Conor O’Malley is having nightmares. Ever since his mother became sick with cancer, Conor has been struggling to keep his life going on as normal at home. His dad and stepmother live in another country, Conor and his grandmother don’t exactly get along, and the kids at school treat him differently. It all makes it very hard to be “normal” at home—or anywhere else. To tell anyone about the nightmares would prevent him from maintaining his illusion that everything is all right.

One night after the nightmare, a monster appears at his window—not the monster from his nightmare, but a different one. This monster wants something from Conor that he just cannot give. This monster wants the truth: Conor’s truth. And that truth is more frightening to Conor than anything else.

To say that A Monster Calls is a moving story about an adolescent boy facing a difficult time in his life would be like saying that Old Yeller is a story about a dog. Both are inadequate statements for conveying the depth of feeling these stories engender. Award-winning author Patrick Ness, working from an idea dreamed up by the late Siobhan Dowd, builds up Conor’s struggle in such a way that we as readers feel his pain and frustration in our very bones. This book is astonishing and heart-wrenching and miraculous all at once. Teen readers looking for the scary tale that the illustrations promise will be surprised at what can really be frightening in life—and it is not a monster calling your name in the middle of the night, as Conor O’Malley already knows.

Wren is heartbroken when her boyfriend Danny is killed in a car accident. Using supernatural powers she inherited from her mother, though she doesn’t yet completely understand them, Wren brings Danny back from the dead. She quickly realizes that what she’s awakened isn’t the real Danny, but something else entirely. Living Danny was a sweet, funny and humanly flawed boyfriend. Zombie Danny feeds off of nothing but Wren’s attention.

As Wren struggles with her emotional decision to raise Danny from the dead, a new boy arrives at her school. Gabriel somehow senses Wren’s secret and gets her to let her guard down enough to confide in him. Wren’s friendship with Gabriel allows her to begin to overcome her grief and see why what she did was so wrong.

Cold Kissis so much more than just another paranormal romance. Wren is a strong character readers will easily relate to, and her struggle to do the right thing is genuine and heartfelt. She’s learning about true love, including the difficult lesson that sometimes what you really must do is let go.

Amy Garvey’s young adult debut is an intricately woven story, full of complex characters and emotional descriptions of love and loss. Readers of all ages will appreciate Wren’s growth throughout the novel. She experiences a believable transformation—one that transcends the paranormal aspects of the novel. Cold Kiss is a valuable addition to the genre of paranormal teen romance.

Seventeen-year-old Karou is an unusual girl. She speaks foreign languages without any effort, is handy with a knife and sports naturally blue hair. By day, she is an art student in Prague, but during her off hours, she runs questionable errands for Brimstone, the father-like demon who raised her. Traveling through portals to the underground markets of Paris and Marrakesh, she buys human and animal teeth, which Brimstone strings together into necklaces in his magical shop. Despite her downworld upbringing, Brimstone is the only family Karou has, so when she is suddenly locked out of the shop, she resorts to dangerous tactics to get back home. Then she meets Akiva, an angel in the middle of an otherworldly battle. Fated and forbidden, Karou and Akiva struggle to be together when their sides are at war.

Laini Taylor’s beautifully written novel features a well-drawn cast of characters. From Karou’s serpent-bodied nanny to her arrogant actor ex-boyfriend, each character is alive in the reader’s imagination. Even the city of Prague feels personified, as Taylor describes it: “The wind carried the memory of magic, revolution, violins, and the cobbled lanes meandered like creeks. Thugs wore Mozart wigs and pushed chamber music on street corners, and marionettes hung in windows, making the whole city seem like a theater with unseen puppeteers crouched behind velvet.”

The first in a trilogy, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a romantic, incredibly imaginative and gripping story; readers will find themselves heavily invested.

Don’t call 19-year-old Hannah Ward a ballerina, a term reserved for the stars of the prestigious Manhattan Ballet. As a dancer in the company’s corps de ballet since leaving home at 14, she’s a true bunhead, dedicating nearly every waking moment to her profession. Hannah’s world is an unusual mix of constant jealousy, as every girl tries to outperform the others for coveted soloist positions, and fierce loyalty forged out of years of devotion together. To remain competitive and to maintain their gaunt appearances, the dancers practice to near exhaustion before their three to four performances per evening and succumb to unhealthy diets that only lead to fatigue and injuries later.

Despite the anxiety in her shared dressing room, Hannah feels confident that she can advance as she enters the fall season. But when puberty strikes, causing her breasts to grow, she faces the impossible task of losing her curves. An even bigger obstacle—named Jacob—also enters the scene. Hannah, who’s never even been kissed, can only manage to spend a few precious hours with Jacob, and she begins to see how little of the city, and the world, she’s experienced outside of ballet.

