The Exchange Student by Kate Gilmore

Do you like science fiction? What if stories? This is about a future time on earth when people are working on saving endangered animals. (Hey, sounds like what's going on now, but there is a twist.)

In the 21st century, 16-year-old Daria has a special license to breed endangered animals. She is busy enough caring for her own menagerie without have to cope with "an exchange student" that her mother has arranged to host during a cultural exchange project. Fey isn't like a typical exchange student of today, instead he can color shift and is 7 ft. tall and is from another planet. Besides these differences, there is also something very weird about the way this alien looks at animals.

Fey's quirky behavior and earth's conservation efforts made for an entertaining read and there is more to this story.

The Year of the Hangman by Gary Blackwood

Here's another book by the author of the series : The Shakespeare Stealer (Spy, Scribe -- series) This series has been very popular in Middle School being passed around.

This particular book is an alternative history of the American Revolutionary Period. It's an interesting perspective as the colonial rebels have been subdued by the British Army and are in hiding in New Orleans, La. (a Spanish colony) George Washington is under arrest in British held territory and the rebels in New Orleans are plotting to free him.

The story begins with Creighton Brown, spoiled son of a British officer supposedly killed in the war, being involuntarily dispatched there in hopes that his ruthless uncle, Hugh Gower, colonel in charge of the Charles Town garrison, can shape him up. The colonel, a thoroughly unpleasant individual has no intention of dealing with Creighton.

Captured by pirates led by dashing hothead Benedict Arnold, Creighton meets Ben Franklin and other exiles living in Spanish-held New Orleans, and finds himself playing both sides, forced to spy for Gower while becoming embroiled in a rebel plan to find and free Washington. The action is constant and the dialogue is clever; all the while, Creighton is finding out the meaning of honor and the value of war.