Book Lists: New Books

In 1902 England, young aspiring writer Aggie Morton discovers a dead body while retrieving her journal left behind at a dance studio. Resourceful and imaginative, Aggie and her new Belgian friend Hector, are sure they can solve the crime, to the frustration of the local constable and the interest of a nosy reporter. Includes black-and-white spot illustrations.

Eighth-grader Niki's best friend, Ava, dumps her just as life at home is becoming more complicated by her brother Danny's behavior and her mother's refusal to admit Danny is on the autism spectrum.

Ever since their free-spirited mama died ten months ago, twelve-year-old Jack and her gender creative nine-year-old brother, Birdie, have been living with their fun-loving Uncle Carl, but now their conservative Uncle Patrick insists on being their guardian which forces all four of them to confront grief, prejudice, and loss, all while exploring what 'home' really means.

In 1880s America, African American friends Jane McKeene and Katherine Deveraux, trained in combat to protect rich white people from zombies, have escaped the horrors of the maniacal preacher from Summerland and now decide to journey to California to find Jane's mother. But their past follows them, as does a horde of zombies.

In early 1960s Florida, sixteen-year-old Goldie, an aspiring detective at the Crossed Palms Resort Hotel, investigates when a diamond-encrusted swim cap goes missing during the filming of a movie at the resort.

In Auburn, Pennsylvania, a farming community overrun with crows, high school senior Leighton struggles to keep herself and her sisters safe from their abusive father even as she starts a relationship.

Adora is still learning about her powers as She-Ra when Glimmer suggests they search for a lost runestone that belonged to a legendary Fire Princess who came to ruin, to give the Rebellion an advantage over the Horde. However, they aren't the only ones looking for the ancient power.

A collection of sixteen stories of fantasy, science fiction, and magic featuring black and gender non-conforming characters.

Nova and Adrian find it harder to conceal their secret identities while the battle rages on in Gatlon City between their alter egos, their allies, and their greatest fears come to life.

Seventeen-year-old Tempe raises the money to bring her sister who drowned two years ago back to life for just twenty-four hours in a quest to learn what she knows about the death of their parents. However, when her sister Elysea is revived, she gives Tempe shocking information. The sisters break out of the facility and embark on a dangerous journey to find the truth about their parents. However, they are pursued by people from the facility who don't want them to learn the truth about the revival process and its ultimate cost.

When all of her family succumbs to a magical illness, Ekata Avenko reluctantly assumes the throne, seeking a cure and fending off unwanted suitors while seeking the culprit.

Thirteen-year-old Grace and her eleven-year-old brother Carter become separated from their father and lost during a hike on Blood Mountain. As a young ranger races to find them, a strange mountain man living off the grid begins following them. Then Grace falls and hurts herself and it's up to Carter to stay alive and get help.

Thirteen-year-old Patricia, widely known as Sweet Pea, navigates her parents' unconventional divorce and finds herself in the unlikely role of her town's advice columnist.

In 1980 life is hard on the Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New York, and most of the teenagers feel like they are going nowhere: Carson Mastick dreams of forming a rock band, and Maggi Bokoni longs to create her own conceptual artwork instead of the traditional beadwork that her family sells to tourists--but tensions are rising between the reservation and the surrounding communities, and somehow in the confusion of politics and growing up Carson and Maggi have to make a place for themselves.

In a reality TV retelling of the myth of the Minotaur, seventeen-year-old Ariadne fights to save her brother, Asterion, and make her own destiny in a world of celebrity, surveillance, and feigned authenticity.

Bao, a poor physician's apprentice, is rejected by Lan, a wealthy nobleman's daughter. Lan then comes to regret her actions. She finds Bao's prized flute and cares for it, not knowing Bao's soul has been trapped inside it by an evil witch, and only love will set him free. Lan and Bao work together to break the curse and save the kingdom of Feng Lu.

Corey Fletcher has the ability to travel into the past--so long as he has a metal artifact from a specific point in time, then he can go to that specific point. When, however, he goes into the past and accidentally saves a life, Corey realizes he is something more than a time traveler: he is a "Throwback," someone with the ability to alter life and the whole timeline. He decides to use this ability to go back to September 11, 2001, and stop his grandmother from dying in the terrorist attack of that day, but things go wrong. He ends up in New York City of 1917, lost and alone.

