I just finished reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins...it was very hard to put it down. This is suspenseful survival story about Catniss, a teenage girl who volunteers to take her younger sister's place in the brutal and sadistic Hunger Game tradition, that pits young citizens from the 12 districts of the dystopic world of Panem, in a fight to the death.

Like Gregor in Collins' Gregor the Overlander series, Catniss is a loyal and self-sacrificing person. She has been taking care of her family after her father's death left her mother unable to cope, and ends up using a lot of her survival skills, including an unparalleled gift for archery, to survive in "The Games."

There are shades of reality-based shows like Survivor that are distorted to horrific proportions, making this fast-moving cautionary tale a sometimes brutal read. Yet, the humanity of the characters in spite of the situation is what keeps you reading.

Copies of this book can be found in the Teen and Adult Science Fiction/Fantasy collections, and the sequel, Catching Fire, was recently released in this expected trilogy.