Francesca Lia Block has made a trademark of twining myth and reality so snugly it’s difficult to figure out where one ends and the other begins. Love in the Time of Global Warming blends an emergency road trip into Homer’s The Odyssey, with home and family—who and wherever they are—firmly at the heart of the story.

The Earth Shaker and tidal wave that wiped out Los Angeles destroyed Penelope’s home and scattered her mom, dad and brother to the four winds. No longer safe among the dwindling emergency supplies in her family’s basement, she cuts off her long hair and hits the road, hoping for signs of life. The ruined landscape she travels, complete with genetically engineered giants who scarf humans like Buffalo wings, is bleak. However, fantastical and sometimes funny parallels to The Odyssey are a pleasure to follow. Pen encounters tranced-out “lotus eaters” crashing in an abandoned hotel, and sirens who—well, the chapter’s titled “The Real Sirens of Beverly Hills,” which pretty much says it all. She also meets Hex, who becomes not just her traveling companion but a love interest strong enough to ease an old heartache from the time before.

A story so harsh could be terribly depressing to read, but Block has always been able to find hope in the bleakest realities, and Global Warming is no different. Pen doesn’t get her old life back, but by story’s end she’s reclaimed some of her history and is no longer running scared but living with an eye toward the future. This is a fine adventure story that leaves the question of what comes next in the reader's hands. You can read it in an afternoon, but you’ll be thinking about it for days afterward.

Hamlet may be one of the best known tales in Western literature, so any reworkings of this famous play carry high expectations. Other recent YA retellings have focused on Ophelia (like Dating Hamlet by Lisa Fiedler and Ophelia by Lisa M. Klein), but none tackle Shakespeare’s lovelorn and possibly mad heroine quite like Dot Hutchison's debut novel, A Wounded Name.

Set among the squabbling administration of the prestigious boarding school Elsinore Academy, A Wounded Name opens after the sudden death of the school’s headmaster. Ophelia, a sophomore, knows that her father Polonius, the Dean of Curriculum, wants her to take her pills to keep her wild visions at bay, but other temptations beckon. The former headmaster’s son Dane, a senior, has the potential to become more than a friend. Dane’s mother quickly remarries to keep her position as chief hostess, the only role she’s ever known. Fellow senior Horatio balances studies with his devotion to his grieving best friend.

A reader familiar with Hamlet will appreciate the way in which details from the play are translated into a boarding school setting (Fortinbras heads a rival school; Laertes attends a study abroad program in France), but what truly sets this retelling apart are the faerie creatures that only Ophelia can see and hear. Although none of these creatures—including the wailing bean sidhe, the water-bound morgens or ghostly figures on an endlessly unresolved Hunt—appear in the original play, they complement the story so naturally that readers might suspect that they were always there, just never mentioned. And although Ophelia still seeks final sanctuary in the lake, Hutchison undermines our assumptions about what awaits her under the water’s surface . . . and what might have driven her there. This is a highly recommended retelling by an author to watch.

After shattering his leg in a car accident the summer before his senior year of high school, former varsity tennis star Ezra Faulkner is forced to take a step back from living on the ledge of a life rife with drunken parties, shallow girls and his own excessive popularity. Abandoned by his supposed friends and teammates while recuperating, Ezra reverts to his former, unpopular self while trying to rekindle both old desires and forgotten friendships. When the unorthodoxly beautiful and witty Cassidy Thorpe transfers to Ezra’s sheltered high school, she opens up a whole new world of possibility for Ezra, one filled with genuine conversations, the debate team, really bad puns and the lunch table of misfit kids.

As his dream girl, Cassidy becomes the catalyst for all of Ezra’s positive life changes, but in his idolizing, Ezra begins to neglect her humanity, ignore her cryptically tragic past and obscure her forewarned shortcomings. The wiser and more melodramatic Cassidy gradually morphs into a cautionary example of the dream girl archetype, one that shows the full extent of her power as a force for both good and bad, and Ezra starts to realize that maybe the only validation he needs is from himself.

