YA Novels
Five feet apart
Lippincott, Rachael, author
2018
Seventeen-year-olds Stella and Will, both suffering from cystic fibrosis, realize the only way to stay alive is to stay apart, but their love for each other is slowly pushing the boundaries of physical and emotional safety.
Go ask Alice
2006
Based on the diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user chronicling her struggle to escape the pull of the drug world.
The hate u give
Thomas, Angie, author
2018
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline.
The Hunger Games
Collins, Suzanne, author
2009
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to death before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Still, if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.
Only ever yours
O'Neill, Louise, 1985-
2015
"Where women are created for the pleasure of men, beauty is the first duty of every girl. In Louise O'Neill's world of Only Every Yours women are no longer born naturally, girls (called eves) are raised in Schools and trained in the arts of pleasing men until they come of age. Freida and Isabel are best friends. Now, aged sixteen and in their final year, they expect to be selected as companions wives to powerful men. All they have to do is ensure they stay in the top ten beautiful girls in their year. The alternatives life as a concubine, or a chastity (teaching endless generations of girls) are too horrible to contemplate. But as the intensity of final year takes hold, the pressure to be perfect mounts. Isabel starts to self-destruct, putting her beauty her only asset in peril. "--Amazon.com.
The outsiders
Hinton, S. E., author
1967
Ponyboy can count on his brothers. And on his friends. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good time is beating up "greasers" like Ponyboy. At least he knows what to expect - until the night someone takes things too far.
