List: 2023 Teen Reading Challenge: Unsettling Settings
Alone in the Woods
Rising eighth-graders Jocelyn and Alex, former best friends forced together on a family vacation, must cooperate to survive when they get lost in the Wisconsin Northwoods. Told in two voices.
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Asylum
Three teens at a summer program for gifted students uncover shocking secrets in the sanatorium-turned-dorm where they're staying--secrets that link them all to the asylum's dark past.
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They Called Us Enemy
Takei's firsthand account of years spent in a Japanese concentration camp, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.
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Hatchet
After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the Canadian wilderness, learning to survive with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce.
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I'm Not Dying with You Tonight
Over the course of one night, two girls with two very different backgrounds must rely on each other to get through the violent race riot that has enveloped their city. Lena has her killer style, her awesome boyfriend, and a plan. She knows she's going to make it big. Campbell, on the other hand, is just trying to keep her head down and get through the year at her new school. When both girls attend the Friday-night football game, what neither expects is for everything to descend into sudden mass chaos. Chaos born from violence and hate. Chaos that unexpectedly throws them together. They aren't friends. They hardly understand the other's point of view. But none of that matters when the city is up in flames, and they only have each other to rely on if they're going to survive the night.
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The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark
Now adapted for young readers! The incredible true story of the young women exposed to the "wonder drug" radium and their struggle for justice.
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No Time to Die: The Deep End of Fear
Message from a dead girl ... It's too late to call back. Jenny will never speak to Liza again. But it seems that even from beyond the grave, Liza is begging her sister for help ... They say it's a serial killer. Is it? Jenny can't afford to trust anyone. Now she's here, in Wisteria, anonymously registered at the Chase College theater camp where her sister died. The daughter of a famous theatrical family, Jenny distrusts actors, loathes acting. Yet here in the college's darkened theatre, Liza seems to be speaking to her. Suddenly Jenny is mouthing Liza's last lines, sharing Liza's last days, a drama starring Brian, the stage manager, who seems to follow her everywhere ... dangerously attractive Mike ... Paul, who was obsessed with Liza...motherly, suffocating assistant director Maggie ... and Walker, the director, bristling with hostility and resentment against Liza and Jenny's famous father. Does he suspect Jenny's true identity? How can anyone know the visions that may be driving Jenny straight into the killer's arms?
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Come Out, Come Out, Whatever You Are
Welcome to the reality game show that'll scare you to death! Have you got what it takes to last the night? On the reality show It's Behind You!, five contestants competing for prize money must survive the night in the dark and dangerous Umber Gorge caves, rumored to be haunted by the Puckered Maiden, a ghost who eats the hearts of her victims. But is it the malevolent spirit they should fear, or each other? As the production crew ramps up the frights, tensions rise and the secrets of the cast member start coming to light. Each of these teenagers has hidden motives for taking part in the show. But could one of them be murder?
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The Mysteries of Thorn Manor
Elisabeth, Nathaniel, and Silas must unravel the magical trap keeping them inside Thorn Manor in time for their Midwinter Ball.
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Dreaming Darkly
Myra Bloodgood was a confusing mix of protective and abusive, a manipulative personality who never told the truth about Ivy's father was, or why they were living their lives on the run. After her death, Ivy is sent to Darkhaven, an island off the New England coast, to live with a rich uncle she didn't know existed. Forced to reckon with her mother's past, and long-held family secrets, she wakes up from one of her nightmares covered in someone else's blood. Darkhaven has a sordid history -- and what Ivy doesn't know might kill her.
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Contagion
After receiving a distress call from a drill team on a distant planet, a skeleton crew is sent into deep space to perform a standard search-and-rescue mission. When they arrive, they find the planet littered with the remains of the project--including its members' dead bodies. As they try to piece together what could have possibly decimated an entire project, they discover that some things are best left buried--and some monsters are only too ready to awaken.
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The Hunger Games
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.