In her first young adult novel penned under her own name (she wrote the middle grade Knightley Academy series under her pseudonym, Violet Haberdasher), actress and videoblogger Robyn Schneider collects her distilled wisdom on finding and being true to oneself, even when that discovery stems from loss. Though The Beginning of Everything centers around Ezra, Schneider shares that “it’s a totally embellished and wildly unfaithful adaptation of eight years of my life condensed into eight months of someone else’s.”

The Beginning of Everything gets off to a slow start, but as Ezra’s narration builds pace, it begins skipping around chronologically and careening through a year of high school drama. Even with all that build-up, the story comes to an end similar to Ezra’s car crash—abruptly and with only slight resolution. Nevertheless, readers will find The Beginning of Everything to be a clever and comical exploration into high school life on both sides of the popularity divide.

Outside their high school, two boys—armed with their friends, some sympathetic teachers and a carefully devised plan—start to kiss. Their goal? To break the world record for longest kiss, clocking in at 32 hours, 12 minutes and 10 seconds. Craig and Harry, the two boys in question, used to be a couple. Now, though, they are aiming to break this specific record as friends, both to honor their mutual friend Tariq, who has recently been the victim of gay bashing, and, as Craig eventually comes to realize, to honor the sheer joy of being and feeling alive.

Craig and Harry’s story is interspersed with those of other boys—kissing, wanting to be kissed or being terrified to kiss. Neil and Peter have been a couple long enough that dating no longer feels like dating, but Neil’s parents refuse to acknowledge that Peter is his boyfriend. Avery and Ryan, who just met at a regional gay prom, are tentatively exploring their new feelings for each other, both hesitant to reveal too much of themselves. And Cooper, after being caught cruising gay sex sites by his father, runs away from his parents’ anger, fear and rejection—but to what?

Levithan’s powerful, multifaceted novel explores just how far things have come for many gay teens—and how far things still need to go. The most poignant aspect of Two Boys Kissing is its narrator—or rather, narrators, as the stories are told by a Greek chorus composed of the generation of gay men who lost their lives to AIDS. These narrators mourn the all-too-familiar scenes of violence and despair, and marvel at the freedom and acceptance they could only have imagined.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with David Levithan for Two Boys Kissing.

Elizabeth Wein’s previous WWII novel, Code Name Verity—which garnered multiple awards, including a 2013 Michael L. Printz Honor—is a singular reading experience. The story of Verity, a spy caught behind enemy lines, is intense, suspenseful and authentic. In this companion novel, Wein revisits the topic of women pilots in the war, and readers who loved Code Name Verity won’t be disappointed: Rose Under Fire is equally good. It might even be better.

Eighteen-year-old American pilot and amateur poet Rose Justice has pulled some strings to land a spot with Great Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). As the daughter of a flight school director, she has been flying since she was 12, and after three months with ATA, she can deliver new and repaired Spitfire fighter planes to airfields without batting an eyelash. But even Rose is surprised to learn that the death of a fellow ATA pilot might have been the result of an attempt to “tip” or ram a German V-1 flying bomb out of the sky. However, when given the chance, she can’t resist trying the same thing—an incident with disastrous consequences. Rose is captured in enemy territory and imprisoned in Ravensbrück, a Nazi concentration camp for women that holds many political prisoners and “Rabbits,” victims of heinous medical experiments.

Although the harrowing story of what happens to Rose and the other Ravensbrück women is fictionalized, Wein says in her author’s note, “I didn’t make up Ravensbrück. I didn’t make up anything about Ravensbrück.” But we, as readers, already sense this. It is impossible to read Wein and not understand that paying witness to the truth is essential to what she does.

Wein, an avid flyer herself, is a powerful, compelling storyteller whose work, like that of Suzanne Collins, will no doubt fly off the young adult shelves and find an eager general audience. As we near the 75th anniversary of the start of World War II in 2014, the timing couldn’t be better to remind ourselves that there are still hard aspects left to tell and to learn.