In Bunheads, her eye-opening debut novel, former New York City Ballet dancer Sophie Flack gives readers a compelling look at the rigorous life of ballet dancers. Will Hannah forfeit everything, including Jacob, to take her dance to the next level, or can she give up the only life she’s known, and even her friends, to start over in the real world? Either path requires sacrifices in this unforgettable journey of self-discovery.

Life: An Exploded Diagram, the new novel from award-winning British author Mal Peet, is a reminder that labeling a work as “YA” (young adult) is often, well, arbitrary. Peet may put young people at the center of his fiction, but his work is so spectacular that it can—and should—be savored by readers of all ages.

This far-reaching, ambitious historical novel begins toward the close of World War II on the day Clem Ackroyd is born, after a German pilot flies a plane low over his mother’s house on March 9, 1945. By the time Clem, a good student who wants to go to art school, is a teenager, his father has gone to work for Gerard Mortimer, whose family owns Bratton Manor. Picking strawberries on the Mortimer farm one summer, Clem finds himself attracted to the Mortimer daughter, Frankie, even though, as Clem’s friend Goz puts it, “She Mortimer You Ackroyd.” Clem and Frankie begin meeting secretly. But just as readers might be expecting a traditional Romeo and Juliet crisis to unfold, Peet steps back from his canvas to paint a compelling picture of the historical landscape that envelops the young lovers—in this case, the Cuban missile crisis.

The random violence of war and terrorism threads through this compelling novel; but Peet weaves it in so seamlessly and relentlessly that when the crisis does come for Clem and Frankie, it is unexpected and devastating. It is not until decades later, when chance and violence once again play a part in their lives, that we fully begin to understand the depth of their connection.

If you’d like to give a young person this novel, do yourself a favor: Read it first!

Traditional versions of the Minotaur legend often portray Ariadne as a tragic figure: After helping her lover Theseus escape the labyrinth, she is later abandoned on an Aegean island. Tracy Barrett’s retelling of the legend, Dark of the Moon, turns this image on its head. Barrett’s Ariadne is a powerful but socially isolated priestess, and the Minotaur who lives under her palace is no monster, but instead her beloved, deformed brother Asterion. Ariadne is confident in her hereditary role of She-Who-Will-Be-Goddess and the future it will bring her. But when she meets Theseus and his fellow tributes, she finds friendship for the first time, learns about the world beyond her palace and begins to question the role she might play in determining her own path.

Barrett both incorporates and undermines well-known aspects of her story, giving new interpretations to Ariadne’s ball of thread, Theseus’ interaction with the Minotaur and the reason for black sails on the Athenians’ returning ship. Details of the complex politics and rituals of her reimagined Krete abound, as do references to other people and places of Greek mythology. She does not shy away from violence, but the bloodiness always serves to establish the characters and setting and is never gratuitous. Chapters are alternately narrated by Ariadne and Theseus, allowing the reader to gain insight into the actions, thoughts and motivations of both characters. In the end, this tale leaves both its characters and its readers questioning the very nature of how stories are told and retold. Fans of mythological retellings will relish this fresh, feminist interpretation of the tale of Ariadne and Theseus.

Trillions of miles from Earth, a massive spaceship, the Empyrean, hurtles toward a goal they only know as New Earth. On board are dozens of families, their children destined to settle and repopulate New Earth with the next generation. For 43 years the Empyrean has traveled without seeing any of the other ships that are traveling the same journey.

All that is about to change.

Traversing a nebula that disrupts their communication and navigation tools, the Empyrean catches sight of a second ship, the New Horizon. But the messages coming from the ship are confusing and contradictory. Are its inhabitants friends or foes? Soon the two ships are engaged in a disorienting power struggle, wrapped up in the desire to perpetuate the next generation.

At the center of the conflict are young lovers Kieran, the untested heir apparent to the role of Empyrean's Captain, and Waverly, who loves Kieran but still has doubts about becoming a wife and mother at age 15. When Waverly and the rest of the Empyrean's girls are taken aboard the New Horizon, these two must determine whether they can trust anyone—even each other.

On the surface of things, Glow is a cracking good science fiction tale, full of action and nonstop plot twists. It's also, however, an exploration of philosophical and historical concepts. The New Horizon's philosophy and way of life—down to the sermons proclaimed by their leader, Anne Mather—are inspired by Puritan principles. Meanwhile, as indicated by its name, the Empyrean abides by a more rational approach. Reason vs. faith—how will this conflict play out when the future of the human race is at stake? Readers will have to wait for the next installment in the tension-packed Sky Chasers trilogy.

