Norah Piehl

I love a good boarding school novel. Kirsten Miller’s Mandel Academy is different—and far more disturbing—than any other fictional boarding school I’ve come across. The main character, Flick, dubs the school “Hogwarts for hustlers,” and the course catalog reads like a series of ugly jokes. “Mining the Masses: Big Profits from Little People” and “Let Them Eat Cake: Exploiting America’s Obesity Epidemic” are just two of the courses at this school that also teaches the fine arts of hacking, blackmail and assassination.

Flick, a skillful pickpocket, is a “legacy kid,” the son of a Mandel alumnus. But Flick enrolls in the academy not because he aspires to be like his dad but because he longs to take him down and expose his secret, murderous history. As Flick rises to the top of the class, he discovers just how sinister the academy is. When his “one good thing,” his girlfriend Joi, winds up at the academy, too, she shows him that there may be another option, one that will keep Flick alive while maintaining his moral integrity, one that will turn Mandel upside down.

In How to Lead a Life of Crime, Miller has created a gruesome school environment, one in which ambition turns bloodthirsty and loyalties are tested. Along the way, she raises significant questions about the origins of evil, the capability of the individual and the distribution of wealth and power. Readers might not want to enroll in the Mandel Academy, but their time spent there will certainly make them think.

Dinah seems much younger than her 15 years. She’s innocent and hopeful, someone who always sees the bright side of any situation. She and her best friend Skint help out at church as part of the “Girls’ Friendly Society” (even though Skint’s a boy) in their small Maine town. But as Skint likes to remind her, a lot of complicated problems—like hunger, poverty, mental illness and abuse—are everywhere, including right in their own backyard.

And Skint should know: His father suffers from early-onset senility, and his mother, desperate to keep her husband out of an institution, is at the end of her rope. Unlike Dinah, Skint is cynical and angry about the world around him, and he often grows frustrated with Dinah’s inability or unwillingness to comprehend the extent of the world’s troubles.

As a long Maine winter takes its toll on the town’s residents, Dinah becomes increasingly aware of the problems that consume Skint. When she must change her own opinion of her best friend, Dinah finds herself feeling unexpectedly unmoored, “like a child whose balloon has come undone from her wrist.”

N. Griffin’s debut novel raises issues (such as religious faith, social responsibility and poverty) not commonly found in young adult fiction. In the end, Griffin encourages readers to consider important questions: Is it possible to see the troubles that surround us without succumbing to despair? And what is left when loving someone is not enough to save them? Simultaneously quirky, funny, thoughtful and sad, The Whole Stupid Way We Are will remain with readers long after its heartbreaking final pages.

In the second decade of the 21st century, some might argue that there shouldn’t be a need for young adult novels exploring the angst and liberation of coming out as gay. However, as long as teens still seem deeply in need of initiatives like the “It Gets Better” project, novels like Ask the Passengers—especially one as compassionate and complex as this one—will be essential reading for all people, regardless of how they label themselves.

Astrid Jones is a senior in high school, a brainy, wordy girl whose favorite hobby is lying on the backyard picnic table, sending her love to the airplane passengers overhead: “It feels good to love a thing and not expect anything back,” she thinks. Astrid and her family have recently moved from New York City to a small town in Pennsylvania, where they may always seem like outsiders and a “fog of gossip” seems to surround everything they do.

Keeping secrets is hard in a small town, and Astrid has plenty—both her own and other people’s. When Astrid’s secret comes to light, she must decide whether and how to start telling the truth, and to whom. Like A.S. King’s previous novels, Ask the Passengers can hardly be considered a “problem novel”; instead, it perfectly blends philosophy, emotion and even a little magical realism in a smart, sympathetic story that is as relevant and compelling as ever.

Midway through Double, the novel’s narrator—at this point beginning to fear (rightfully) for his life—thinks about his new family, “Maybe none of them were what they seemed. Maybe it wasn’t just me.” The stark contrasts between appearances and reality, between expectations and intentions, form much of the thematic backbone—not to mention the suspenseful framework—of Valentine’s mind-bending thriller.

Our 16-year-old narrator, known only as “Chap,” is on his last legs, in a homeless shelter, locked up for fighting, when he’s recognized by one of the case workers. She shows him a missing persons photo of Cassiel Roadnight, a boy who could be Chap’s twin. Seduced by visions of Cassiel’s comfortable home, of a family who misses and longs for him, Chap eases, almost without thinking about it, into Cassiel’s life.

The two boys look so much alike that Chap fools almost everyone. But as he settles into Cassiel’s small town and starts learning more about Cassiel’s disappearance, he begins to realize that he might be in as much danger as Cassiel once was.

Marked by a complex revenge plot and multiple hairpin turns, enriched by Chap’s recollections of the one person he’s ever loved, Double is both a relentlessly thrilling suspense novel and a wrenching character study. Author Jenny Valentine has won multiple awards in her native Great Britain, and it’s about time that U.S. readers learn more about her. With Double, Valentine’s second novel to be published in the United States (after Me, the Missing, and the Dead), she should find the wider audience she so well deserves.

Just when you think that every possible approach to fairy-tale retellings has been heavily trod, along comes Marissa Meyer, who boldly sends her retelling of Cinderella into a futuristic new realm.

Meyer’s Cinder is a cyborg, only 64 percent human, her other 36 percent reconstructed from robotic parts after a horrible childhood accident. She was adopted soon after, but her beloved stepfather has died from the plague that is ravaging New Beijing, and her stepmother is nowhere near as sympathetic. Now, on the eve of the ball sponsored by Prince Kai, Cinder’s beloved stepsister Peony has succumbed to the deadly disease, and Cinder herself has been conscripted as one of the cyborg guinea pigs for the scientists trying to find a cure. But Cinder’s artificial parts might be hiding a secret from her past—and perhaps also the key to her future.

Meyer cleverly includes enough elements of the original Cinderella story to keep fans of fairy tales happy, but she simultaneously makes the story entirely her own, constructing a futuristic, dystopian world that is complex enough to stand on its own. The good news is that Cinder is just the first in a projected Lunar Chronicles quartet, with futuristic takes on the tales of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Snow White still to come.

Trillions of miles from Earth, a massive spaceship, the Empyrean, hurtles toward a goal they only know as New Earth. On board are dozens of families, their children destined to settle and repopulate New Earth with the next generation. For 43 years the Empyrean has traveled without seeing any of the other ships that are traveling the same journey.

All that is about to change.

Traversing a nebula that disrupts their communication and navigation tools, the Empyrean catches sight of a second ship, the New Horizon. But the messages coming from the ship are confusing and contradictory. Are its inhabitants friends or foes? Soon the two ships are engaged in a disorienting power struggle, wrapped up in the desire to perpetuate the next generation.

At the center of the conflict are young lovers Kieran, the untested heir apparent to the role of Empyrean's Captain, and Waverly, who loves Kieran but still has doubts about becoming a wife and mother at age 15. When Waverly and the rest of the Empyrean's girls are taken aboard the New Horizon, these two must determine whether they can trust anyone—even each other.

On the surface of things, Glow is a cracking good science fiction tale, full of action and nonstop plot twists. It's also, however, an exploration of philosophical and historical concepts. The New Horizon's philosophy and way of life—down to the sermons proclaimed by their leader, Anne Mather—are inspired by Puritan principles. Meanwhile, as indicated by its name, the Empyrean abides by a more rational approach. Reason vs. faith—how will this conflict play out when the future of the human race is at stake? Readers will have to wait for the next installment in the tension-packed Sky Chasers trilogy.