an ancient power thought to have been quelled millennia ago. Their enemies are ruthless and myriad, but Molly and Oliver are joined by indomitable friends in this endlessly inventive tale full of drama, intrigue and adventure.

I'm delighted to see these books for teens from Tor - they will fit so well with columns I"m working on this year. I've been doing so long hard looking at what is out there today for YAs - and what's missing. More on all that in coming days, but these four books are certainly welcome.