Author Fridrik Erlings perfectly captures the turmoil of being a teenager in his awkward and honest Fish in the Sky. Josh Stephenson’s life changes the moment he turns 13 in a clever series of events: His absent father sends him a famous taxidermied falcon, his attractive 17-year-old cousin moves into his closet, he falls in love with a classmate and, most frighteningly, his newly changing body promises to cause him plenty of embarrassment in the locker room. What’s a boy to do? Play hooky, of course!

Unafraid to question God, sexuality, love and even identity, Fish in the Sky rings wonderfully true for today’s tween. Not only does the novel ask important questions, it answers them, such as during Josh’s discovery of pornography as he struggles with the opposite sex. Through these first experiences, Josh is eventually able to embrace the changes in his life and learn from them.

Fish in the Sky begins with angst and self-loathing and ends with self-acceptance. Young readers will learn that we must each go through our own journey of self-discovery and forgive ourselves for the mistakes we made along the way. It’s an important message for every child navigating the path toward adulthood—and a good reminder for parents who may have forgotten how difficult the teenage road can seem.

Monstrous Beauty combines horror, romance and fantasy in an affecting and creepy tale. In 1872, a mermaid named Syrenka falls in love with the naturalist who has been sketching her. Trading her tail for life on land is not as easy as she'd hoped, and the consequences of her decision pay forward for more than a century. In the present day, Hester, all of 17 and certain she's doomed to a life alone due to a family curse, meets a beautiful stranger who seems to be the answer to her prayers. Funny how wrong first impressions can turn out to be.

Author Elizabeth Fama (Overboard) gives Monstrous Beauty style and punch. For a book aimed at readers 12 and up, the violence (including a graphic sexual assault) comes as a shock, but it raises the stakes for all the humans, mermaids and other creatures involved in the unfolding story. After two episodes that would put most of us out of commission for a week, the hits just keep on coming: “Before she could react, [Hester] was tackled to the ground and being clawed and punched by a raving madwoman.” But when Hester sees that her future isn't etched in stone after all, her insecurities give way to a plucky willingness to try anything.

Modern day crashes into late-19th-century morals when the story looks back at the town's church, which condemns things they can't understand (kind of forgivable in the case of mermaids, but still). The Puritan attitudes fire up the tension between good versus evil, giving the book's finale more oomph. Not that it needs it! Monstrous Beauty packs a serious, sexy wallop.

The lights and sounds of 1926 Manhattan burst to life in Printz Award-winner Libba Bray’s exciting new historical fantasy series.

When 17-year-old Evie O’Neill causes a scandal in her Ohio hometown, her parents banish her to Manhattan to live with her Uncle Will, a paranormal expert and curator at the failing Museum of the Creepy Crawlies. Evie is thrilled to sneak out to illicit nightclubs, drink “hooch” at speakeasies and drag her best friend into trouble every step of the way. When a young girl is sadistically murdered, the lead detective asks Uncle Will for help, but Evie discovers that as a Diviner (a person with supernatural abilities), she is the key to finding the killer.

Interwoven throughout Evie’s story are the lives of other Diviners. Memphis is a Harlem numbers-runner who can heal with his hands. Theta is a Ziegfeld girl with a violent gift. Sam is a hypnotic pickpocket who’s after Evie’s heart. None of them know about each other’s powers, but as the series progresses, these dynamic characters will come together to stop a growing evil.

Incredibly haunting and at times frightening, The Diviners is well researched and ambitious. The glitzy nightlife, the kitschy slang and the flapper-girl fashion all invoke the glamour of the Roaring ’20s. Readers will love Evie, a fearless and charming protagonist who lights up the book with her carefree attitude and sense of humor. This is Heroes meets the Jazz Age, and one could divine it will be the next big series in YA.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read an interview with Libba Bray for The Diviners.

