Finch Kelly feels most at home on the debate stage, and he knows winning the national debate championship could be his ticket to achieving his dreams: admission to Georgetown University and the first step toward becoming the first transgender member of Congress. But his family’s finances are falling apart, his feelings for his debate partner, Jonah, are growing more and more complicated and the topic for the championship debate will require him to argue against his own human rights. As the pressure mounts, Finch begins to lose confidence in everything he once believed.

In this sharp and emotional first novel, author Peyton Thomas explores the queer high school experience through Finch, who longs to look more like the teenage boy he is and whose feelings for Jonah are causing him to question his sexual orientation. The novel also confronts racism through Jonah’s experience as a Filipino American who deals with microaggressions from debate judges and his gorgeous, Juilliard-bound boyfriend. Add in the socioeconomic woes that are never far from Finch’s thoughts, as his parents grapple with unemployment and his debate opponents' families write huge checks to prestigious colleges, and Both Sides Now is jampacked with timely issues.

Thomas doesn’t pull any punches on difficult topics and never once reduces his characters to objects of pity. Instead, he depicts teenagers who are working hard to find their places in a world that has thrown obstacle after obstacle in their paths. The novel balances serious political conversations and scenes of moving emotional hardship with moments of comedy and a spirit of true camaraderie and respect between Finch and Jonah.

Teens who participate in their schools' debate or Model United Nations programs will especially appreciate the book’s detailed exploration of contemporary political issues, but Thomas’ witty prose, strong pacing and knack for creating vivid, dimensional characters have broad appeal.

Elizabeth Bertelsen’s life is not sheltered—far from it, in fact. Growing up Mormon during the late 1870s means she is close to the land, to matters of life and death and to the complex dynamics of a polygamous household. But Elizabeth has quite literally set her sights on the stars; she hopes to become an astronomer at a time when women studying science is tantamount to witchcraft. Rosalyn Eves’ Beyond the Mapped Stars blends fiction and fact to create an adventure that doesn’t shy away from difficult topics.

It all hinges on a solar eclipse, the first that the Western states will experience in almost a hundred years. When Elizabeth finds herself close to the path of totality (the area on Earth where the moon will completely block the sun), she’s willing to make major sacrifices to be there to witness it. Chapters count down the days and then the hours to the eclipse, which keeps a sense of urgency bubbling as Elizabeth makes new friends and begins a tentative romance. A brother and sister whom she meets after a train robbery offer support as well as a chance for reflection; some of Elizabeth’s assumptions about them are based on the color of their skin, and she’s surprised to learn that their family makes assumptions about Mormons in a similar fashion.

Beyond the Mapped Stars offers a portrait of a diverse American West that’s filled with promise, but it does so with honesty about where and from whom much of that promise was stolen. If that seems like a modern flourish, Eves makes a strong case for its basis in historical fact in her author’s note, while also revealing a deeply personal dimension to the story.

The whole novel takes place amid a six-week journey by train, carriage and on horseback, during which Elizabeth finds her courage, makes mistakes and learns from them. It’s a thrill to travel alongside her. Faith, family, race and gender are the earthly concerns that draw her down from the clouds, but as Eves expertly incorporates them into Elizabeth’s life-changing summer, Beyond the Mapped Stars takes flight and soars.

Explosive, long-buried family secrets lie at the heart of Malla Nunn’s vivid and arresting Sugar Town Queens, but so do friendship, hope and the promise of love.

Aptly named for the Zulu word for power, Amandla Harden is a bright and empathetic biracial girl who lives with her unstable white mother, Annalisa, in a tidy one-room shack on the outskirts of Durban, South Africa. Their daily life is a balancing act. Amandla manages their household and the vicissitudes of her mother’s fractured mind while also having typical teenage experiences. She worries about how to make their food money last but also thinks about university and wonders if a cute boy will ever look at her the way she can't help but look at him. It’s a precarious existence, but she’s mostly made it work.

