An outcast teenage boy, an imprisoned father and a loyal best friend who happens to be a pretty blonde all seem like relatively normal components for a teen novel—unless, of course, the boy lives on Mars and is hired by the unscrupulous to rescue kidnapped children.

Meet Durango, a teen mercenary eking out a meager existence on the dry, red planet. Often attempting dangerous stunts, he risks his life and that of his pretty partner, Vienne, in order to earn enough money to eat. His only guide is Mimi, an Artificial Intelligence imprinted in his brain, but even she can’t keep him out of trouble. While he’s battle-school-trained and quick with a weapon, he and Vienne are outcasts, easily exploited and discarded by those who hire him. With his father in prison and desperate for bribe money, he agrees to help a group of impoverished miners whose children are being stolen by a villainess and her cannibalistic minions. Against lousy odds, Durango leads a crew of inexperienced soldiers into the biggest fight of their lives.

Readers will anxiously follow Durango’s escapades, which alternate between his first-person narration and third-person point of view. From his escape into a cosmic elevator to his battles against the cannibals, Durango is a sympathetic hired gun with something to prove to both his father and himself. Even on Mars, an adolescent boy still strives for his father’s approval and his peers’ acceptance. And as Durango suppresses his romantic feelings for Vienne, he also matures into a man with a lot to lose.

Despite the fact that alien cannibals are stealing children and eating them, this book is far from morose. Its humorous dialogue and motley crew of characters give this science fiction a theatrical quality that one could easily imagine on the big screen. Named after a popular song by the rock band Soundgarden, Black Hole Sun is a gritty blend of suspense, action, humor and romance that’s sure to engage even the most reluctant reader.

Robeson Battlefield lives in a nice neighborhood with his parents and his little brother Carmichael. Pacino Clapton lives in the projects with his mother (when she’s actually home instead of out working at one of her two jobs) and his little sisters—twins named Lavender and Indigo. Robeson is always neatly dressed and tries to avoid getting in trouble. Pacino puts on a tough-guy attitude and a “street” appearance. What could the two 13-year-olds possibly have in common?

Both boys attend Alain Locke Middle School, and both boys have landed in “PSS”—Post-School Suspension—for incidents with the same kid, Tariq Molten. Tariq is the biggest bully at Alain Locke, and he already has a criminal record. Robeson (whom Pacino nicknames “Crease” for his always-neat appearance) and Pacino soon bond as they get to know one another during their three days in PSS. The boys discuss self-respect, women, hip-hop music, the “N-word” and what it means to grow up black in today’s society. They go to one another’s homes and share meals together. They agree to “have each other’s backs” and stick together as they face whatever Tariq brings their way.

Author Derrick Barnes, himself the product of a single-parent home, manages to bring the characters of Pacino and Crease to life within the pages of We Could Be Brothers. Barnes is an accomplished writer, husband and father with a list of literary successes. Although his focus here is on the African-American teen experience, the story is a perfect coming-of-age tale that could apply to any American teen. Pacino and Crease learn to overcome their fears and stand up for themselves, while still maintaining their integrity. They also learn the value of friendship—and that sometimes the best of friends can seem, in the beginning, the most unlikely.

The hilarious friends from Swim the Fly are back in Don Calame’s sequel, Beat the Band. However, Swim the Fly‘s narrator Matt takes a back seat as the wisecracking, often irritating Cooper narrates.

Best friends Matt, Cooper and Sean are just beginning their sophomore year in high school as the story begins. On the first day of school, Cooper is paired up with “Hot Dog” Helen for a semester-long health class project on, of all topics, safe sex. Helen is nicknamed “Hot Dog” for exactly the reason that might pop immediately into the mind of a sex-crazed teen boy. In fact, the entire book appears to spring from the mind of that same sex-crazed teen boy, but the result is an absolutely hilarious story with a nice twist of a moral thrown in.

When the friends decide to join in a “Battle of the Bands,” they hope they’ll be able to off-set the negative social effects of Cooper’s being paired up with Helen. They assume being “rock stars” will earn them instant social status, but they seem less concerned about the fact that none of them actually plays an instrument than they are about trying to appear cool.