Newbery Medal-winning author Karen Hesse is known for tales of characters finding rays of hope in situations of despair. In Safekeeping, Hesse envisions a future United States torn apart by civil war. Teenage Radley, returning to Vermont after volunteering at an orphanage in Haiti, looks forward to her parents meeting her at the airport. But her parents are missing—and her credit card and cell phone are useless. Strangers are wary, daylight curfews are violently enforced and the police may be chasing her. Hoping her parents have sought sanctuary in Canada, Radley heads north.

Along the way, Radley cautiously befriends the secretive Celia and her loyal dog, Jerry Lee. As the three travelers seek safety, shelter and food, they also struggle with defining their new identities, accepting their past regrets and learning to live in a world where the rules have suddenly and irrevocably changed.

Fifty of Hesse’s original black-and-white photographs accompany the narration. The photographs, which include panoramic views of landscapes, ghostly images of abandoned buildings and close-up shots of ordinary objects, enhance the story. Sometimes they directly illustrate Radley’s world; other times they set the tone or invite further reflection on a theme.

Readers looking for an introspective view of a post-apocalyptic world, or who enjoyed the use of photographs in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, won’t want to miss this latest example of an emerging form of young adult literature.

Will West knows how to blend in. He can run 1.2 miles in 3:47 minutes and scores off the charts in aptitude tests, but his teachers can barely remember his name. As the 14-year-old hero of The Paladin Prophecy, the first in a new series from New York Times best-selling author Mark Frost, Will should be showing off his talents; instead, he’s keeping the promise he made to his parents to never reveal his true abilities.

Will and his parents have moved from city to city “like Bedouins every eighteen months.” On a breathtakingly beautiful Southern California morning, though, Will finds out why: Someone is after them—him, especially—and now his father’s admonition to trust no one is proving very helpful.

Whether it’s by dark-suited men in black sedans or yawping, snarling, fleshy masses from the nightmarish Never-Was, Will is being chased. They’ve already gotten to his mother; the proof is in her glassy eyes and eerie smile. “Do whatever you need to do to stay alive,” his father tells him in a video message. And so Will does.

Frost, co-creator of the creepy television show “Twin Peaks,” heads in a more action-adventure, sci-fi direction with The Paladin Prophecy. The result is a fast, fun novel that will spark imaginations like something off the silver screen.

There is a long history of prejudice against people with dwarfism, and while today we know it is usually caused by a genetic disorder, author Katherine Marsh details the cruel treatment of Renaissance dwarf jesters in her fascinating new novel. To imagine the world of Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, Marsh drew inspiration from a portrait of a court dwarf to Philip IV of Spain, “Don Sebastián de Morra” by Diego Velázquez—a painting that suggests sympathy for the poorly treated little people of the day.

Jepp leaves home for court, thinking that a whole new world will open for him; what he finds instead is a version of slavery. Punished for helping another dwarf try to escape, Jepp is sent to Uraniborg Castle to serve Lord Tycho, a character based on the real Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe.

Although a brilliant seeker of truth about the stars, Tycho is an eccentric, often cruel master. Jepp’s place at dinner is under the table, and he sleeps in the stable with Tycho’s pet moose. At first given menial tasks like filling inkpots and cleaning Tycho’s celestial globe, Jepp begins to learn from the scholars around him and eventually reveals his secret command of Latin. “Fate has cast me here, but I wish to learn and better myself,” he tells his master.

With an engaging hero and unusual setting, Jepp is compelling historical fiction about the treatment of those who are different and the challenges they face to be viewed as equals.

In Jessica Warman’s taut, haunting thriller, nothing is quite as it seems. The story revolves around Rachel and Alice, who are not just identical twins but rare Monoamniotic-Monochorionic twins who shared the same amniotic sac. This resulted in a special connection between the sisters, who can sense when something is wrong with each other, even from afar. Their bond goes even deeper—sometimes, especially when one twin experiences physical trauma or threat, the other twin feels the same physical symptoms.

As Beautiful Lies opens, Rachel reports to her aunt and uncle that her sister Alice has disappeared from a night out at the fair with friends. But the report does not generate the response she wants, as Alice has been disappearing often, defying her guardians’ authority and acting out. No one believes that the missing twin is really in danger—except her sister.

