Take a look at our new book picks for teens and young adults this April! Includes titles by Patrick Ness, Juno Dawson, and Sarah Beth Durst and more. All these books are available to borrow for free with your library card.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations.
A Million Tiny Missiles All at Once
Lucas Maxwell
Elias’s brain is a swamp of fears and bad things. His once-loving brother Bo has become a stranger, and his parents are at breaking point.
When Bo falls in with dangerous people, Elias decides he’s the only one who can bring his family back together. But what begins as a simple pizza-night plan quickly spirals into chaos.
Can Elias find a way to reach the people he loves the most before it’s too late?
Deathly Fates
Tesia Tsai
As a priestess paid to guide the deceased home, Kang Siying has never feared death. But when her father collapses due to his declining health, Siying realizes that even she is not free from the cruel grasp of mortality.
Desperate to save her father, Siying accepts a dangerous job and travels through enemy territory to retrieve the corpse of a missing prince. But the moment Siying places her talisman on the dead prince’s head, the prince comes back to life. Worse, he won’t stay alive for long – not unless he absorbs enough qi, or life force, to keep his soul anchored to his body.
In return for a reward worth twice her original commission, Siying agrees to aid him in finding and purifying evil spirits for their qi. But as they journey across the countryside, encountering vengeful ghosts and enemy spies alike, they gradually uncover dark secrets about the prince’s death – secrets that could endanger both Siying’s father and their entire kingdom.
The Faraway Inn
Sarah Beth Durst
When sixteen-year-old Calisa arrives at her great-aunt’s bed and breakfast for the summer, she’s shocked to find it run down rather than cosy.
Grumpy and eccentric, Auntie Zee is determined to keep anyone from messing with her beloved inn – even though she clearly needs the help. To convince her great-aunt to keep her around, Calisa sets to work fixing up the inn, enlisting extra help from the groundkeeper’s (handsome) son.
But the longer she stays, the surer she is that there’s something strange about the B&B – and its residents. Something almost – otherworldly. The inn is hiding a magical secret – but secrets are like doors. Once Calisa opens this one, she won’t be able to go back.
A Deadly Pledge
M.A. Bennett
A case of mistaken identity means Eddie Dontay is hurled into the exclusive world of New Haven School.
Pretending to be Bartholomew ‘Brat’ Van Buren III, the sole heir to a rich family, who mysteriously disappeared a year ago, Eddie is sent undercover to expose the dark secrets of the Gloomth society.
But all is not what it seems. Eddie must participate in a series of difficult initiations, which prove his fitness for the club, competing against other students. An increasingly deadly contest culminates in the most dangerous challenge of all at a horror-filled, legendary Gothic house.
Is joining the Gloomth really worth dying for?
Survival Show
Juno Dawson
Welcome to the New Alliance – a reimagined world after a war and a flood.
Taryn Beck and her family don’t have much, and her younger brother needs vital medication to survive. Medication they can’t access or afford.
Taryn secretly enters Network G’s reality show: Starmaker, the most watched TV show in the world. The rules are simple; young women from all over the globe compete to join an all-singing, all-dancing pop outfit, DOLLHOU5E.
If you win, a life of luxury, stardom and wealth awaits. But there’s a catch. Eliminated contestants are literally eliminated; ‘volunteered’ to Project Population, an initiative designed to cull the community.
Sequestered in the sinister Dreamhouse, and filmed 24 hours-a-day, Taryn soon realises that reality TV is far from real. She and her fellow trainees are pitted against each other in cruel challenges.
Piper at the Gates of Dusk
Patrick Ness
In New World, there were no secrets. Everyone could hear everyone else’s thoughts in a constant, overwhelming Noise. Then a cure came – one that the second generation took from birth. Peace descended, wars ended, communication was silenced.
Until now…
Brothers Ben and Max have never really gotten on, each being more like one of their parents – Todd and Viola.
But when something is spotted in the night sky – something that’s bringing back dreams of Noise, dreams of terror – the brothers will have to come together.
Danger is coming and the family will be tested like never before.