Between the grief of losing her mother to cancer and the strain from caring for her ill but frivolous father, Ruby Santos is just trying to stay afloat. So when she discovers that her father is in debt to a powerful family who secretly rules the San Francisco BART system, Ruby doesn’t hesitate to take on his contract—which means becoming a “jumper,” or a person who magically travels between train lines to make mysterious, under-the-table deliveries. Ruby is determined to do well, but as she learns more about what the deliveries are and how the train-jumping business works, she begins to wonder if this new, magical world is darker—and deadlier—than she expected.

The Vanishing Station is a sweeping journey told in beautiful, first-person prose full of Ruby’s dynamic personality. As Ruby jumps around the world, Ellickson brings each place to life with vibrant descriptions, including sensory elements and Ruby’s emotional responses. Ruby’s charming and personable voice comes through to the reader in asides, exclamations and clever quips.

Ruby lives in between many worlds. While she was raised in a house passed down through her mother’s Irish family, her father also passed along the food, music and beliefs of his Filipino upbringing. Ruby has a burning desire to pursue art but feels pressured to focus on jobs that pay more because of her father’s mental and physical health issues. Isolated by her family’s troubles and the loss of her mother, Ruby starts the story feeling completely lost: “I’m a ghost in my own city.” 

Becoming a jumper seems to promise a life of adventure, if not freedom. But Ruby finds herself entangled in lies and secrets, stuck trying to balance her heavy responsibilities and her beliefs. As Ruby learns more about the people around her, including her father and members of the Bartholomew family, she begins to recognize that power can manifest and be claimed in many different ways.

Ultimately, Ruby’s development hinges on knowing and accepting herself. As she is forced to look inward, she learns more about where she comes from and who she truly is—and who she wants to be. Even when life feels out of control, we have the power to make meaningful decisions.

The Vanishing Station is about complex relationships: with family, with our choices and especially with one’s self. Ruby is a reminder that even under the heaviest, most difficult circumstances, it’s worth it to love, try and believe in yourself.

Seventeen-year-old Shane has spent much of her adolescence mired in grief. Several years ago, a flood devastated the Lipan Apache community where Shane and her family lived in Texas, and Shane’s father and paternal grandparents died. Only Shane, her mother, Lorenza, and Shane’s little brother left their home unscathed. 

Shane and Lorenza are part of a long line of Lipan Apache women who can raise the ghosts of animals, an ability they put to use to help locate the missing. In their new, patched-together life, Shane helps Lorenza with local search-and-rescue missions, assisted by their well-trained bloodhounds—as well as their ghost dog. 

But one day, Lorenza herself goes missing herself while searching for a pair of siblings. Shane rushes to follow Lorenza’s trail, but it soon becomes clear that Lorenza and the siblings have vanished from the area entirely, thanks to the strange workings of fairy magic. To find them, Shane must call on the support of her family—both given and chosen—and the strength of her ancestors. 

A prequel to acclaimed YA author Darcie Little Badger’s 2020 debut Elatsoe (which features Shane’s granddaughter, Ellie, as the protagonist), Sheine Lende is a powerful and deeply moving tale of family, grief, cultural identity and magic. As a Lipan Apache woman herself, Little Badger combines the myths and legends of her tribe with fantastical elements to tell a story that, while fictional, rings true.The universe the book occupies is almost identical to our own, except in Little Badger’s version of reality, the ancient folklores that have informed cultural beliefs and practices since time immemorial are made manifest in the real world—but they exist alongside representations of true and historic modes of systemic oppression used by the U.S. government against indigenous peoples like the Lipan.

This is not to say, however, that Sheine Lende is all darkness. Though frequently consumed by anxiety, doubt and grief, Shane is a vibrant character who continues to find joy in her family, friends and the world around her. And on a larger scale, Little Badgernever portrays the Lipan Apache tribe as downtrodden or defeated. Much to the contrary, Sheine Lende presents a family and a people who have had atrocities small and large, but who, despite it all, turn toward the light.

Jo-Lynn Kirby’s always been one of the boys: “For so long, I was the cool girl. I was loud and fun and untouchable, always hanging with the guys—no girls allowed but me.” So it was both a thrill and a surprise when she and Maddie Price became best friends, and together reveled in their popularity at Culver Honors High School—until Maddie abruptly dumped Jo at the end of ninth grade. Jo was deeply hurt, but she’d be fine with her guy pals, right?

As Meredith Adamo’s masterful debut Not Like Other Girls opens, it’s senior year and graduation is on the horizon. But instead of celebrating, Jo’s in survival mode, trying to be invisible.

Last fall, private nudes were stolen from her phone and sent to her classmates. Her grades plummeted, she was labeled “Senior Slut,” and even her supposedly lifelong buddies now ostracize and bully her. Jo’s dismissive parents and brother aren’t thrilled with her either, and a safe place feels like a thing of the distant past.

