Best Young Adult Books

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 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.

In a brutal, medieval village far from the Giver's Community, the orphaned girl Kira is spared from abandonment because of her gift for embroidery, and is put to work restoring the Robe that tells her people's history.

Sandy and Dennys Murry — the 'normal' twins — accidentally travel back to biblical times, to the era just before Noah's flood, where they encounter nephilim, seraphim, and Noah's family in a story about choice, mortality, and the nature of good and evil.

Bri, sixteen, is the daughter of a legendary rapper who died before he made it. She wants to be the greatest rapper of all time — and writes a song that goes viral for all the wrong reasons.

Rusty-James wants to be like his older brother, the Motorcycle Boy — the legendary, color-blind, near-deaf gang leader who has returned to their town like a ghost from a more vital era.

An orphaned soldier discovers she harbors a rare power that could end a centuries-long darkness threatening her country — and draws the attention of a mysterious and dangerous commander.

Claire, a young Birthmother in Jonas's Community from The Giver, escapes after her son is taken as a Receiver, and spends years pursuing him across a vast geography in the fourth and final book of the Giver Quartet.

Brian Jackson, the first in his family to go to university, arrives at Bristol in 1985 determined to join the University Challenge quiz team and fall in love with the right girl. A funny and tender novel about class anxiety, intellectual aspiration, and the specific humiliations of being young.

Deviant King's unanswered questions start to resolve — but Aiden King's answers raise darker ones. The Elites' grip on Elites Academy tightens, and Ellie begins to understand that the world she was placed in has rules she was never told about.

Gregory Reeves grows up among Latinos in East Los Angeles, serves in Vietnam, becomes a lawyer in San Francisco, and tries to outrun the poverty and violence of his childhood. Allende's first novel set in North America — a bildungsroman structured around the myth of self-invention and a portrait of the Latino community in California.

Matty, a boy from Gathering Blue, now lives in Village — a community of outcasts and refugees — as it begins to close itself off to newcomers and the surrounding forest becomes deadly.

Amory Blaine moves through Princeton and the First World War and a series of love affairs toward a nebulous self-awareness. Fitzgerald's debut novel made him famous at twenty-three and introduced the Jazz Age to American literature.

Juliette has escaped the Reestablishment and found safety at Omega Point, a refuge for those with supernatural abilities. But safety has its own demands, and when Warner — the Reestablishment commander she fled — reveals unexpected depths, Juliette's certainties begin to unravel.

Colin Singleton has dated nineteen girls named Katherine and been dumped by all nineteen. A child prodigy now between his last Katherine and his uncertain future, Colin and his best friend Hassan embark on a post-graduation road trip to Gutshot, Tennessee, where Colin tries to derive a mathematical theorem to predict the rise and fall of romantic relationships.

Two college friends in Dublin become entangled with a married couple, and the relationships that develop test every assumption both women hold about themselves.

Ellie has always avoided the Elites — the four students who run Elites Academy with brutal authority. Now Aiden King, the most dangerous of them, has decided she is his. She has no idea why. She is not sure she wants to find out.

The boys of Plumfield are now young adults, facing real-world choices about career, marriage, and moral character, while Jo March has become a famous author and must cope with the peculiar burdens of literary celebrity.

Amelia Lovett grows up in a Catholic enclave of North Belfast from the 1960s through the 1990s, in a family shaped by proximity to violence — the novel follows her through fifteen vignette chapters, each presenting a distinct moment in the Troubles and its effects on ordinary family life.

The sequel to Delirium follows Lena as she survives in the Wilds and infiltrates the resistance movement, alternating between 'then' and 'now' chapters that build toward a shocking revelation about the man she thought she lost.

Travis, a troubled teenager sent to live with his uncle in rural Oklahoma after an incident with his stepfather, finds unexpected purpose in writing — and in watching Casey, a young woman who trains horses, attempt to tame the unrideable Star Runner.

Fifteen-year-old twins Sophie and Josh Newman discover that their employer Nick Fleming is actually Nicholas Flamel — the legendary medieval alchemyst — and are drawn into a centuries-old battle between immortal figures from history and mythology over the Book of Abraham the Mage.

Thomas finally has the answers he's been seeking — who WICKED is, what the Trials were for, and what the Flare does to its victims. But the cure may cost more than anyone imagined, and WICKED's final phase has only just begun.

A young woman living in a converted church with her deeply dysfunctional family falls for a boy hiding his own secrets while navigating depression and family dysfunction.