What Are You Looking For?

This story centres on a teenager negotiating faith, attraction and the beliefs expressed around him at a Bible camp.

A witty, humane fantasy about growing into responsibility while facing fear, prejudice and loss. Tiffany’s work as a witch centres on caring for people, while the story also brings darker threats and emotionally difficult relationships.

A fantasy novel with an unusual time-based world and a forbidden romance at its heart. It may particularly appeal to readers interested in steampunk-like settings and LGBT protagonists, while its darker content merits advance discussion.

This is a lively historical novel about sisters navigating an emotionally distant mother while encountering Black Panther community work and racial injustice. Its strongest offering is the combination of distinct girl characters, family complexity and a child’s perspective on a changing society.

This is a personal account of rejecting inherited hatred and choosing peace. It offers a way into questions about responsibility, identity and prejudice, while engaging with terrorism and family history rather than treating them as abstract subjects.

A sports-centred school story broadens into questions about trying unfamiliar activities and supporting a friend. Kyle’s basketball and theatre commitments provide the main conflict, while homophobic bullying is a significant social issue in the story.

A stark historical journey about a young woman claiming an independent life, while discovering that escape does not remove poverty, danger or responsibility. Its restrained style and unsettled emotional relationships may reward readers who prefer serious, atmospheric fiction over easy comfort.

This is a serious, character-led account of friendship tested by colonial injustice. It offers a personal route into Kenya’s history, showing how fear, racial privilege and silence can damage people across divided communities.

This offers a supernatural murder mystery rooted in Prohibition-era New York, alongside folklore, occult ideas, jazz-club life and vivid secondary storylines. Its horror is central rather than incidental.

Expect an atmospheric historical fantasy centred on a vulnerable boy, an alchemist’s dangerous ambitions, and cats drawn into rivalry over magical inheritance. Its plot combines adventure with grim events and unsettling supernatural ideas.

This is a school story about the harm caused by judging people by appearance. It offers two viewpoints on being teased and also includes a child’s difficult home life.

A suspenseful historical novel linking a present-day investigation with a teenager’s experience of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. It combines mystery, racial history and questions about privilege, social inequality, identity and justice.

This is an ensemble fantasy about cats facing leadership uncertainty, personal loyalties and unsettling mysteries. It offers relationship dilemmas, humour and character change, but its later conflict is darker and may feel less clear or controlled.

This is a supernatural thriller about a transgender teen whose post-operative recovery is interrupted by a werewolf attack. Friendship, bodily change, prejudice and the pull of revenge sit alongside the horror premise.

This is an emotionally intense, socially engaged story of young people facing bereavement, family instability, discrimination and addiction. Its perspective shifts and layered histories invite sustained attention, while compassion, accountability, faith and hope remain important strands.

A fast-moving supernatural mystery about a teenager searching for her missing mother, then uncovering concealed family history and a strange inheritance. It offers suspense, folklore, friendship and a seaside setting, with the pace reportedly slowing after the opening.

Choose this for a reader who enjoys high-seas adventure, mermaids, treasure hunts, riddles and brisk action. The story also offers a character-led exploration of identity, friendship, prejudice and belonging.

A stranger arrives by sea and is confined, mistreated and expelled as the islanders’ fear becomes hatred. Their final wall leaves a bleak image of exclusion rather than reconciliation.

This offers imaginative fantasy alongside sustained questions about Black identity, friendship, prejudice and self-determination. Its dual perspective gives Tavia and Effie distinct forms of identity exploration, though the opening may feel slow before the action intensifies.

Expect lively, performative poems alongside serious real-world concerns. The collection can invite laughter, close attention to word choice and discussion about fairness, nature, animal treatment and how poetry communicates ideas.

This is an adventurous, emotionally charged fantasy combining dragons with Cold War intrigue. It follows danger, friendship, romance and hope while confronting racism, bereavement, political violence and the destructive consequences of power.

This is an emotionally serious but often humorous story about a child trying to solve an illness he cannot control. Its interest lies in Colin’s urgency, bold schemes and changing understanding of help, responsibility and loss.

