Book Finder

In this collection of stories set on one block of 145th Street get to know the oldest resident; the cop on the beat; fine Peaches and her girl, Squeezie; Monkeyman; Benny, a fighter on the way to a knockout; Kitty, whose love for Mack pulls him back from the brink; and Big Joe, who wants a bang-up funeral while he’s still around to enjoy it. 

Recognizing a “golden age” of young adult literature, Silvey combines her considerable experience and a love of literature to identify and write about books for young adults. Many were written specifically for that audience; others were published as adult books but of interest to younger readers. The books are organized by subject that appeal to young adults (e.g., humor, horror, historical fiction) and that represent a level of quality. Additional titles are recommended, including audio books. Additionally, books are listed by geographic location and by suggested age ranges (up to 18).

Matt Nolan is the high school drug dealer, deadbeat, and soon-to-be dropout according to everyone at his school. What no one knows is the only reason Matt sells drugs is to take care of his uncle Jack, who is dying of cancer. Amanda. Matt gets stuck with the overly-cheerful social outcast, Amanda, as partners in school and it’s only a matter of time until Amanda discovers Matt’s secret. But Amanda is used to dealing with heartbreak, and she’s determined to help Matt find a way to give life 100 percent.

While working for the Toronto subway system during the summer, Duncan finds a journal in the Lost & Found that leads him to believe a serial killer is on the loose. When the police refuse to investigate the matter, Duncan launches his own investigation, leading readers on a suspense-filled, terrifying journey to capture the killer before it is too late.

A companion to Under a War-Torn Sky finds brothers Wesley and Charles adapting to a new culture and rural farm life after being evacuated from England to America only to encounter a Nazi threat to their family in Virginia. 

A common love of Tupac Shakur unites three preteens: two from comfortable lives and one, D Foster, who can really relate to Tupac’s lyrics.

Three years after losing her brother Luka in a school shooting, Skye Gilchrist is moving home. But there’s no sympathy for Skye and her family because Luka wasn’t a victim; he was a shooter. Jesse Mandal knows all too well that the scars of the past don’t heal easily. The shooting cost Jesse his brother and also his best friend - Skye. Jesse and Skye are haunted by the unanswered questions of that terrible day. But the more they hunt for the truth of what really happened, the closer they get to a new killer.

Twelve-year-old Sunny Nwazue, an American-born child with albinism of Nigerian parents, moves with her family back to Nigeria, where she learns that she has latent magical powers which she and three similarly gifted friends use to catch a serial killer.

This plane crash adventure story concerns the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the mountains. Forced to do whatever they needed to survive, they turn to cannibalism to stay alive. This ultimate story of survival is still compelling several years later. Fans of the TV show Lost will enjoy this title.

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys. Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren’t Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson’s emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults. A New York Library Best Book of 2020.

Little did Gerda know that her father’s insistence that she wear her hiking boots one hot, summer day would be her salvation from death. Gerda was able to see good even in the darkest of moments while struggling to survive in several concentration and slave labor camps. From January through April 1945, it was those boots that saved her from the cold during a brutal, 300-mile death march from a labor camp in western Germany to Czechoslovakia where she was the only one of 120 women who survived.

Two boys are starting over at a new high school. Jules is still figuring out what it means to be gay…and just how out he wants to be. Jack is reeling from a fall-out with his best friend…and isn’t ready to let anyone else in just yet. When Jules and Jack meet, the sparks are undeniable. But when a video linking Jack to a pair of popular trans vloggers is leaked to the school, the revelations thrust both boys into the spotlight they’d tried to avoid. Suddenly Jack and Jules must face a choice: to play it safe and stay under the radar, or claim their own space in the world — together.

In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance.

What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill … or else everyone dies.

The jury said she did it…the media said she did it….only nine years old and convicted of killing a baby girl, Mary didn’t say anything. Six years later, a pregnant Mary finally wants to speak up and clear her name, so that her own baby is not taken away.

For as long as she can remember, it’s been Robin and her mom against the world. Growing up as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea, wasn’t always easy, but it has bonded them fiercely together. So when a vacation to visit friends in Huntsville, Alabama, unexpectedly becomes a permanent relocation — following her mother’s announcement that she’s getting married — Robin is devastated. Overnight, her life changes. She is dropped into a new school where she doesn’t understand the language and struggles to keep up. She is completely cut off from her friends in Seoul and has no access to her beloved comics. At home, she doesn’t fit in with her new stepfamily, and worst of all, she is furious with the one person she is closest to—her mother. Then one day Robin’s mother enrolls her in a local comic drawing class, which opens the window to a future Robin could never have imagined

Experience the growth of the environmental movement in poetry, essay, song, and prose from its infancy to present day through the eyes of its champions.

Bright and carefree, Zitkála-Sá grows up on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota with her mother until Quaker missionaries arrive, offering the reservation’s children a free education. The catch: They must leave their parents behind and travel to Indiana. Curious about the world beyond the reservation, Zitkála-Sá begs her mother to let her go—and her mother, aware of the advantages that an education offers, reluctantly agrees. But the missionary school is not the adventure that Zitkála-Sá expected: The school is a strict one, her long hair is cut short, and only English is spoken. She encounters racism and ridicule. Slowly, Zitkála-Sá adapts to her environment—excelling at her studies, winning prizes for essay-writing and oration. But the price of success is estrangement from her cultural roots—and is it one she is willing to pay?

The author reflects on the childhood dream that led him, as an adult, to take a break from Princeton and travel to China’s famed Shaolin Temple to study martial arts for two years.

Ana’s life is a collection of bits and pieces of her past. Infected with HIV at birth, she’s unaware of many details of her early childhood and barely remembers her mother. Living with her strict grandmother, she learns how to keep secrets – secrets about her infection and about the abuse she endures at home. But after Ana falls in love and becomes pregnant at seventeen, she begins a journey of hope – a journey of protecting herself and others. She is living with HIV, not dying from it.

Jenna Bush tells of Ana’s struggle to break free from the cycle of abuse, silence, and illness with passion and eloquence. But this is not just Ana’s story. It is also the story of many children around the world who are marginalized, neglected, and mistreated.

Mowat retells his own experiences as a young soldier during World War II. At first he was very idealistic and romanticized the war effort but after exposure to many atrocities, Farley grows and learns painfully to see war as it is.

When high school senior Paul Wagoner walks into his school library with a stolen gun, he threatens his girlfriend Emily Beam, then takes his own life. In the wake of the tragedy, an angry and guilt-ridden Emily is shipped off to boarding school in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she encounters a ghostly presence who shares her name. The spirit of Emily Dickinson and two quirky girls offer helping hands, but it is up to Emily to heal her own damaged self.

This inventive story, told in verse and in prose, paints the aftermath of tragedy as a landscape where there is good behind the bad, hope inside the despair, and springtime under the snow.

The Campbell’s Soup Cans. The Marilyns. The Electric Chairs. The Flowers. The work created by Andy Warhol elevated everyday images to art, ensuring Warhol a fame that has far outlasted the 15 minutes he predicted for everyone else. His very name is synonymous with the 1960s American art movement known as Pop. Warhol’s rise, from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to status as a Pop icon, is an absorbing tale—one in which the American dream of fame and fortune is played out in all of its success and its excess. No artist of the late 20th century took the pulse of his time—and ours—better than Andy Warhol.

Black teens Isaiah Wilson and Angel Hill start to fall in love in Greenwood, Oklahoma, just before the the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.