As the story develops, the laugh-out-loud moments are punctuated with a truly touching story. The constant sexual references are a bit shocking at first, but once the reader gets into the groove of Cooper’s narration, it all falls into place. Surprisingly, Cooper turns out to have a conscience, and Calame’s well-developed characters lead the reader through a side-splitting but realistic story of teens trying to fit in—and learning a lot about themselves in the process. Don Calame’s ability to emulate the voice of a pubescent teenage boy is uncanny; in Beat the Band, he does so with wit and, more importantly, compassion.

Jonathan stands at the edge of a bridge, wobbling, mere seconds from toppling to his death. The only things keeping him rooted to reality are his guitar, named Ruby, and his crew of “thicks”—his best friends, high school boys with the loyalty of Odysseus. Jonathan, self-medicated and frustrated, suffers the aftermath of his twin brother’s death with little grace. He clings instead to Red Bull, Ruby and his poetry, though he distances himself from his local fame as a talented young writer. He buries himself in Bukowski and his own “spontaneous writing” to avoid the rest of his life.

But Jonathan is forced to face reality when he discovers that he will have to redo his junior year if he does not comply with his principal’s requests—first, to write the memoir of a dying, blind old man; and second, to play a terrible song in front of a huge graduation crowd. Jonathan must face his demons, at the Delphi hospice and on stage, and all on very little to no sleep. With the help of his “thicks” and the wisdom of the blind man, Jonathan searches for the “shimmer”—a reason to step away from the bridge’s edge.

Conrad Wesselhoeft’s bildungsroman Adios, Nirvana is heavy with death, sexually frustrated high school dudehood and the hanging rainclouds of west Seattle grunge (Eddie Vedder makes a cameo appearance). The heart of the story, however, is the connection between Jonathan and music. It attaches him permanently to his late brother Telemachus, and it transforms his damaged guitar Ruby into a breathing, warm body. Ruby is his girlfriend, his family and his heart. It is through music that Jonathan is able to “connect to eternal things” and keep himself from toppling over the edge.

Adios, Nirvana is raw and angry, but forgiving in its love affair with guitars and the universality of lifelong grief.

The 10 P.M. Question is a wonderful study in opposites. At just 12 years old, Frankie Parsons has an idyllic kid’s life: great best friend, amazing pet cat and more cake than one boy can reasonably eat alone. He’s also saddled with responsibilities to his eccentric family that most grownups would juggle with difficulty, and a whopping anxiety disorder weighting his shoulders. Has the cat given the whole family worms? Did everyone get their flu shot? Every bug bite holds the potential to blossom into full-blown cancer in his overactive imagination. At 10 p.m. each night he visits with his mother in bed, and she helps to dispel his anxieties . . . but she may be at the root of them, too.

When a new girl comes to Frankie’s school, she immediately adds to his list of things to worry about. Sydney asks questions that blow the lid off Frankie’s highly ordered universe and force him to begin taking care of himself, but she’s not without her own issues and complications.

Kate De Goldi has created a lush, loving world in The 10 P.M. Question. From the fat aunties to the even fatter cat, a father called “Uncle” and best friend Gigs, it’s just a pleasure to spend time in the family home with its attendant, and obviously affectionate, chaos. For a kid with too much on his mind, Frankie is at least in good and supportive hands when things come to a head.

An additional treat for this reader was the book’s New Zealand setting. The unfamiliar landmarks and subtle cultural differences just add another layer of lushness to the backdrop, a fourth auntie in the family, as it were. After Frankie has what his sister calls a “nut-out,” we see that a happy ending isn’t possible for everyone in the story, and that to settle for contentment sometimes must suffice. But the family pulls together in the wake of the crisis, and there’s great hope in this story of one boy slowly conquering his fears.

Samhain Corvus Lacroix, a self-proclaimed “dropout loser” and fry cook at the local Plumpy’s fast food outlet in Seattle, has always felt directionless and lost among his peers. But as it turns out, he takes the term “late bloomer” to a whole new level in Lish McBride’s inventive, supernatural debut novel, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer: When disgruntled mall customer Douglas Montgomery, a mighty and territorial necromancer and head of the Northwest Council, comes into Plumpy’s one day to complain, he detects necromancer ability in clueless Sam.

