Paolo Bacigalupi’s debut YA novel (and Printz Award winner) Ship Breaker imagined a future America dependent on scavengers for survival after global warming and peak oil have irrevocably altered the landscape. The Drowned Cities is not a sequel per se, but a “companion” volume packed with new thrills and provocations.

After 10 years, China has given up trying to negotiate peace among the warring factions in the United States, pulled up stakes and gone home. The remaining Americans are engrossed in infighting and the recruitment of children to serve as soldiers: a sure ticket to a brutal and short life, but for many kids the only choice available.

Refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to escape this fate, until they find a bioengineered, half-human fighting creature named Tool who was wounded and left to die. Mahlia sees an opportunity to save Tool and “make him into her loyal fighting dog.” But Tool has fought for so long he’s begun to see the futility of battle, and may shift his loyalty at any time. When a crisis strikes, Mahlia must decide between Tool, who may be her ticket to safety, and Mouse, who once risked his own life to save hers.

The Drowned Cities is an adventure story, a thriller and a sharply drawn fable about the state of the world today. It succeeds handily on all three fronts. Bioengineered man-dog border guards may not be with us today, but child soldiers, sadly, are, and they become harder to ignore when they’re here at home.

Bacigalupi does a masterful job of letting the action propel the plot and the scenery tell the larger story. The White House is never identified by name but described so we can recognize it, despite the fact that half of it has been shelled to smithereens. K Street in Washington, D.C., is now the K Canal, winding through the ruins of a once-great city. The perception of foreign aid by those receiving it is captured here as well: “Mahlia could imagine all those Chinese people in their far-off country donating to the war victims of the Drowned Cities. . . . All of them rich enough to meddle where they didn’t belong.”

The Drowned Cities is dark, and the violence is unrelenting, but Bacigalupi allows for a hopeful conclusion—possibly the riskiest move in this entirely cutting-edge novel.

Sixteen-year-old Odile first meets the famous Doctor Henry Jekyll in a Paris zoo, where she has tried a magical spell on the monkeys—with disastrous results. To distract the doctor from her bloody business, Odile promises to procure elephant steaks from her butcher boyfriend. The Franco-Prussian War is raging and meat is scarce, so the wealthy are dining on slaughtered zoo animals while Odile sells dead rats for those desperate enough to eat anything.

When Odile worries that her witch powers will not save her younger brother from a degenerative eye disease, she turns to the gracious doctor for help. But she isn’t done experimenting, and in Doctor Jekyll’s laboratory, she creates a magical potion that transforms her brother into a monster. What she doesn’t know is that the shrewd doctor has been spying on her, and that his interest in her well-being springs not from charity, but from his fascination with magical transformation. Thus begins a retelling of the famous Doctor Jekyll’s story, as seen through the eyes of a poor orphan girl, who unintentionally gives the doctor the resources he needs to become the dangerous Mr. Hyde.

Best-selling author James Reese has created an enigmatic story. Odile’s first-person narrative is engaging and the descriptions of 19th-century Paris are historically authentic, despite the novel’s fantastical bent. Readers needn’t be familiar with the original Robert Louis Stevenson text to understand the message of this fresh take: that to mess with human nature welcomes disastrous and often deadly results.

“Have you ever noticed how minutes or hours seem to speed up sometimes, but other times they go really slow? And how you remember things that happened a long time ago and it was like only yesterday? Ever think that maybe it doesn’t just seem that way? That time really does speed up and slow down?”

Ted Kampfert, a homeless musician in Elizabeth Hand’s vibrant new novel, Radiant Days, addresses these questions to two young creative types in the early morning hours of October 9, 1978. The idealistic and passionate young woman, Merle, has been kicked out of art school and is nearly homeless herself, spending her time painting graffiti art with the tag “Radiant Days.” She lives in Washington, D.C.

The boy, named Arthur, is a talented teenage poet. He, though, is living in 1870, in France. But on this magical night they are brought together, on a journey which, like the novel itself, explores the meaning and making of art, and the intensity of being young.

It was no accident that Hand chose Arthur Rimbaud as her time traveler in this complex and passionate depiction of youth. Hand herself discovered the poet when she was a teenager, and in her author’s note she tells us that Arthur Rimbaud may be considered the “patron saint” of young poets, as he wrote most of his poems before he turned 20, and many between the ages of 16 and 18.

But even more compelling here is the way Elizabeth Hand captures Merle’s edgy, nervous energy and the 1970s setting. As Ted Kampfert reminds us, sometimes it really does seem like things from long ago only happened yesterday.

Mirabelle has no memory of her parents, who died in a fire shortly after she was born. As her godmothers prepare to celebrate her 16th birthday, the desire to visit her parents' graves overwhelms her, and she secretly boards a bus for Beau Rivage, the town of her birth.