Middle schooler Liberty likes to make her own maps of the stars, in fact she is obsessed with them, especially since her family is falling apart; her parents are getting divorced, her nine-year-old sister will barely leave the house and carries a stuffed tiger at all times, her father is suffering from depression, but will not talk about it, and the brothers down the street, once friends, have turned into bullies--so when a tiny meteorite literally falls in her lap it is like a sign, but a sign of what?

In a post-apocalyptic world, a seventeen-year-old Apache hunter named Loren searches for a valley where she once took refuge with her family. But when a Bigfoot named Hally points them in another direction, Loren finds herself traveling through a barren land filled with monsters.

In London during World War II, Alice enters quarantine with her boyfriend Alfred, whose tuberculosis doctors think might kill him by morning. She reads him their favorite story--"Alice in Wonderland"--and soon has difficulty separating reality from the story. Eventually Alice is forced to choose between the comfort of the story and the pain of real life.

Full-color graphic novel depicting ten-year-old Aster who moves with her parents and brother to an isolated village near a mountain where she's gifted a dog named Buzz from an elderly woman and meets a series of magical creatures who inhabit the nearby forest.

Russ's friendship with Andrew disintegrates when Russ gets a girlfriend, leaving the video they are making without an ending, but a close encounter with the legendary Jersey Devil brings them back together.

Sam and Katie discover an unkempt, skinny dog in their neighborhood and follow it, hoping to gain its trust (and convince their parents to let them keep it). They observe several neighbors treating it badly and when they make a poor choice to paint on the dog, they feel guilty and work to win back the abused dog's trust.

Izzy struggles with her parents' separation, starting middle school, and more, but especially the effect her friendship with her Muslim neighbor, Sitara, has on her best friends, Zelda and Piper.

Ware can't wait to spend summer 'off in his own world' -- dreaming of medieval knights and generally being left alone. But then his parents sign him up for dreaded Rec camp, where he must endure meaningful social interaction and whatever activities so-call 'normal' kids do. On his fist day Ware meets Jolene, a tough, secretive girl planting a garden in the rubble of an abandoned church next to the camp. Soon he starts skipping Rec, creating a castle-like space of his own in the church lot. Jolene scoffs, calling a dreamer-- he doesn't live in the 'real world' like she does. As different as Ware and Jolene are, though, they have one thing in common: for them, the lot is a refuge.

Told from multiple viewpoints, Shae Tatum, an unarmed, thirteen-year-old black girl, is shot by a white police officer, throwing their community into upheaval and making it a target of demonstrators.

Fourteen-year-old Hanna, who is half Chinese, settles with her father in the frontier town of LaForge, in Dakota Territory in 1880. She hopes she can attend school before becoming a dressmaker in her father's dry goods shop, but first she must deal with racism from the local townspeople who are afraid to have their children attend class with her, grief from the loss of her mother, and a yearning to belong as she and her father struggle to find a place where they will be accepted.

Three years after his father's death by suicide, twelve-year-old Drew struggles with a new girl Audrey taking over at the library where Drew feels safe, the distancing of his best friend Filipe, and the mysterious man suddenly staying at Drew's house claiming to be a friend of his mom's. With the unlikely help of Audrey, Drew investigates who the man really is, and embarks on a journey toward understanding, forgiveness, and hope.

Lena, a cryptling, and Constance, the duke's banished daughter, must use their forbidden magic to discover who cast a spell over their homeland, shrouding it in deadly clouds and sealing it off.

A collection of poems relay historical and biographical information about Nicaraguan poet Rubén Dario, including his abandonment by his mother when he was young, finding his purpose in writing poetry, and his various travels across Central and South America, where he developed his unique voice and ushered in a literary movement known as Modernismo in the early twentieth century.

Presents a novel in verse following the story of Misael Martínez, a boy from El Salvador who goes with his family to join a migrant caravan heading to the U.S. Sad to leave their beloved home, they still have many terrible reasons to do so, but when they reach Tijuana they are met with protests and tear gas.