Douglas, who may be responsible for the Rolling Stones’ longevity, has been performing experiments in the basement of his gaudy mansion, hoping to increase his dark powers. When one of his henchman, sent to kidnap a Were-hound, accidentally returns with teenage Bridin, next in line to head the Were-hound pack, Douglas is forced to hold her captive in a silver-lined cage. Realizing that he can be even more forceful with Sam’s power, Douglas urges him to join the dark side by threatening his best friends (and Plumpy’s co-workers), Ramon and Frank, with the delivery of another co-worker’s talking head, which the guys end up carrying around in a bowling ball bag (admittedly clichéd, but immensely useful).

As the once-wayward teen learns his family’s secrets, including the revelation that his power was bound by magic when he was an infant, he begins to develop his inner strengths—both human and supernatural. With Ramon’s help, Sam forges alliances on both sides of the living spectrum and works to save himself from the evil necromancer mastermind. He even finds romance (and a little lust on the side) after being tossed in the same cage as Bridin and discovering that she needs rescuing, too.

Part scary, part funny, with a touch of tenderness, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer holds readers spellbound with unforgettable characters, snappy dialogue and killer (sometimes literally) song lyrics that open and offer clues to each chapter. Drawing on the timeless adolescent quest for identity and the popularity of supernatural fiction, McBride makes Sam’s adventures a scream—and a hoot.

Themis Academy is the kind of high-powered boarding school where the students take on extra projects, perform challenging music for the faculty and volunteer their time for worthy causes. In short, it’s a school where the students can do no wrong—or so the teachers think. They’re so convinced they’re teaching the best and the brightest that they turn a blind eye to bad behavior. So what’s a student to do if she or he is the victim of injustice?

That’s where the Mockingbirds come in. It would be tempting to call their brand of justice “vigilante,” but that would misrepresent their vast organization, efficient tactics and strict codes of conduct. The group of students known as the Mockingbirds (inspired by Harper Lee’s famous novel) serve as judge, jury and jailer for the perpetrators they try in their laundry/courtroom.

When Alex is date-raped after a party, she can barely remember the event, let alone stand up to her attacker. But when he starts spreading rumors about Alex, her older sister—the founder of the Mockingbirds—encourages her to take her case to the secret society. Alex, who usually feels most comfortable sitting at a piano, must find her memories—and her voice—if she hopes to feel like her old self again.

In The Mockingbirds, Daisy Whitney effectively captures the simultaneous disorientation, guilt, embarrassment and fear that arise in the wake of rape. Even if some of the details of Themis life, or Alex’s musical knowledge, seem a little unrealistic, Alex’s story—her self-doubt, slow recovery and reliance on old friends and new supporters—rings true. Readers will be cheering for Alex to recapture her old life, and to discover a new one that might be even better.

Dash is perusing the 18 miles of books at New York City’s legendary Strand bookstore when a flash of red catches his eye. It’s a Moleskine notebook with “DO YOU DARE?” scrawled on the cover, and a series of clues encoded inside. Will he take the bait, even if it means approaching the counter to ask for a novel called Fat Hoochie Prom Queen?

Lucky for us, the answer is “Yes.” Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares is the third collaboration between Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, and the magic they create together is not just holding but getting stronger. Dash and Lily are each spending the winter holidays without their parents, and they begin sending each other on more ridiculous and risky missions, abetted by friends, family, a custom-designed Muppet and the iconic red notebook. Along the way a department-store Santa is inappropriately groped, a baby is catapulted through the air in Washington Square Park, and information is extorted under the threat of a spontaneous recitation from the works of James Patterson. Did I mention the 2 a.m. Christmas/Hanukkah mosh pit?

Somehow all these antics (and more!) combine to create a surprisingly chaste and tender love story. Lily’s sweet optimism might soften the “snarly” side of Dash that everyone sees, and he lures her out of a comfort zone that’s concealing a fear of life. So here’s my list for the next several Christmases: more intelligent, heartfelt hilarity from these two talented authors.