Once there, she falls in with a set of very unusual characters. Blue, a boy her age with ferociously blue hair, tries to scare her off, while his older brother, Freddie, welcomes her and offers her a place to stay in their family's casino hotel. Their friend Viv, in the meantime, is constantly comparing her beauty with that of her stepmother, Regina. As Mira spends more time in Beau Rivage, she learns that teenagers born there—including herself—are each fated to live out the role of a character in a traditional fairy tale. Viv is Snow White, and her on-again, off-again boyfriend is the Huntsman—but what roles do the increasingly attractive Blue and Freddie have? And what about Mira herself? Could her role have anything to do with the odd rules her godmothers have enforced over the years, like their refusals to let her date or their prohibition against sharp objects?

Kill Me Softly focuses on Mira's quest for her own identity and her struggle to understand the sometimes incomprehensible world around her. She wants to make her own decisions, but how can she control her situation when every choice seems to be predetermined? The answers Mira finds are sure to satisfy readers seeking a contemporary retelling of fairy tales, a story with a strong female protagonist or a suspenseful romance.

Beatrice Prior is about to leave her prior life behind. She loves her family and their tightly controlled life, but individuality and freedom are calling. In Beatrice’s dystopian Chicago, every 16-year-old must choose their “faction” and devote themselves to that group for the rest of their lives. The factions, which correspond to specific characteristics, work to encourage specific virtues: Candor (chosen by the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful) and Erudite (the intelligent). When the time comes for Tris (as Beatrice renames herself) to pick her faction, she opts for adventure over predictability. That decision calls everything into question, from who her family really is to what lurks behind the facade of this new, allegedly perfect society—and why being labeled “divergent” must be kept hidden at all costs.

With Divergent, debut author Veronica Roth has created a startling future world on the verge of war. The adventures Tris goes on with the members of the Dauntless faction are breathtaking in their danger, and the dizzying heights and terrors leap right off the page. Her relationships are fraught with worry; since everyone is jockeying for inclusion and not everyone will make it, who can she really trust? You'll be up all night with Divergent, a brainy thrill-ride of a novel. And good news—it’s the first book of a planned trilogy.

Willo lives in a future in which the planet has been plunged into a near-constant, bitter winter. The government controls the scarce electricity and food for most people, but Willo lives with his family on a snow-covered mountain, catching what food they can, waiting for the short spring thaws to come. Willo doesn’t mind their harsh life; he’s proud of his hunting skills and pays no mind when his dad talks about the comforts of the past or the hope he sees in the future. But one day, coming home from a hunt, Willo sees his family taken away, and for the first time he truly is on his own.

After the Snow is a beautifully written novel about the kind of life that might await us if winter never ended, but more than that, it’s a book about a teenager discovering the world and his place in it. While Willo’s father fears he’s been hardened by the harsh realities of his childhood, Willo is actually full of innocence, shown in his pure desire to help a girl he finds along his path, and even more so by the constant guilt that haunts him over a baby bunny that died after he killed its mother. He’s tough when battling the elements or any other cruelties nature throws at him, but having been raised by kind people, he is completely unprepared for the cruelty of men.

Author S.D. Crockett’s only misstep is her desire to make the novel into something it’s not: a mystery. The setup of the mystery comes too late, the reveal comes too quickly, and all the questions that surround it are overshadowed by the book’s brilliantly drawn characters: Willo; Mary, the girl he rescues who seems so breakable in the wild yet taps into a strength that astounds him in the city; the strangers he encounters who are willing to share what little they have; and those he thought were friends who are ready to use untold brutality against him.

Set in a sparse, cold landscape, with hardships befalling its protagonist at every turn, After the Snow is surprisingly hopeful, and sure to keep you engrossed through the final page.

Molly Horan is a grad student at The New School getting her MFA in writing for children and young adults.

March brings two delicious literary and entertainment treats for teens (and, let’s face it, the rest of us). Not only is there the release of The Hunger Games on the big screen, there’s the U.S. publication of Froi of the Exiles, the new fantasy novel by Australian author Melina Marchetta.

Marchetta won the Michael J. Printz Award for Jellicoe Road in 2009. Her first fantasy novel, Finnikin of the Rock, garnered Australia’s Aurealis award. Froi of the Exiles is Book Two of the Lumatere Chronicles; like Finnikin, it is an absorbing adventure that brings Marchetta’s well-conceived fantasy world to life.

The scrappy, hot-tempered Froi takes center stage here. In Finnikin, Froi was always getting into trouble, and had a hard time telling right from wrong. As Book Two opens, three years have passed. Froi is now 18 and a trained protector of the royal family: Finnikin, Queen Isaboe and Princess Jasmina (their two-year-old who, if truth be told, rules them both).