Then around her 15th birthday, Amandla finds a mysterious note and a large wad of cash among her mother’s belongings and decides to investigate what Annalisa has been hiding for so long. The quest turns both of their lives upside down as Amandla opens herself up to new friends and turns to neighbors for support.

As Amandla explores her mother’s connections to an entirely different world from the one Amandla has grown up in, Nunn takes readers into intimate spaces within vastly different sectors of a very stratified and segregated society. Along the way, the novel effectively explores the contradictory racial dynamics of contemporary, post-apartheid South Africa.

Nunn paints an especially grounded and nuanced portrait of life in the townships. Danger lurks around the corner in this ramshackle, hardscrabble place, but the crowded lanes are also full of complicated people who care about and take care of each other. Annalisa and Amandla’s home comes alive on the page—the good, the bad, the ugly and the merely human.

Nunn’s evocative storytelling will make you ache for Amandla. She is a complex creation whose circumstances are sensational but whose journey is relatable. Nunn surrounds Amandla with a diverse cast of characters who are similarly interesting and strongly developed. The novel’s hard truths about race and class are more than balanced by the love of all types that Amandla experiences. These supportive relationships are the most rewarding part of Sugar Town Queens, the glue that holds it all together.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Malla Nunn reveals the personal memories she drew on to create Sugar Town Queens.

In the small community of Amity Falls, 18-year-old Ellerie Downing spends her days tending to her family’s beehives and secretly dreaming of life beyond the woods that surround the village. But when townsfolk begin to go missing, tales of beasts that stalked the settlement in its early years resurface. Could there be a terrifying reality behind the stories?

Erin A. Craig follows her 2019 debut novel, House of Salt and Sorrows, with another absorbing, uncanny tale that walks the fine line between fantasy and horror. A winding mystery loosely based on the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin,” Small Favors takes a haunting look at the limits of human civility.

Tensions rise among the people Ellerie once called her friends as strange phenomena start to occur. Animals give birth to grotesque creatures, and mysterious symbols appear in unexpected places. Winter sets in, trapping Amity Falls’ residents in the village, and reality itself twists unsettlingly. Ghosts are seen in places that later go up in flames, and neighbors blame one another for inexplicable sabotage. Claustrophobia and dread seep into the very fabric of the community, and a stifling sense of hostility causes the town to turn on itself. Ellerie must uncover what’s really troubling Amity Falls before she loses the home and people she loves.

Ellerie is a kind and dutiful older sister, and Craig crafts the considerable cast of characters who surround her into a complex web of personalities and relationships. Through Ellerie’s eyes, readers experience Amity Falls as a cozy and cordial place, which makes it all the more heartbreaking when the town begins to crumble. From gossip that permeates conversations at church to bickering between once amicable neighbors to shocking accusations directed at old friends, Ellerie witnesses the transformation of Amity Falls into a place she hardly recognizes as home. As she confronts sinister and possibly otherworldly forces, readers must decide what’s real and who can be trusted.

Small Favors is as much about humanity as it is about horror. Perfect for readers who love mysteries and the macabre, the novel poses provocative questions. What can we keep for ourselves, and what must we give up for others? How far are we willing to go for what we want? How will we know when we’ve sacrificed our souls in order to gain our heart’s desires?

Della Lloyd’s family has drawn their magic from the Bend, a stretch of river and woodland known to locals as Wood Thrush Nature Park, for generations. Recently, however, something has gone terribly wrong with the woods and their magic that Della can’t explain. Almost a year ago, a spell left her mother cursed to be transformed into a monstrous river siren each night, and now a string of girls has disappeared in the park. 

Among them is Rochelle Greymont, whose sister, Natasha, will stop at nothing to find her. While Natasha suspects Rochelle’s abusive boyfriend, Jake, of foul play, Della secretly worries her bloodthirsty mother might be the real culprit. Natasha’s anger and desperation lead her to beg Della for magical assistance in tracking down Rochelle, but neither girl is prepared for the terrible secrets their search will unearth. 

