“I tell this story because I can,” writes Saundra Mitchell in the author’s note of her new novel, All the Things We Do in the Dark. Seeking to avoid “adding one more fictional rape to a world that uses it far too often for entertainment,” Mitchell retells a traumatic event from her childhood, adding elements of fabulism to create All the Things We Do in the Dark.

The first thing everyone notices about Ava is the scar on her face. When she was 9 years old, a man lured her into the dark and raped her. But Ava’s a junior in high school now, and she knows what to do: She avoids strangers, follows her mother’s rule of never going out by herself and, most of all, keeps her emotional baggage neatly folded in mental boxes with strong, secure locks—until she finds a dead body in the woods, that is.

Ava instantly connects with the dead teenager, whom she calls Jane. Jane haunts Ava at every turn, leading Ava to take impulsive chances as she begins to break all of her own rules. But even as Jane appears to Ava in increasingly disturbing guises, Ava’s regular life goes on. Her best friend, Syd, becomes distant, and she finds herself falling for her classmate Hailey. Soon Jane’s secret can no longer stay hidden, and Ava must make a choice. Will she claim her buried past or let it claim her?

Like the worms in the soil of Ava’s visions, All the Things We Do in the Dark will crawl into readers’ viscera and stay under their skin.

Rico Danger has a name straight out of an explosive action movie, but her life is hurtling off a cliff in ways that are all too ordinary. Overstretched at her job at a gas station to try and keep a roof over her family’s heads, she’s perpetually one crisis away from the edge. The “good” school her mom insists she attend is unlikely to lead to college afterward, and friends are in short supply because she’s hard-wired to keep people at arm’s length. So when a customer at the gas station buys what might be a winning lottery ticket, it sets a whole new life in motion for Rico. But is a Jackpot really the answer to all her problems?

Nic Stone (Dear Martin) structures Jackpot like a romance with a twist of mystery—Rico enlists rich kid Zan to help her track down the ticket holder, and their shared quest leads to mutual attraction—but it has so much more going on underneath its surface. Although Rico’s circumstances are difficult, her attitude doesn’t help; she isolates potential allies by assuming the worst about them as a defense mechanism. Stone writes some chapters from the perspectives of inanimate objects (the winning ticket, a wood stove, some high thread count sheets, etc.), which offers a glimpse beyond Rico’s tight focus and also adds some surreal charm.

When a medical crisis sends her family into deeper debt than they could have imagined, Rico throws her already flexible morals aside and makes a risky final attempt to get the winning ticket, but fate has a twist in store. There’s a happy ending of sorts, but it’s not one readers will see coming.

Jackpot is a high school romance (senior prom receives its due) and also a kind of fairy tale (for all her complaining about thrift-store clothes, Rico still manages to end up in the perfect dress for any occasion). But Jackpot tells other stories, too, about how we judge one another based on race and class, and the ways those most in need sometimes cut themselves off from help that’s hiding in plain sight.

Ali Chu is the only Asian student in her rural Indiana high school. Accustomed to her teacher’s blatantly racist remarks and her friends’ constant misunderstandings of her Taiwanese culture, Ali has learned to survive in a small town by not standing out. She is thrown for a loop however, when Chase, another Taiwanese American student, moves to town. Everyone at school thinks that because Ali and Chase are both Asian, they should become a couple.

Determined not to succumb to stereotype (or to her parents’ strict rule that she only date Chinese boys), Ali tries to resist her attraction to Chase, but as she gets to know him, their relationship moves quickly from friendship to something more. Just as quickly, however, Ali’s mother finds out and forbids Ali from dating Chase. While the two surreptitiously continue their relationship, they begin to discover long-hidden secrets about their families, forcing them to wonder about the circumstances that brought them together in the first place.

Gloria Chao’s beautifully heartbreaking second novel (after 2018’s American Panda) intersperses Ali and Chase’s contemporary story with the historically set Chinese folktake “The Butterfly Lovers.” Chao develops both primary and secondary characters well, particularly Ali’s friend Yun, who is just beginning to explore his sexuality.

