Born under a full moon at midwinter, 18-year-old Saba and her twin brother Lugh live in a dry and desolate wasteland left behind by the Wrecker civilization. Their Pa learned how to read the stars, but that skill can’t save him when the King’s henchmen, high on a drug called chaal, kidnap Lugh—killing their father in the process. Saba’s not sure if “eether Pa was readin the stars wrong or the stars was tellin him lies.” But she does know that she has to rescue Lugh—at any cost.

Spare storytelling plus one very tough heroine equal nonstop adventure in this atmospheric dystopian debut novel, told in Saba’s primitive dialect. As the plot unfolds, Saba braves fighting warriors, sandstorms fierce enough to uncover abandoned Wrecker cities in seconds and other undesirable surprises. Sometimes the real battle, though, is with her own guilt and the responsibility she feels to her family, and even to what’s left of humanity. Aiding Saba on her quest are her tagalong younger sister (whom she can’t seem to leave behind—no matter how hard she tries), a renegade group of female revolutionaries and the quick-witted—and frustratingly handsome—Jack. Fans of the Hunger Games and Chaos Walking trilogies will welcome this exhilarating new series. 

In the fictional town of Ayala, California, where orange groves and old Spanish missions dot the landscape, 15-year-old Angie Arnaz is confiding her troubles to Felix, a saint of questionable origin who lives in her church basement.

Angie’s mother has abruptly left her stepfather without any indication why and insists that Angie move out of their home too. When Angie doesn’t budge, her mother threatens to call the police. Angie says, “I’m mad but I’m sort of enjoying how nuts it’s driving her.” Meanwhile, 19-year-old Jesse Francis has just returned home from fighting in Afghanistan and has enrolled in Angie’s high school. Angie is the only one who doesn’t treat him like a freak or a victim. Against everyone’s advice, the two quickly form a romantic relationship. Despite their age gap, Angie really loves Jesse’s maturity and sensitivity. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know how to handle his violent outbursts or erratic behavior. Suddenly her desire to save him is at odds with her desire to save herself.

In What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay, Amanda Cockrell has created an engaging, sharp and endearing protagonist who speaks to the reader like a best friend. Angie is instantly likable, as are supporting characters such as goofball Noah, lovable and wry Grandpa Joe and St. Felix, Angie’s stand-in shrink who doles out the tough advice, even if it isn’t what she wants to hear. Angie’s voice will resonate with anyone facing difficult choices and wondering if anyone is listening.

When a group of orphans in Calcutta form a secret society, they vow to protect one another as a family would. Little do they know how much that pledge will demand of them later. As the children prepare to “graduate” from the orphanage to the real world, Ben learns he has a twin sister, Sheere, whose grandmother separated the two at birth to protect them from a force of evil that travels under the name Jawahal. Ben entreats his fellow society members to help secure Sheere’s safety and find out what Jawahal wants. Welcome to The Midnight Palace.

Author Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Shadow of the Wind) has created a dark and unforgiving world for these children to navigate. The stench of raw sewage seems to leap off the page, and Jawahal is a truly frightening and violent character. But this bleak backdrop is warmed by the love Ben feels for his friends and newfound family, and by several small mysteries that they must solve along the way. Even the perilous final showdown with Jawahal takes the form of a game: Ben must reach into boxes, hoping to withdraw the names of his friends to win their release . . . but one box contains a poisonous snake.

The story’s conclusion is explosive, literally and emotionally, and deeply moving. Fans of Zafón will love this book for its rich storytelling and co-mingling of fantasy and reality, and new readers will quickly become fans after visiting The Midnight Palace.

It’s been said that there’s only a certain amount of luck in the world, and some people have more of it than others. For high school junior Nick Brandt, his wealth of luck is his birthright. He has it all—good grades, a best friend who could be an honorary brother and a perfect relationship with his parents. Not only that, but Nick is well on his way to finally getting the girl of his dreams, Eden Reiss.

Until that one little phone call.

Unfortunately, Nick doesn’t have the foresight to just let it ring, and on a random Tuesday, his life changes forever with a simple lift of a receiver. Nick does not want change, because he’s a lucky one, and change is an intruder come to disrupt his pristine world. But that one phone call sends Nick’s dad into silence as secrets about his life are slowly revealed, and Nick is positive that a) things will never be the same again and b) his lucky life was false to begin with. As Nick fumbles around and redefines “angst” for teenagers everywhere, he must discover what it really means to be The Lucky Kind.