Froi has been mentored and nurtured, but still struggles to control his hot-headed reactions. Ready or not, the moment to prove his true mettle has come. He is the only one who can undertake a secret mission to the neighboring kingdom of Charyn, a strange barren place under a mysterious curse that prevents any of its women from bearing children. In Charyn, Froi will find himself tested in ways he could not begin to imagine, and readers will get to the breathtaking finish eager to spend more time in Marchetta’s richly imagined universe.

In Froi of the Exiles, Marchetta has once again created a complex, engrossing world of adventure, intrigue and romance, with strong characters and compelling storylines. Books this good aren’t just for teens.

The premise of this intriguing and intense novel centers on Gabby Gardiner, who wakes up bruised and broken in a hospital room, the apparent victim of a drunk-driving accident in which she was the intoxicated driver. Thrown from the car, Gabby has no memory of the accident or the events preceding it. Her parents, friends and authorities question her repeatedly, and it becomes clear that no one believes Gabby has amnesia; they just think she is covering for her boyfriend, Billy, whose criminal record forces him to lie low. One more misfire and Billy will be sent to juvenile rehab. Suddenly, Gabby is thrust into the hands of professionals (recommended by Billy’s deceptive mother) who have to help her overcome her “drinking problem” so that she can get back to her old life, the life where she was popular and pretty. But Gabby’s denial of the truth is causing her more harm than the accident that got her into this mess.

Gabby’s voice is bitter and cynical, yet compelling and heartbreaking. Raised in the uber-wealthy “Three B’s” (Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Bel Air), Gabby’s parents are self-indulgent wannabes who pay little attention to her. Her shopaholic mother buys expensive make-up to hide Gabby’s bruised face. Her father, a depressed drunk, can’t even face his daughter in the hospital. It’s not Gabby’s artistic talents that ignite pride in her parents, but her sudden luck at snagging the most eligible boy in school. Gabby says, “Being Billy Nash’s girlfriend is the only thing I’ve done since I turned twelve years old and got into Winston School that comes close to fulfilling her destiny as mother of a daughter she can stand.” It’s no wonder that insecurity and loneliness drive Gabby’s poor decision-making, but readers will cheer for her when she finally recognizes her own worth.

In the year 2129, the United Nations’ Permanent Peace and Prosperity governs the world and 96% of the global population allows robots to do their work and lives on the social minimum, a government allowance comparable to two million dollars a year today. With the rise of boredom, entertainment is what really rules the planet. Only celebrities with the most media play are deemed eligible for professional celebrity status and employment beyond the social minimum. Celebrities’ children, however, must prove their own celebrity status, mostly by “styling” attitude and emotions, and as a result, special schools exist to prepare them for celebrity potential exams.

In this brilliant adventure, Printz Honor-winning author John Barnes balances real science with humorous jibes against today’s obsession with social media, including swapping out the “infodumps” of hard science fiction for periodic “Notes for the Interested,” which can be skipped (but why miss the fun?). He also knows how to tell a thrilling story. Susan Tervaille and eight of her fellow classmates at one of the elite prep schools have little chance of raising their recognition scores until Derlock, whose lawyer father has become famous for getting violent offenders freed due to media interest, comes up with a scheme to make them even more famous than their parents.

The plan—to hide out on a spacecraft that facilitates transportation between Earth and Mars—is interrupted by an accidental explosion that leaves only the nine teens and an illegally “geneered” horton (yes, from Dr. Seuss’ elephant-like creation) alive. They can’t communicate with the outside universe, and they have a limited window to approach Mars or spend two years in orbit. When classmates suddenly find themselves in other life-threatening situations, Susan begins to wonder if the “accident” was part of Derlock’s plan. Fighting for survival while disconnected from the media, the teens begin to realize the importance of feelings over styling, teamwork over status and education over entertainment. Hang on, readers, for one wild ride.

It’s a longstanding tradition at Mount Washington High School—on the last Monday in September “The List” is posted all over school. It names the prettiest girl, and the ugliest girl, from each grade. Who writes The List? No one seems to know. It’s apparently an honor secretly passed down from one student to another, and it’s gone on for as long as anyone can remember. To add a touch of legitimacy, each copy of The List is emblazoned with a line drawing of Mount Washington High, from an embossing stamp stolen decades ago from the principal’s desk.

When beautiful Candace is named “ugliest” in the sophomore class, with an annotation that “beauty isn’t just skin-deep,” she is devastated and wonders what could have gone wrong. When lovely Bridget is named “prettiest” in the junior class, along with a note about “what a difference a summer can make,” she resolves to continue her zealous diet and maintain the thin physique she managed to starve herself into over the summer. The stories go on, in alternating chapters that reveal the humiliations and triumphs of each of the eight girls on The List.

