The Book Thief - Trudy White, Markus Zusak A future classic. Far and away the best YA novel I have read to date. At first I worried that I would not respond well to the narrator (who happens to be Death, btw) but he turned out to be the perfect omnipresent storyteller for this particular tale. There is so much ugly truth and yet there is so much true beauty in this novel. I loved it.