Lists and Suggestions for Teens

Trey Anderson balances the pressures of school popularity with a job at his family's beloved local bookshop, Wonderland. Quirky, creative Ariel Spencer needs tuition for the prestigious art program of her dreams, and an opening at Wonderland is the answer. When Trey and Ariel learn that Wonderland is on the brink of being shut down by a neighborhood gentrifier, they team up to stop the doors from closing before the Christmas Eve deadline-- and embark on a journey that will change them forever.

From the moment she first learned to read, literary genius Darcy Wells has spent most of her time living in the worlds of her books. There, she can avoid the crushing reality of her mother's hoarding and pretend her life is simply ordinary. But when a new property manager becomes more active in the upkeep of their apartment complex, the only home Darcy has ever known outside of her books suddenly hangs in the balance. While Darcy is struggling to survive beneath the weight of her mother's compulsive shopping, Asher Fleet, a former teen pilot with an unexpectedly shattered future, walks into the bookstore where she works...and straight into her heart. For the first time in her life, Darcy can't seem to find the right words. Fairy tales are one thing, but real love makes her want to hide inside her carefully constructed ink-and-paper bomb shelter. Still, after spending her whole life keeping people out, something about Asher makes Darcy want to open up. But securing her own happily-ever-after will mean she'll need to stop hiding and start living her own truth--even if it's messy

Optics can make or break an election. Everything Mark knows about politics, he learned from his father, the Congressman who still pretends he has a daughter and not a son. Mark has promised to keep his past hidden and pretend to be the cis guy everyone assumes he is. But when he sees a manipulatively charming candidate for student body president inflame dangerous rhetoric, Mark risks his low profile to become a political challenger. The problem? No one really knows Mark. He didn't grow up in this town, and his few friends are all nerds. Still, thanks to Scandal and The West Wing, they know where to start: from campaign stops to voter polling to a fashion makeover. Soon Mark feels emboldened to engage with voters--and even start a new romance. But with an investigative journalist digging into his past, a father trying to silence him, and the bully frontrunner standing in his way, Mark will have to decide which matters most: perception or truth, when both are just as dangerous.

They're called parachutes: teenagers dropped off to live in private homes and study in the US while their wealthy parents remain in Asia. Claire Wang never thought she'd be one of them, until her parents pluck her from her privileged life in Shanghai and enroll her at a high school in California. Suddenly she finds herself living in a stranger's house, with no one to tell her what to do for the first time in her life. She soon embraces her newfound freedom, especially when the hottest and most eligible parachute, Jay, asks her out. Dani De La Cruz, Claire's new host sister, couldn't be less thrilled that her mom rented out a room to Claire. An academic and debate-team star, Dani is determined to earn her way into Yale, even if it means competing with privileged kids who are buying their way to the top. When her debate coach starts working with her privately, Dani's game plan veers unexpectedly off course. Desperately trying to avoid each other under the same roof, Dani and Claire find themselves on a collision course, intertwining in deeper and more complicated ways, as they grapple with life-altering experiences.

Both playful and wryly observant, Ed Lin's YA-debut explores coming-of-age in the Asian diaspora while navigating relationships through race, class, and young love. David Tung, our nerd-hero, is a Chinese American high-school student who works in his family's restaurant, competes for top grades at his regular high school located in an upscale, Asian-majority New Jersey suburb, and attends weekend Chinese school in NYC's working-class Chinatown. While David faces parental pressures to get As and conform to cultural norms and expectations, he's caught up in the complicated world of high school love triangles--and amid these external pressures is the fear he will die alone, whether he gets into Harvard or not!

Eliza Quan is the perfect candidate for editor in chief of her school paper--until ex-jock Len DiMartile decides on a whim to run against her. Suddenly her vast qualifications mean squat because inexperienced Len just seems more like a leader. When Eliza's frustration spills out in a viral essay, she finds herself inspiring a feminist movement she never meant to start, caught between those who believe she's a gender equality champion and others who think she's simply crying misogyny. The school asks Eliza and Len to work side by side to demonstrate civility, and she just might be falling for the face of the patriarchy himself.

Vi came to Arden High for a fresh start and a chance to wear beanies and button-ups instead of uniform skirts. And though doing it without her twin feels like being split in half, Vi finds her stride when she stumbles (literally!) into broody and beautiful poet-slash-influencer, Orsino. Soon Vi gets roped into helping plan the school's Twelfth Grade Night dance, and she can't stop dreaming about slow dancing with Orsino under the fairy lights in the gym. The problem? All Vi's new friends assume she's not even into guys. And before Vi can ask Orsino to the dance, he recruits Vi to help woo his crush, Olivia. Who has a crush of her own . . . on Vi.

It's the last day of senior year. Rowan Roth and Neil McNair, both overachievers, have been bitter rivals for all of high school. When Neil is named valedictorian, Rowan has only one chance at victory: Howl, a senior class game that takes them all over Seattle, a farewell tour of the city she loves. Learning that a group of seniors is out to get them, the two reluctantly decide to team up. They'll play until they are the last players left-- and then destroy each other.