Alice’s problems seem to go deeper than just normal teen rebellion. She is the twin who remembers the terrifying accident that killed the sisters’ parents, and she may also have inherited her grandmother’s madness. Rachel and Alice have an incredible connection, but there are some burdens Alice can never share.

Beautiful Lies is a fast-paced young adult thriller with twists and turns that take the reader by surprise and where nothing is quite as it seems—even kindly neighbors and loving boyfriends. What remains true throughout is Rachel and Alice’s love for one another, and the sisters’ commitment to do whatever it takes to help one another survive.

Warman is a natural storyteller, and this haunting, dramatic novel is sure to appeal to mature young adults. Even so, Beautiful Lies might not be a book to read when one is alone in a lonely, dark house. Then again, for some teens, it might be just the perfect choice.

Some call them sea-wives. Others call them seal-women, fairy lasses or monsters. But to the boys of Rollrock Island—only boys, not a single daughter in a generation—they are their mams. Beautiful, docile, other­worldly and sad, the mams say nothing of their past, only that they came from the sea.

At the heart of this magic lies the witch Misskaella. Mocked and alienated by the people of Rollrock, Misskaella draws on her natural affinity with the island’s seals to exact an exquisite revenge. The radiant, not-fully-human women she calls forth from the water’s edge dazzle the men of the village. Once a man has been enchanted by a seal maiden, his interest in the business of human affairs dries up like old seaweed.

In The Brides of Rollrock Island (first published in Australia as Sea Hearts), two-time Printz Honor recipient Margo Lanagan draws on Scottish, Irish and other Northern European coastal legends of ­selkies: shape-shifting seal women who can be held captive in their human form by whoever possesses their sealskins. Lanagan’s lush, image-laden writing style, reminiscent of the fairy tale retellings of Donna Jo Napoli and Francesca Lia Block, forms the perfect vehicle for the atmosphere of wistful longing that traditionally characterizes selkie tales. Weaving between the points of view of several generations of islanders, mainlanders, witches and boys, Lanagan tells a story in which loves are lost and sometimes regained, truths are hidden and sometimes revealed . . . and redemption may be both closer and farther away than it appears.

Seventeen-year-old Katharine Tulman, an orphan under the guardianship of her dreadful aunt, has been sent to her uncle’s country estate to have him committed to an insane asylum. Having never met her Uncle Tully, Katharine plans to carry out her assignment and return to London at once. However, she is unprepared for the people who await her: her uncle, an eccentric inventor who spends hours in his workshop tinkering with toys that exceed the imagination; his brooding yet handsome assistant; a secretive, mute boy; a resentful housekeeper; and a gossipy servant.

Uncle Tully’s estate holds more than just his workshop; it is responsible for the livelihood of 900 people, all of whom will do anything to stop Katharine from taking it away. She must weigh the lives of hundreds of people—including powerless women, poor families and others on the fringes of society—against her own. If she doesn’t want to see her uncle’s laborers sent back to London’s abysmal workhouses, she just might have to forfeit her own financial future.

Set in 1852 against the backdrop of England’s burgeoning Technological Revolution, The Dark Unwinding blends together elements of streampunk and Gothic literature. It is atmospheric and imaginative, rooted in a rich history and packed with well-drawn characters—and is a great crossover for adults.

“A” awakens in a different person’s body each day. One day, A might inhabit the body of a suicidal girl; the next, maybe an athletic boy. All A knows is that he/she must never get attached and never interfere with a body’s life—and the body will never know.

The rules change when A wakes up as Justin. When A meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon, their connection is instantaneous . . . and seemingly impossible to pursue. As A attempts to form a relationship with Rhiannon from within multiple bodies, A must convince her that the story of his/her life is real—and that he/she is a person she can love.

