Many writers of fiction for adults have tried to bridge the gap to writing for young people, with mixed success. Adriana Trigiani, the popular author of the Big Stone Gap series, among other novels, breezily navigates the transition to young adult fiction with her first book for teens, Viola in Reel Life.

The last place 14-year-old Viola Chesterton wants to be spending her freshman year of high school is at all-girls Prefect Academy. But when her parents, documentary filmmakers, head to Afghanistan on assignment, they decide that boarding school in South Bend, Indiana, is a much safer option than home-schooling in Kabul. Viola’s sure she’ll hate everything about boarding school. She’s an only child, unused to sharing anything—let alone a single dorm room with three other girls. She’s a lifelong New Yorker, not sure how her unique fashion sense will go over with her Midwestern classmates.

Fortunately, Viola is also creative—something that goes a long way toward both saving her sanity and improving her social standing. She’s inherited a dramatic flair from her actress grandmother and the filmmaking bug from her parents. Over the course of her year at Prefect, Viola’s creative talents come into their own, as she creates multimedia sets for the Founder’s Day pageant and eventually writes and directs her own short film. As if that weren’t enough, over the course of this single pivotal year, Viola gains three new friends, falls in love, and falls right back out again.

Narrated by Viola herself, Viola in Reel Life is loaded with Viola’s wryly funny observations about boarding school life, as well as with plenty of pop culture references and IM-speak. Although Viola’s three roommates may seem a little underdeveloped in this novel, they’ll get their own chance to shine in three subsequent books in this projected series.

With its light, optimistic tone and easygoing storytelling, Adriana Trigiani’s boarding school novel might just be the perfect way for young readers to ease back into their own school days.

Norah Piehl is a writer and editor who lives near Boston.

If this were the classic road novel, 17-year-old Remy Walker would leave his little West Virginia town of Dwyer and go off with his $1,000 life savings, his beat-up old car, and his girlfriend Lisa as she heads to college in Pennsylvania. After all, what does this old mining town offer? It’s old, worn out and “past the purpose it was built for.” The coal is gone, the old miners’ houses are falling apart, hotels and offices are boarded up, and kudzu is taking over everything. It’s a “town full of people who didn’t know they were living in a time warp, people who’d been left behind or were too stupid to get up and go.” Even Remy’s mother couldn’t take this life and walked out, leaving Remy and his father to live on in the little trailer on Walker Mountain.

Remy loves Lisa, and what 17-year-old boy could resist a pretty girl, the lure of the open road and a new life in a better place? But when another pretty young artist comes to town and sees Dwyer with an outsider’s eyes, she makes Remy see things anew and wonder about his decision to leave and his single-minded love for Lisa. When Mr. Walker tells his son he’s thinking of selling the land to a mining company to help Remy have a better future, Remy’s decision becomes tortured and tangled. After all, Walker Mountain has been in Remy’s family for 160 years, before there ever was a town. “It was woven through every memory he had.”

Wyatt’s prose is simple and poetic, a perfect match for a quiet, reflective story about the tug of home and the lure of the road. The dialogue is pitch-perfect, the third-person voice perfect for dissecting the complexities of relationships and life-changing decisions. It’s a beautiful gem of a book, with resolutions, but not easy ones—and enough to make readers look anew and appreciate the wonders of their own places in the world.

Dean Schneider teaches middle school English in Nashville.
 

"I don’t mean to be weird P but in your letter you said how you wanted the truth about stuff even if it’s ugly and trust me it’s going to get a little ugly,” writes Jamie, aka Punkzilla, in this gritty novel told in letters. AWOL from the military school his conservative parents forced him to attend, 14-year-old Jamie has been scraping by in Portland, Oregon, rooming in a boarding house, stealing iPods for Fat Larkin, experimenting with meth and suffering from ennui.

When he receives word that one of his older brothers, Peter, a gay playwright living in Memphis and a fellow black sheep of the family, has cancer, the teen starts a long, strange journey to see his brother before he dies. In stream-of-consciousness prose, filled with idiomatic expressions, visceral details and dark humor, Jamie describes traveling by Greyhound bus and hitched rides and staying in seedy motels. Each interstate stop features a new cast of evocative, unpredictable characters from a boy genius obsessed with robots to an old lady with a leaky eye to a caring transsexual named Lewis. Filling in the gaps of Jamie’s story are letters from his depressed mother, his father, “the Major,” and other family and friends.

In this modern-day version of Kerouac’s On the Road, the teen discovers the vastness of the United States and tells his brother, “P life is really weird really really weird but I’m sure you already know that.” With a raw and unique style, author Adam Rapp draws attention to the marginalized youth of this country in a manner that’s never been accomplished before. Just as pressing as Jamie’s time crunch to reach his brother is his need to connect to other people—a need, Jamie shows us, we all have.

