John Marsden's A Killing Frost passes all three of my tests (and please forgive my purposefully hazy focus on "good writing", but I must have some quirks as a book reviewer!). Sensory detail pervades this novel of war, told from the point of view of a teenager who, with her friends, becomes a partisan against an intractable enemy that has invaded her homeland. The homeland in question is Australia, and we are treated to a …showed first 75 words of 426 total…

…showed last 75 words of 426 total…depressive and jumpy rover, always on the go. This book doesn't just contain well-written characters that you care about, but also situations and storylines that grab you and don't let go. One of the best-written episodes, in which the teenage characters manage to greatly hinder an enemy-held harbor, kept me glued to the book for three solid hours. I hardly noticed that I had ingested over a 100 pages of fiction -- I was that engrossed.