It’s time for another round-up of YA books hitting shelves in paperback. This isn’t comprehensive, as I’ve limited this to 30 titles total. They’ll be out between December and the end of February. Some titles are hitting shelves brand new in paperback while others are moving from their original hardcover publication to paperback. That means some of these titles might look familiar while others might not.
This list includes both fiction and nonfiction, as well as a whole host of genres within YA. I’ve limited to standalone titles, as well as books which are the first in a new series.
Settle in with a great read that’s easy to tote and easier on the wallet. Note that some links may go to the hardcover edition. You can toggle over to the paperback from there.
Expelled from high school months shy of graduation—her acceptance to Columbia revoked due to vigilante justice gone awry—Kassandra Black is sent to work in her great-uncle Brian’s lab at Henley University. She’s helping with his HEAR (Henley Engineering Anomalies Research) program, and hopefully getting him to put in a good word for her to attend Henley instead. She’s got to go somewhere, after all.
But as she gets to know the other HEAR students, it becomes clear that she overlooked the “Anomalies” part of their acronym—these kids are here to help Brian run experiments that gauge ESP capacity. They’ve each been selected and recruited, including, to her astonishment, Kass herself. But ESP? She doesn’t buy any of it. And even if it were real, she definitely isn’t psychic.
Yet with each new test, she finds herself more frightened. Kass really can communicate telepathically; she can even glimpse the future. When one of her fellow HEAR students is murdered, Kass must try to forget everything she knows about herself and her family and learn to trust those who share her remarkable gift.
Jim Sturges is your typical teen in suburban San Bernardino—one with an embarrassingly overprotective dad, a best friend named “Tubby” who shares his hatred of all things torturous (like gym class), and a crush on a girl who doesn’t know he exists. But everything changes for Jim when a 45-year old mystery resurfaces, threatening the lives of everyone in his seemingly sleepy town. Soon Jim has to team up with a band of unlikely (and some un-human) heroes to battle the monsters he never knew existed.
Eight years ago, Addie Webster was the victim of the most notorious kidnapping of the decade. Addie vanished—and her high-profile parents were forced to move on.
Mark Webster is now president of the United States, fighting to keep the Oval Office after a tumultuous first term. Then, the unthinkable happens: the president’s daughter resurfaces. Addie is brought back into her family’s fold…but who is this sixteen-year-old girl with a quiet, burning intelligence now living in the White House? There are those in the administration who find her timely return suspicious.
When a national security advisor approaches Darrow Fergusson, Addie’s childhood best friend and the son of the president’s chief of staff, he doesn’t know what to think. How could the girl he’s missed for all these years be a threat to the United States? Still, at the risk of having his own secrets exposed, Darrow agrees to spy on Addie.
He soon realizes that his old friend is much more than the traumatized victim of a political fringe group. Addie has come with a mission…but will she choose to complete it?
Each chapter is told from a different victim’s viewpoint, giving insight into who Kirby was and who he’d become. Some are sweet, some are dark; some are seemingly unrelated, about fights or first kisses or late-night parties.
This is a book of perspectives—with one character and one event drawing them all together—from the minds of some of YA’s most recognizable names.
Fourteen-year-old Storm Hall lives to sing. Forget school. Forget boys. All Storm wants is to sing. So when she’s forced to miss a national competition to go on a once-in-a-lifetime family vacation to Hawaii, her life is over! What could be worse than missing a big break to visit an island paradise? What if her (former) best friend steals her spotlight?
When Storm meets a Hawaiian band who needs a last minute singer she starts to think vacation might not be so bad after all. And when she hears her voice and her song on the local radio the next day, she thinks all of her dreams are coming true! That is until the band introduces their singer on air. It’s NOT her. There’s a Storm coming!