When eleven-year-old Iris sneaks out at night to make snow angels, she was not expecting to raise the ghost of Avery Moore, a girl her own age; but bringing to light the segregated and abandoned black cemetery seems like the perfect way to help Avery get the recognition she craves, and it will also be a good idea for the school project about the history of her small North Carolina town, where racial tensions are never far from the surface--only it seems that if Avery gets everything she wants Iris will join her as a ghost, best friends forever.

A servant girl named Milla thought dragons were only legends until she witnesses a murder and ends up caring for four dragon eggs. Milla risks everything to protect the eggs, and ends up uncovering a secret from her own past.

When an alien ship is destroyed above Earth, a fog is released that covers everything and turns reflective surfaces into portals that release monsters. Although there is a ban on mirrors, seventeen-year-old Marty Callahan, who suffers from OCD, becomes an illegal distributor of mirrors until he's caught. Marty is exiled along with the mayor's son Elliott to an abandoned city overrun by fog. But Marty is determined to find his brother Ty in London, so he and Elliott set aside their differences and embark on a quest that reveals the truth behind the spaceship and the danger threatening Earth.

Martha Tom knows better than to cross the Bok Chitto River to pick blackberries. The Bok Chitto is the only border between her town in the Choctaw Nation and the slave-owning plantation in Mississippi territory. The slave owners could catch her, too. What was she thinking? But crossing the river brings a surprise friendship with Lil Mo, a boy who is enslaved on the other side.

When Soviet troops invade Japanese-occupied Manchuria during the last days of World War II, twelve-year-old Natsu Kimura must care for her younger sister as they struggle to survive and return to Japan.

In Ukraine, 1941, Krystia goes from living under the cruel occupation of the Soviets to the just-as-cruel occupation of the Nazis, even though some of her neighbors welcome the Germans as liberators. Then, Krystia's Jewish friend Dolik warns that their new rulers will bring even worse days, and after the Nazis frame the Jewish citizens for murders and force them into a ghetto, Krystia tries to do what she can to help Dolik and his family hide.

When Liv's older brother, Jonah, accidentally shoots himself with his best friend Clay's father's gun, her life changes forever. Now Jonah needs round-the-clock care just to stay alive and Liv feels like she's the only one who can still see her brother inside his broken body. When Liv's mom sues Clay's family, Liv knows there are lines that she can't cross, but Clay is her friend too and she refuses to give up on Clay and Jonah.

Cassie Logan, now a young woman, has gone from the Logan family home in Toledo, then to California and Colorado, to law school in Boston, and finally in the 1960s back to Mississippi where it all started. There she joins the voter registration drive and is witness to the historic events of her era--the Great Migration to the north, postwar Americas racism, the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, and the violent confrontations that it sometimes takes to bring about real change.

Sixth grade is supposed to be perfect. Shannon's got a sure spot in the in-crowd called The Group, and her best friend is their leader. Jen, the most popular girl in school. But the rules are always changing, and Shannon has to scramble to keep up. She never knows which TV shows are cool, what songs to listen to, and which boys she's allowed to talk to. Who makes these rules, anyway? And does Shannon have to follow them?

Twelve-year-old Donte is the darker-skinned brother of Trey, which in his racist, mostly-white school has earned him the nickname Black Brother. When the captain of the school fencing team successfully frames him for something he didn't do, Donte is arrested and suspended from school. Joining a local youth center, Donte meets former Olympic fencer Arden Jones and begins training to defeat his school bully and find courage to confront the racist system that got him arrested.

In Devil's Lake, Michigan, the body of seventeen-year-old Kit Malloy is found in the woods frozen to death and half undressed in the back of a running pickup truck. Now her sisters Tessa and Lilly will stop at nothing to uncover the secret Kit was keeping and learn the truth about her death, a truth that will change everything.

When a mysterious man moves into their farm's silo apartment, twelve-year-old Sara and her brother Hawk are told not to bother him no matter what. Sara and her brother don't follow directions very well and see an opportunity to help out their family and get Sara the heart operation she needs, but it involves bothering the mysterious man--who they soon learn has big problems of his own.

Desperate to be forever remembered for her music, Nannerl Mozart makes a dangerous pact with a mysterious stranger from a magical land, which may cost her everything.

In a predominately white California beach town, the only two black seventh-graders, Alberta and Edie, find hidden journals that uncover family secrets and speak to race relations in the past.

