Young Adult Fiction

*Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for 2023
A family extending from Pakistan to California, deals with generations of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness.

*Winner of Stonewall Book Award-Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award for 2014
Gabe has always identified as a boy, but he was born with a girl's body. With his new public access radio show gaining in popularity, Gabe struggles with romance, friendships, and parents--all while trying to come out as transgendered. An audition for a station in Minneapolis looks like his ticket to a better life in the big city. But his entire future is threatened when several violent guys find out Gabe, the popular DJ, is also Elizabeth from school.

*Winner of Stonewall Book Award-Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award for 2020
Michael is a mixed-race gay teen growing up in London. All his life, he's navigated what it means to be Greek-Cypriot and Jamaican--but never quite feeling Greek or Black enough. As he gets older, Michael's coming out is only the start of learning who he is and where he fits in. When he discovers the Drag Society, he finally finds where he belongs--and the Black Flamingo is born.

*Winner of the William C. Morris Award for 2019
Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life.

* Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for 2020
Only a generation removed from being simple Pennsylvania potato farmers, Gottfried and Marla Hemmings managed to trade digging spuds for developing subdivisions and now sit atop a seven-figure bank account, wealth they've declined to pass on to their adult children or their teenage grand children. Now the five teenagers are lost in a tangled maze of family secrets. One of the teens sells pot; one has cancer; all are estranged from the family. As they come together for Easter dinner, will they be able to find their ways back to each other?

* Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for 2021
Twelve-year-old Iranian refugee Khosrou moves to Oklahoma where he goes by Daniel and models himself after the legendary storyteller Scheherazade as he weaves tales that reflect his perseverance and reinvention.

*Winner of the William C. Morris Award for 2020
When Norris, a Black French Canadian, starts his junior year at an Austin, Texas, high school, he views his fellow students as clichés from "a bad 90s teen movie."

*Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award and the William C. Morris Award for 2022
A groundbreaking YA thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community. Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she'll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she's ever known.

*Winner of the William C. Morris Award for 2015
Sixteen-year-old Gabi Hernandez chronicles her senior year in high school as she copes with her friend Cindy's pregnancy, friend Sebastian's coming out, her father's meth habit, her own cravings for food and cute boys, and especially, the poetry that helps forge her identity.

*Winner of the William C. Morris Award for 2018
After witnessing her friend's death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter's life is complicated when the police and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died.

* Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for 2015
At first, Jude and her twin brother Noah are inseparable. Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude wears red-red lipstick, cliff-dives, and does all the talking for both of them. Years later, they are barely speaking. Something has happened to change the twins in different yet equally devastating ways . . . but then Jude meets an intriguing, irresistible boy and a mysterious new mentor.

*Winner of Stonewall Book Award-Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award for2017
Amanda Hardy only wants to fit in at her new school, but she is keeping a big secret, so when she falls for Grant, guarded Amanda finds herself yearning to share with him everything about herself, including her previous life as Andrew.

*Winner of the William C. Morris Award for 2023
Hoodie Rosen's life isn't that bad. Sure, his entire Orthodox Jewish community has just picked up and moved to the quiet, mostly non-Jewish town of Tregaron, but Hoodie's world hasn't changed that much. The people of Tregaron aren't happy that so many Orthodox Jews are moving in at once, but that's not Hoodie's problem. That is, until he meets and falls for Anna-Marie Diaz-O'Leary—who happens to be the daughter of the obstinate mayor trying to keep Hoodie's community out of the town.

*Winner of Stonewall Book Award-Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award for 2018
Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her brother Lionel fall in love with the same girl, pushing Lionel's bipolar disorder to spin out of control and forcing Suzette to confront her own demons

* Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for 2019
A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother's religion and her own relationship to the world in this debut novel by renowned slam poet Acevedo.

*Winner of Stonewall Book Award-Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award for 2016
Seventeen-year-old Carson Speier is bored of Billings, Montana, and resentful that he has to help his mother take care of his father, a dying alcoholic whom he has not seen in fourteen years--but then he meets Aisha, a beautiful African American girl who has run away from her own difficult family, and together they embark on a journey of discovery that may help them both come to terms with their lives.

*Winner of the William C. Morris Award for 2017
The son of a Pentecostal preacher faces his personal demons as he and his two outcast friends try to make it through their senior year of high school in rural Forrestville, Tennessee, without letting the small-town culture destroy their creative spirits and sense of self.

*Winner of the William C. Morris Award for 2016
Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he's pushed out--without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he's never met.

* Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for 2018
Marin hasn't spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she's tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that's been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

*Winner of Stonewall Book Award-Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award for 2023
Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her.

*Winner of Stonewall Book Award-Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award for 2022
With the threat of deportation looming over her father--in spite of his hard-won citizenship and disavowal of Communism--seventeen-year-old American-born Chinese Lily Hu pursues a relationship with her Caucasian classmate Kath.

A tale of friendship, fun, and intrigue that celebrates the rural life Mark Twain knew as a boy growing up on the Mississippi River, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer mixes good-natured humor with thoughtful consideration of serious issues such as race, religion, and the strictures of adult life. Amusing and insightful for readers of all ages, it is one of the most enduring novels in American literature.

Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel—a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

A high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies.

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

Aerin, with the guidance of the wizard Luthe and the help of the blue sword, wins the birthright due her as the daughter of the Damarian king and a witchwoman of the mysterious, demon-haunted North.

Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal--including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world. Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want. But what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other...

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.

The struggle of three brothers to stay together after their parent's death and their quest for identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society.

High school freshman Melinda barely speaks. She is a social outcast for making the 911 call that ended a wild party, one at which she was raped--something she has been unable to tell anyone.

Shipwrecked passengers on a deserted island: how will they survive? After their ship founders at sea, the Robinsons--father, mother, and four sons--find themselves stranded in an uninhabited, idyllic land. Young readers will enjoy watching them handle every crisis with cleverness and skill.

The death of high school basketball star Rob Washington in an automobile accident affects the lives of his close friend Andy, who was driving the car, and many others in the school.

Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.