Here is a reading list of unusual and uncommon reading titles:

"Catch Me If You Can" by Frank Abagnale, was made into a movie in 2002 starring Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio. The book originally came out in 1980. It is the story of a 16-year-old who started passing bad checks around the U.S. and eventually the world, which led him into a life of impersonating an airline pilot, lawyer, college professor and doctor. Even more remarkable is that he did all of this by age 21. Today he is a consultant to companies hoping to avoid fraud.

"Teasing Secrets from the Dead: My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes" by Emily Craig. Craig has the unique job of being a forensic anthropologist for the state of Kentucky.

She is called in on murder crime scenes to identify victims. She started her career as a medical illustrator studying anatomy and drawing the human body. Her ability to use the smallest piece of evidence to discover the facts around a case is astonishing. Craig participated in the federal office bombing case in Oklahoma and assisted in victim identification in New York City after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

She also talks about the "body farm" at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville. This is where experts study the effects of the human body decomposing.

"Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants" by Robert Sullivan. Can you imagine spending a year observing rats in an alley? Sullivan does this while providing the reader with history, sociology and storytelling about New York City. The reader learns about garbage strikes, the last state to get rats, and why each year around the world 50,000 people (mainly kids) get bitten by rats.

"Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer" by Lynne Cox. Santa Catalina Island is 26 miles across the ocean from mainland Southern California. As a teen, Cox set the record for this swim. She relates her experience of interviewing the man who will guide her from England to France in her quest to swim the English Channel. Her swimming takes her from Egypt to the icy Bering Strait. Imagine swimming alongside her as she avoids shark waters off Africa and icebergs in the chilly water of the Bering Strait.

"Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak and Joy Inside the Mind of a Baseball Manager " by Buzz Bissinger. Bissinger lets us into the manager's office of Tony La Russa of the St. Louis Cardinals during a crucial three-game series in summer 2004. All of the three games are described in detail. Great stories about La Russa and insight into what makes him one of the game's best managers.

Another great book involving baseball is "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" by Stephen King. It is early fall in New England. Trish is on a hike with her mother and her "can't stand him" brother. She falls behind and gets desperately lost off the trail. She does have her radio and listens to the radio call of her beloved Boston Red Sox. Each night reliever Tom Gordon enters to save the game. After running out of food and water, Trish wanders through the woods in a daze. Oh yes, there is a mysterious creature out in the woods watching her.

Ken Gollersrud is Teen Services Librarian at the Delridge Branch of the Seattle Public Library.