Erica Waters’ second novel (after 2020’s Ghost Wood Song) is a richly atmospheric mystery that isn’t afraid to delve deep into the darkness of its premise, and the Bend provides a perfect backdrop for its story. It’s a foreboding place, steeped in a long history of violence and filled with creatures that are not what they seem to be. Even Della, who loves the Bend and feels connected to the rich plant life it harbors, can’t ignore the threat its increasingly twisted magic poses. 

While both Della and Natasha are driven by the need to protect the people they love, Waters never shies away from the harsher sides of her heroines. “I’d kill a hundred park visitors myself before I’d let my momma die,” Della admits early on, while Natasha wants Jake to suffer for how he treated her sister as much as she wants him to confess. Waters gives Della’s and Natasha’s feelings of rage, grief and fear plenty of space to seethe without judgment. The result is a cathartic portrait of two girls’ anger toward a world whose cruelty and injustice forced them to fight back. 

Full of dangers both magical and mundane, The River Has Teeth delivers ferociously good thrills.

“My life is small and simple, but it’s a better one than I ever thought I’d have,” says Cash, the protagonist of Jeff Zentner’s fourth novel, In the Wild Light. After his best friend, Delaney, discovers a new bacteria in a local cave, she becomes a scientific sensation and nabs a scholarship to a fancy New England boarding school. There’s a catch though: She won’t go without Cash. 

Delaney is desperate to leave their small, opioid-ravaged town of Sawyer, Tennessee. But Cash’s guilt at leaving his ailing Papaw behind and his insecurity about cutting it at a private school initially cloud any visions he might have of a grander life.  

Zentner’s signature poetic prose is in full effect as he crafts sentences that read like sweet tea tastes and cotton feels. The gorgeous writing reflects the inherent romance of Cash’s new life on campus, where he forges new relationships with a girl who teaches him about love, a boy who shows him the value of prayer and a teacher who helps him discover the gift of poetry, which he comes to rely on as a salve for life’s problems. Frankly, Zentner’s writing is romantic because his story demands it. Poetry, the divine, science and, yes, even quiet porches in podunk Appalachian towns—this is the stuff of passion and worship.

Every rose, however, has its thorns, and In the Wild Light’s are particularly sharp. Its romance is balanced by tragedy and grief, which keep the story grounded in reality and build enough tension to keep things from veering into the saccharine. The darkness that surrounds Cash and Delaney is enormous. Candid discussions of addiction and death by overdose abound, and a scene of attempted sexual assault is a shock to the system. 

In the Wild Light is a love letter to possibility. Like the hero of the Pixar film Ratatouille who learns that “anyone can cook,” Cash (though not a rat, but certainly someone who feels like an outsider) learns that our creative impulses are an essential part of what we need to survive and heal. Zentner, who, like Cash, calls Tennessee home, asserts that anyone, even kids from the rural South with unremarkable pedigrees and pasts scabbed over after trauma, can live beautiful lives full of love. In an author’s note included with advance editions, Zentner says every book he writes is a love story. You can tell.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Discover how In the Wild Light author Jeff Zentner tricked his publisher into publishing his poetry.

In 1930s England, Bea’s parents are determined that she should become a proper lady, but she’d rather be studying insects. So when she mortifies her parents yet again (in a dinner scene that involves a discussion of the mating habits of glowworms, the local vicar and the word fecundity), they send her to Italy so her strict Uncle Leo can set her straight. 

Bea arrives to discover that her uncle’s fiancée, Filomena, has turned his once stuffy villa into an artists’ haven. Rather than polishing her manners, Bea will spend her summer studying art with Ben, an obnoxious though decidedly handsome painter. In an effort to keep Ben’s ego in check and to give Bea a taste of the romance she craves—in the interest of scientific inquiry, of course—friends dare Bea and Ben to start up a summer fling, but it soon becomes clear that they’re both in for far more than they bargained for.

Under a Dancing Star is an effervescent retelling of Much Ado About Nothing, in which author Laura Wood transplants Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick to an artists’ colony in Tuscany. There, young Bea is encouraged to explore her passions under the watchful but mischief-minded eyes of her new friends.

