“Our privilege don’t work like theirs,” says a young Black man in Jumata Emil’s second novel, Wander in the Dark (Delacorte, $19.99, 9780593651858). He’s one character of many trying to navigate a world and system that sets Black men up to fail. In this riveting mystery, Emil uses his pen like a jagged knife, cutting open painful truths of how racism seeps through class and politics, before sewing up the resulting wounds with the healing power of community. 

All Marcel wants to do is make things right with his half-brother Amir, even though their parents don’t get along and their lives are worlds apart. He’s shocked when Amir shows up to his swanky birthday party and even more shocked when Amir leaves with Marcel’s best friend, Chloe, a popular white girl with a penchant for making trouble. When Amir wakes up the next morning on Chloe’s sofa and finds her blood-soaked body in her bedroom, he panics. He knows what happens to young Black men in situations like this. Through chapters that alternate between the brothers’ perspectives, Emil slowly unravels a mystery that unmasks not only a killer but also a community built on lies. 

Emil’s tinderbox of a murder mystery is at its best when exploring the fractured family Marcel and Amir share. The gulf between the brothers’ lives—from their skin tones to financial status—and how they attempt to bridge that divide composes the bedrock of the novel. Queer readers will also appreciate how Marcel’s sexuality is explored matter-of-factly.

Emil is a seasoned journalist covering crime and politics in the American South, and his writing reflects that experience. Genuinely shocking acts of racism appear about halfway through the story, but in Emil’s hands, the pain and anger produced is also expertly excised by both love and justice to create a satisfying story. Truthful and twisted at the same time, Wander in the Dark is both a thrill and a delight.

For 10 years, Julius Gong has lived rent-free in 17-year-old Sadie Wen’s head. He’s her school co-captain at Woodvale Academy and “the most prominent source of pain in my life.” The two compete in academics, athletics and anything else possible to compete in. They communicate mainly via taunting, eye-rolling and impatient sighs.

But despite frequently feeling intense animosity toward Julius (“Just seeing him makes me want to put my fist through something hard—ideally, his jaw”), Sadie hardly ever talks about it or any of her other frustrations. Instead, she vents in email drafts addressed to Julius and also people like Rosie, who won last year’s science fair with work she stole from Sadie, and Ms. Johnson, a teacher who refused to round up an 89.5 to a 90.

The secret emails have helped Sadie maintain her amicable persona, but everything changes when the drafts are somehow sent out all at once in the middle of a school day. After years of assiduously avoiding conflict, Sadie’s suddenly faced with a situation she might not be able to fix or apologize for. What is she going to do?

For starters, she’s mortified at the people now mad at her for being mad at them—and shocked when it turns out that not only is her fabulous BFF Abigail on her side, but Julius just might be, too. Is it possible he’s also been hiding some complicated feelings?

Fans of rivals-to-lovers romances will delight in I Hope This Doesn’t Find You and its protagonists’ attempts to find common ground in heady will-they-won’t-they scenes that deftly capture the two overachievers’ struggles with vulnerability. They’ll root for Sadie to consider what she wants rather than devoting her life to being the best people-pleaser ever. Chinese Australian author Ann Liang’s heartfelt third novel (after If You Could See the Sun and This Time It’s Real) is an engaging story steeped in humor and empathy, encouraging readers to consider that relentlessly striving for success might not be the best path to a truly rewarding life.

Author of the National Book Award-winning King and the Dragonflies and the World Fantasy Award-winning Queen of the Conquered, Kacen Callender is widely celebrated for their ability to tell stories that reverberate across diverse viewpoints, and that gift is on full display in their first YA fantasy novel, Infinity Alchemist. In Callender’s New Anglia, magic is “an outdated term, used rarely.” It’s no longer reserved for the chosen few. Anyone can become an alchemist, though certification is strictly regulated.

Ash Woods is a talented young alchemist, but despite being the son of the famed alchemist Gresham Hain, albeit unacknowledged, Ash is denied admittance to the prestigious Lancaster school and thus ends up practicing alchemy in secret and illegally. Hain, a trusted professor, has a long history of taking on young apprentices like Ash’s mother (who died in poverty) and putting them to work in his secret quest to find the legendary Book of Source. Participating in this search took the lives of the heads of the House of Thorne—parents of Ramsay Thorne. Their public execution has made Ramsay an outcast despite possessing considerable intellectual and alchemical power.

“Infinity Alchemist had been percolating for a lot of years, so it felt like a massive triumph for me to finally write it.” Read our interview with Kacen Callender.

