Best Young Adult Books

Grayson and Jameson Hawthorne find themselves on separate, dangerous missions — Grayson drawn into a high-stakes game that threatens everything his family built, Jameson on a globe-trotting adventure that tests the limits of his recklessness. A dual POV expansion of the Hawthorne brothers' world.

Still trapped as a mortal teen, Apollo journeys to Indianapolis to free a captive Oracle from the cruel emperor Commodus. Rick Riordan's second Trials of Apollo book deepens the fallen god's humbling, adding new allies and a chilling second member of the Triumvirate.

Carter and Sadie Kane discover they are descended from the most powerful magicians in ancient Egypt. When their father accidentally unleashes the chaos god Set, the siblings must master Egyptian magic fast enough to prevent Set from destroying the world — and find out why their family has been lying to them.

Set eight years after The Queen of Nothing, a new protagonist — Oak, the young prince of Elfhame — ventures into the north to recover a kidnapped human girl. What he finds is Suren, the former Queen of the Unseelie Court, living as an exile with a power she cannot control. A new duology in the Elfhame world begins.

In Verity, violence creates monsters — literally. Kate Harker is the ruthless daughter of the man who runs half the city by selling monster protection. August Flynn is a Sunai, a monster who feeds on souls — and who desperately wants to be human. When they become unlikely allies, the line between predator and prey disappears.

Charles Wallace, now fifteen, travels through time on the back of the unicorn Gaudior to change the course of history and prevent a nuclear war, while Meg participates from a distance through kything — a form of telepathic sharing.

Ibi Zoboi's lyrical, National Book Award–finalist debut. Fabiola Toussaint arrives from Haiti to join her cousins in Detroit, only to have her mother detained by immigration. Alone in a harsh new world, and guided by the spirits of Haitian Vodou, she must navigate love, loyalty, and an impossible choice.

Jace has disappeared — taken and bound to Sebastian Morgenstern — and Clary must go undercover to find him, pretending to join Sebastian while searching for a way to free Jace from the demonic tie that controls him. The stakes are higher than ever as Sebastian prepares to raise an army.

The prequel to The Hate U Give — seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter navigates early fatherhood, gang loyalty, and the decision of who to become in Garden Heights in 1998.

Orphaned Rose Campbell comes to live with her seven aunts and eight boy cousins, and her unconventional guardian Uncle Alec sets about raising her according to his progressive ideas about health, fresh air, and genuine education.

Six friends on a road trip to spring break. The RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere. A sniper pins them in place. Someone in the RV is the target — and someone knows who.

An orphan who can see the dead is summoned to a crumbling family estate where a wall divides the living world from a hungry shadow realm. V.E. Schwab crafts a hauntingly atmospheric gothic fantasy about belonging, grief, and the things that wait behind locked doors.

Glyndon Doyle arrives at Reinar University determined to start over. Killian Carson — cold, brilliant, and the undisputed ruler of campus — decides her fresh start belongs to him.

The conclusion of the Shattered Sea trilogy. As the High King's power threatens to crush the lands around the Shattered Sea, a young princess, a cunning minister, and the series' returning heroes are drawn into a war that will demand terrible compromises to win.

Will, an orphan boy at Castle Redmont who dreams of becoming a knight, is instead chosen as apprentice to Halt — the kingdom's most enigmatic and skilled Ranger — and must develop the arts of stealth, archery, and tracking to help face a rising evil threatening the kingdom.

Alina Starkov is on the run from the Darkling — the powerful Grisha commander who wants to use her light-summoning abilities to control all of Ravka. Seeking safety at sea, she instead discovers a new amplifier and a privateer named Sturmhond whose motives are far more complicated than they appear.

Bryon and Mark have been inseparable since childhood — more brothers than friends — but as they move into their mid-teens, Bryon begins to change in ways that will make their bond impossible to sustain.

Eighteen years ago, Bel Price's mother vanished without a trace. Now a true crime documentary crew arrives to revisit the cold case — and Rachel Price suddenly reappears, alive, turning everything Bel thought she knew about her family upside down.

Lima's Leoncio Prado Military Academy: the cadets live under brutal hierarchy, organize theft rings, and maintain codes of silence. When a cadet is killed, someone informs. The search for the informer consumes the novel. Vargas Llosa's debut—written at twenty-six—was burned publicly in Peru and made him internationally famous.

Sixteen-year-old Kaye has spent her childhood moving between cities while her mother plays small venues. Returning to New Jersey, she discovers the faerie world she glimpsed as a child is real — and she is more entangled in its politics than she ever knew. Dark, seductive, and morally complicated, Tithe established the template for Holly Black's faerie fiction.

Meg Murry must journey inside her brother Charles Wallace's cells to battle a cosmic evil called the Echthroi, accompanied by a Teacher named Blajeny and a strange creature called Proginoskes, in a quest that turns on the power of naming and love.

Country girl Polly Milton visits fashionable Boston and discovers that her plain, warm, old-fashioned values stand in refreshing contrast to the shallow vanities of city society — and later returns to prove her independence as a working woman.

The fourth Anne of Green Gables novel. Engaged to Gilbert but separated by his medical studies, Anne spends three years as principal of Summerside High School, boarding at Windy Poplars and winning over a town wary of newcomers — told largely through her letters home.

The Mortal War is over, but Clary and Jace's happiness is short-lived. Someone is murdering Shadowhunters and turning their bodies into weapons. As Jace struggles with dark visions that threaten his relationship with Clary, a new and terrifying enemy emerges — one whose connection to Valentine's legacy runs deeper than anyone suspected.