A sweeping fantasy sequel about friends divided by danger and prejudice, with witches, magic, political responsibility and a developing romance. It offers an immersive world, tense escapes and battles, while leaving parts of the journey open for a later book.

This is an atmospheric, dark fantasy centred on a distinctive card-based magic system and Elspeth’s uneasy relationship with the Nightmare. Romance develops alongside political conflict rather than replacing the fantasy plot.

Expect a large-scale space adventure with mythic elements, unusual worlds and questions about identity. The illustrations are an important part of the experience, adding atmosphere rather than simply depicting events.

A brief, visually striking fable about how judging groups by appearance can escalate into war. Its simple storytelling carries difficult ideas, while the final uneasy glance leaves the future unresolved.

This offers immersive folklore, a slow-building relationship and a heroine confronting shame about her magic. It may suit readers who enjoy gothic atmosphere, complex myth-making and emotionally difficult fantasy rather than a light fairy-tale retelling.

A lively coming-of-age adventure where friendship, family banter and entrepreneurial schemes meet questions about words, responsibility and belonging. Humour and musical energy sit alongside more serious experiences involving prejudice, peer pressure and policing.

This is a grief-focused family story told through Jamie’s limited understanding. It combines painful circumstances with comic moments, friendship and movement towards hope, while showing how adults’ responses to loss affect children.

This is an explanatory introduction to how AI can reproduce unfair patterns when its information contains prejudice. It also takes an empowering position: people can use their voices to support fairer, more just technologies.

This is a lively university romance built around an advice column: Mary-Elizabeth gives relationship guidance while navigating attraction, questionable choices, shaken confidence and changing views of the people around her.

This offers a tense zombie-survival story alongside a developing romance between two boys. Its distinctive appeal lies in combining wilderness adventure with questions about belonging, prejudice, fear and how communities respond to outsiders.

A fast-moving historical fantasy that places a child and a growing phoenix inside the Great Fire of London. Maps, historical events and an imagined creature create an adventurous route through danger, trust and responsibility.

A coming-of-age story about identity, belonging and disclosure, balancing painful social pressures with friendship, family love and romantic possibility. It offers a queer Mexican American protagonist whose choices are shaped by school, faith and immigration-related family separation.

This offers an engrossing, multi-viewpoint dystopian adventure, with telepathy, wartime politics, secret identities and dramatic reversals. Its strongest appeal appears to be the combination of tense plotting and questions about belonging, tolerance and social control.

A richly imagined magical-school adventure that places friendship and belonging alongside prejudice, family reputation and mystery. Ella’s determination and growing relationships drive the story, while the fantasy world draws on varied cultures and customs.

This is a richly imagined fantasy adventure about searching for a missing parent while navigating a hidden botanical world. It offers magical danger, family revelations, environmental stakes and questions about belonging.

This is an adventure about two young people from opposing populations whose friendship brings hidden injustice into view. Its imaginative giant-built city provides a route into questions about prejudice, power, exploitation and environmental responsibility.

This is a sharp, often comic story about Elizabeth Bennet’s relationships and mistaken judgements, set within a society where marriage, money and social rank strongly shape women’s choices.

This is a compact, serious story about two migrant workers pursuing work and a shared dream. Its strongest elements are loyalty, loneliness and the pressures placed on vulnerable people when hopes collide with harsh circumstances.

This is an emotionally direct coming-of-age novel about friendship, group identity and social division. Its first-person voice invites closeness while leaving room to question how Ponyboy understands and presents the people around him.

A sweeping, emotionally serious story linking personal betrayal and family relationships with Afghanistan’s recent history. Its movement towards forgiveness and redemption is set alongside graphic cruelty, sexual assault, death and distressing language.

This is a fast-moving fantasy adventure built around three young characters with different goals. It offers magical creatures, peril and hidden truths about the island and the beliefs surrounding its beasts.

Expect an imaginative fantasy built around ordinary household objects seen from a tiny family’s perspective. Its appeal lies in clever details, family relationships and the contrast between the Borrowers’ hidden life and the human world.

A tense, imaginative adventure follows Varjak from sheltered privilege into an unfamiliar city, where friendship, danger and dream-teaching reshape his understanding of himself and other cats.