Future Shock

Gr 8 Up—Elena believes that her eidetic, or photographic, memory makes her a freak, and moving from foster home to foster home after her father ends up in prison for killing her mother only reinforces her thinking. Being different in foster care is asking for trouble, and her violent temper surfaces as she defends other foster children who are bullied. When high-tech Aether Corporation promises to reimburse her for her participation in a research project to the extent that she could support herself for the rest of her life, she can't say no, even when the project involves a dangerous time travel experiment. Four other teens with special skills, including three from foster care, are recruited with her, and together, they forge into the unknown, with deadly consequences none of them could have predicted. Everything that can go wrong does, and the teens are left to deal with the past as well as the future on their own, unsure if they can trust one another or the Aether scientists who are using them. This is an entertaining science fiction murder mystery that doesn't particularly stand out but should appeal to James Patterson fans along with readers of Michael Grant's "Gone" series (HarperCollins).