Sephora Golding lives in the shadow of her unbelievably beautiful mother. Even though they scrape by in the seedier part of Venice Beach, she’s always felt lucky. As a child, she imagined she was a minor but beloved character in her mother’s fairy tale. But now, at sixteen, the fairy tale is less Disney and more Grimm. And she wants the story to be her own. Then she meets Felix, and the fairy tale takes a turn she never imagined. Sometimes, a story is just a way to hide the unspeakable in plain sight.
On the anniversary of her daredevil brother’s death, Jaycee attempts to break into Jake’s favorite hideout—the petrifying ruins of an insane asylum. Joined by four classmates, each with their own brand of dysfunction, Jaycee discovers a map detailing her brother’s exploration and the unfinished dares he left behind.
As a tribute to Jake, Jaycee vows to complete the dares, no matter how terrifying or dangerous. What she doesn’t bargain on is her eccentric band of friends who challenge her to do the unthinkable: reveal the parts of herself that she buried with her brother.
On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the segregated Navy base at Port Chicago, California, killing more than 300 sailors who were at the docks, critically injuring off-duty men in their bunks, and shattering windows up to a mile away. On August 9th, 244 men refused to go back to work until unsafe and unfair conditions at the docks were addressed. When the dust settled, fifty were charged with mutiny, facing decades in jail and even execution. This is a fascinating story of the prejudice that faced black men and women in America’s armed forces during World War II, and a nuanced look at those who gave their lives in service of a country where they lacked the most basic rights.
Sixteen-year-old Giselle Boyer and her identical twin, Isabelle, are as close as sisters can be. They are each other’s strongest source of support even as their family life seems to be unraveling and their parents are considering divorce. Then the Boyers have a tragic encounter that will shatter everyone’s world forever.
Giselle wakes up in a hospital room, injured and unable to speak or move. She doesn’t know what’s happened to her sister, to her family, to herself. Trapped in the prison of her own body, Giselle must revisit her past in order to understand how the people closest to her—her friends, her parents, and above all, Isabelle—have shaped and defined her. Will she allow her love for her family and friends to buoy her and lead her on the path to recovery? Or will she remain lost in a painful spiral of longing and regret?
The yearbook votes have been cast and senior year is about to get interesting. Three irresistible stories from Jennifer Echols—now available together in one paperback edition!
Meanwhile, in Perfect Couple, Harper is artsy and introverted. Brody is athletic and extroverted. Two people couldn’t be more different. But when they are elected the Perfect Couple that Never Was, they find they have more in common—and more feelings for each other—than they could have anticipated.
And finally, Most Likely to Succeed follows two major opposites—put-together, ambitious Kaye and slacker, bad-boy Sawyer—as fate (and their friends!) conspire to bring them together. Perhaps their fellow classmates see the shimmering attraction that Kaye and Sawyer are unwilling to acknowledge themselves.
In September 1941, Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history—almost three years of bombardment and starvation that culminated in the harsh winter of 1943–1944. More than a million citizens perished. Survivors recall corpses littering the frozen streets, their relatives having neither the means nor the strength to bury them. Residents burned books, furniture, and floorboards to keep warm; they ate family pets and—eventually—one another to stay alive. Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who would write a symphony that roused, rallied, eulogized, and commemorated his fellow citizens—the Leningrad Symphony, which came to occupy a surprising place of prominence in the eventual Allied victory.
This is the true story of a city under siege: the triumph of bravery and defiance in the face of terrifying odds. It is also a look at the power—and layered meaning—of music in beleaguered lives.
Heartbroken and humiliated, teen supermodel London Phillips is done with her pity party and ready to move on. But between the mean-spirited media, a shocking realization about her billionaire ex, and a vengeful obsession, London s discovering that while confessions are good for the soul, deception is so much sweeter.
When it comes to juggling her cuties, Rich Montgomery is the queen. But now she s fallen for a bad boy who comes with more drama than she ever did and her fairytale love affair soon turns into a nightmare. Will she find a way out, or will pride get the best of her?
I’d be remiss in not also noting that my book, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World, will be out in paperback on January 24.