1. How To Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Worms? Interesting. Fried worms? Irresistible! Harassed by the other boys in his school, the protagonist makes a bet that he can wolf down a set number of worms in a given amount of time. And this he does, in gloriously icky and surprisingly appetizing ways...pure storytelling genius.
2. Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy Gamebook series
These are the same authors who created the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks I enjoyed as a boy. The stories are of the 'choose-your-own-adventure' variety, where you may make choices along the way that lead your character to different outcomes. It's fun to see where different choices bring you, and often a simple combat system (involving dice or some other random number generator) is used to resolve encounters with hostile creatures. Adventure, monsters, a combat system, and the chance to determine the character's fate...what's there not to love? Of course, the same experience is now recreated in computer role-playing games, but nothing quite replicates the smell and feel of paper, and the appeal of black and white pen illustrations that are scattered throughout the books.
3. Snakehead (Alex Rider) by Anthony Horowitz
This is a book about a reluctant teenage spy who has to deal with Southeast Asian gangs, and is one of a series of books starring protagonist Alex Rider . I haven't read any of these books yet, but it's certainly got good reviews on Amazon.com. I've seen a lot of the books in Popular Bookshop but never felt compelled to buy one. After reading the reviews, I just might pick one up.
4. Another recent favourite with young boys is the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer. The star of the book is a 14-year old criminal mastermind, Artemis Fowl, who aims to rebuild his family fortune after the mysterious disappearance of his father. It isn't often the hero of a book turns out to be a criminal mastermind!