Lists and Suggestions for Teens
List: Realistic Fiction
Tales of the Madman Underground
Barnes, John,
In September 1973, as the school year begins in his depressed Ohio town, high-school senior Kurt Sho...
Perfect Chemistry
Elkeles, Simone.
When wealthy, seemingly perfect Brittany and Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town...
Schooled
Korman, Gordon.
Homeschooled by his hippie grandmother, Capricorn (Cap) Anderson has never watched television, taste...
Speak
Anderson, Laurie Halse.
A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman yea...
Jellicoe Road
Marchetta, Melina,
Abandoned by her drug-addicted mother at the age of eleven, high school student Taylor Markham strug...
Reality Check
Abrahams, Peter,
After a knee injury destroys sixteen-year-old Cody's college hopes, he drops out of high school...
All Unquiet Things
Jarzab, Anna.
After the death of his ex-girlfriend Carly, northern California high school student Neily joins forc...
Queen of Secrets
Meyerhoff, Jenny.
Fifteen-year-old Essie Green, an orphan who has been raised by her secular Jewish grandparents in Mi...
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Alexie, Sherman,
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an ...
The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin
Berk, Josh.
When Will Halpin transfers from his all-deaf school into a mainstream Pennsylvania high school, he f...
Carter Finally Gets It
Crawford, Brent.
Awkward freshman Will Carter endures many painful moments during his first year of high school befor...
Crunch Time
Fredericks, Mariah.
Four students, who have formed a study group to prepare for the SAT exam, sustain each other through...
The Rule of Won
Petrucha, Stefan.
Caleb Dunne, the quintessential slacker, is pressured by his girlfriend to join a high school club b...
The Queen Geek Social Club
Preble, Laura.
Seeking more of their own kind and wanting to shake things up at school, fifteen-year-old Shelby and...
How to Say Goodbye in Robot
Standiford, Natalie.
After moving to Baltimore and enrolling in a private school, high school senior Beatrice befriends a...
Viola in Reel Life
Trigiani, Adriana.
When fourteen-year-old Viola is sent from her beloved Brooklyn to boarding school in Indiana for nin...
Rikers High
Volponi, Paul.
Arrested on a minor offense, a New York City teenager attends high school in the jail facility on Ri...
Food, Girls, and Other Things I can't Have
Zadoff, Allen.
Fifteen-year-old Andrew Zansky, the second fattest student at his high school, joins the varsity foo...
After
Efaw, Amy.
In complete denial that she is pregnant, straight-A student and star athlete Devon Davenport leaves ...
After the Moment
Freymann-Weyr, Garret,
When seventeen-year-old Leigh changes high schools his senior year to help his stepsister, he finds ...
Artichoke's Heart
Supplee, Suzanne.
When she is almost sixteen years old, Rosemary decides she is sick of being overweight, mocked at sc...
Destroy all Cars
Nelson, Blake,
Through assignments for English class, seventeen-year-old James Hoff rants against consumerism and h...
Flash Burnout
Madigan, L. K.
"Telephoto lens. Zoom. In a shutter release millisecond, Blake's world turns upside down. ...
Game
Myers, Walter Dean,
If Harlem high school senior Drew Lawson is going to realize his dream of playing college, then prof...
Hold Still
LaCour, Nina.
As Caitlin struggles to cope with her best friend Ingrid's suicide, she turns inward and quiet,...
Into the Wild Nerd Yonder
Halpern, Julie,
When high school sophomore Jessie's long-term best friend transforms herself into a punk and go...
Jumped
Williams-Garcia, Rita.
The lives of Leticia, Dominique, and Trina are irrevocably intertwined through the course of one day...

Marcelo in the Real World
Stork, Francisco X.
Marcelo Sandoval, a seventeen-year-old boy on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, fac...
No More us for You
Hernandez, David,
Isabel and Carlos, both seventeen, find themselves growing closer after an unexpected accident force...
Pop
Korman, Gordon.
Lonely after a midsummer move to a new town, sixteen-year-old high-school quarterback Marcus Jordan ...
Shooting Star
McKissack, Fredrick,
Jomo Rogers, a naturally talented athlete, starts taking performance enhancing drugs in order to be ...
Some Girls Are
Summers, Courtney.
Regina, a high school senior in the popular--and feared--crowd, suddenly falls out of favor and beco...
Struts & Frets
Skovron, Jon.
Sammy wants to be a musician, as was his grandfather, but while the band he is in is self-destructin...
Swim the Fly
Calame, Don.
"Fifteen-year-old Matt Gratton and his two best friends, Coop and Sean, always set themselves a...
The Life of Glass
Cantor, Jillian.
Throughout her freshman year of high school, fourteen-year-old Melissa struggles to hold onto memori...
Thirteen Reasons Why
Asher, Jay.
When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes ...
Hate List
Brown, Jennifer,
Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junio...