Things I will never be: a teenage boy, a person who never sleeps (or for that matter, a person who never sleeps during the day, given my proclivity for napping), a person who reads comics/graphics novels/whatever you want to call those books with all the drawings and dialogue bubbles, a person who will probably never be able to extricate herself from high school drama, humor, and life.

No matter how incredible my adult experiences (I have a truck! A house! I can go to the store and buy candy any time I want!) there is an inexplicably seductive quality to high school life--not the real thing, of course, but the imaginary world of sex, secrecy, and snark that exists in my favorite TV shows: Friday Night Lights, Glee, Veronica Mars.

I recently flew to San Francisco for a conference and a 4-night stay in a boutique hotel that looked like it was decorated by a Manhattanite with a 400-square foot apartment who thinks a $50 throw pillow is a bargain. I flew first class because through some quirky karmic wormhole, I was bumped from my original $119 flight to first class, plus a $300 ticket voucher. I mention this not just to be an obnoxious braggart, but because it is exactly like the forces that rule high school life. No one deserves seat 1D (first row, first class) anymore than anyone else deserves backne, untameable curls and dyslexia. But teenagerhood and flight are similar that way: sometimes you're a size 4 cheerleader with a rack like Jennifer Aniston, and sometimes your flight is rerouted to Fargo and your brand-new Swiss luggage is circling a luggage carousel in Dayton, Ohio.

Being a high school teacher/librarian for the past twenty years has given me some insight into teenagers and also fortified me against many of the evils of the world. I continued to be fascinated by this weird 4-year period in life, and I keep reading about it. It's not enough to endure adolescents for seven hours a day, I also have to tack on another few hours reading about them. The Crazy School by Cornelia Read is one of my recent favorites, combining some of my favorite topics: mystery, sass, boarding school, bizarre psychological stuff, and teenage life.

Protagonist Madeline Dare is hired to teach at an expensive boarding school for troubled teens, and establishes a great rapport with her students, given her snarky humor and tenacity. Despite her good relationships with kids, however, Madeline is aware that something weird is going on at the academy--a student commits suicide, another disappears, and the headmaster requires everyone, students and teachers, to participate in counseling sessions. As she investigates the recent events, Madeline comes closer to discovering the dark secret at the heart of the institution, and only by joining forces with one of the academy's most dangerous students can she get to the heart of what's going on.

Nothing like this ever happens to me at my school, and I'm thankful that most of our mysteries are things like who spilled raspberry smoothie in the hall during first lunch? and who used up all of the ink in my printer? Nevertheless, the high school culture and the students rang true and entertained. If you like your mysteries smart, funny, and sexy, put this one one your list!