A confession: I picked up If You Could Be Mine knowing only that it was about two teenage girls in love in Tehran. While homosexuality is a crime in Iran, transsexuals are tolerated if not enthusiastically embraced, so one of the girls contemplates sex change surgery for the chance to love without risk of death. I assumed the book would be grim and possibly preachy—how else could you tell a story with so much at stake? Thankfully, I could not have been more wrong. If You Could Be Mine is at once dazzling and funny and heartbreaking and wise.

Sahar and Nasrin have been best friends—and girlfriends—since early childhood. When Nasrin’s parents arrange a marriage for her, Sahar considers changing her gender in order to try to stop the wedding. The people she meets at a transgender support group question her motivation, but reluctantly offer their help. When one who comes to meet her at an underground gay bar is openly hostile to the crowd—it’s not just elitism but Muslim law that separates gay and transgender people—Sahar’s gay cousin Ali intervenes. When the woman explains she came to deliver hormones to Sahar, “Ali looks at me like I have just told him I have killed Britney Spears, Madonna, and Lady Gaga.”

A girl considers extreme lengths for love in Farizan's debut.

Things only get more difficult from there. Sahar’s relationship with Nasrin suffers as the wedding approaches, and at home she tries to wake her widowed father from a five-year period of mourning and detachment. Eventually she begins to carve out a new life for herself, and a new relationship with Nasrin.

This is Sara Farizan’s first novel, and what a debut it is. The Iran revealed through the eyes of her teenaged characters is a place of oppression and great risk, but the Ayatollahs are viewed as little more than cranky grandfathers. The West is regarded with a mix of awe at the freedom allowed there and disgust that it is so unappreciated.

Sahar and Nasrin’s circumstances differ from those of most Americans in drastic ways, but their love, heartbreak and redemption will resonate with anyone. If You Could Be Mine is a beautiful, compassionate, must-read novel.

Seth drowns in a furious ocean, his body battered by freezing waves and sharp rocks. But as his consciousness gradually returns, he finds himself in a world that’s both foreign and eerily familiar. It appears to be a long-abandoned version of his childhood hometown, the British village full of painful memories that his family left eight years ago to start a new life far away. Strangest of all, this alternate, desolate world seems to respond directly to Seth’s thoughts, putting everything from supplies to companions in front of him just as he needs them.

As Seth and two other mismatched teens band together to avoid a terrifying menace, all three are haunted by frighteningly realistic dreams of their previous lives. Issues of forbidden love, unwavering friendship, complex family dynamics, the difference between childhood and adulthood, violent abuse and teen suicide dovetail as the three survivors gradually figure out where they really are . . . and what they might be able to do about it.

Artsy, creepy and full of psychological suspense, More Than This from Carnegie Medal-winning author Patrick Ness combines the science-fiction/thriller aspects of Robison Wells’ Variant with the surreal, trauma-induced alternate realities of Andrew Smith’s The Marbury Lens. As readers familiar with the Chaos Walking trilogy know, Ness specializes in writing post-apocalyptic worlds where things are rarely as they seem. When the truth—or what might be the truth—is finally revealed, the answers are both fitting and surprising. The dizzying ending brings the characters to the narrow edge between inevitable outcomes and hope for second chances—and challenges readers to form their own conclusions.

It’s summer in Echo, Maine, and 17-year-old Violet White and her brother are wondering how they are going to manage their crumbling seaside mansion. Violet’s beloved grandmother is dead, and her artist parents are spending what little remains of the family fortune in Europe. And so Violet decides to rent out the guesthouse to River West, a stranger who brings money and intrigue, but also lies. Violet is immediately drawn to River and finds herself trying to understand the strange boy who stirs in her both passion and contempt.

Don't trust the handsome stranger in Tucholke's Gothic debut.

Just when River arrives in town, strange things start happening: Children claim to see the devil; a man kills himself in the town square; and a woman is murdered nearby. Violet's grandmother always said to believe in the devil, and now Violet knows such evil exists. River isn't as innocent as he claims to be, but Violet doesn’t care, and that's the problem.