Willa lives a quiet life with her mother, stepfather and two stepsisters. She sings in the school choir and doesn't mind that her sisters can afford expensive vacations and tennis coaching while she hesitates to ask for voice lessons. Besides, she has a secret coping strategy: When she feels stressed, she cuts herself, letting the pain wash away the difficult feelings.

Willa's contentment is shattered when a phone call brings frightening news: Her birth father, Dwayne, has killed his current wife and two of their daughters and is on the run with the third—and may be making his way toward Willa's family next. Fearing for their lives, her family hides with friends and in motel rooms, watching the news and waiting for an attack. When the immediate danger is resolved, Willa finds herself drawn to her mother's hometown. She tells her family that she wants to attend the funerals of her father's victims, but her real motivation is to seek answers to questions that threaten to overwhelm her. Why has her mother never spoken of the time before she met Jack, Willa's stepfather? What family and friends did she leave behind? What might have caused Dwayne to solve his problems with violence . . . and how much like him is Willa herself? As secrets of her mother's former life are revealed, cracks also begin to appear in the perfect facade of Willa's blended family.

In Blood Wounds, Susan Beth Pfeffer's simple, direct writing style keeps her difficult subject matter accessible, and Willa's first-person narration allows the reader a window into her evolving emotions. The concluding scenes neatly tie together Dwayne's past, Willa's present and her family's future in an endingthat leaves the reader feeling satisfied and hopeful.

Having tackled amnesia and the afterlife in previous novels, Gabrielle Zevin turns to the future in All These Things I’ve Done. Unlike many of the proliferating dystopias that have taken over young adult literature, this glimpse at the year 2083 is funny and romantic as 16-year-old Anya Balanchine looks back at one wild year in the heart of New York City.

In a Prohibition-like age in which speakeasies dole out illegal chocolate and caffeinated beverages, Anya is just trying to keep her family out of trouble until she turns 18. With her notorious chocolate crime boss father and former CSI mother dead from “mafiya” hits, an older brother with mental challenges from an unsuccessful hit, an overlooked genius little sister and a grandmother kept alive as guardian with a host of machines, Anya has become the real head of the household.

Her life becomes even more complicated when her ex-boyfriend is poisoned by bars of her family’s black-market chocolate—and she’s the prime suspect. To make matters worse, her brother has gotten involved in the family business, and Anya can’t resist new student Win Delacroix, whose father is running for District Attorney. With her head and her heart constantly at odds, feisty Anya must decide what’s right for her in the face of unusual family and relationship dynamics.

Anya’s predicaments are reason enough to like this witty story, but her amusing narration, complete with notes to the reader, adds to the enjoyment. Although she doesn’t understand the significance of such sites as “Little Egypt,” a club that used to be a museum with a grand collection of Egyptian art, or such dated expressions as “OMG” from the era of her grandmother (born in 1995), readers will appreciate the humor. Just like chocolate, the story’s dark bitterness is sweetened by Anya to form a delicious treat.

Harlan Coben’s young adult debut might be a new direction for the internationally best-selling author, but Shelter treads familiar and much-loved terrain. Coben has written 10 books on wisecracking sports agent Myron Bolitar, and the end of the latest, Live Wire, left the Bolitar legacy in the hands of Myron’s nephew, Mickey Bolitar.

Mickey resembles his uncle in many ways, including his 6-foot stature and basketball wizardry. Unfortunately, the two don’t get along—but after Mickey’s parents vanish from his life (his father dies in a car accident; his junkie mom admits herself to rehab), he’s stuck with Uncle Myron as a guardian.

Despite Myron’s experience in digging himself out of danger, Mickey has no interest in seeking help from his uncle when things start to get weird at his new high school. His sort-of-girlfriend vanishes and the crazy Bat Lady who lives in a dilapidated mansion sends him a disturbing message: His father is not dead. Mickey is soon sneaking into strip bars, questioning tattoo artists and chasing down the suited man who seems to be following him—all in search of the truth.

In true Coben spirit, Mickey acquires two ragtag sidekicks in the course of his search: Ema, a sharp-tongued Goth girl, and Spoon, a geeky guy whose easy access to security tapes and personnel files secures his place on the team.

Shelter has all the twists and turns of a Coben classic, but on a teen scale—including run-ins with the hottest girl in school and confrontations with a brutish bully. Full of mystery that stretches back through Mickey’s and Myron’s past, Shelter will turn more than a few young readers into excited Coben fans.