When Maddie goes missing, Jo decides to investigate in the name of their former friendship. She’s aided by her classmate Hudson, who proposes a faux romance that’ll get her back into the popular clique and closer to people who might know what happened. As the two ferret out information about Maddie, Jo also plumbs the murky depths of her own memories, unearthing truths about the last few years that provoke fresh pain but also bring her self-image—and the motivations of those around her—into sharper focus.

Maddie’s senior year is an eye-opening one, rife with revelations that change her life and offer hope for her future. Not Like Other Girls is a powerful book that’s likely to do the same for its readers as it delivers a fiercely feminist take on rape culture. Whether crafting authentic and immersive narration, spinning a sweet and sexy fake-dating storyline, or building a suspenseful and twisty mystery, Adamo proves herself to be absolutely an author to watch.

For many years, Icarus Gallagher has slipped into the dangerous Mr. Black’s mansion on opportune nights to steal priceless artworks and replace them with perfect forgeries created by Icarus’ father, Angus. Their strange mission is one of revenge: Mr. Black hurt Angus’ family, and so Angus has spent almost two decades trying to hurt Mr. Black.

As a consequence of his father’s obsession, Icarus lives a half-life devoid of any real connection. At 17, he only has a year before he can leave and never see Angus again. Until then, he’ll keep his head down. 

Except one night, Icarus is caught by Helios, Mr. Black’s teenage son. While he originally appears to be a threat that could expose Icarus, the two soon form a tentative friendship—and then something more intense. For Icarus, a boy made of want, it’s almost more than he can bear. But his connection with the broken, golden Helios might prove to be the key to freedom for both of them. 

K. Ancrum’s extraordinary fifth novel Icarus is an elegant, multifaceted gem about art, power and fear. Ancrum performs a confident high-wire act in balancing the weighty manifestations of these themes alongside those of connection, desire and contradiction. 

Icarus—book and boy—is the embodiment of raw yearning, and all of Ancrum’s characters wear their hearts on the tips of their tongues. Occasionally the book’s dialogue can feel unrealistic or even overwrought, showing an honesty and openness not necessarily common among 17-year-old boys. But there is an intimate truth in the intensity of feeling behind their words, and this is one of Ancrum’s greatest skills as a writer. 

“Some of us lead lives that would require suspension of belief from others,” Ancrum writes in the novel’s dedication. Perhaps she references the unreality of a teenaged art thief who tends ferns and scales buildings, but maybe she’s simply talking about the unreality of everyday injuries and ecstasies: the cold rage of abuse; the emptiness of grief; the rapturous beauty and agony of being touched. 

Ancrum’s prose is also thrillingly decadent in certain moments, channeling the masterpieces of art whose power she telegraphs through every page. Often sudden bluntness, either of sentence length or metaphor, gives an edge to the gilded phrasing. In Ancrum’s novel, Icarus’ wings striving for the heat of the sun becomes both a beautiful representation of queer love and a sharp, artful subversion of the original Greek mythos.

In her creative and contemplative debut How Do I Draw These Memories?: An Illustrated Memoir, Jonell Joshua reflects on the people, places and events that helped her become the person—and artist—she is today. 

An interesting pastiche of illustrative styles give this mixed-media memoir a scrapbook-like feel, and Joshua’s artistic range is on full display in painterly full-page pieces, expertly drawn black-and-white comics and colorful, vibrant illustrations. Through the inclusion of photographs of prominent figures in her life, Joshua also illuminates the ways in which others’ perspectives can become woven into our own. 

The author’s childhood years were peripatetic: After Joshua’s father’s death when she was very young, she moved with her mother and brothers to her grandparents’ home in Savannah, Georgia. She and her brothers also lived with their other grandparents in New Jersey while her mother sought treatment for bipolar disorder. The author notes, “I envied the schoolmates who’d grown up together. . . . I kept tabs on how many [schools] I’d gone to. It was like a game I played in my head. Five elementary schools, four middle schools, one high school.” 

While How Do I Draw These Memories? begins with the author’s earliest memories and ends approximately in the present, the memoir moves back and forth chronologically in between, resulting in a reading experience that’s more akin to an assemblage. As Joshua moves from state to state, school to school, her memoir also switches between narrators and storytelling styles—straightforward prose, Q&A format, illustrated narratives, etc.

Additional insight is offered via sections like the informative and empathetic “Bipolar Disorder—From My Perspective” and a detailed chronicle of her path from post-high school uncertainty to where she is today: an illustrator whose clients include the New York Times, CRWN Magazine, and NPR; and someone whose memories remind her that “The moments of joy I felt growing up . . . felt immeasurable. The love I was raised with is the love I carry with me.”