April Genevieve Tucholke's debut is a Gothic horror with a contemporary setting, although a major element of the story’s appeal is the sense that it could take place at any time in the past. There is no mention of cell phones or the Internet. Violet's neighbor never calls or texts; she just shows up at Violet’s door. Violet dresses up in her grandmother’s vintage clothes, and River drives a classic car.

There is also a sensual undercurrent throughout the book. Violet often catches her brother and pretty neighbor with their hands all over each other. Violet, too, is feeling uncontrollable passion for the first time, even though her affections are directed at a romantic lead who is not at all charming.

Atmospheric and sultry with phenomenal cover art, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is as frightening as it is alluring.

Vee Crawford-Wong has a mouthful of a name that says a lot about him. His Chinese father gave him a first name with no Chinese translation because, as he tells his frustrated son, “We wanted to unburden you from a commitment to artificial meaning that comes with a family name.” Gee, thanks, Dad. He gets “Crawford” from his Texan mother, but she won’t say a thing about her life before Vee was born. The three of them have a fine home life, but their attempts to avoid talking about extended family explode when Vee’s history teacher asks the class to trace their genealogical backgrounds. Hence, The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong.

A biracial teen's search yields hilarious results.

Author L. Tam Holland’s first novel is long and a bit gangly, not unlike Vee himself, but the side stories into high school ring true, often to a painful degree. Why is it that when life is flying by so quickly, an hour spent in class with a sworn enemy can feel like hard time, or a moment’s attention from an unreachable crush can pull two weeks along in its wake? Holland gets the highs and lows right, along with the regrettable degree to which kids suddenly feel smarter than their parents and emboldened to act on it, often with disastrous results.

Don’t despair, though—Holland mines comic gold from those darker moments. A racist insult fabricated to win Vee sympathy instead sends his parents into hysterical laughter (you’ll laugh, too, the next time you need ibuprofen). And while Vee’s pain is real, his actions in response to it consistently lead to farcical results, and sometimes lead him halfway around the world. The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong is a frank look at growing up biracial and feeling neither/nor, then discovering that wholeness was there all along, just waiting to be found.

All Danielle wanted was a quiet, peaceful summer, and her babysitting job provided her with just that. Five-year-old Humphrey was adorable, funny and better company than the friends from whom she seemed to be growing apart. And then came the accident, a split second during their walk home from the park: Humphrey ran into the road and was hit and killed by a passing car, and Danielle can’t help but feel responsible.

A devastating accident leaves a girl scrambling for answers.

Guilt and grief consume Danielle as she tries to remember the good times with Humphrey, the afternoons of make-believe and nights of Popsicles, but in the aftermath of the accident, her sleepy neighborhood buzzes with controversy. Some members of the community think a lack of streetlights caused the crash and lobby for improvement, while others are hung up on the fact that the driver of the car was an illegal immigrant. What no one wants to talk about, Danielle realizes, is the smart little boy who was lost that night.

When her parents put her in therapy to deal with the loss, Danielle begins to realize that she was having problems long before the accident, and if she wants to get past them and honor Humphrey's memory, she's going to have to speak her mind in the neighborhood’s debates.

Author Debbie Levy’s depiction of loss in Imperfect Spiral is powerful, and equally as compelling are her frequent flashbacks of Danielle and Humphrey’s time together. Levy has created an incredibly nuanced relationship between the two, showing that the most important relationships can form outside traditional boundaries like age groups and family ties. Within these memories she also explores Humphrey’s family and the complicated mix of a parent’s love and expectations.

The novel sometimes lags under the weight of all the issues it attempts to address. Danielle deals not only with her panic attacks and feelings of loss, but also her feelings on illegal immigration and the strain between her parents and brother, and the story becomes exhausting for both her and the reader. Likewise, the addition of a love interest feels squeezed in, and while the relationship’s development is genuine, it also feels rushed.

Despite its flaws, Imperfect Spiral is a powerful book that stays with you long after you’ve read the final page. It’s a story of love and loss that distinguishes itself from the flood of YA books tackling those topics by challenging how we define family and who you can count among your friends.

