The best young adult thrillers & teen fiction mysteries.
The Bottom Line: An essential whodunnit for both YA and adult crime fiction fans. Karen M. McManus’ teen murder mystery is the perfect antidote to Netflix’s Riverdale, the Twin Peaks-meets-Archies mashup that never really feels set in high school. By contrast, McManus artfully sets up a believable single-setting high school atmosphere that feels inspired by […]
The Bottom Line: A sophisticated young adult novel that will appeal to all readers, regardless of age. The Dream Keepers stretches the idea of fantasy to its limits, incorporating a larger-than-life dreamland where anything can happen with a narrator that’s at once naïve and completely in charge. Mona and her friends are a comforting cast […]
The Bottom Line: Fans of Divergent and The Hunger Games will find plenty to love in this enthralling, fast-paced story filled with richly drawn characters and the injustices they face. A track star, Daniela Machado has the opportunity to escape the world she knows — the squalor, oppression and constant vigilance required to survive in […]
Academic overachiever Abbie Cooper Cooper is desperate to get accepted into Princeton University. But when a mysterious stranger threatens to expose the dark secret that could destroy her future, it’s only the beginning of a diabolical game with no limits—a game Abbie will break every rule to win.
The Bottom Line: With Robin Wasserman at the helm, it’s never too early or late for Halloween. This barnburner of a novel about intense obsession is a must-read. Halloween, 1991. A popular high school basketball star ventures into the woods near Battle Creek, Pennsylvania, and disappears. Three days later, he’s found with a bullet in […]
The next installment in Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series escalates the struggle between the growing rebel army and the blood-segregated world they’ve always known—and pits Mare against the darkness that has grown in her soul. Mare Barrow’s blood is red—the color of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into […]
Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free. Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear. It is in this brutal world, inspired by […]
The Bottom Line: Harry Potter fans will be spellbound by this high flying YA thriller about the hidden world of magic and the organizations that control it. Is Big Brother is always watching? Yes, and his name is Joshua. In the Roman Coliseum, Joshua, the CEO of a company of magicians called Sarras, presents his […]
Everyone Celaena Sardothien loves has been taken from her. But she’s at last returned to the empire-for vengeance, to rescue her once-glorious kingdom, and to confront the shadows of her past… She has embraced her identity as Aelin Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen. But before she can reclaim her throne, she must fight. She will fight […]
To say eighteen-year-old Farrah Higgins—or Digit—is good at math is a laughable understatement. She’s been cracking codes since childhood, and is finally at home with “her people” at MIT in Cambridge. Her talents are so off the charts that her laptop is under surveillance by both the CIA and an ecoterrorist named Jonas Furnis. So […]
