young adult
You know i’m no good | harpercollins/quilltree books
Mia is officially a Troubled Teen™— she gets bad grades, drinks too much, and has probably gone too far with too many guys.
But she doesn’t realize how out of control she seems until she is taken from her home in the middle of the night and sent away to Red Oak Academy, a therapeutic girls' boarding school in the middle of nowhere.
While there, Mia is forced to confront her painful past at the same time she questions why she's at Red Oak. If she were a boy, would her behavior be considered wild enough to get sent away? But what happens when circumstances outside of her control compel Mia to make herself vulnerable enough to be truly seen?
Challenging and thought-provoking, this stunning contemporary YA novel examines the ways society is stacked against teen girls and what one young woman will do to even the odds.
• YALSA Best Fiction For Young Adults 2021 title
• Bank Street Best Book of 2021
• Chicago Public Library Best of the Best 2020 title
• Illinois Reads 2021-2022 title
• Abraham Lincoln Award 2024 nominee
Sorry for your loss | harperteen
As the youngest of eight, painfully average Pup Flanagan is used to flying under the radar. The only person who ever made him think he could be more was his older brother Patrick, the family’s golden child. But that was before Patrick died suddenly, leaving Pup alone with a family who won’t talk about it and acquaintances who just keep saying, “sorry for your loss.”
When Pup excels at a photography assignment he thought he’d bomb, things in his life start coming into focus: his dream girl shows her true colors, an unexpected friend becomes something more, and one of Pup’s photos reveals someone else who needs healing. Someone with a secret Pup could never have imagined.
• YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults 2020 title
• Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
• Winner, Maine North Star YA Award 2020-2021
• Illinois Reads 2020-2021 title
• Georgia Peach Book Awards finalist
• Oklahoma Library Association Sequoya Book Awards 2021 Masterlist title
• Friends of American Writers Young People’s Literature Award
• Shortlisted title for Iowa Reads program
“Printz Honor winner Foley takes readers through tenderhearted and sometimes painfully funny observations. It’s a narrative that is threaded through with incredible feeling. A warm and clear-eyed examination of a family swimming through grief and a boy who finds the light.” — ALA Booklist
neighborhood girls | harperteen
Before junior Wendy Boychuck was best friends with Kenzie, Sapphire, and Emily—the most brutal group of girls that Academy of the Sacred Heart has ever seen—she was content with being a nobody. Then Wendy’s father, a corrupt police officer, gets sentenced to prison. So when Wendy has a chance to join Kenzie and her pack of alphas, she sees in the them the type of protection and remaking that she—the daughter of a crooked cop—so badly needs. From that point on, what Wendy encounters are the exhilarating highs and isolating lows that come with being in her school’s most feared and revered clique.
With tinges of magical realism, Jessie Ann Foley’s follow-up to the highly-acclaimed The Carnival at Bray deftly explores toxic friendships, broken families, and a girl’s journey back to herself, all with unmistakable authenticity.
• Booklist Editor’s Choice, Best Books for Youth 2017
• YALSA Best Fiction For Young Adults Title 2018
"A heartbreakingly modern representation of a city at the heart of America" — Booklist, starred review
the carnival at bray | harpercollins/quilltree books
It’s 1993, and Generation X pulses to the beat of Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement. Sixteen-year-old Maggie Lynch is uprooted from big-city Chicago to a windswept town on the Irish Sea. Surviving on care packages of Spin magazine and Twizzlers from her rocker uncle Kevin, she wonders if she’ll ever find her place in this new world. When first love and sudden death simultaneously strike, a naive but determined Maggie embarks on a forbidden pilgrimage that will take her to a seedy part of Dublin and on to a life-altering night in Rome to fulfill a dying wish. Through it all, Maggie discovers an untapped inner strength to do the most difficult but rewarding thing of all—live.
• Printz Honor Book
• YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults Title 2014
• Kirkus Reviews Best Book 2014
• William C. Morris Award Finalist for debut YA fiction
• Texas Library Association TAYSHAS reading list selection
• Pennsylvania Young Readers’ Choice Awards finalist
• New York Public Library favorite book of 2014
• Finalist, Chicago Writer’s Association 2015 Book of the Year Awards
• Finalist, Housatonic Book Awards 2015
• One of the top twenty most banned books in the United States from 2022-2023
“The narrative subtly and carefully interweaves peer and family drama . . . Every character, every place comes alive with crisp, precise detail. Powerfully evocative.” — Kirkus, starred review
“The Carnival at Bray is a complex, eloquent, and deep look at one teen’s journey . . . I sense many more awards to come – it’s that good. Highly recommended!” — Wandering Educator
“Beautifully-done coming of age story . . . as bittersweet as a first love and just as unforgettable.” — Forever Young Adult