At Books & Moore, the musty bookstore her family has owned for generations, Madeline knows nothing is going to stop her from coming back after college to take over the store from her aunt. Then a chain bookstore called Prologue opens across the street and threatens to shut them down. Jasper, the guy who works over at Prologue, seems intent on ruining her life. Not only is he taking her customers, he has the unbelievable audacity to be extremely cute! But that doesn't matter: Jasper is the enemy and he will be destroyed. Madeline knows: all's fair in love and (book) wars.

Radcliffe Prep. The third most haunted school in the country, where a student disappearance isn't uncommon and no one dares stay in the library after dark. And Este Logano enrolls with the hopes of finding her dead father. Not literally, of course. She doesn't believe in ghosts. Going to her dad's school just seems like her best hope at figuring out who he was. But then Este meets Mateo, who is maybe--probably--definitely--a real ghost. And an annoying one at that. When Mateo frames Este for the theft of a rare book from the library's secret spire and then vanishes, Este will have to track him down or risk being expelled and leaving Radcliffe early just like her father did. Except following in her father's footsteps might be more dangerous than Este ever anticipated. As she investigates the library with its secret passageways, hidden tunnels, and haunted halls, she learns that the student disappearances aren't just myth. And if she isn't careful, she'll be next.

Noa Ohunene Jenkins doesn't feel Black enough. Or autistic enough. Or cool enough. In her new town, the fifteen-year-old strives to make Dean's Merit Society, an elite honor society that she sees as her ticket to success. To make the society, she needs leadership experience, but there's one problem: Noa struggles to socialize appropriately. Desperate to make it in the society, she creates her own group consisting of autistic students from her school district and names it the "Roaring Pebbles." With the assistance of the Roaring Pebbles, a robot toy invention, her nonverbal brother, and a bit of classical Mozart along the way, Noa clings to her chance to make the society. And to one day, finally feel enough.

After her paranormal-loving father dies, Hattie Tilney stops believing in ghosts: she has enough to worry about in the land of the living. When she works with new student Kit Morland on an investigation project, Hattie finds herself wanting to believe in something. Kit transferred to Northanger on a ghost-hunting scholarship, and is determined to prove the campus is haunted; Hattie is determined to prove it isn't.

Online Halle is Kels, the enigmatically cool creator of One True Pastry, a YA book blog that pairs epic custom cupcakes with covers and reviews. When she arrives at her Gramp's small town to spend senior year, she find herself face-to-face with her online best friend, Nash. Halle is sure that if she tells him she's actually Kels, it will ruin their digital friendship. Is it still a love triangle if there are only two people in it?

When a storm strikes at Blackbrook Academy, an elite prep school nestled in the woods of Maine, a motley crew of students are left stranded on campus with their headmaster. Hours later, her body is found hanging in the conservatory and it's very clear her death was no suicide. With this group of students who are all hiding something, nothing is as it seems, and everyone has a motive for murder.

Two years ago, a misunderstanding between the leaders of Earth and the invading Ilori resulted in the deaths of one-third of the world's population. Seventeen-year-old Janelle "Ellie" Baker survives in an Ilori-controlled center in New York City. With humans deemed dangerously volatile because of their initial reaction to the invasion, emotional expression can be grounds for execution. Music, art and books are illegal, but Ellie breaks the rules by keeping a secret library. When a book goes missing, Ellie is terrified that the Ilori will track it back to her and kill her. Born in a lab, M0Rr1S was raised to be emotionless. When he finds Ellie's illegal library, he's duty-bound to deliver her for execution. The trouble is, he finds himself drawn to human music and in desperate need of more. They're both breaking the rules for the love of art--and Ellie inspires the same feelings in him that music does. Ellie's--and humanity's--fate rests in the hands of an alien she should fear. M0Rr1S has a lot of secrets, but also a potential solution--thousands of miles away. The two embark on a wild and dangerous road trip with a bag of books and their favorite albums, all the while creating a story and a song of their own that just might save them both.

Scholarship student Rachel keeps to herself at Manchester Prep, preferring the company of horror films to trust fund babies. When a prank puts her on the radar of a mysterious student society, "The Mary Shelley Club," they subject her to a number of escalating Fear Tests which eventually puts them on the radar of a serial killer.

All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer's Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery -- magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power. Then an act of sabotage releases the library's most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth's desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them. As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she's been taught -- about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.

A dark, twisty thriller about a centuries-old, ivy-covered boarding school haunted by its history of witchcraft and two girls dangerously close to digging up the past. The history of Dalloway School lives in the bones it was built on. Five violent deaths in the first ten years of its existence. Sometimes you can still smell the blood on the air. It wasn't until Felicity enrolled that she fell in love with the dark. And now she's back to finish her senior year after the tragic death of her girlfriend. She even has her old room in Godwin House, the exclusive dormitory rumored to be haunted by the spirits of the five Dalloway students who died there--girls some say were witches. It's Ellis Haley's first year at Dalloway. A prodigy novelist at seventeen, Ellis is eccentric and brilliant, and Felicity can't shake the pull she feels to her. So when Ellis asks for help researching the Dalloway Five for her second book, Felicity can't say no. Dalloway's occult lore is everywhere, and the new girl won't let Felicity forget it. But when the past begins to invade on the present, Felicity needs to decide where she stands. The soil under her feet is bloody with Dalloway's history. But so is the present. Is it Dalloway--or is it her?