Snap's town has a witch. At least, that's the rumor. In reality, Jacks is just a Crocs-wearing, internet-savvy old lady who sells the skeletons of roadkill online. It's creepy, sure, but Snap thinks it's kind of cool, too. Snap needs a favor from this old woman, though, so she begins helping Jacks with her strange work. Snap gets to know her and realizes that Jacks may in fact have real magic--and an unlikely connection to Snap's family's past"--Back cover.

Using her Enchanted cards, Alex can see into the future, but such magic is illegal in the city of Luma. Betrayed to authorities by her foster sister, Alex and her younger brother Louie escape Luma but now they are hunted by Hauntings. However, all Alex really wants is to learn about her parents and her past, and the Enchanted cards are her only clue to her true identity so she's not giving them up. She vows to keep trying to find out who she really is.

When twelve-year-old Ross is diagnosed with a rare form of eye cancer, he just wants things to be normal. But he soon discovers normal is overrated, and that with music, art, and the support of his true friends, he can make it through his treatments and middle school.

Sixteen-year-old Allie, aged seven when she knew her family was different and feared, struggles to claim her Muslim and Arabic heritage while finding her place as an American teenager.

When her father is cursed by a rival witch, twelve-year-old Clementine Morcerous assumes his duties as Dark Lord of the realm, but soon questions her father's code of good and evil.

Unable to control her tendency to burst into flame, twelve-year-old Ember, a dragon transformed into a girl by her foster father, is sent to Antarctica where she tries to save ice dragons from extinction.

After coming out as nonbinary, Ben must leave home and go to live with a sister and her husband to finish the last year of high school.

Addamsville--a small town so obsessed with ghosts it becomes a tourist trap--is home to Zora, who knows for a fact that ghosts are real and that something darker lurks in the woods. Then Zora is accused of a crime she didn't commit and must run around in a town full of restless supernatural beings in a hunt for the true culprit.

Although deadly sirens lurk in the seas around her island town, seventeen-year-old Moira Alexander loves to get close to them and play her violin on the shore. Then the body of twelve-year-old Connor is found on the beach, and the townspeople blame the sirens. Moira and her friend Jude, the lighthouse keeper, are suspicious of these claims and set out to determine the identity of the real killer.

Reading his dead best friend's journal allows seventh-grader Tristan Strong to see folk heroes John Henry and Brer Rabbit. Then, a character from the Anansi story steals the journal, and in his effort to retrieve it, Tristan accidentally rips open a hole into Alke, where African American folk characters are gods. Tristan learns that the people of Alke are suffering partly due to Tristan's actions, and in order to get back home and save his friends, Tristan, John Henry, and Brer Rabbit must seek out the god Anansi the Weaver and convince him to fix the chasm.

In the modern day, Rosella Olivia makes shoes for her town's magical festival every October. This year, the Olivia family crafts shoes that impart a sense of impulsive love and desire, but over the course of the family's five-generation history, this wasn't always the case. In the summer of 1518, a dancing sickness inflicted over 400 people, some of which died, and authorities blamed and banished a Romani family. Rosella puts on a pair of her shoes and is inexplicably drawn to Emil, whose family was blamed for the 1518 outbreak. Together they learn a shocking truth about their shared history and Rosella's fate.

While helping police officers Esther and Lon investigate a suspicious death at her group home, nineteen-year-old Sal Miyake, who is mentally challenged, gains insights into herself and makes new friends.

In 1928, Maxine, Rose, Alice, and London face vicious attendants and bullying older girls at the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded, each determined to change her fate at all costs. Includes historical notes about eugenics.

Gene Luen Yang, a graphic novelist and math teacher in Oakland, California, follows his Catholic high school's men's varsity basketball team, the Dragons, over the course of one season. Interviews Coach Lou and his players on their lives, the team's mysterious past, and its quest for the state championship.

While his father works two jobs, seventh-grader Efrén Nava must take care of his twin siblings, kindergartners Max and Mia, after their mother is deported to Mexico. Includes glossary of Spanish words.

Most people have a good luck rabbit and a bad luck black cat that they never notice, like young Cecil Bean's mean cat Millikin and his devoted rabbit Leek. When Millikin hatches an evil plan to make Leek disappear into a magician's hat, Cecil has no luck at all. Now Leek must find a way to escape the dangerous, dark world of Hat to return to his beloved boy.