With authentic teen voices that will help readers easily connect with the characters and their stories, Our Wayward Fate is an excellent choice for readers who love a mix of contemporary and historical fiction.

In 2008, Zimbabwe is in transition, and politics permeate the everyday lives of its people. Students attend class without their teachers, who are protesting and striking. Business people face rapid declines in profits. Landowners who benefitted from the land-reform program of 2005 defend the land redistribution.

Fifteen-year-old Shamiso is grieving the loss of her father, a journalist and outspoken critic of Zimbabwean politics, whose recent death in a mysterious car crash turned Shamiso’s world upside down. Gone is her stable life in England; now at a boarding school in Zimbabwe, Shamiso isolates herself socially, nursing her anger and resentment.

But her new roommate, Tanyaradzwa, who is suffering in her own way with a secret cancer diagnosis, draws out Shamiso’s feelings. As her friendship with Tanyaradzwa deepens, Shamiso’s defenses break down. But how will she cope when she discovers that this relationship, too, may end in devastating loss?

The concise chapters in Hope Is Our Only Wing move back and forth in time, focusing mainly on Shamiso’s experiences, but italicized interludes intermittently reveal other characters’ perspectives, so that readers encounter multiple voices and experiences. This unconventional format results in a powerful mosaic of personalities and situations and creates a vivid portrait of a nation and society in flux.

Questions of justice and reform serve as a powerful backdrop to this personal story of a young woman’s growth into hope and connection. Written in spare and evocative prose, this memorable taste of Zimbabwe will leave readers thirsty for more of its kind.

To her family and friends, Kiera Johnson is popular, a good big sister, an honors student, talented at math and likely to attend historically black Spelman College after she graduates from predominantly white Jefferson Academy, where she too often feels singled out as the “voice of Blackness.” But unbeknownst to everyone in her real life, Kiera is also Emerald, the developer of SLAY, one of the hottest new virtual reality role-playing games.

Tired of playing video games in which the only characters of color are villains or dwarves, and weary of encountering racial slurs hurled at her by other players’ avatars, Kiera developed SLAY to create a place where black gamers could play safely online. In the world of her game, black culture is not only respected but is actually the source of players’ power.

But when a black teenager is shot to death over a SLAY-related dispute, Kiera begins to question everything, from the possibility of her own culpability in the player’s murder to whether, as one particularly insidious online troll suggests, the game’s Afrocentric focus and referrals-only membership system discriminate against gamers who are not black.

Debut novelist Brittney Morris admirably melds Kiera’s real-life and online worlds in Slay while illustrating the diversity of experiences and philosophies within the black community. Morris intersperses vignettes that explore the varied experiences of black gamers around the world and what SLAY means to them amid detailed depictions of online gameplay and Kiera’s rapidly escalating real-world crises. 

Readers will cheer for Kiera as she slays her own demons, and they’ll come away from the novel desperately wishing SLAY were more than the product of Morris’ imagination.

When high school senior Clara, who is a longtime volunteer in her private school’s library and the creator of miniature lending libraries all around her Tennessee town, accidentally stumbles onto a memo about a list of newly “prohibited media” at her school, she knows exactly what to do. She pulls all the books listed in the memo off the library’s shelves, wraps them in white construction paper covers, downloads a personal library management app to her phone and starts running an underground lending library out of her locker. 

Students who borrow Clara’s books are invited to spread the word and encouraged to fill up their books’ blank covers with their reactions. They’re also asked to leave the administration in the dark. Before long, Clara’s secret library begins attracting unexpected patrons. Who knew that the star of the football team had a soft side, or that the popular rich kids had problems of their own? 

As word about Clara’s locker library travels rapidly through the hallways, the effects of the ban begin to spread. What will become of her English teacher’s plan to include some of the now-banned books in her syllabus? Will Clara’s undercover activism support or hinder her chances of winning the coveted Founders Scholarship and a full ride to college? What significance will the comments left on the illicit books’ covers turn out to have? And what role do books have in supporting readers when times are tough?

