The Hunger Games

In District 12, where coal dust coats everything and hunger never quite leaves, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen keeps her mother and little sister alive by slipping into the woods to hunt. Then her sister's name is drawn at the reaping for the Capitol's Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death in which twenty-four teenagers must kill until one remains. Katniss volunteers in her place before she can think. Taken to the glittering Capitol to be dressed and trained for slaughter, she stands beside Peeta, the baker's son who once saved her from starvation with a burned loaf. The forest taught her to survive. It never taught her how to kill the boy who kept her alive.