Shady Grove’s daddy could call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle. He died in a car crash four years ago, but when the woods around Shady’s home suddenly fill with the sound of the bluegrass music he used to play, she knows he’s trying to send her a message. Then her brother is accused of murder, and Shady realizes it’s her turn to take up her daddy’s fiddle, call out the ghosts and illuminate the secrets that have been keeping her family prisoner for generations.

Ghost Wood Song, Erica Waters’ debut novel, is a haunting Southern Gothic tale that will delight fans of Jeff Zentner’s The Serpent King and Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s Beautiful Creatures. Readers will lose themselves in Florida’s rural pine woods, among the ghosts that haunt Shady’s family and the bluegrass melodies she plays to summon them. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Author Erica Waters shares her favorite murder ballads and explores the appeal of this genre of traditional music.

Waters’ characters are just as vivid, coming into sharp relief against the lush setting as they wrestle with grief, family secrets and high school drama. (Shady and her two best friends, Sarah and Orlando, can’t agree on the set list for their band, and their arguments are complicated by the love triangle between Shady, Sarah and gorgeous cowboy Cedar.) Waters makes it easy to root for Shady as she battles conflicts both mundane and supernatural, working through a wide range of emotions rendered with nuance and authenticity.

Ghost Wood Song is a lyrical, evocative novel that’s part ghost story and part mystery, wrapped around a gorgeous tale of loss, love and family healing.

Marit Olsen is alone in the world. Her father died in an accident in the wealthy Vestergaard family’s mines. The Firn, an icy buildup in the veins that freezes a body from the inside as a result of the overuse of magic, claimed her sister not long after. Like her sister, Marit has magic; Marit’s gives her a connection to fabric, thread and sewing. She can embroider a dress in one night that would take an expert seamstress weeks. But like all magic users, Marit uses her gift sparingly for fear of the Firn.

On the cusp of aging out of the orphanage, Marit is determined to look out for Eve, a younger girl with a gift for ballet who has become like a little sister to her. When Eve is adopted by Helene Vestergaard, Marit manages to obtain a place as a seamstress in the Vestergaard household. As she settles in among the staff, she realizes they all have magical abilities that they use often. While Eve adjusts to a life of wealth and privilege, Marit uncovers new information about her father’s accident with the help of her new friends, siblings Liljan and Jakob. If her father’s death wasn’t an accident, could the Vestergaards have been involved? Is Eve in danger? Marit will risk it all, including the Firn, to ensure that her chosen family is safe.

Emily Bain Murphy’s second novel is an assured blend of historical fiction and fantasy, with satisfyingly researched details appearing alongside a simple but powerful system of magic. The story includes a slow-burning romance, but Marit’s prickly enemies-to-friends relationship with another household servant is even more compelling. Most satisfying is the book’s villain, an occasional narrator whose identity is revealed in time. Murphy has created a more nuanced villain than is usually attempted in YA fantasy, with valid (yet misguided) goals and easily understandable, even sympathetic motivations. 

Marit’s struggle to find and protect her found family, the lush and hygge-filled Scandinavian surroundings and the thrilling showdown with a complex villain make Splinters of Scarlet a finely woven tale perfect for historical fiction and fantasy readers alike.

It’s the last day of high school, the day when the ultimate prizes in a four year-long rivalry between Rowan Roth and Neil McNair will be announced. Which one of them will be named valedictorian? And who will win Howl, an annual senior class scavenger hunt and elimination game, the winner of which walks away not just with bragging rights but also with a generous cash prize?

Rowan’s interest in Neil is only as an aggravating competitor. Neil wears suits to school, thinks The Great Gatsby is the epitome of literary taste and plans to study linguistics at NYU. Rowan’s true goal today is fulfilling a list she made at the beginning of high school, which includes having a fantastical date with her Perfect High School Boyfriend.

Who is definitely not Neil.

Right?

Part delicious puzzle story, part nostalgic reflection on a teen rite of passage and part romance, Today Tonight Tomorrow takes place entirely within a single 24-hour day, interspersing Rowan’s first-person narration with documents, lists of clues and pages of other books . . . including the romance novel she’s secretly writing. As Rowan and her classmates careen from one Seattle local to another in order to complete the scavenger hunt, the suspense of the game of Howl still allows time for personal reflection. What does Rowan’s Jewish Mexican identity mean to her? Will she continue to hide the romance stories she loves, knowing that many people will look down on her because of them? Does Neil’s seemingly perfect exterior mask something he doesn’t want anyone else to know?

