Best Young Adult Books

Following the events Under the Mountain, Feyre adjusts to life as a High Fae and discovers that the Spring Court is not the safe haven she believed.

Kaz Brekker and the Dregs execute an increasingly complex series of heists and cons across Ketterdam to reclaim what was stolen from them and destroy those who betrayed them.

Maya Angelou's first autobiographical volume, covering her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, her rape at eight years old, her years of traumatized silence, and her eventual recovery through literature and language.

Set in Nazi Germany, a young girl's love of words and storytelling sustains her through air raids, poverty, and death — narrated by Death itself.

Clary and Jace travel to Idris, the Shadowhunters' hidden homeland, where Valentine seeks the power to destroy all Downworlders — and a revelation about Clary's true identity changes everything she thought she knew.

As the King's Champion, Celaena Sardothien is supposed to eliminate his enemies — but she has been secretly protecting her targets while uncovering shocking truths about her own identity and the darkness at the heart of Adarlan's power.

Harry Potter's second year at Hogwarts is shadowed by a mysterious voice in the walls and a series of petrifications tied to the legend of a Chamber of Secrets. When the Heir of Slytherin opens the Chamber again, Harry must confront a darkness rooted in the wizarding world's oldest prejudices.

Celaena travels to the fae kingdom of Wendlyn to master her powers, while a new threat — the Valg, demonic beings from another world — descends on Adarlan with the King's devastating backing.

Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen helps her Jewish best friend's family escape to Sweden during the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1943, in Lowry's Newbery Medal-winning novel based on true events.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter witnesses the police shooting of her childhood friend Khalil — and must navigate the collision between her Black neighborhood and her predominantly white private school as she decides whether to speak up.

In the dystopian future of Panem, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her sister's place in a televised death match between children.

Nesta Archeron and Cassian are trapped in a brutal training regimen together, slowly discovering that their mutual antagonism masks something much harder to fight.

Feyre returns to the Spring Court as a spy, and the war against Hybern that has been building since the first book finally arrives in a climax that reshapes Prythian.

Pippa Fitz-Amobi reopens the supposedly closed case of Andie Bell's murder as her senior capstone project — and discovers the truth is far more dangerous than anyone expected.

After her defiant act in the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen finds herself the symbol of a brewing rebellion — and is forced back into the arena for an unprecedented Quarter Quell.

Harry's fifth year is defined by institutional persecution, Voldemort's growing power, and the devastating loss of the person who most represented his connection to his parents. The Ministry of Magic has declared war on the truth, and Dolores Umbridge has come to Hogwarts to enforce it.

Seven children in a small Maine town band together to fight an ancient evil that preys on their fears — and are called back as adults to finish what they started.

Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson discovers he is the son of a Greek god and must prevent a war among the Olympians by recovering Zeus's stolen master lightning bolt.

An abandoned girl raises herself in the marshes of North Carolina and becomes the prime suspect when a local man is found dead.

In a brutal Roman Empire-inspired world, a Scholar girl goes undercover as a spy in the empire's most elite military academy while a soldier is tested to become the next Emperor.

Bryce Quinlan and Hunt Athalar navigate the aftermath of the Gate explosion while uncovering a rebel network that links their world to Maas's wider universe in a shocking crossover finale.

Melinda Sordino begins ninth grade as a social pariah after calling the police at an end-of-summer party — haunted by a secret she cannot speak about and slowly losing her ability to function.

Holden Caulfield, expelled from his fourth prep school, wanders New York for three days before a breakdown — narrating his alienation with an intensity that defined adolescent literary voice.

Sixteen-year-old cancer patient Hazel Grace Lancaster meets Augustus Waters at a support group and falls in love — while both of them confront their mortality with wit, books, and each other.