Callender weaves a tight plot around these characters as Ash, Ramsay and Ramsay’s first love, Callum, join forces to find the Book of Source before Hain. As they search, they discover the truths by which they want to live their lives, as well as the many ways love can manifest in their world. Callender raises thoughtful questions about class, power, morality and family.

Infinity Alchemist is full of smart dialogue and moves with the kind of pace that will keep readers drawn in, but it is the overriding feeling of empathy throughout that elevates this resonant fantasy.

Abby Akerman believes in the Universe. Leo Brewer believes the Universe hates him. The only thing the two have in common, other than being queer 16-year-olds from small towns, is that their respective marching bands have just arrived in New York City to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Abby thinks this trip will be the perfect moment to come out to her best friend, Kat, and confess her love for her with a grand romantic gesture. Leo can’t focus on anything other than the broadcast of the parade, which, along with a local news segment, will out him as a trans boy to his extended Southern family. But NYC—or maybe the Universe—has other ideas: Abby and Leo accidentally step into the same train, which leads them away from their bands and toward an epic love story neither of them could have imagined.

This Day Changes Everything is Edward Underhill’s heartfelt and delightful sophomore novel about two band kids trying to find their rhythm outside the marching formations. Spanning less than 48 hours, the whirlwind plot takes Abby and Leo on a unique quest that challenges them to both celebrate queer joy and explore the challenges of being queer youth. Underhill excels balancing out his first dual narrative plot: Both Abby and Leo are complex, passionate and engaging.

The pair’s friends make up an intersectional, diverse cast whose extreme charm makes it easy to suspend disbelief at some of the comical ways they trick their chaperones into thinking Abby and Leo are still with the groups. Arguably, New York City itself is a bustling side character, and Underhill succeeds at capturing the wild nature of the city.

Fans of rom-coms will love how This Day Changes Everything operates within familiar tropes while putting Underhill’s queer spin on them. It’s a perfect blend of Nicola Yoon’s The Sun Is Also a Star and Becky Albertalli’s Imogen, Obviously.

Ann Fraistat’s deliciously creepy, highly inventive YA gothic horror novel A Place for Vanishing has a killer first line: “Days like this made me wish I’d never come back from the dead.” It just gets better from there—at least for readers who revel in cleverly conceived supernatural horror, from scary seances to oodles of sinister, clickety-clackety insects. For 16-year-old Libby Feldman, 13-year-old Vivi and their mom, not so much.

It was certainly a relief that their mom’s childhood home, Madame Clery’s House of Masks—a grand Victorian replete with blue roses and a hedge maze in the backyard—was vacant and available to give the family a fresh start after Libby’s recent suicide attempt. Libby has since been diagnosed with bipolar III disorder and is benefiting from medication and therapy, but newly delicate family dynamics have her on edge, and she’s baffled over why her mom thought moving into a haunted house was a good idea.

Founded in 1894, the House of Masks has been linked to numerous disappearances over the decades, and Libby’s grandparents died there. It’s filled with disturbing sounds and bizarre details, like beautiful but deeply unsettling stained glass windows depicting various insects—ants, moths, cicadas, wasps and more—surrounding human-like figures with voids for eyes.

Despite her doubts, Libby’s determined to ignore the you-should-flee signals her gut is sending, since, “I’d caused a lot of misery lately. I owed it to Mom and Vivi to make them feel good.” But urgent questions soon arise: Why is her mom behaving oddly and drinking cup after cup of blue-rose tea? Are the masks dangling from the windows as weird as she thinks they are, and why is Vivi so casual about wearing one? Handsome neighbor Flynn knows a lot about the house but is reluctant to share details. What is he—and the house—hiding?

As in her Bram Stoker Award-nominated debut novel, What We Harvest, Fraistat does a masterful job of balancing supernatural goings-on, psychological suspense and complicated relationships. She writes about the effects of trauma with sensitivity and care in this eminently entertaining horror tale rife with thrills, chills and heart.

Like the traditional Lion Dancers featured in their gorgeous Lunar New Year Love Story, graphic novel veterans Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham combine their considerable skills, bringing a tender love story to life. Yang’s writing and Pham’s illustrations blend seamlessly to introduce readers to Vietnamese American Val (short for Valentina) and her on-again, off-again relationship with love.