Law Walker comes from a home of wealth and prestige. His father is a prominent black Harvard professor who preaches in favor of reparations for slavery. Law’s mother, an architectural historian (and a white woman), is desperately trying to save Pinebank, a Boston landmark and the center of much controversy, from demolition. A child of mixed race, Law struggles with his identity: “I feel less black than Eminem,” he says.

Living in a very different world is Law’s high school classmate Katie Mullens, an orphan who has been grieving the death of her mother for the past year. Labeled crazy by her peers, she sees ghosts and draws deeply disturbing images of death. She is almost swallowed up in her grief until she and Law begin a life-saving relationship. Unfortunately, Law’s parents don’t approve of Katie. Not only is she poor, and from a broken home, but she’s also white—a fact not lost on Law either. For a guy struggling with being black, having a white girlfriend isn’t easy.

The two couldn’t be less alike, and yet they are drawn together by a centuries-old mystery surrounding the decrepit Pinebank and the ghosts who reside there. For Law and his mother, Pinebank is an irreplaceable historical gem, even if Law’s father condemns the house for the crimes committed by its slave-owning proprietor. For Katie, the key to freeing herself from the spirits who haunt her is buried somewhere in that house.

In her first novel for teens, Sarah Smith tells Law’s and Katie’s stories in alternating chapters, masterfully weaving in the very real and detailed history of Pinebank. The result is a haunting, emotional tale about a teenage girl’s unraveling, and a boy whose very identity feels entwined in a house condemned for demolition. The Other Side of Dark is no ordinary ghost story, but rather a meticulously researched and poignant tale about grief, identity and the dark pasts that can define us.

Jane Moore hasn’t been handed any breaks in her 19 years. Although she’s the third child of well-to-do suburbanites, she’s always been treated as the unwanted “extra” child. When her parents die suddenly, her portion of the inheritance amounts to basically nothing, and she’s forced to drop out of college and take a job as a nanny at Thornfield Park, the home of bigger-than-life rock star Nico Rathburn.

Jane finds herself—quite reluctantly—drawn to Nico. After a great deal of heartache and self-doubt, she learns that Nico is just as enamored of her, and they embark upon a steamy love affair. It is, in fact, so steamy that mothers previewing the novel to decide whether or not to allow their daughters to read it might find themselves blushing as Jane discovers her hidden desires under the very capable tutelage of the brooding and sensual Nico. Yet the sex scenes are not at all gratuitous, and readers shocked by the romance between Jane and the much older Nico would do well to read (or re-read) Jane Eyre—the quintessential story of a May-December romance between employer and employee.

April Lindner’s Jane is a novel of mystery and romance, and the story is painstakingly true to its inspiration. In fact, Jane is not merely inspired by Jane Eyre, it is a retelling in its truest sense. Lindner, a professor of English, certainly knows her subject, and her affection for Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece is clear on every page. She masterfully weaves the 19th-century tale into an edgy, modern love story that revolves around secrets and their consequences, and in the process, she creates a story that can stand alone as a well-written and engaging page-turner for readers of many ages.

Vera Dietz would rather be ignored by her classmates than have them know the truth about her mother. Vera’s father would rather she ignored everything but school and her full-time pizza delivery job, including the abuse taking place in her best friend Charlie’s house. But ignoring things doesn’t make them go away. When Charlie dies in dark circumstances and Vera knows more about it than anyone, she has the opportunity to come forward and clear his name . . . or the option to pretend that nothing happened.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz is a gritty account of one young woman’s reckoning with grief. Vera is not the only narrator, though. Her dad gets to share a few stories and flowcharts, which bring needed humor to the subplot about Vera’s burgeoning alcoholism: “I wish she’d look beyond herself once in a while. But that’s a side effect of alcohol, isn’t it? Stopping to think about other people is not on the bar menu.” Charlie Kahn also weighs in with a few notes from “The Dead Kid,” when he’s not haunting Vera with messages in steamy mirrors or appearing in droves to help her find the clues to his death, and there are very funny comments from the town’s defunct landmark, the Pagoda, which read as entirely normal in this surreal universe.