With Every Day, author David Levithan has given readers a genderless, faceless and virtually nameless protagonist who still manages to be endearing and emotionally resonant. And while the core question—can a love between a bodiless soul and a real human possibly work—captivates on its own, the novel’s greatest strength lies in its ability to capture many different experiences of young adults. From stress to depression, from obesity to loneliness, the daily struggles of A’s bodies transform this love story into a brilliant mediation on teen life.

Levithan (Boy Meets Boy, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist) is not timid about taking on unique storylines, but in Every Day he has created something totally new.

Although Myron Horowitz is an orphan and the survivor of a horrible accident that left him permanently disfigured (he has no nose), Immortal Lycanthropes hasn’t even a hint of sentimental melancholy. As the narrator matter-of-factly states, “It would be easy to paint a sob story here, but I am trying to remain objective. So: Myron Horowitz, short, scrawny, and hideous, had no friends.” Clearly, this is not your typical coming-of-age novel.

Myron looks and feels like a 13-year-old kid (without the nose), but he’s really an immortal lycanthrope—a were-mammal who can transform at will from animal to human and back again. His search for the answers to who he is and what it all means—and why so many others like him want to kill him—drives this remarkable debut novel.

In Immortal Lycanthropes, adventure is a given. Whether it’s secret societies, doomsday devices or a kimono-wearing gorilla named Gloria, Myron is fantastically unperturbed. As he says with a sigh, “You know, the first time I stared down my own death, I was really scared. The second time I cried. But by now, it’s just something that happens to me.”

Myron is on a quest, and his journey is a cleverly imagined, smartly written, wonderful ride of a story.

Sixteen-year-old Sara Jane Rispoli is on the run. The only daughter in an influential Chicago crime family, Sara Jane comes home one night to find that her beloved family has been kidnapped. Her father’s cryptic message before his disappearance helps Sara Jane find cash, a gun and a mysterious notebook. This notebook not only contains fascinating details about the history of Chicago’s organized crime, but information on how to access those connected to it. Unfortunately for Sara Jane, the people who kidnapped her family want that notebook and all the power it wields—and they’re coming for it. An amateur boxer, Sara Jane has the tools to defend herself against a masked, murdering thug and her traitorous uncle, never realizing that her greatest weapon might just be her inheritance—an innate ability far deadlier than a quick left hook.

Sara Jane Rispoli is a surprising protagonist. A trained and powerful fighter, she is conflicted about when and how to use the violence that comes naturally to her. Although disgusted with her family’s criminal history, Sara Jane has to employ unsavory tactics of her own to track them down. But ruthlessness can only help her so much, especially when a dear friend gets caught in the crossfire.

This debut novel is written like it’s ready for the movie screen, complete with nonstop action sequences, foul villains and a butt-kicking female lead out for vengeance. Be warned—this page-turner ends on a cliffhanger.

You may think you know all there is to know about Peter Pan, but long before Wendy, there was Tiger Lily. Featured only briefly in the Disney movie, Tiger Lily receives the coverage she deserves in Jodi Lynn Anderson’s captivating retelling. The mute, insect-sized fairy Tink narrates the love story, revealing even more mysteries about Neverland.

The adopted daughter of her tribe’s cross-dressing shaman, Tiger Lily enjoys immense freedom until she learns that she is to be wed to violent, overgrown Giant. The forever-15-year-old accepts her fate until she meets the infamous Peter Pan and his Lost Boys. Their tentative and secret love, full of tenderness, doubt, companionship and jealousy, often surprises them both.

Readers will enjoy the intensity of the story, which intersects with Barrie’s and Disney’s versions, but the rich, complex characters earn the most appreciation. Tiger Lily must reconcile her duty to her tribe and loyalty to her father with her true feelings, while Pan fights to stay a boy as he wrestles with becoming a leader to his Lost Boys and finding the privacy that love requires. Even the minor characters—broken, alcoholic Hook, psychotic Smee and killer mermaids—elicit fascination.

With this quiet and bittersweet story, readers will never again think of Peter Pan as simple animation.