November 2011: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi.

November 2010: Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick.May 2015: The Game of Love & Death by Martha Brockenbrough.May 2013: The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle by Christopher Healy.May 2012: Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin.May 2010: Sucks to Be Me by Kimberly Pauley.March 2015: My Secret Guide to Paris by Lisa Schroeder.March 2011: The Body Finder series by Kimberly Derting.March 2010: The Lonely Hearts Club by Elizabeth Eulberg.June 2014: The Stepsister’s Tale by Tracy Barrett.July 2014: Brazen by Katherine Longshore.July 2013: The Watchers Series by Veronica Wolff.July 2012: Innocent Darkness by Suzanne Lazear.July 2011: The Revenant by Sonia Gensler.July 2010: The Naughty List by Suzanne Young.February 2015: I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios.February 2013: The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Shepherd.February 2012: A Beautiful Evil by Kelly Keaton.February 2011: Prom & Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg.February 2010: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl.August 2014: The Bridge from Me to You by Lisa Schroeder.August 2013: Wise Young Fool by Sean Beaudoin.August 2010: Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare.April 2015: The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma.April 2014: Noggin by John Corey Whaley.April 2013: The Program by Suzanne Young.April 2012: Curse Workers series by Holly Black.Po’town in Spill Zone is modeled on Goiania, a small city devastated by a wondrous and deadly technology that its residents couldn’t fully grasp.

In the end, dozens of houses had to be torn down, and even the wing of the hospital where the victims sought treatment was contaminated. She showed it off to neighbors, spreading disaster to the entire city. The thieves sold the device to a scrapyard, where the six-year-old daughter of the scrap dealer became fascinated by a strange glowing substance inside - cesium 137. The other was in Goiania, a small city in Brazil, where in 1986 some scrap thieves broke into a closed-up hospital and stole a radiotherapy unit (for zapping tumors). One was the Chernobyl nuclear accident, which I assume everyone knows about. But the story was inspired by two industrial accidents from the late 1980s.

It could have been an alien visitation or a spillover from some kind of Cthulhu-world. WESTERFELD: Well, the Spill wasn’t really an industrial accident. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What made you want to explore a dystopia that featured an industrial accident?

The spill zone