Siobhan Vivian’s latest novel for young adults tackles the beauty myth head on. Readers will find themselves relating to each character’s struggles—and The List does bring challenges to all who appear on it, “pretty” and “ugly” alike. Labels can be damaging, even when they may appear to be positive.

Half cautionary tale and half whodunit, The List will keep readers turning pages in the hopes of finding out who is behind The List, and what will become of the girls it singles out.

Great student, skilled actor, loyal boyfriend, good son and brother: Ben Bright’s talents can take him wherever he wants to go in life. When he decides on the Army Reserves instead of college, his friends and family are crushed and afraid. Insisting he’s not going to war, Ben is nevertheless deployed to Iraq, and ends up being hit by a makeshift bomb. When his family gets a call telling them he has a brain injury, everyone in Ben’s life feels the changes in their own. They rally to help him, but, unable to communicate or remember who anyone is, Ben is trapped inside his injured frame.

Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am is based on author Harry Mazer’s experience as an underage enlisted soldier. In relatively few pages, the book (co-authored by Peter Lerangis) discusses many of the issues surrounding injured veterans, yet never feels busy or cluttered. Ben’s best friend and girlfriend become crucial to his recovery process, though they are devastated by his inability to remember them. His parents’ marriage suffers under the accommodations they must make to get Ben well and home again, only to find he feels safer in the hospital. His younger brother’s autism uniquely equips him to draw Ben out of his shell; while everyone else in his life is suffering emotionally over what has happened (and acting out, adding to Ben’s discomfort and confusion), Chris is distant by nature and content to simply talk about memories of his big brother. If he does so long enough, without interruption, Ben’s memories might be led back to his home and family, a crucial step on the road to healing.

Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am tells a bold war story without being overtly political or taking sides; as such it’s a great choice for discussion groups. It’s also an exciting, intelligent, fast-paced read that should appeal to both avid and reluctant readers, providing gripping action and food for thought.

Midway through Double, the novel’s narrator—at this point beginning to fear (rightfully) for his life—thinks about his new family, “Maybe none of them were what they seemed. Maybe it wasn’t just me.” The stark contrasts between appearances and reality, between expectations and intentions, form much of the thematic backbone—not to mention the suspenseful framework—of Valentine’s mind-bending thriller.

Our 16-year-old narrator, known only as “Chap,” is on his last legs, in a homeless shelter, locked up for fighting, when he’s recognized by one of the case workers. She shows him a missing persons photo of Cassiel Roadnight, a boy who could be Chap’s twin. Seduced by visions of Cassiel’s comfortable home, of a family who misses and longs for him, Chap eases, almost without thinking about it, into Cassiel’s life.

The two boys look so much alike that Chap fools almost everyone. But as he settles into Cassiel’s small town and starts learning more about Cassiel’s disappearance, he begins to realize that he might be in as much danger as Cassiel once was.

Marked by a complex revenge plot and multiple hairpin turns, enriched by Chap’s recollections of the one person he’s ever loved, Double is both a relentlessly thrilling suspense novel and a wrenching character study. Author Jenny Valentine has won multiple awards in her native Great Britain, and it’s about time that U.S. readers learn more about her. With Double, Valentine’s second novel to be published in the United States (after Me, the Missing, and the Dead), she should find the wider audience she so well deserves.

In this sweet, albeit heart-wrenching debut, 16-year-old Brie Eagan dies from a broken heart just after her boyfriend declares he no longer loves her. Devastated and bitter, Brie ends up in a funky pizzeria, an odd limbo, with a few other souls who aren’t ready to move beyond the hereafter. There she meets the charming and sarcastic Patrick, who helps her navigate the afterlife and accompanies Brie as she spies on the living. But when she discovers painful truths about her friends and family, Brie’s actions become her undoing. (At one point, she crashes a Halloween party and terrifies her ex-boyfriend.) When she unexpectedly meets a long-lost friend, Brie has the opportunity to return to her old life for one day—but at a great cost. As she reluctantly moves through the five stages of grief, all the while trying to piece together the fractured lives of those she left behind, Brie discovers that life is too short and too precious to deny those who love you.

Set against the backdrop of a misty San Francisco, this tragic tale of a life cut short never borders on morose (as one could expect) but is rather hopeful and celebratory. Brie’s first-person narration is often light and funny. She’s a fan of Kate Winslet and cheesy '80s songs. She and Patrick banter like Sam and Diane or Chuck and Blair, which only turns up the heat on their suppressed feelings and intensifies the swoon-worthy romantic twist at the end. Despite all this, the author still manages to tackle tough issues such as teen suicide and social isolation that will strongly resonate with the target audience.

With The Catastrophic History of You and Me, her impressive debut offering, Jess Rothenberg shows great promise as an author worth following.