Numerous nods to Seattle culture (Nirvana, compostable cups and kitschy attractions) abound, as do delightful bits of literary humor; a condom given to Rowan by her best friends at the beginning of the book is later referred to as “Checkov’s condom” in a nod to the playwright’s famous gun. Author Rachel Lynn Solomon’s first self-described “fun” book is a breezy, one-sitting read that wraps the immediacy of a single day with outstanding layers of nostalgia, empowerment and self-acceptance.

Tanaz Bhathena’s Hunted by the Sky, set in a medieval India-inspired fantasy world, begins with a murder. Gul watches, helpless, as her parents are slaughtered by the king’s warrior, Major Shayla, who has been assigned to hunt down girls born with star-shaped birthmarks—like Gul’s. It’s been prophesied that one of these girls will grow up to kill the king.

Gul is rescued by an underground sisterhood that trains her to wield magic, and she swears she will take revenge against Shayla and the king. Then Gul meets Cavas, an ordinary boy who works in the palace stables and helps Gul pose as a member of the queen’s staff. Gul’s vengeance might bring down a king, but it could also destroy the kingdom and everyone she has come to care about.

Bhathena, the critically acclaimed author of The Beauty of the Moment, creates a vibrant fantasy kingdom that is equal parts beautiful and brutal. Her prose is as lush as the world she has imagined, immersing readers in colorful bazaars and extravagant palaces. Despite the gorgeous scenery, the book thrums with an undercurrent of violence.

In many ways, Gul’s story is a typical hero’s journey. Naive and impulsive, Gul must reconcile her thirst for revenge with her newfound desire for Cavas. She must go up against evil forces far stronger than she is. But in Bhathena’s skilled hands, Hunted by the Sky feels fresh and feminist. It’s a story about women who are both prey and predator, and an exciting start to a series that’s just beginning to stretch its legs.

Many high school basketball players dream of having the talent and the drive to make it to the next level—but what happens to those who actually do? Liara Tamani’s All the Things We Never Knew explores the lives of two young players and the bond they form both on and off of the court.

Carli and Rex are both star athletes with promising careers ahead of them. When Carli literally falls into Rex’s arms during a game, it seems like destiny that they should end up together. But as the two are swept into a whirlwind romance, it quickly becomes clear that their lives are more complicated than they first appeared.

Rex is ambitiously pursuing his goal of playing basketball professionally in the NBA, but Carli is determined to escape the sport permanently. While Carli grapples with her parents’ sudden, jarring divorce, Rex strives to connect with his father, who has become emotionally absent since Rex’s mother’s death. All of this leaves Carli and Rex struggling to hold onto one another.

In chapters that alternate perspectives between Carli and Rex, Tamani develops distinct narrative voices for each character that ring true. Readers will cheer for them, cry with them and occasionally—but passionately—question the choices they make. Tamani doesn’t avoid complexity; although few teens share Carli and Rex’s athletic gifts, every teen has made a mistake and hurt someone they love, and Tamani’s willingness to let her characters make these mistakes too will endear them to readers all the more. Raw and honest, All the Things We Never Knew is a slam dunk.

Margot lives with her mom in a run-down apartment. They’re barely getting by; there’s never enough food or heat, and forget about love. After she finds a photograph from her mother’s younger days, Margot becomes obsessed with trying to learn about her mother’s past. Why did she leave Phalene, the small town where she grew up? Why won’t she talk about it?

Burn Our Bodies Down takes off when Margot goes to Phalene to unravel the fabric of her life, starting with a devastating fire and the death of an unidentified girl who happens to look just like Margot. Add in a grandmother who seems loving but who’s definitely hiding something, a tangled ancestral mystery and a heaping dose of brimstone, and you’ll only have scratched the surface of Rory Power’s fast-paced, unnerving thriller.

