Westerfeld, Scott

Hunter Braque, a New York City teenager who is paid by companies to spot what is "cool," combines his analytical skills with his girlfriend's creative talents to find a missing person and stop a conspiracy.

Tally has been turned into a Special and is offered a chance to stamp out the rebels of the New Smoke permanently.

In a society that considers children to be "Uglies" until they are transformed by surgery at age sixteen into "Pretties," fifteen-year-old Shay discovers a group of rebellious teens called the Crims and a world outside the city where she can decide to be real instead of a "Pretty.".

In an alternative civilization where the social status of each person is monitored and rated and anyone can drop from celebrity to nobody, fifteen-year-old Aya Fuse's popularity ranking is so low her only chance of moving up is to find a good story, so when she meets a group of girls who hide an explosive secret, Aya decides to expose the group and unknowingly puts her own life in danger.

In an alternate 1914 Europe, fifteen-year-old Austrian Prince Alek, on the run from the Clanker Powers who are attempting to take over the globe using mechanical machinery, forms an uneasy alliance with Deryn who, disguised as a boy to join the British Air Service, is learning to fly genetically-engineered beasts.

Shay, who has little recollection of her past from before she underwent surgery to become pretty, decides to fight back against the status quo, the mysterious Special Circumstances, and her best friend.

After his parents are assassinated, young Prince Alek Ferdinand runs away from his own government, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which wants him dead. At the same time a young woman, Deryn Sharp, a commoner, disguises herself as a man to enter the Air Men of the British Army. With the aid of her brother she enters a flying airship made of a giant whale. Deryn and Alek travels cause them to cross paths many times before Alek discovers who Deryn really is.

Tally is faced with a difficult choice when her new friend Shay decides to risk life on the outside rather than submit to the forced operation that turns sixteen year old girls into gorgeous beauties, and realizes that there is a whole new side to the pretty world that she doesn't like.

After being captured and surgically transformed into a "special, " teenaged Tally Youngblood, now a government agent programmed to protect society from outside threats, is ordered to eliminate the rebel colony New Smoke, Tally's former home.

Alek and Deryn encounter obstacles on the last leg of their round-the-world quest to end World War I, reclaim Alek's throne as prince of Austria, and finally fall in love.