In 1848 Providence, Rhode Island, Victoria "Tory" Blaisdell lives a boring life but dreams of being adventurous. When her father loses his job, he and her brother Jacob head to find their fortune in the California Gold Rush. However, Tory stows away on their ship and ends up caring for her brother when their father goes into the gold fields. Then Jacob disappears and Tory risks everything to find him.

Sixteen-year-old Isabella "Izzy" Crawford is a trailer-park scholarship kid at a wealthy Catholic school in Virginia, and is desperate to keep her status a secret from everyone. One day she helps a new student, Aubrey Shackleton--the sister of Hot Sam, who Izzy and her best friend Roz secretly stalk--resolve a cyberbullying situation. Then Izzy's family is selected to receive a new house from Habitat for Humanity, right in the neighborhood where the Shackletons live, which threatens all the secrets Izzy has so carefully kept.

A young girl named Mulan sets out on quest with the Jade Rabbit of legend to search for an antidote for her sister, Xiu, who was bitten by a spider. Mulan learns a shapeshifter named Daji wants Xiu dead because a daughter of the Hua family is prophesied to save the emperor. Mulan works to defeat Daji with the help of immortal healers.

Book smuggler and high school teen Prudence Wu is rescued from a failed run to the ruthless United Continental Confederacy by a cybernetic dragon known as Rebelwing. Capable of choosing its own pilot, the dragon imprints itself to her and she's drawn into her government's secret weapons program to counteract the next generation of weapons developed by the UCC.

High schooler Jarli Durras becomes an overnight celebrity after creating an app that can tell when a person is lying, but his fame soon turns dangerous when a secret network of criminals adds Jarli to its hit list.

Presents a series of interconnected short stories about the lives of those around showman P.T. Barnum, including his wives, daughters, and famous sideshow entertainers, exploring what it meant to be one of Barnum's "creatures.

All of the light in Chattana is made by one man, the Governor. The magical lights represent freedom for Pong, who was born in Namwon Prison and he dreams of walking among them. But when Pong escapes from Namwon, he discovers that the outside world is just as unfair as life in the prison. Nok, the prison warden's daughter, searches for Pong in order to restore her family's good name, but she uncovers secrets that make her question everything she's believed. When Nok and Pong find each other, they set out to make things right.

After an accident leaves him damaged and separated from his scientist caregiver, a young android recruits four robot accomplices and embarks on a cross-country road trip to reunite with her.

Twelve-year-old Jade Society member Faryn Liu may be destined to command the Jade Emperor's army of demon-fighting dragons, but first she must complete a daring quest across San Francisco's Chinatown before the Lunar New Year.

Sent by a banished Merlin to protect King Arthur, a sixteen-year-old impersonating the deceased Guinevere struggles to fit in at Camelot where the magic she practices is banished.

A girl named Cleveland Rosebud Potts has created her Paris Project List, and she thinks that if she can tick off all six items, she will finally escape her terrible small town of Sassafras, Florida, by earning a place at the high-culture and rich American School of Paris. Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan, and before the end Cleveland will have to learn how to forgive her family, be a friend, and learn to grow and prosper where she is.

Ten-year-old Frank's life revolves around his autistic brother, five-year-old Max, but after many changes over the course of a year, he discovers that he loves Max and is proud of him.

Jo Wilson, repair technician in the Core, must journey to the lawless surface to repair the damage she did while on a routine assignment. She finds herself in an unfamiliar society with strange beasts, dangerous bounty hunters, and blistering deserts all while the agents of the Core hunt her down.

Lozen is recently healed from the Enemy Sickness and is trying to build a new community with her family. But as the remaining Ones plot to kill Lozen, she must use all her powers to defeat her enemies and protect her new community.

Seventh-grader Martin McLean has trouble expressing himself except at Mathletes competitions and, now, as a female impersonator but his first-ever drag show falls on the same night as an important Mathletes tournament.

In her final year of foster care, seventeen-year-old Muir tries to survive her senior year before aging out of the system. As she becomes closer to her latest foster mother, meets a new friend, and even finds love, she worries that she's getting too involved and fights the urge to flee the closest thing she's ever had to a home.