Burn Our Bodies Down is a tightly woven tale of intergenerational trauma and abuse that maps out a truly poisonous family tree. The novel’s earth-shattering suspense builds to a resolution that will leave readers unsettled in the best way.

Sirscha Ashwyn is convinced that earning a place as the queen’s spy will finally transform her from an orphan with no past into a warrior with a purpose. But when a deadly encounter with shamans results in the death of her best friend, Saengo, Sirscha is shocked to discover the incredible power within herself—power that reveals itself by bringing Saengo back to life. Together, Sirscha and Saengo are thrown into the midst of a sprawling clash among kingdoms and magical powers. Their path leads them into the Dead Wood, a forest possessed by spirits and ruled by the mysterious and ancient Spider King.

Lori M. Lee’s Forest of Souls plunges readers into a fast-paced narrative and captivates with an expansive, lore-filled world that juxtaposes lush fantasy with horror and violence. Thiy, a continent home to creatures both mundane and magical, is as sociopolitically complex as our own world. The obstacles Sirscha and Saengo must confront there reflect the internal challenges they face: Bloody battles and terrifying spirits go hand-in-hand with fear, prejudice and loss.

Lee’s pacing propels the story relentlessly forward as she explores themes of identity, confidence and sisterhood. The revelation of Sirscha’s magical power ultimately forces her to question everything she believes about her loyalties and her values, and Lee isn’t afraid to be as honest about how she depicts her characters’ failures as she is in celebrating their moments of triumph. Readers will be hooked by Forest of Souls’ appealing fantasy narrative, but it’s Sirscha, a girl from nowhere who, against all odds, learns to recognize her power and worth, who’ll win their hearts.

Seventeen-year-old Lou has always been drawn to the grand but empty house just across the causeway from her own home—so drawn, in fact, that when she discovered an open window in the house’s library, she went in and made herself comfortable. When the house’s owners, the Cardew siblings, return for the summer of 1929, they invite Lou into their circle and introduce her into to their intoxicating, glamorous world. But what lies hidden beneath the opulent surface of their lives? In a moment when Lou is feeling hemmed in by the pressures of life in her small Cornish town—pressures to grow up and settle down—her summer with the Cardews may be just what she needs to find out what she really wants.

Middle grade novelist Laura Wood’s first YA novel is dazzling in every way, starting with its gorgeous prose. From Lou’s small and plain but bustling family home, to the luxurious quiet of a Sunday afternoon at the Cardew house, to the glitz of one of their many Gatsby-esque parties, Wood creates atmospheres that readers can dive into headfirs. Lou’s perspective—smart and capable but a little naive and utterly in awe of the new world she’s suddenly part of—enables readers to get swept up in it completely, with no sense of pretense or feeling that we’re stuck on the outside, looking in.

Lou’s relationships with the Cardew siblings—Lou and Caitlin quickly form a fast friendship, while she and Robert develop the best kind of budding attraction, masked by constant barbs and banter—bring these larger-than-life characters into sharp focus, making them just as grounded and human as Lou herself.

Tinted with an undercurrent of magic, A Sky Painted Gold will resonate with readers who love the glamour of The Great Gatsby or Jane Austen’s sharp, will-they-won’t-they romances and fierce female friendships, or with any reader who has ever longed to step into a life grander than their own, even just for a moment.

The last thing Andromeda remembers is entering her cryo’tank, ready to sleep through the hundred-year journey across the stars to a new planet. Along with her mother, a prominent scientist, Andra is part of a small group making the journey. But when Andra wakes up, she slowly puts together the horrifying truth: She’s been asleep for a thousand years, not a hundred.

What’s more, she’s stranded in a society that worships her as a goddess and has completely lost her society’s deep understanding of technology. It’s clear to Andra that Zhade, the young man who woke her, has his own agenda, but Andra hopes that if she follows him, she can scrounge up enough still-functioning tech to get back to Earth. For lack of any better option, Andra accompanies Zhade to the crumbling city of Erensed, where her precarious divine status and Zhade’s complicated relationship with the leader of Erensed make it difficult for her to move freely and collect the parts she needs. More disturbing discoveries will force Andra to reckon with her past, change her assumptions about the present and rethink her future.