Valentine’s Day has always been Val’s favorite—it’s her namesake—and as a kid, she embraces the holiday wholeheartedly: making valentines for all her classmates, speaking blessings over each one, and even sending her dad a valentine from her mom in heaven. But when a crushing pronouncement from her estranged grandmother reveals a massive lie in Val’s life, everything falls to pieces. Soon, Val has lost her faith in love. Then she meets Les, “hands down the prettiest boy” she has ever seen, at the Lunar New Year festival, and she decides to give herself one year before she gives up on her heart for good. Will Les be the true love she’s been looking for?

“Once you have the familiar, you can weave in the unfamiliar.” Read our interview with Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham. 

While the majority of the narrative takes place during Val’s junior and senior years of high school, Lunar New Year Love Story will appeal to a broad audience, including younger teens. Though it is a love story, it embraces all kinds of love: romantic, yes, but also familial, intergenerational, spiritual and the special love between trusted friends. All these versions of love get tested, and readers will hope along with Val as she attempts to escape her family’s doomed relationship history. Yang writes wholly real teenagers: reflective and impulsive; seeking while still confident; aware of their ability to hurt and be hurt. Yang’s Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese teen characters share diverse cultural perspectives as they explore the art of lion dancing. Their teachers insist: “It isn’t just a dance. If you’re doing it right? It’s as if you two become one animal, with one heart.”

A Desi auntie sits in her cardamom-and-sugar-scented cottage, a cup of chai in hand and a pile of envelopes in front of her. Wedding season approaches, and she needs to decide which to attend, out of the many she’s been invited to. “Weddings were her favorite. Big declarations of love, gold-spun dresses, glittering jewelry, dramatic interactions with family members, and the food. Oh, the food.” She closes her eyes and randomly picks eight envelopes . . .

Editor Prerna Pickett (If You Only Knew) brings together award-winning and debut Desi authors in a young adult anthology of short stories celebrating love as it unfolds at Desi weddings. Anthologies work best when the stories are tied together by a unifying theme, and this one takes things a step further by also centering a unifying event and its unique, beautiful traditions. Yet there’s no monotony; the ethnicities, religions and languages spotlighted in My Big Fat Desi Wedding vary widely. A broad range of romantic tropes is explored, from the classic old flames rekindling to an enemies-to-lovers story between two families with competing pickle businesses. One story even refreshingly excludes romance, instead featuring a Muslim boy gathering the courage to go to his disowned brother’s wedding, which his disapproving parents have forbidden. The multitude of experiences portrayed wonderfully mirrors the wide array of events one can witness at a Desi wedding, which often blend multiple traditions as families are joined.

However, for all the diversity this collection encompasses, it is predominantly heteronormative. There is one story with an explicitly bisexual main character, and it’s the one with the heaviest fantasy elements. While that story, which features vampires, is phenomenal, this reviewer wishes there had been more LGBTQ+ representation throughout.

Whether readers have attended a Desi wedding or not, they’ll feel welcomed like a family friend, as the ceremonies are given just enough background context. Throughout My Big Fat Desi Wedding, it is a true joy to look out for the recurring auntie with a mole and bob haircut, and watch her interactions with the characters in each story. Fans of anthologies with vibrant characters like those in Blackout and Come On In will be thrilled to attend these eight celebrations.

It would be an understatement to say that her dad’s abrupt departure from the family has disrupted Belén’s life. Ever since he abandoned Belén, her older sister Ava and their mom in their East Oakland neighborhood, Ava has seemed distant and dismissive, and their mom is hardly ever home. Even Belén’s former refuge, books and reading, hasn’t come through for her. Now, in the midst of senior year of high school, she’s on the verge of flunking out. To make things even more complicated, Belén’s brilliant, ambitious best friend, Leti, is pregnant, and Leti’s lifelong dream of attending UC Berkeley hangs in the balance, especially when Leti’s racist parents learn her boyfriend is Black. Belén wants to be a good friend to Leti, but how can she, when she’s barely holding herself together?

In one short year, Belén’s life has become almost completely unrecognizable. Unfortunately, her relatives all claim that one thing is entirely too recognizable: Belén’s resemblance to her father, a high school dropout. Is she fated not only to look like him but also to repeat his various failings? Are she and Leti doomed to retrace old ways of thinking and being, or can they outline new and different paths for themselves?