Wood’s second YA novel resurrects the dazzle that made her first, 2020’s A Sky Painted Gold, such a gem. Readers will be immersed in the electric heat of an Italian summer, surrounded by vibrant characters and inspired by their free-flowing conversations and progressive ideals. 

Although Wood treats the political tensions in Italy on the eve of World War II seriously, the novel’s primary focus is Bea’s personal journey. In the beginning, she’s a witty and intelligent girl who’s unhappy with the status quo but uncertain how to define her ambitions. Over the course of her transformative summer, it’s heartening to see Bea’s evolution into a self-assured young woman who is determined to chart her own course. And if readers fall just a little bit in love with Ben in the meantime, well, who could blame them?

Magic is rare and forbidden in the kingdom of Kiata. Most people, including the emperor, associate it with demons and danger, so Princess Shiori keeps her magical abilities carefully hidden. But when her nerves about her impending betrothal lead to a slip-up, Shiori’s stepmother, Raikama, notices. The two were close when Shiori was a child, but now they watch one another warily until Shiori discovers that Raikama is also hiding a secret. 

After Shiori reveals the secret to her six older brothers, Raikama curses them, transforming the princes into cranes, then lays an even more cruel curse on Shiori: A magical bowl on her head hinders her power and obscures her face, so that she is unrecognizable as the kingdom’s princess, and any time she speaks a single word aloud, one of her brothers will die. 

Cast to the far reaches of the kingdom and unable to explain her plight or reveal her identity, Shiori must rely on help from Kiki, a mischievous paper bird brought to life by Shiori’s magic; an infuriating dragon prince; and a nobleman’s son who continually defies her expectations. It will take all of Shiori’s wit and determination to reunite her family and break Raikama’s curses.

In Six Crimson Cranes, YA fantasist Elizabeth Lim delivers a blend of fairy tale and legend that feels both classical and fresh. Lim draws on and blends European, Chinese and Japanese sources, and the mix gives the novel both a sense of familiarity and an entertaining unpredictability, as the reader never knows which source’s elements will take precedence in the next step of the story.  

Shiori is no magical savant: She’s an endearing heroine who grows over the course of her journey, using her natural strengths to fight her way back home. Her relationships with her six brothers are well defined and touching. The book’s romantic subplot is satisfyingly swoony but also functions as an indicator of Shiori’s transformation from a kind and curious yet sheltered and judgmental princess into an open-minded young woman. 

Intriguing departures from the beats of a typical fantasy-quest plot, well-laid red herrings and excellently sown seeds of future complications set Six Crimson Cranes apart. It radiates with Lim’s love for fairy tales and legends from around the world and takes readers on a well-paced adventure with a magic all its own. 

For Olivia Brooks, the three-day Farmland Music and Arts Festival represents the possibility of an exciting new experience and of winning a car in the #FoundatFarmland scavenger hunt. It's also the only thing distracting her from an upcoming judicial hearing in which she'll be asked to testify against her ex, who violated her trust in a deeply personal (not to mention illegal) way.

For Toni Foster, the festival represents a familiar stomping ground, full of bittersweet memories of her late musician father. The festival’s Golden Apple talent competition is also her last chance to perform on stage before she’s forced into the college, career and life her mother has chosen for her. 

When Olivia and Toni meet by chance on the first day of the festival and join forces to compete in their respective contests, neither girl is prepared for the whirlwind of emotion that Farmland has in store for them. 

Leah Johnson’s second novel, Rise to the Sun, is filled with evocative details of the music festival experience and moving descriptions of live music. Whether listening to a heartfelt acoustic practice at a campsite, dancing to EDM in a refurbished barn or performing under blinding stage lights, the characters’ love of music rings clear. The world of the novel feels particularly real and alive thanks to some fun cameos that readers of Johnson’s first book, You Should See Me in a Crown, will be excited to see. 