Lora Beth Johnson’s ambitious debut novel, Goddess in the Machine, showcases a thrilling plot, colorful side characters and a world constructed with remarkable attention to detail. Johnson’s vision of how society, technology and language could be transformed in the next century and a millennia from now is thoughtful and inventive, yet the urgency of Andra’s plight never gets lost in the tech.

Sci-fi fans familiar with authors such as Christopher Priest and Isaac Asimov may see a few of the plot’s twists and turns coming, but Johnson’s pacing is perfection, and the payoffs of various reveals are satisfying. Andra is a smart and sensitive heroine who’ll leave readers eager to see what awaits her in the next volume of Johnson’s epic science fiction saga.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Lora Beth Johnson discusses the futuristic English in Goddess in the Machine.

Malik is a refugee. Karina is a princess. Both long to escape the circumstances of their lives. They’re set on a collision course when Malik makes a deal with the power-hungry spectre that kidnaps his little sister: He must kill Princess Karina to ensure his sister’s safe return.

Unbeknownst to Malik, however, Karina is also on a deadly mission. Her relationship with her mother, the queen, hasn’t been the same since the deaths of her father and beloved sister in a fire; now her mother’s only remaining heir, Karina finds the pressure to live up to her sister’s example, to be the perfect future queen, unbearable.

When the queen is assassinated on the eve of the empire’s Solastasia festival, Karina embarks on a dark quest to resurrect her, but in order to complete the spell, she must obtain the heart of a king. With no other surviving members of the royal family, Karina sets her sights on the winner of a series of competitions held during the festival—competitions from which an unlikely champion, a refugee named Malik, is emerging.

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin is the lush debut novel from author Roseanne A. Brown, who was born in Ghana and immigrated to the United States as a child. It’s a supernatural love story inspired by West African folklore and dripping in political commentary and modern parallels. Border wall? Check. Police raids? Check. Class warfare and dishonest governments? Check and double check.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Roseanne A. Brown shares how she felt when she learned her book was going to be published.

Brown places Karina and Malik front and center, each chapter alternating between their perspectives. As they uncover long buried secrets and reveal hidden cruelties in their world, Brown raises the stakes of her storytelling far beyond the typical YA fantasy-romance, exploring the ways in which we all have a responsibility to right the wrongs of injustice—and the tools to do so.

In this first book of a planned duology, Brown digs in to world building right away. Ancient sorcerers, shadowy spirit creatures and venerable deities doesn’t even begin to cover it. Every page is packed with cinematic detail and symbols that evoke the Pan-African diaspora, from a mischievous griot who mesmerizes passersby with clever storytelling to decorative masks depicting patron deities that adorn the palace walls. Brown effortlessly transports readers to the vibrant world of the Ziranian empire.

Even more impressive, however, are Brown’s characters, who serve as grounding forces that keep her tale from getting bogged down in its own arcana, no matter how fantastical. Malik is a refugee, but not just a refugee. He’s self-conscious around the other competitors, who hail from far more privileged backgrounds, and worries constantly that his status as a refugee will be revealed, endangering him and his family. But he’s also a skilled storyteller who’ll do anything to protect his family. Similarly, Karina is a princess, but not just a princess. She’s a musician who longs to escape the confines and expectations of royal life and is still processing the traumatic loss of her father and sister.

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin is an ambitious epic of political justice cleverly wrapped in the trappings of a love story. It’s so skillful and effortlessly accomplished that it’s hard to believe it’s Brown’s first book.

It’s summer, and Sydney Reilly is on the verge of turning 16. She’s also certain that she’s on the verge of some indefinable “IT,” something big that will help her cross the mysterious bridge from girlhood to womanhood. As she says, “I didn’t know what IT was exactly, just something large, something that would change everything.” But Sydney isn’t sure how she’s going to find or experience “IT,” now that she’s being forced to spend her summer away from all her friends in Seattle.

Instead, she has to spend the summer with her mother, the once-famous movie star, Lila Shore, at her sumptuous mansion in San Francisco’s exclusive Sea Cliff neighborhood. Sydney is exhausted by Lila’s drama-laden life and over-the-top lifestyle; she’s especially irked when she meets creepy Jake, the latest in Lila’s seemingly endless string of beaus.