Angela Leeper is a director at the University of Richmond.
 

James can’t wait to leave his old life behind him and make a new start as a freshman at State University. While stopping for gas on the way to college, he has a chance encounter with his childhood pal, Reggie, and the two are forced to recall their 12th summer. Daniel Kraus’s chilling debut novel, The Monster Variations, looks back at that time of terror, when a mysterious silver truck is running over boys at night. James and Reggie’s mutual blood brother, Willie, is lucky to be alive, only losing an arm from the hit-and-run attack.

Just when summer arrives, promising long evenings playing junkball with neighborhood friends, paranoia sweeps the boys’ small town, which institutes a curfew for children and sends parent vigilantes on the prowl. With more time at home, the boys take notice of the frequent absences by James’ father and his parents’ disintegrating marriage, Reggie’s “well-known” waitress mother who works long hours and Willie’s alcoholic father and overprotective mother. There’s also more time for the boys to seek out the school bully’s secrets, view the dead “monster” kept hidden in an older teen’s barn and turn against each other for the first time.

In this cerebral thriller, Kraus crafts masterful descriptions of bygone childhoods, a town overcome by suspicion and the psychological effects of fear. As the boys try to figure out the identity of the killer, everyone is a suspect until the shocking conclusion. But perhaps the real fear is simply fear of growing up, realizing the disappointments and imperfections in life and trying to avoid becoming a monster oneself, burdened by life’s responsibilities.

Despite the difficult changes that coming of age brings, Kraus also offers hope for happiness and independence in the unsettling time known as adolescence.

Evie Spooner is a 15-year-old New Yorker growing up in post-World War II Queens; she loves the Dodgers, candy cigarettes, her parents and Frank Sinatra, though not necessarily in that order. She's learning from her friends how women are supposed to act, but she doesn't think she'll ever be as pretty and sophisticated as her mother. Evie's looks apparently came from her long-departed father, a man eclipsed by her adored stepfather, Joe. Her late summer reverie is broken by his announcement that the three of them will be vacationing in Palm Beach, Florida, but this is a trip that will cover more than miles: it will be a journey from childhood to adulthood, where her loyalty will be tested and she will learn both the joy of love and the shattering pain of betrayal.

What I Saw and How I Lied, which won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in November, is the marvelous new book for teens by Judy Blundell, a veteran writer of more than 100 books, who is publishing under her own name for the first time.

Blundell has good reason to want her name on this work; it's a compelling coming-of-age story of blackmail and tragedy with a strong moral center. Evie Spooner is that center, and as the awkward teen tries to fit into the social scene at a rundown hotel her father is negotiating to buy, she finds herself falling in love with handsome young Peter Coleridge, whose Long Island father has "business interests" in Palm Beach. More importantly, he served with Evie's father in post-war Austria, and she quickly realizes that there's more to their past connections than he's saying. As summer wanes, her feelings for Peter increase, her stepfather's negotiations become strained, and there's talk of bad weather ahead. More than one kind of storm is brewing for Evie.

This beautifully written story is full of period detail, from a post-war New York City right out of Life magazine to a sleepy and sticky Florida courthouse, and its well-drawn and original characters spring to life on the page. Like much of the best literature being written for teens, this gripping novel would also make a top-notch read for adults.

James Neal Webb works in a university library. 

Things go from bad to worse in short order for Daisy, the endearing but decidedly imperfect heroine of Meg Rosoff’s fascinating young adult novel, How I Live Now. Exiled from her New York home to England to escape a difficult relationship with her new stepmother, Daisy soon finds herself in a situation much more trying than a mere family crisis. Shortly after the anorexic American teenager arrives at the country home of her somewhat eccentric cousins, England is invaded and occupied by a fearsome (unnamed) enemy force. Daisy’s aunt—a diplomat pursuing last-minute efforts to avoid war—is trapped abroad, leaving Daisy and her four young cousins home alone.

Daisy finds herself falling for one of her male cousins, Osbert, and the teenagers lead an almost blissful existence, ignoring the chaos around them. Their brief idyllic taste of freedom ends abruptly, however, when they are rounded up by authorities and sent away to other locations. Daisy and her youngest cousin, Piper, are separated from the boys in the family and settled at the home of a young Army officer in a distant town.

When violence escalates horribly in the area, Daisy and Piper have no choice but to set off on a terrifying odyssey to find their family members. Hungry, cold and scared, they hike for endless days in the hope of being reunited with the boys. Rosoff describes their trek so vividly that readers are likely to find themselves as frightened and anxious as the characters.