On the day that his beloved grandmother, Mem, dies, Billy “Brother” Grace dreams of the sea. While he’s never been to the ocean in his 18 years, Brother has grown up hearing his grandmother’s stories from her childhood.

Brother holds a single memory of his mother, who dumped him with Mem and then was killed in a car crash. After the loss of Mem, he believes he is alone in the world—well, at least as far as family goes, since he still has his loyal dog Trooper—but all that changes in a flash. First, his buddy Cole, who’s been struggling to raise his 5-year-old brother Jack on his own, disappears, leaving Jack with Brother. Then Brother discovers the newspaper his grandmother had been reading before her death—a newspaper with his own picture in it. Only it’s not him at all, but his spitting image: a senator’s son named Gabriel, who nearly died of a drug overdose.

Brother sets out for an island off the coast of North Carolina to find the truth about himself, his twin brother and his family. It’s not your typical solo adventure, though, as Brother has an Australian shepherd and a pesky kid in tow, as well as a car that doesn’t quite make it.

Thanks to some help from a girl named Kit, Brother arrives on the island, but his hopes of finding a loving family are dashed as he becomes embroiled in a web of old secrets and lies.

Brother, Brother tackles a number of hard issues, including drug addiction, PTSD and class conflict. With a strong sense of mystery, an unusual setting and engaging teen characters—both male and female—Brother, Brother is a perfect page-turner for summer reading, whether readers are on the beach or just dreaming of one.

Five hundred years ago, Terra’s ancestors left a dying Earth for life aboard the Asherah, a spaceship bound for the distant planet Zehava. Over time, their well-intended plan to preserve their society—and their secular Jewish heritage—has hardened into a set of authoritarian rules: Everyone must marry and raise a family, and occupations and corresponding class structures are determined by an elite Council. Obedience is a mitzvah—part good deed, part commandment—and deviances are not tolerated.

As the Asherah approaches Zehava, Terra is almost 16—the age at which she must choose a mate or risk being assigned one. Her father has never recovered from her mother’s unusual early death; her older brother is distant; and her longtime best friend has concerns of her own. Terra’s passion is drawing, but her new career placement seems not to involve art at all. And at night, Terra dreams of an unseen lover—her bashert, Hebrew for “heart’s twin.”

When Terra accidentally stumbles on an underground anti-Council resistance movement, the certainties in her world begin to disappear. Readers familiar with the structure of YA dystopias may think they know what to expect next, but author Phoebe North demonstrates that a futuristic tale of love, rebellion and the search for identity can still offer some surprises. Life on the spaceship is meticulously described, and journal entries from an original passenger—a lesbian grieving her own lost lover—add context from the early days of the voyage. Hebrew and Yiddish phrases sprinkled throughout the text are clearly defined in context, but subtly altered definitions hint at the intriguing ways that words can change over time. In the end, many questions are answered . . . but many new ones take their place, to be pursued in a follow-up novel, Starbreak, in 2014.

If you ask Bea, she’d tell you that she’s in therapy because she has a little trouble managing her anxiety. She doesn’t really need a therapist, and she certainly doesn’t need to attend group therapy with a bunch of other teens who—let’s face it—look like freaks compared to Bea. Of course, Beck—who has a habit of constantly washing his hands and doing things in sets of eight—is kind of a cute freak. But still, Bea doesn’t belong with these other kids and their compulsions . . . or does she?

Ever since Bea’s bad breakup with her last boyfriend, she has had a tendency to fixate on people—mostly guys—whom she needs to “check on” in order to keep them safe. Her latest obsession is handsome Austin, who attends couples therapy with his wife and whose sessions Bea just happens to overhear. But when Bea starts following the couple from the therapist’s office in the suburbs to their home in downtown Boston, it’s clear to everyone but Bea that her interest has gone too far.

OCD Love Story is one of those novels that sneaks up on you—what seems to start off as a humorous account of one girl’s adventures in therapy turns into something much darker and more intense, as readers gradually realize the extent of Bea’s illness. In her debut, Corey Ann Haydu raises important questions about recognizing, enabling and recovering from mental illness—all explored in Bea’s funny, loveable, vulnerable voice.