The Check-in!

Truly Devious meets Turtles All the Way Down in critically acclaimed author Katie Henry’s YA contemporary comedic mystery, a hilarious send-up of the hardboiled detective genre that spotlights family, friendship, and love.

Gideon’s short-lived run as a locally famous boy detective ended when middle school started, and everyone else—including his best friend, Lily—moved on while Gideon kept holding on to his trench coat, fedora, and his treasured film noir collection. Now he’s sixteen and officially retired. That is, until Lily shows up suddenly at Gideon’s door, needing his help.

Call number: FIC HEN

Genre: YA Mystery, Comedy

Reading level: 8-9

Length: 384 pages

Availability: MHHS

In this thrilling and epic YA fantasy debut, the only hope for a city trapped in the eye of a cursed storm lies with the daughter of failed revolutionaries and a prince terrified of his throne.

Vesper Vale is the daughter of revolutionaries. Failed revolutionaries. When her mother was caught by the queen’s soldiers, they gave her a choice: death by the hangman’s axe, or death by the Storm that surrounds the city and curses anyone it touches. She chose the Storm. And when the queen’s soldiers—led by a paranoid prince—catch up to Vesper’s father after twelve years on the run, Vesper will do whatever it takes to save him from sharing that fate.

Call number: FIC MAR

Genre: YA Fantasy

Reading level: 7-12

Length: 400 pages

Availability: MHHS

When TJ Powar—a pretty, popular debater—and her cousin Simran become the subject of a meme: with TJ being the “expectation” of dating an Indian girl and her Sikh cousin who does not remove her body hair being the “reality”—TJ decides to take a stand.

She ditches her razors, cancels her waxing appointments, and sets a debate resolution for herself: “This House Believes That TJ Powar can be her hairy self, and still be beautiful.” Only, as she sets about proving her point, she starts to seriously doubt anyone could care about her just the way she is—even when the infuriating boy from a rival debate team seems determined to prove otherwise.

Call number: FIC KAU

Genre: YA Fiction

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 368 pages

Availability: MHHS

Prudence Perry is a third-generation Ladybird Scout who must battle literal (and figurative) monsters and the weight of her legacy.

Sixteen-year-old Prudence Perry is a legacy Ladybird Scout, born to a family of hunters sworn to protect humans from mulligrubs―interdimensional parasites who feast on human emotions like sadness and anger. Masquerading as a prim and proper ladies' social organization, the Ladybirds brew poisons masked as teas and use knitting needles as daggers, at least until they graduate to axes and swords.

Call number: FIC AND

Genre: YA Fantasy

Reading level: 10-12

Length: 416 pages

Availability: MHHS

Book 2 of 2: Beasts of Prey

In this much anticipated follow up to New York Times bestselling Beasts of Prey, Koffi’s powers grow stronger and Ekon’s secrets turn darker as they face the god of death.

Koffi has saved her city and the boy she loves, but at a terrible price. Now a servant to the cunning god of death, she must use her newfound power to further his continental conquest, or risk the safety of her home and loved ones. As she reluctantly learns to survive amidst unexpected friends and foes, she will also have to choose between the life—and love—she once had, or the one she could have, if she truly embraces her dangerous gifts.

Call number: FIC GRA

Genre: YA Fantasy

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 496 pages

Availability: MHHS

A powerful, gripping YA novel about the insidious nature of racism, the terrible costs of unearthing hidden truths, and the undeniable power of hope.

Safiya Mirza dreams of becoming a journalist. And one thing she’s learned as editor of her school newspaper is that a journalist’s job is to find the facts and not let personal biases affect the story. But all that changes the day she finds the body of a murdered boy.

Jawad Ali was fourteen years old when he built a cosplay jetpack that a teacher mistook for a bomb. A jetpack that got him arrested, labeled a terrorist—and eventually killed. But he’s more than a dead body, and more than “Bomb Boy.” He was a person with a life worth remembering.

Call number: FIC AHM

Genre: YA Fiction

Reading level: 7-12

Length: 416 pages

Availability: MHHS

A Muslim Coming of Age

A heartwarming book about family and identity introduces a compelling new voice, with a coming-of-age story that will speak to everyone who’s ever struggled to figure out where they belong.

After leaving Egypt when Sara was only six years old, her family slowly learns how to navigate the social dynamics of their new home. Sara feels out of place in her new school. Her father refuses to buy his coworkers a ginger beer, thinking it contains alcohol. Her mother refuses to wear a hijab, even if it would help them connect with other local Muslims. And Sara learns what it feels like to have a crush on a boy, that some classmates are better friends than others, and that her parents are loving, but flawed people who don't always know what's best for her, despite being her strongest defenders.

Call number: 818 SAY

Genre: YA Memoir

Reading level: 8-12

Length: 256 pages

Availability: MHHS

American Horror Story meets the dark comedy of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as Cat searches for a way to escape her high school.

Cat lives in her high school. She never leaves, and for a long time her school has provided her with everything she needs. But now things are changing. The hallways contract and expand along with the school’s breathing, and the showers in the bathroom run a bloody red. Cat’s best friend is slowly turning into cardboard, and instead of a face, Cat has a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh

Call number: FIC ZAP

Genre: YA Fantasy, Horror, Comedy

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 304 pages

Availability: MHHS

Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance.

For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother’s fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called “the secrets”: the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds.

Call number: 818 CON

Genre: Memoir, Biography

Reading level: 11-12

Length: 320 pages

Availability: MHHS

GRAPHIC NOVEL

From Eisner-Award nominated writer Marika McCoola and debut artist Aatmaja Pandya, an emotional coming-of-age graphic novel for fans of Bloom and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me.

Right before Jade is about to leave for a summer art intensive, her best friend, Phoebe, attempts suicide. How is Jade supposed to focus on herself right now?

GRAPHIC NOVEL

Call number: 741.5 McC

Genre: YA Graphic Novel

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 208 pages

Availability: MHHS

A young adult adaptation of the national bestseller that details the true story of two Navy pilots from divergent racial and economic backgrounds who forge a deep friendship during the Korean War as they face extraordinary circumstances.

Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, both Navy pilots during the Korean War in 1950, come from different backgrounds: Hudner is a white New Englander, a son of privilege; Brown is an African American son of a sharecropper from Mississippi. When the two men join forces in Fighter Squadron 32, they forge a deep friendship at a time when racial inequality was prevalent in America.

Call number: 951.904 MAK

Genre: Nonfiction, US History, Korean War

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 368 pages

Availability: MHHS

Opposites attract in this battle-robot-building YA romance from the NYT best-selling author of The Atlas Six.

Bel would rather die than think about the future. College apps? You’re funny. Extracurriculars? Not a chance. But when she accidentally reveals a talent for engineering at school, she’s basically forced into joining the robotics club. Even worse? All the boys ignore Bel—and Neelam, the only other girl on the team, doesn't seem to like her either.

Call number: FIC FOL

Genre: YA Romance

Reading level: 9-12

Length: 272 pages

Availability: MHHS

How a Century of Bigotry Led to Japanese American Internment

In another unrelenting look at the iniquities of the American justice system, Lawrence Goldstone, acclaimed author of Unpunished Murder, Stolen Justice, and Separate No More, examines the history of racism against Japanese Americans, exploring the territory of citizenship and touching on fears of non-white immigration to the US -- with hauntingly contemporary echoes.

Call number: 341.6 GOL

Genre: YA Nonfiction, US History, WWII

Reading level: 7-9

Length: 288 pages

Availability: MHHS