A native of Boston who has lived in England for several years, Rosoff has crafted an unforgettable and original world in How I Live Now, her first novel. The voice of Daisy, in particular, is a stunning creation—gritty, inticing and utterly real throughout. With elements of teenage rebellion, romance, adventure and near-future science fiction, this original work is that rare “crossover”—a novel that will delight both male and female teen readers.
 

Have you ever wondered what’s happening in your neighborhood when most people are asleep? Popular teen novelist Sarah Dessen has, especially after recently becoming a mother and seeing lots more of those wee hours than she used to. In Along for the Ride, Dessen vividly imagines the very different, but intersecting, lives of two of those late-night denizens.

Perpetually high-achieving Auden West has been an insomniac ever since her parents’ divorce. At first, she’s planning to spend the sleepless nights of the summer after senior year getting a jump on her college reading list and spending time with her high-powered academic mother. But somewhere between econ and calc, the invitation from her father and stepmother to spend the summer with them and their infant daughter starts to seem more attractive, and Auden finds herself relocating to their small beach town, Colby, on a whim.

Her stepmother, bubbly Heidi, is nothing like Auden’s mom, and life in Colby bears little resemblance to what she’s left behind. One thing hasn’t changed, though—she still can’t sleep. In Colby, however, sleepless nights can mean beach parties, cute boys and late-night sessions with the girls who work at Heidi’s trendy beachfront store. And they can mean Eli, a talented but stoic former bike jumper who refuses to talk with anyone except Auden. Auden helps Eli get beyond his tragic past, while Eli helps Auden rediscover the childhood she missed while she was trying to be the perfect student.

One of those things Auden never experienced was learning to ride a bike. The images of falling off and getting back on (both of which Auden does a lot) serve as metaphors for starting over: “Given the chance for a real do-over, another way around,” Auden reflects, “who would say no?” Along for the Ride’s striking imagery of jumping and landing also reflects Auden’s hard-won ability to let go, to be free, to find her own way, even if it’s not as smooth or perfect a road as she had always planned. Her journey will speak to mothers, daughters and anyone who’s ever needed a second, or even a third, chance to get things right.

Norah Piehl is a writer and editor who lives near Boston.

Child prodigy Ronald Earl Pettway has always accepted his gift of healing, which has led to endless tent revivals and a sheltered life on the road with elderly, scripture-spouting evangelists Sugar Tom and Certain Certain and his great-aunt Wanda Joy. But now that he’s turned 16, Ronald Earl, known simply as Little Texas, finds himself doubting his once-solid gift. He has begun to take an interest in girls, especially a ghost-like girl named Lucy, whom he failed to save one evening on a revival stop.

“One thing I have learned is every story of the strange has a mustard seed of truth,” Sugar Tom tells the boy, and in R.A. Nelson’s modern-day horror story, Days of Little Texas, forgotten truths wail to be heard.

Sensing Ronald Earl’s adolescent changes, Wanda Joy leads the troupe to Vanderloo, a former cotton plantation in Alabama. This last remaining structure atop an island, created when the Tennessee Valley Authority flooded the area, is better known to the locals as Devil Hill. Wanda Joy hopes to encourage the teenager’s loyalty to the church by testing his gift and avenging the diabolical death of her grandfather decades earlier.

With the help of Lucy, Ronald Earl discovers Vanderloo’s dark slavery secrets, held captive since its pre-Civil War days. His battle against its demons also becomes a personal fight against fear and for love and independence. Nelson’s eerie and sometimes downright scary descriptions of the plantation’s evil inhabitants and effective twists create a spine-chilling experience.

Although Ronald Earl may have a gift from God, he questions the world like any teenage boy. His stolen moments with Sugar Tom and Certain Certain, discussing his dilemmas and their own scrapes in life, provide rich commentary on living in the world today. Readers drawn to the story’s horror will also find a formidable champion for setting the past and present straight.

Angela Leeper is the Director of the Curriculum Materials Center at the University of Richmond.

Next-door neighbors Anna and Frankie have felt like sisters all their lives. In Sarah Ockler’s poignant debut novel, Twenty Boy Summer, the girls’ friendship is tested when a freak accident changes their lives forever.

Anna’s longtime crush on Frankie’s older brother, Matt, turns to love when he kisses her on her 15th birthday. They keep their romance a secret, since Matt wants to wait until his family’s summer vacation to break the news to his sister. But the night before the big trip, the three teens experience a tragic car crash which takes Matt’s life.