Alyssa B. Sheinmel, author of The Beautiful Between, has captured the sinfully annoying whine of a teenager who can’t stand someone messing with his perfect life. Nick might kick and scream the entire way, seemingly regressing from a junior hotshot to a toddler in mere pages, but in the end, teen readers will be touched by the unexpected friendship and change of heart that will help him put his life back together again.

Joy has just moved from California to Utah; for a devout Mormon teenager, her social potential has multiplied exponentially, but the conformity is crushing. As she says, “Even now that I live in a town where it’s hard to tell where belief ends and culture begins—I don’t like the culture, but I do like the belief.” This may explain why she finds Zan so compelling. Staunchly individual, gorgeous and quirky, Zan seemed to care for Joy too, but their brief romance blew up when he quickly got his GED and transferred to a California college a year early. Now Joy is deflated, devastated and irritated by Zan’s ex-friend Noah, who keeps trying to help her. Needing closure, and lacking a ride, she persuades Noah to take her on a road trip to Zan’s school, a situation she saw in a prophetic dream, so it has to be a good idea, right?

Back When You Were Easier to Love tells this story in jump-cuts and flashbacks, letting events unfold like a mystery. Were Joy’s friends right to dismiss Zan, or was he really all that? Might there be someone better for her in her midst, who shares her beliefs and eschews mocha java for the virtues of Sprite? Author Emily Wing Smith may indulge Joy’s pining for her lost love a bit too long, and while she represents Mormon culture thoughtfully, other groups sometimes read as stereotypical, like the “cardboard cutouts” Zan gripes about. But this novel has far too much charm to be undone by these minor quibbles. After all, how many books in recent memory have featured personal revelations taking place while in the presence of a Barry Manilow impersonator? Get yourself a decaf caramel steamer and settle in for a good time.

Author Gary Schmidt has won many fans with his luminous, heartfelt novels, including two Newbery honor titles, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and The Wednesday Wars. His moving new book, Okay for Now, is a companion to the latter novel. It follows Holling Hoodhood’s friend, Doug Swieteck, who moves to the small town of Marysville, New York, which he at first calls “The Dump,” in the summer of 1968.

Like Holling, Doug faces challenges at home. His father, who keeps up a litany of complaints about his new job at the Ballard Paper Mill, is stern and abusive at home. Doug and his middle brother, Christopher, have learned to watch out for the moments where their dad’s hands might “flash out.” His older brother, Lucas, is fighting in Vietnam.

But in his first days in the new town Doug begins to find some unlikely friends, including a girl named Lil Spicer, who befriends Doug and gets him a job doing Saturday deliveries for her father’s deli (five dollars a Saturday, plus tips). There are also Mr. Powell and Mrs. Merriam at the town library, who prove to be unlikely allies in Doug’s journey from a lonely, embittered outsider to a kid who is fully part of his community.

Doug’s repeat visits to the library are rather a surprise to his brother—and to Doug himself. Doug is not a reader—far from it. The library offers a different kind of magic. When Doug wanders up the cool marble staircase to the second floor, he discovers a square table with a glass case on it. And in that glass case is the most terrifying and beautiful thing he has ever seen: an Arctic tern illustrated by John James Audubon. So terrifying and beautiful that Doug just has to try his hand at drawing it, under the patient guidance of the mild and friendly Mr. Powell.

Before long, Doug finds himself solving problems: how to draw feathers of a tern so they look as if they are “plunging against the air like all get-out” and how to draw the “stupid foot of the stupid puffin . . . who was trying not to drown.”

As the summer ends and Doug begins to endure the challenges of being the new eighth grader at Washington Irving Junior High School, his newfound abilities to solve problems as an artist begin, very slowly, to spill over into the problems in his life. In the process he is able to convert enemies into allies, to find a way to help his brother, Lucas, pick up the pieces of a new life, and to make something precious, yet broken, almost whole again.

Like all Gary Schmidt’s novels, this is a rich and multi-layered story that weaves together themes of redemption, creativity and possibility. Okay for Now reminds us that the best children’s literature is not just for young readers, but for all of us.

The course of true love, as Shakespeare wrote, never did run smooth, and nowhere is that truth more apparent than in Holly Goldberg Sloan’s debut novel, I’ll Be There. From the moment Emily—wracked with nerves while (badly) singing a solo at church—spots a scruffy but undeniably handsome boy in the back pew, her heart is his. And Sam, quiet and mysterious though he is, seems to really like her, too.