Teen activists and literature lovers alike will cheer for Clara and her friends and classmates as they advocate on behalf of their favorite books. Best of all, Suggested Reading will surely inspire teens to pick up commonly challenged young adult classics, such as Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War.

The Larkins’ family history starts with a shipwreck off the coast of Maine in 1885. Fidelia Larkin, the only survivor of the sinking of the Lyric, persevered, founded the town of Lyric, Maine, married and started her family there. “Their love was our beginning” is Lyric’s unofficial slogan. 

Generations later, Fidelia’s descendants are adrift in wreckage of a different sort. Violet’s younger brother, Sam, has just tried to take his own life, and Violet’s parents have sent her to stay with her uncle in Lyric for the summer so they can focus on Sam’s recovery. Desperate to shed her own self-destructive tendencies, Violet shaves her head and tries to disappear. But she soon discovers that, although her disappearing act won’t help her brother, reviving their lifelong dream of finding the wreckage of the Lyric just might.

Debut novelist Julia Drake has drawn all her characters richly, easily enabling readers to identify with Violet, Sam and their struggles. The seaside setting is vividly evoked, and readers will feel fully transported to the small town of Lyric. Violet and Sam undergo dramatic transformations as they begin to heal, redefining both their identities and their relationship with each other. Their journey together is the novel’s greatest strength. 

Inspired by Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Drake’s enthralling debut doesn’t shy away from the big stuff. The Last True Poets of the Sea explores themes of identity, mental health, romance and family with grace and gravitas.

The summer after her first year of college is going to be great for Juliet Milagros Palante. An internship with her favorite feminist author means spending the summer in the hippy, happening city of Portland, Oregon—far away from her home in the Bronx. She’s packed the inhalers she needs to control her asthma, her girlfriend, Lainie, has promised to call, and her extended family sends her off with a traditional Puerto Rican dinner.

But the summer doesn’t quite turn out as planned. Juliet’s mother won’t talk to her after Juliet comes out, Lainie isn’t returning her messages, and the feminist scene in Portland is more complicated than Juliet expected. Juliet doesn’t know what preferred gender pronouns are, what it means to be polyamorous or why activists of color sometimes distrust their well-meaning white friends. Is her mentor, Harlowe, who champions positivity toward women’s bodies, really the heroine Juliet thinks she is? How can Juliet call herself a queer feminist when she isn’t sure what those words mean anymore? Where does religion—whether it’s Juliet’s Catholic faith or any other—fit in to feminist ideologies? Who is Juliet, anyway, and who does she want to become?

Set in 2003, Juliet Takes a Breath is both a coming-of-age story and a guidebook to an emerging world of intersecting identities. Author Gabby Rivera takes readers through an unforgettable summer of libraries, science fiction writing workshops, hair-styling parties, women’s studies and self-discovery.

Editor’s note: Juliet Takes a Breath was originally published in 2016 by Riverdale Avenue Books.

“It’s an ordinary summer day, the day that Jimmy Killen dies and comes to life again.” So begins Almond’s tale of young Davie’s journey through the streets of Tyneside town and up the hill on the other side.

It’s not a long walk, yet it feels like an epic pilgrimage for all of the people he meets along the way—a priest who questions the existence of God, little girls drawing fairies and monsters and angels in chalk on the pavement, a one-legged man with a hawthorn crutch, friends, footballers, a bonny lass, a handsome murderer, and the dead man come to life again.

Death is in the air, as it often is in Almond’s novels, where the line between the dead and the living is blurred. Often, too, the loveliness of the world is celebrated: “Ah, the mountains, Davie, and the sun and the rain, the greenness of the grass beneath me feet, the yellow in the hedges, the blueness of the sky above me head, those distant jagged islands in the blue, blue sea,” Paddy Kelly says to Davie.

Not many writers for young readers take on so much in a short novel—death and life and what’s the point of it all, anyway. If this novel covers similar ground as previous novels, just as Davie covers the same ground of Tyneside town he has walked many times, Almond views these elemental themes from a new and exciting perspective.