Looking for your next great read? We’re excited to share some of our favorite new YA books to hit the library shelves!
Disability Visibility: 17 First-Person Stories for Today
We’re so excited for a teen-oriented edition of this collection that’s been called “essential reading” by just about every reviewer. Disability rights activist Alice Wong gathers these 17 essays written by people with disabilities that examine their experiences through a wide variety of lenses, from confronting widespread ableism to celebrating disabled joy. Embracing diverse authors, this collection recognizes the disabled community as one with a vital culture and significant history of its own.
The Woman All Spies Fear: Code Breaker Elizabeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life
Elizabeth Smith Friedman is one of those all-too-common female STEM figures nearly lost to history, which would be a crime because she was like the real-life James Bond and Indiana Jones rolled into one. As an expert codebreaker, she was involved in a number of high-stakes missions throughout her life, including deciphering enemy messages in both world wars, busting prohibition smuggling operations, and a side hustle to research whether Sir Frances Bacon had a hand in writing Shakespeare’s plays. Told in entertaining vignettes, Amy Butler Greenfield chronicles the origin story of a master spy.
And We Rise
In her debut, Erica Martin proves that poetry can feel both timely and historic, informative and emotionally galvanizing. She journeys through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, employing photographs and research to complement her minimalist verse in this poetry collection that’s part art, part history.
Howl
Shaun David Hutchinson has previously written surreal coming-of-age stories by way of alien abductions, zombie best friends and the apocalypse itself, so all we can predict about his latest novel is its unpredictability. This time he tackles the classic monster movie as a metaphor for trauma and isolation in small town America.
Family of Liars
Put your hold on this one before it flies off the shelves! No spoilers here, but fans of E. Lockhart’s hit We Were Liars will be eager to return to Massachusetts for another suspense-filled summer. This prequel follows a different generation of the Sinclair family, promising to deliver just as much betrayal and drama as the last.