The book’s plot gains structure and momentum from the scavenger hunt and talent competitions, but Johnson is careful not to let the contests overwhelm the more sensitive struggles at the core of Olivia’s and Toni’s stories. Olivia is outgoing and friendly, but she frequently worries she’s “too much” for others. Toni has the talent to pursue her dreams, but she often pushes away the things she wants the most. Johnson makes excellent use of alternating perspectives to convey each girl’s complex and relatable interior life. As Olivia and Toni begin to fall for one another, the contrasting and complementary elements of their personalities make for a beautifully balanced love story.

Readers will find it impossible not to root for Olivia and Toni as they race to solve scavenger hunt clues, nail onstage performances and learn to trust each other with their hopes and fears. Rise to the Sun shines even brighter than Johnson’s dazzling debut.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Leah Johnson reveals why she included cameos from You Should See Me in a Crown in Rise to the Sun.

In Blackout, six of YA’s biggest superstars join forces to create a memorable collection of interlinked love stories that all unfold on one unforgettable New York City night.

Talented authors Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk and Nicola Yoon have been crafting memorable novels and gaining deservedly passionate readerships for years. That makes this joint undertaking nothing less than a landmark publishing event for YA literature enthusiasts.

Jackson’s story, “The Long Walk,” serves as a framing narrative of sorts for the book, as it’s split into five “acts” that alternate with the other contributors’ stories. It’s late afternoon on a sweltering summer day, and just as Tam realizes that she and her ex-boyfriend Kareem have mistakenly been offered the same internship at the historic Apollo Theater, the city is plunged into a widespread blackout. Tam and Kareem embark on an epic journey on foot from Harlem back home to Brooklyn, where the summer’s most happening block party will kick off that evening.

Along the way, Kareem and Tam’s story intersects with five other tales of love. In Stone’s “Mask Off,” two boys stuck on the same subway car feel torn about the last time their paths crossed, when both were in disguise. In Clayton’s story, a girl in the iconic New York Public Library struggles to find the perfect book to express her romantic feelings. And in Thomas’ “No Sleep ’til Brooklyn,” set on a double-decker tour bus, a girl on a class trip from Mississippi gets valuable advice from a bus driver about charting her own course—which is exactly what he does, too, when he steers the bus to Brooklyn and to that same block party.

Not all of Blackout’s stories are typical happily-ever-afters, but they’re more interesting that way. Several leave just enough ambiguity to encourage healthy debate among readers. Spotting various characters’ connections to one another will also keep readers engaged and entertained.

YA readers have been calling on traditional publishers to acquire and support more positive representations of Black teens. Readers in search of joyful stories of young Black love will adore Blackout.

About halfway through The Marvelous Mirza Girls, Noreen, an Indian American teenager who is spending a gap year in India with her mother, Ruby, overhears a white American girl talking on her phone at a cafe. “Poor people here have like literally nothing, but they’re happier than so many people in American who have, like, everything. They’ve been such an inspiration,” the girl says. Shortly after, the girl receives a verbal dressing-down that's uniquely Indian and full of pride, serving as something of a mission statement for The Marvelous Mirza Girls.

Noreen and Ruby have traveled to New Delhi to recharge, reconnect and find solace after the death of Ruby’s sister, Noreen’s aunt Sonia. The chic Mirzas breeze through adventures in ancient ruins, have romantic encounters with handsome men and absolutely slay at karaoke parties, all while navigating a culture that’s both familiar and foreign to them. Second- and third-generation American readers will find Noreen’s and Ruby’s experiences inspiring, and the novel’s easy charm, strong mother-daughter relationship and romantic elements recall the best moments of Amy Sherman-Palladino’s “Gilmore Girls” or “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

When a sex scandal erupts involving Noreen’s new boyfriend and his family, the novel embarks on a precarious tightrope walk between tradition and modernity. Through author Sheba Karim’s lens, readers see New Delhi as a complex place of refuge that’s also in need of reinvention. It’s home to breathtaking architecture, delicious food and maybe even wish-granting jinn, but it’s also a city where poverty, toxic air and even more toxic masculinity can be overwhelming.

“For each thing that is true about India, the opposite is also true,” says Noreen. In other words: It’s complicated, just like The Marvelous Mirza Girls.