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Monday's Not Coming
Monday Charles is missing, and Claudia seems to be the one person who notices. They've always been inseparable, and when Monday doesn't show up for school for two weeks, Claudia knows that something is wrong. Monday's mother refuses to give Claudia a straight answer, and her sister April is even less help. How can a teenage girl just vanish without anyone noticing that she's gone?
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The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein
Elizabeth Lavenza has been starved and beaten by her "caregiver" until she is brought to the home of Victor Frankenstein, an unsmiling, solitary boy who has everything-- except a friend. To escape from misery, Elizabeth does everything she can to make herself indispensable. She is taken in by the Frankenstein family and soon she and Victor are inseparable. But as the years pass, Elizabeth's survival depends on managing Victor's dangerous temper and entertaining his every whim, no matter how depraved. She is determined to stay alive no matter the cost... as the world she knows is consumed by darkness. --
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The Missing Season
Every October another kid goes missing from the old factory town of Pender. There's a monster out in the marshes, called the Mumbler. That's what Bree, Sage, Trace and Kincaid tell Clara when she moves to town with her father. Clara doesn't actually believe in the Mumbler, not like Kinkaid does. But as Halloween gets closer and tensions build in the town, it's hard to shake the feeling that there really is something dark and dangerous in Pender. Lurking in the shadows. Waiting to bring the stories to life.
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This Splintered Silence
Lindley Hamilton has been the leader of the space station Lusca since every first generation crew member on board, including her mother, the commander, was killed by a deadly virus. Lindley always assumed she'd captain the Lusca one day, but she never thought that day would come so soon. And she never thought it would be like this--struggling to survive every day, learning how to keep the Lusca running, figuring out how to communicate with Earth, making sure they don't run out of food. When a member of the surviving second generation dies from symptoms that look just like the deadly virus, though, Lindley feels her world shrinking even smaller. And as more people die, Lindley must face the terrifying reality--that either the virus has mutated, or one of their own is a killer.
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Coraline: The Graphic Novel
When Coraline steps through a door in her family's new house, she finds another house strangely similar to her own (only better). At first, things seem marvelous. The food is better than at home, and the toy box is filled with fluttering wind-up angels and dinosaur skulls that crawl and rattle their teeth. But there's another mother and another father, and they want her to stay and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go. Coraline will have to fight with all her wit and all the tools she can find if she is to save herself and return to her ordinary life.
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The Girl in the White Van
Told in multiple voices, sixteen-year-old Savannah Taylor is abducted after her kung fu class and must figure out how to escape and rescue fellow prisoner Jenny Dowd.
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Sawkill Girls
From the New York Times bestselling author of Furyborn comes a breathtaking and spine-tingling novel about three teenage girls who face off against an insidious monster that preys upon young women ...
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Girls with Sharp Sticks
The girls of Innovations Academy are beautiful and well-behaved, learning to be the best society has to offer. Under the watchful gaze of their Guardians they are obedient young ladies, free from arrogance, defiance, or opinions... until Mena starts to realize that their carefully controlled existence may not be quite as it appears. Uncovering the dark secrets of what's actually happening-- and who they really are-- the girls of Innovations will find out what they are truly capable of.
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Just Mercy: Adapted for Young Adults: A True Story of the Fight for Justice
Lawyer and social justice advocate Bryan Stevenson offers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned and his efforts to fight for their freedom.
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Ace of Spades
At Niveus Private Academy, Devon and Chiamaka are the only students chosen to be Senior Prefects who are also black, which makes them targets for a series of anonymous texts revealing their secrets to the entire student body. Both students were on track toward valedictorian and bright college futures, but this prank quickly turns into a very dangerous game and they are at more than one disadvantage as it looks like things could turn deadly.
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They Both Die at the End
In a near-future New York City where a service alerts people on the day they will die, teenagers Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio meet using the Last Friend app and are faced with the challenge of living a lifetime on their End Day.