The story moves back and forth in time, tracing Charlie and Vera’s friendship and its dissolution, then his death and the crime that happened the same night, weaving shared history together with the clues Vera uncovers. When all is revealed at the end, the book ends abruptly, with not much attention given to the criminal case that would inevitably follow, and little in the way of comeuppance for the truly nasty villain, Jenny Flick. But that’s a minor quibble for a book that balances intense subject matter with humor and a touch of the supernatural, and makes it all flow naturally. Ignore this book at your peril; it’s a keeper.

Perhaps one of the highest compliments a reader can pay an author is the immediate desire to be best friends with a book’s main character. Such is the case with Violet Tunis, the 16-year-old protagonist of Leila Sales’ witty debut novel, Mostly Good Girls, which portrays Violet’s everyday shenanigans at a swanky all-girls prep school in Boston.

Of course, Violet already has a best friend, Katie, whose wealth, beauty and perfect score on the PSATs don’t even make Violet jealous—that much. While Katie has many envious natural talents, Violet must pride herself on the little victories. For example, when Violet’s safari theme is chosen for the junior yearbook, her parents beam with pride. Violet notes, “My parents are proud of me no matter what I do, be it suggesting a yearbook theme or getting a B on a math test. They have incredibly low standards.” At other times, it is about the small battles fought but not won, such as trying to steer the school’s literary magazine staff away from really bad eating-disorder poetry. (“Hunger is a sin / As bad for you as a shark fin.”) But if not for Katie, Violet wouldn’t have nearly as much fun as she does, like when the two friends try to make a fortune selling Harry Potter tours to the younger students.

Unfortunately, when Katie meets Martin, her new boyfriend-having status creates a rift in the girls’ friendship. As Violet says, “Out of all the reasons I might envy Katie, in a list of things she had that I constantly worked for, Martin did not even rank. I wasn’t jealous of Katie for having Martin. If anything, I was jealous of Martin for having Katie.” Suddenly, Violet and Katie’s long-standing friendship is tested, and Violet wonders about her own identity without her best friend.

Told in first-person point of view, each chapter is like a short story unto itself, infused with a sharp wit and wry humor. Anyone who has ever been one half of a best-friend pair will easily identify with Violet’s typical high school drama, and Sales’ laugh-out-loud portrayal of life at an all-girls school makes this tale about friendship incredibly fresh and lighthearted.

Phoebe is the youngest in a long line of Rothschilds, the eminent Jewish family that, over the course of more than 200 years, has attained wealth, power and a degree of protection even as the world has been in turmoil around them. Everyone agrees that the Rothschilds are an extraordinary family, filled with those, like Phoebe’s mother Catherine, who hold positions of power and prestige.

But what if Phoebe is nothing special? Just ordinary? Would she still be worthy of her family’s name? These questions haunt her, especially once she meets Mallory, an odd new girl at school who seems desperately in need of Phoebe’s friendship and support. By the time the girls are juniors in high school, they are more like sisters than friends. Phoebe is sure nothing could separate them—that is, until Mallory’s aloof, alluring brother Ryland moves to town. Phoebe falls under his spell, and Mallory must stand by, helpless, as Ryland not only drives the best friends apart but does his best to destroy Phoebe’s self-confidence.

For Mallory, too, is complicit in Ryland’s devious plans, as the otherworldly siblings intend to use Phoebe to fulfill a longstanding debt owed to the inhabitants of Faerie by one of Phoebe’s Rothschild ancestors. When faced with a horrific choice, will Phoebe prove herself extraordinary? And can the girls’ friendship endure through the lies and betrayal?

With Extraordinary, Nancy Werlin, long known for her Edgar Award-winning suspense novels, returns to the faerie realm she first began to explore in her last novel, Impossible. Both books stand alone but share thematic interests in human responsibility, loyalty and the persistence of history. Werlin adeptly explores the interconnections between the realms of humans and faeries, creating not only a rich fantasy world but also an examination of family, religious heritage and friendship that transcends genre. Werlin’s faerie novels are haunting, suspenseful and provocative; readers are sure to hope for another opportunity to venture with her into the faerie realm.