Debut novelist Carolina Ixta lives and works in Oakland, and her knowledge of and affection for the city is apparent on every page of Shut Up, This Is Serious. Ixta doesn’t shy away from representing the city’s complexities—its vast socioeconomic inequalities, its legacy of racial tensions, its rich but complicated Mexican American community—in clear-eyed detail conveyed through Belén’s intimate first-person narration. While the setting is so vivid that Oakland itself almost becomes a character, Belén’s story still manages to take center stage. Many of her struggles—to find self-acceptance and confidence; to shed harmful relationships and seek out healthy ones; to accept help from supportive adults; to imagine a better future for herself, her family and her friends—will resonate with a wide swath of readers, who will be captivated by Belén and Leti’s efforts to thrive.

An exciting start to the Above the Black trilogy, Sky’s End transports readers into a dazzling setting reminiscent of Treasure Planet and “Attack on Titan,” where vast lore sets the scene for complicated ethical and cultural questions bound to make readers stop and think. Marc J Gregson’s debut novel features a stunning, harrowing world of floating islands and a society ordered by Meritocracy: a culture where those who rise are rewarded, and those who fall are left to fend for themselves. Every character in Sky’s End is caught in the rigid structure of Meritocracy, which forces them to reconcile their morals with their desire to surpass everyone else. 

After his treacherous uncle kills Conrad’s father and takes his title, Conrad and his mother are exiled to live among the Lows, leaving his sister, Ella, in his uncle’s clutches. When Conrad’s mother is killed by gorgantauns—giant sky serpents with steel scales—his uncle gives Conrad an offer he can’t refuse: He’ll reveal Ella’s location if Conrad agrees to be Selected by one of the Twelve Trades. Chosen by the Hunters, Conrad and his fellow recruits compete to kill the most gorgantauns before time runs out. With a manipulative crew and rumors of rebellion, Conrad must figure out who to trust and how to rise in his own way.

Conrad wrestles with opposing ideologies: Is his father’s harsh, self-preserving perspective the way to succeed, or does his mother’s plea for compassion have weight in a world like this? As Conrad learns to work with fellow crew members—like Bryce, whose optimistic outlook challenges Conrad’s pessimism, and Pound, whose long-held family rivalry with Conrad’s family makes him an automatic enemy—his worldview shifts.

Sky’s End will prompt readers to reflect on their own beliefs about success, society and trustworthiness. Can a person be truly selfless in a world where one needs to get ahead? What is loyalty worth, and what does it cost? Instead of answering these moral questions outright, Sky’s End lets its characters work through different perspectives. While goodness and evil are factors in the story, each character swims in moral grayness: Although many of them possess good intentions, almost all are culpable of some crime, lie or betrayal.

Action-packed, mysterious and satisfying, Sky’s End is a great read for anyone who loves fantasy and dystopian fiction.

Kalvin Shmelton, sophomore at Gregg County High, is “a jack-of-all-treats, master of none” with a nice side hustle as a purveyor of $1 candygrams. The student council used to dominate the market, but Kalvin saw an opportunity to improve on their narrow offerings. After all, “nothing in the school’s handbook says students can’t be capitalists, too.” 

In high school teacher Brian Wasson’s warm and witty debut novel, Seven Minutes in Candyland, another money making opportunity arises one fateful day in the utility closet that doubles as Kalvin’s HQ. He’s surveying his inventory when his longtime crush Sterling Glistern eases in, looking for a place to have a good cry. Intense awkwardness transforms into meaningful conversation when Sterling confides in Kalvin about her relationship troubles. Kalvin is able to offer a sympathetic ear and helpful advice: His psychologist parents have a successful couples therapy podcast and YouTube channel, and Kalvin’s been absorbing their teachings his entire life.

Soon, he’s the school’s go-to therapist, earning $10 per seven-minute session from the “rich kids.” It’s a thrill to not only help other people, but also stockpile lots of cash. Kalvin isn’t just working for spending money. He’s got an important goal: earn $11,737 by Valentine’s Day so he can present his parents with a family trip to Hawaii. Lately, their marriage has been on the rocks, and Kalvin is convinced the trip will help his family find joy once again.

But what if Kalvin can’t fix his family? As his deadline approaches, Kalvin’s anxiety switches into high gear, leading him to try to find some relief by meddling in his classmates’ lives. Why won’t some of his clients just take action based on his advice, already? 

Seven Minutes in Candyland is an entertaining and empathetic read that urges us to embrace vulnerability, pursue emotional clarity and tend to our mental health. Readers will enjoy the story’s rom-com aspects: multiple will-they-or-won’t-they couples; a big upcoming school dance; and plenty of sweet surprises. Candy consumption is optional but encouraged.