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Aftershocks
When a major earthquake hits California, trapping seventeen-year-old Ruby with Charlie, a near-stranger, in a laundromat, they struggle to stay alive and hopeful with only memories and each other's voices to sustain them.
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I Am Still Alive
Stranded alone in the unforgiving Canadian wilderness, Jess is determined to survive and seek revenge on her father's murderers.
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Through the Woods: Stories
A collection of five spine-tingling short stories.
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The Reader
After her father is brutally murdered, Sefia flees into the wilderness with her aunt Nin, who teaches her to hunt, track, and steal. But when Nin is kidnapped none of her survival skills can help her discover where Nin's been taken, or if she's even alive. The only clue is the odd rectangular object her father left behind, an object she comes to realize is a book-- a marvelous item unheard of in her otherwise illiterate society. With the aid of a mysterious stranger with dark secrets of his own, Sefia sets out to rescue her aunt and find out what really happened the day her father was killed.
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Not If I Save You First
Six years ago Maddie lived in Washington D.C. with her father, a Secret Service agent assigned to the President's family, and her best friend was Logan, the President's son; but after her father was wounded in an attempted kidnapping the two of them moved to a remote cabin in Alaska and Logan never replied to her letters-- but now he has suddenly turned up on her doorstep, and, while she has no intention of forgiving him for his silence, she soon realizes that first she has to save him from the winter wilderness and the men who are pursuing him.
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Sink or Swim
Shy trans teen Bass reluctantly skips school and goes on a boat trip with his adventurous girlfriend, Rosie. When a sudden storm smashes their boat on the rocky shore of a deserted island, Bass and Rosie struggle to make it to safety. Bruised and battling hypothermia, the pair have to work together to survive. Rosie, an experienced climber, decides to scale a steep cliff to find help, but she falls and injures herself badly. Now Bass has to find the strength and courage to swim for help before it's too late.
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The Liar's Guide to the Night Sky
After her grandpa got sick half a world away, Hallie Jacob's parents yanked her to Colorado the last semester of her senior year. Career-wise, she has specialized in fighting fire, and now she is surrounded by ice, snow, and a thousand cousins she's half-banned from hanging around with. On one big family weekend in the freaking tundra, Hallie sneaks off with those cousins to an abandoned ski slope. Caught in a random mudslide, what started as a Secret Bonfire Party goes in a Potential Donner Party direction real fast. With some cousins in need of medical attention, Hallie is surprised when Jonah Ramirez (her cousin's extremely off-limits, absurdly hot best friend) joins her to search for a way to send help back to their stranded friends and family. --
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The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden & the Trial of the Century
Examines the Borden murders, using newspaper articles to recreate the events and the trial and acquittal of Lizzie Borden and exploring Lizzie's story to theorize on what may have happened.
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Where She Fell
Teenager Eliza and her friends are going to explore a cave near their upstate New York home, but first her friends insist on dragging her to Drowner's Swamp, a bog legendary for its dangerous sinkholes, and a place which her mother has frequently warned her about. Eliza does not want to go, and when the earth opens up and swallows her she finds herself in a system of caves--and what she finds living there is strange and dangerous beyond anything the legends could conjure up.
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Neverworld Wake
Beatrice Hartley and her friends were the cool kids at Darrow-Harker School. The shocking death of Jim-- their creative genius and Beatrice's boyfriend-- changed everything. A year after graduation the group returns to Wincroft, and Beatrice has questions about Jim's death. A mysterious man knocks on the door and announces that time for them has become stuck. They are in the Neverworld Wake, where fears are physical and memories come alive. Only one of the group can return to the real world.. and the decision of who can return must be unanimous.... --
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Chasing Lincoln's Killer
New York Times bestselling author James Swanson delivers a riveting account of the chase for Abraham Lincoln's assassin. Based on rare archival material, obscure trial manuscripts, and interviews with relatives of the conspirators and the manhunters, Chasing Lincoln's Killer is a fast-paced thriller about the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth: a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia.
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