Agnes is a teenager living with her younger sister Beth and other even-younger siblings in a crowded mobile home in Red Creek, a fundamentalist Christian settlement in the desert Southwest modeled somewhat after that described in Carolyn Jessop’s memoir ESCAPED…. Read More ›
Controversial YA Topics
This Is How I Lied
Eve is a 15-yr-old girl living with her mother Charlotte and 13-year-old sister Nola in small-town Grotto, Iowa. They don’t have much. Her mother works but doesn’t bring in a lot, and she is one cranky, self-centered mom. Like in… Read More ›
The Children’s Bible: A Novel
The bare bones of this story: Eve/Evie is a high school girl with a 9-year-old brother, Jack. Her family goes in with several other families of long-friendship-duration to rent a large, historic estate on the East Coast for a summer… Read More ›
crave
Grace Foster is a high school girl living in San Diego whose parents die suddenly. She is shipped off to a remote part of Alaska where her Uncle Finn runs a boarding school and her cousin Macy is a student…. Read More ›
Rules for Being a Girl
Long-time best friends Marin Lospato and Chloe Niarchos are high school seniors who also are co-editors of their school newspaper. They seem like typical teens with the usual interests, with a good social circle of friends, supportive families, and realistic… Read More ›
Dragon Hoops
Award-winning comics artist and graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang spent seventeen years teaching at Bishop O’Dowd High School in California. Near the end of his tenure there, as he was casting about for the topic of his next book, he… Read More ›
One of Us Is Next
This book is a sequel to the author’s book ONE OF US IS LYING. However, I have not read that book and I found that, while fairly frequent references were made to the previous story, the current book stands perfectly… Read More ›
Winterwood
Nora Walker is living alone in the family homestead that nestles close to the bottomless lake and the lush forests of Fir Haven, while her mother has taken off towards the west coast to make sales calls for the special… Read More ›
we speak in storms
Three high school students who barely know each other are wrestling with problems: Joshua, who defines himself as queer, at home lives with a religious stepfather who won’t accept it and at school goes from being bullied by classmates to… Read More ›
Watch Over Me
Zoey is the managing “adult” living in a household which has been defined by domestic violence. At the age of 15 she testified against her abusive cop father in court, and he was sent to jail. Now she is 18… Read More ›
Before You Buy YA 