Now a year later, Anna joins Frankie’s family on their California excursion. While hanging out in all of Matt’s favorite locales, Anna meets Sam and finds instant, mutual attraction. She can’t help but worry, though, that falling in love with Sam means erasing her memories with Matt.

With friendship at the forefront, Anna explores grief and love and the pain and wonders of it all. The teen’s dilemma—how to remember Matt, move on with Sam and still be loyal to Frankie—gives a firm tug on the reader’s heart.

Seventeen-year-old Mia has her entire life ahead of her. She’s a shoo-in for the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, and the biggest decision she has to make is whether to move to New York on her own or stay in Oregon with her boyfriend Adam. That decision seems trite in comparison to the one she faces after a deadly car crash changes the course of her life forever.

If I Stay  is a page-turner, save the moments when reflection is required. In a fairly slim volume, author Gayle Forman manages to create a believable and virtually blameless character in Mia. Readers will find themselves drawn to empathize with Mia and nearly all of the other characters at some point.

Mia contemplates her love for the cello, her boyfriend Adam and her best friend Kim. She also considers what life will be like having lost so much. Life and death are the two choices presented to Mia, but the first-person account offers no insight into who is presenting that decision. Religion, faith and pre-conceived notions about life after death play no role in this bare-bones depiction of the psychological inner-workings of one young woman.

Soon to be a film, If I Stay calls to mind Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, but readers must cope with the tragic events in the novel without having the satisfaction of a specific character to blame. Teen readers will be thrilled, horrified, saddened and excited by the subject matter. The implications of Mia’s choice—and eventual decision—will resonate with readers of all ages.

Robert B. Parker’s literary protagonist, Boston detective Spenser, is brave, witty, strong and smart, with a streak of impregnable integrity and a stubborn determination to do the right thing. Through almost 40 novels, Parker has given us glimpses of Spenser’s past, but his newest novel, Chasing the Bear, takes us back to an incident that molds the boy into the man he would become.

As a teenager growing up in Laramie, Wyoming, Spenser is raised by his father Sam, and his two uncles, Patrick and Cash. An all-male household means a lot of testosterone-influenced activities, including boxing and hunting. But the three men also try to expose their young kin to the classics (like Shakespeare and Milton) and encourage him to do what’s right. These lessons come into play when Jeannie, a friend from school, is taken upriver against her will by her abusive, alcoholic father, and Spenser has no choice but to follow them in a small, rickety skiff. The choices he makes in trying to rescue Jeannie will have repercussions both in the short term and for the rest of his life.

Chasing the Bear will appeal to teen readers in much the same way the Spenser mysteries appeal to adults. Spenser’s wit, strength and moral rectitude serve as a stand-in for the way we want ourselves to be. He’s the quintessential hero, and we all need a hero, no matter what our age.

Following the death of her mother, 16-year-old Katie D’Amore is spending the summer tending to the grounds at the home of the famously reclusive Miss Martine. It’s the kind of work Katie’s mother would have appreciated—the quiet pursuit of beauty—and the physical labor is a welcome diversion. She joins a cast of devoted caretakers, working under the guidance of the inscrutable Old Olson, who begin clearing a patch of land for a new gazebo. The project is the latest in a string of orders seemingly handed down by Miss Martine herself—though she was last seen in 1954—that reflect a meticulous and somewhat puzzling need to perpetually reorganize the lush landscape of the vast estate.

In Nothing but Ghosts, acclaimed author Beth Kephart (Undercover and House of Dance) artfully juxtaposes themes of grief and torment with the persistence of beauty. Katie must reconcile herself with the notion that “Things disappear and vanish. That’s the fact. Before you’re ready for them to go, they go, and after that all you can do is keep the idea of them bright inside yourself.”

Spurred by a need to make sense of her own recent loss, Katie becomes compelled to solve the mystery that has shrouded Miss Martine’s withdrawal from society. She begins to delve into the community archives with the assistance of a local librarian, an atypical beauty herself, trying to break through a tangle of riddles and hidden truths.

Though confronting her own ghosts, Katie keeps busy through the long, hot summer, dividing her time between the big old house she now shares only with her father, the library where she conducts her research, and Miss Martine’s garden where secrets are being unearthed daily. Meanwhile, Katie’s father is grieving in his own eccentric but even-handed way. He restores paintings for a living and his latest acquisition might just hold an important key.

Beth Kephart’s dazzling new novel is wise and wonderful, certain to be a revelation for young adult readers. As Katie makes a few necessary discoveries, she begins to let love in once again. In doing so, she honors an important promise, “a daughter’s promise: to live my life with my eyes wide open. To honor exuberance, and color.” 

Ellen Trachtenberg is the author of A Parent’s Guide to the Best Children’s Literature.