Best Young Adult Books

A prequel to We Were Liars — the story of Carrie Sinclair, grandmother to the original novel's narrator, and the summer of 1987 when the secrets that would haunt the Sinclair family for generations were first buried.

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.

The fourth and final volume of the Inheritance Cycle brings the war against Galbatorix to its end. Eragon and Saphira must find the strength to topple a tyrant who has ruled for a century — and confront the question of what kind of world they want to build from the ruins.

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.

A teenage girl investigating the strange events in her suburban neighbourhood discovers that her mother and her mother's best friend performed dangerous magical rituals as teenagers — and that the consequences are still running.

The thrilling conclusion to Lauren Oliver's Delirium trilogy. In a world where love is a disease to be cured, Lena has crossed fully into the resistance. Told in alternating voices by Lena and her former best friend Hana, Requiem brings the rebellion against the regime to its breaking point.

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.

The conclusion of The Queen's Rising duology, in which a newly restored queen and her allies must defend a fragile new order against the deposed enemies determined to reclaim their power.

Rebecca Ross's debut, a young adult fantasy in which a young woman trained in the art of knowledge becomes embroiled in a dangerous plot to restore a fallen queen to her throne.

Kunal, a soldier sworn to protect the empire, and Esha, an assassin hunting the empire's generals, meet in unlikely circumstances and are drawn into a conspiracy that could destroy both of them — and the ancient magic holding their world together.

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.

The third Inheritance Cycle novel finds Eragon torn between competing oaths — to the Varden, to his cousin Roran, to the elf Arya, and to the dragon Saphira — as the war against Galbatorix accelerates and the secrets of his own origins finally come to light.

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.