But Sydney falls in love with San Francisco, and if there’s one thing to be said for Lila’s mercurial brand of motherhood, it’s that Sydney has a lot of freedom to explore the city on her own—which is how she meets Nicco and begins a relationship that will unexpectedly change all of their lives forever.

In some ways, Girl, Unframed reads like a true crime novel, with excerpts from an a criminal trial evidence list that open each chapter. Sydney’s first-person narration also seems to suggest that the book itself is her testimony about the lead-up to a terrible crime. There is, in fact, a crime (actually more than one) at the novel’s center, but the most interesting elements of Sydney’s story are more cerebral and emotional.

Sydney’s experiences in San Francisco—with Jake, with the builder next door to the mansion, with her best friend from back home, even with the elderly frequenters of the nearby nude beach—help her construct a new and sometimes disturbing sense of what it means to be a woman in the world: It often means being looked at but not seen. This introspective novel offers a perceptive examination of a young woman’s journey, not to the life-changing “IT” she imagined, but to a hard-won understanding of the persistant contradictions that still govern how women are perceived, particularly when it feels like the eyes of the world are upon them.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Girl, Unframed author Deb Caletti explains the true crime that inspired her new book—and introduces the real-life role models for the dog who plays a critical role in Sydney’s story.

Sasha Bloom never really fit in at school, preferring to interact with her classmates from behind the safety of her camera lens. Mostly, Sasha spent time with her single mom; it had been just the two of them for a long time. But then came the massive earthquake and her mom’s death. With nowhere else to go, Sasha is taken in by grandparents she barely knows and brought home to their wealthy town of Bayport.

After spending her summer in a blur of grief, Sasha starts junior year at Baycrest High and feels like she’s in a new world. For one thing, the popular kids are also great students, loading up their schedules with honors classes and tightly focused on the college application process. The school has tons of extracurriculars, like Art Club, that her old school didn’t—never mind that Sasha hasn’t picked up her camera since the earthquake. Her classmates seem eager to befriend her, but is that just because their families belong to the same country club as her grandparents? Despite her new surroundings, Sasha still feels pressure, judgment and insecurity as she navigates her conflicted emotions about her seemingly ready-made friends, her grandparents’ determination to set her on a more conventional path in life than her mother’s and her intense interest in a beautiful classmate, Lily. But how much of Sasha’s difficult feelings are the result of external influence, and how much are they the result of pressure she puts on herself?

YA author Robyn Schneider’s fourth novel is anchored by Sasha’s experiences of loss and confusion, but the wry wit and artistic sensibility of Sasha’s narrative voice make You Don’t Live Here shine. Schneider absolutely nails the way that making new friends can be full of awkward hopefulness and fear. Some of the assumptions that Sasha makes about other people, particularly with regard to her grandparents, are unfounded, while others, including her anxiety about revealing her bisexuality to her conservative family, will ring true for teen readers. You Don’t Live Here is at its most affecting when Sasha gains the courage to put her feelings about her sexuality into words, even if just to herself. Sasha’s journey to understand who she is and express it to others makes for a moving and authentic read.

In Zan Romanoff’s young adult novel, Look, Lulu Shapiro has mastered Flash, a Snapchat-like app that shares her perfectly edited life with 10,000 followers. But a racy Flash, meant to be private, accidentally goes public, and now everyone has seen Lulu being intimate with another young woman. Her classmates think she just did it for attention, but Lulu is bisexual and fears what sharing this truth about herself could mean for her popularity.

Then Lulu meets the beguiling Cass and her friend Ryan, a trust-fund kid refurbishing an old hotel. With no phones allowed at the hotel, Lulu experiences a social life less focused on perfectly edited images. For the first time, she feels like she can truly be herself—until an abuse of trust brings it all crashing down.

Like a feminist film studies class in book form, Look poses intriguing questions about agency and self-commodification. Anyone who has engaged in any form of content creation—even just photos on Instagram—will have a lot to chew on regarding the praise and scorn women experience based on how they depict themselves. Most importantly, Look is a timely demonstration of how women can be violated by imagery that is controlled by men.

The cast of characters is almost entirely teens, but older readers will take a lot from Look as well. Self-commodification hardly started with Snapchat, after all.