Trending YA Literary Fiction Books
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Released: January 1999)
Author(s): Stephen Chbosky
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.06 (1169 Ratings, 95 Reviews)
Pages: 240
Standing on the fringes of life... offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor. This haunting novel about the dilemma of passivity vs. passion marks the stunning debut of a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction: The Perks of Being A WALLFLOWER This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.
Genre(s): Young Adult, Fiction, Classics, Friendship, Bildungsromans, social science, General, LGBTQ
The Old Man and the Sea (Released: January 1952)
Author(s): Ernest Hemingway
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.69 (1012 Ratings, 74 Reviews)
Pages: 127
Told in language of great simplicity and power, The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal -- a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.
Genre(s): Classics, Fiction, Adventure, General, Literature, History, Psychology, Friendship, Reading (Senior high), Aged men
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Released: January 2002)
Author(s): Mark Haddon, Simon Stephens (Adaptor)
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.81 (1033 Ratings, 64 Reviews)
Pages: 290
This is Christopher's murder mystery story. There are no lies in this story because Christopher can't tell lies. christopher does not like strangers or the colours yellow or brown or being touched. On the other hand, he knows all the countries in the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7507. When Christohper decides to find out who killed the neighbour's dog, his mystery story becomes more complicated than he could ever have predicted.
Genre(s): Fiction, Mystery, Young Adult, Classics, Adventure, Action & Adventure, Study Aids, Drama, Asperger's syndrome, Autism
Looking for Alaska (Released: January 2005)
Author(s): John Green
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.75 (871 Ratings, 80 Reviews)
Pages: 263
Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . . After. Nothing is ever the same
Genre(s): Fiction, Classics, Adventure, Young Adult, American fiction, literary criticism, Juvenile Nonfiction
The Outsiders (Released: January 1967)
Author(s): S. E. Hinton
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.95 (720 Ratings, 59 Reviews)
Pages: 229
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 know what to expect - until the night someone takes things too far. ((back cover)
Genre(s): Young Adult, Classics, Adventure, Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Friendship, General, Spanish, English fiction, Juvenile Nonfiction
The Bell Jar (Released: January 1963)
Author(s): Sylvia Plath
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.95 (805 Ratings, 94 Reviews)
Pages: 234
Working in New York one hot summer, Esther Greenwood is on the brink of her future. Yet she is also on the edge of a darkness that makes her world increasingly unreal. In this vivid and unforgettable novel about the struggles of growing up, Esther's world shines through: the wide-eyed country girls, her crazed men-friends, hot dinner dances and nights in New York, and a slow slide into breakdown. --back cover
Genre(s): Fiction, Classics, General, Biography, Literature, Poetry, Psychology, Women, Autobiographical fiction, Psychological
All the Light We Cannot See (Released: January 2014)
Author(s): Anthony Doerr
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.20 (775 Ratings, 115 Reviews)
Pages: 544
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).
Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction, War, General, History, Classics, Friendship, Young Adult, Adventure
The Help (Released: January 2009)
Author(s): Kathryn Stockett
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.19 (653 Ratings, 47 Reviews)
Pages: 534
There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue, and white Miss Skeeter, home from college, who wants to why her beloved maid has disappeared.
Genre(s): Fiction, Classics, Young Adult, Literature, Spanish, African American women
A Study in Scarlet (Released: January 198)
Author(s): Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen Fry (Narrator)
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.02 (588 Ratings, 36 Reviews)
Pages: None
The first of the Sherlock Holmes' adventures, this book introduces the great sleuth and explains how Dr. Watson and Holmes come to share rooms together and solve mysteries together.
Genre(s): Fiction, Classics, Mystery, Murder, Crime, Crime Fiction, Private investigators, General, Adventure, Young Adult
Little Fires Everywhere (Released: January 2017)
Author(s): Celeste Ng
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.00 (599 Ratings, 79 Reviews)
Pages: 370
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town--and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs. Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. “Witnessing these two families as they commingle and clash is an utterly engrossing, often heartbreaking, deeply empathetic experience… It’s this vast and complex network of moral affiliations—and the nuanced omniscient voice that Ng employs to navigate it—that make this novel even more ambitious and accomplished than her debut… The magic of this novel lies in its power to implicate all of its characters—and likely many of its readers—in that innocent delusion [of a post-racial America]. Who set the littles fires everywhere? We keep reading to find out, even as we suspect that it could be us with ash on our hands.” — NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 🔥 “Ng has one-upped herself with her tremendous follow-up novel… a finely wrought meditation on the nature of motherhood, the dangers of privilege and a cautionary tale about how even the tiniest of secrets can rip families apart… Ng is a master at pushing us to look at our personal and societal flaws in the face and see them with new eyes… If Little Fires Everywhere doesn’t give you pause and help you think differently about humanity and this country’s current state of affairs, start over from the beginning and read the book again.” —SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE 🔥 “Stellar… The plot is tightly structured, full of echoes and convergence, the characters bound together by a growing number of thick, overlapping threads… Ng is a confident, talented writer, and it’s a pleasure to inhabit the lives of her characters and experience the rhythms of Shaker Heights through her clean, observant prose… She toggles between multiple points of view, creating a narrative both broad in scope and fine in detail, all while keeping the story moving at a thriller’s pace.” —LOS ANGELES TIMES 🔥 “Delectable and engrossing… A complex and compulsively readable suburban saga that is deeply invested in mothers and daughters…What Ng has written, in this thoroughly entertaining novel, is a pointed and persuasive social critique, teasing out the myriad forms of privilege and predation that stand between so many people and their achievement of the American dream. But there is a heartening optimism, too. This is a book that believes in the transformative powers of art and genuine kindness — and in the promise of new growth, even after devastation, even after everything has turned to ash.” —BOSTON GLOBE 🔥 “[Ng] widens her aperture to include a deeper, more diverse cast of characters. Though the book’s language is clean and straightforward, almost conversational, Ng has an acute sense of how real people (especially teenagers, the slang-slinging kryptonite of many an aspiring novelist) think and feel and communicate. Shaker Heights may be a place where ‘things were peaceful, and riots and bombs and earthquakes were quiet thumps, muffled by distance.’ But the real world is never as far away as it seems, of course. And if the scrim can’t be broken, sometimes you have to burn it down. Grade: A-” —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Genre(s): Fiction, Contemporary, Young Adult, psychological fiction