Sam and his near-mute little brother, Riddle, are taken aback by the generosity, kindness and normality of Emily’s family. After all, the only lessons they’ve learned on the road with their violent, thieving father are, according to Sam, “if you cared about something, it would be taken away. If you stood up for yourself, you would be beaten down. If you spoke out, you would be silenced.” The two boys have learned to keep secrets, stay out of the way and look after each other. So when they’re forced to go on the move again, can Sam find his way back into a normal life—and real love?

Holly Goldberg Sloan might be a first-time novelist, but she’s an experienced writer and director of many popular family films. No surprise, then, that I’ll Be There has a cinematic feeling, rapidly shifting setting and perspective in a free indirect style that helps reinforce the novel’s themes of interconnection. Are coincidences meaningful? What motivates people to help others, become friends, fall in love? Can those who have been deeply damaged seize a fresh start? Emily and Sam’s journey is a rocky one—literally so, for Sam—but it’s also romantic, heartfelt and deeply satisfying.

Shine is the story of a hate crime, or so it seems. Cat’s dear friend Patrick has been savagely beaten and left in a coma, and everyone in town knows it’s because he’s gay. But no one, including the sheriff, knows what actually happened—so Cat makes it her mission to find the attacker herself. This is serious stuff, and author Lauren Myracle doesn’t shy away from the tough emotions her characters face: “Why does God let bad things happen?” Cat wonders in anguish. “Could he not see her, or did he not care?”

Beyond the strife and violence, Shine is also a Southern story, a country story, refreshingly regional amid a sea of novels set in suburban Anywhere, USA. Black Creek, North Carolina, is a tiny village of 500, idyllic in setting but isolated, and with more than its share of poverty and problems. Myracle gets in all the details: the beauty of the woods and the comfort of home cooking, but also the drug use that threatens the community, and the embarrassed anger Cat feels at being thought of as a hillbilly by the people in town.

In becoming a small-town sleuth, Cat not only solves the mystery of the night her friend was attacked, but also confronts pain from her own past she hasn’t yet dealt with. She has an essential sweetness—and a bit of sass—that make her a winning main character. But the novel’s ending, while satisfying, has the main characters perpetuating a lie, which feels strange after so much truth-seeking. All in all, though, this is an engaging story with characters who really come to life.

As Ruby Red begins, Gwen Shepherd is just an ordinary 16-year-old living in London with her mother, brother and sister and her eccentric extended family in a “posh” house full of paintings and antique furniture. She attends St. Lennox High School with her best friend, Lesley.

But on closer inspection, “ordinary” may not be exactly the right word to describe Gwen. First, she just happens to be able to see and converse with James, a young local ghost. (“Like so many ghosts, he refused to accept that he wasn’t alive anymore.”) Second, although the family tradition predicts that her cousin Charlotte is meant to be the special one, destined for magic, something extraordinary is about to happen to Gwen.

One day in the school cafeteria, Gwen finds herself overcome by the strangest sensation: a dizzying feeling, a bit like swooping down from the top on a roller coaster ride. And suddenly she finds herself transported to the past. As Gwen discovers, it is she—not Charlotte—who has inherited the time-travel gene that runs through her family lineage.

Gwen has a lot of ground to make up. She must learn the rules of time travel—and fast, too—because Gwen and her time-traveling counterpart, a boy named Gideon, are at the center of a desperate quest to track all the previous time travelers to close the Circle so that the Secret of the Twelve will be revealed.

An enormous success in Germany where it was first published (the English version has been translated by Anthea Bell), Ruby Red ends on a cliffhanger, with many of its mysteries unresolved. Teen readers will be eager to find out what happens to Gwen and Gideon in their next adventures, to be revealed in the second book of the trilogy, Sapphire Blue, followed by Emerald Green.

McLean’s old life was normal, back before her mother left her father for another man. But after their sticky divorce, her dad, eager to get away, took a Gordon Ramsay-style job reorganizing failing restaurants that necessitated a long-distance move every few months. Against her mother’s wishes, McLean went with him. In three years she’s gone to four high schools in four suburbs, and each time she’s used a new name and adopted a different personality to go with it. But now they’ve landed in Lakeview, and thanks to the charming characters at the restaurant and the smart, quirky boy next door, this temporary home feels like a real one.

Readers will root for the likable McLean as she meets people and softens her defenses. As a narrator she’s authoritative and self-aware, sounding almost like a movie voice-over—not surprising, maybe, since Dessen’s first two books were made into the movie How to Deal. A nice subplot that has McLean and her friends building a model of their town gives her the opportunity to make poetic insights about community, family and home. Dessen’s confident style makes What Happened to Goodbye a smooth and entertaining read.