NPR’s Top 100 YA Novels

In the ruins of a future North America, a young girl is picked to leave her impoverished district and travel to the decadent Capitol for a battle to the death in the savage Hunger Games. But for Katniss Everdeen, winning the Games only puts her deeper in danger as the strict social order of Panem begins to unravel.

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few more years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at the Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

In a far future world, television dominates, and books are outlawed. The totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be burned by “firemen,” whose job is to start the fires rather than stop them. But one fireman begins to see the value of the printed word.

Sixteen-year-old Miles’ first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.

In this hit series, young Lyra Belacqua tries to prevent kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments; helps Will Parry — a boy from another world — search for his father; and finds that she and Will are caught in a battle between the angelic forces of the Authority and those gathered by her rebel uncle, Lord Asriel.

This tale of a handsome farm boy who, aided by a drunken swordsman and a gentle giant, rescues a beautiful princess named Buttercup comes with a slyly humorous, metafictional edge: Goldman claims to have merely abridged an earlier text by one “S. Morgenstern” (actually a pseudonym) and peppers his text with clever commentary.

The classic study of human nature depicts the degeneration of a group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island. Ralph, Piggy, Simon and their fellow castaways attempt to develop their own society — and fail disastrously.

Able to see demons and those who hunt them, Clary Fray is drawn into the world of the Shadowhunters when her mother slips into a coma and travels to the City of Glass, the capital of their secretive country, where she uncovers important truths about her family’s past.

Always being dumped by girls named Katherine, Colin Singleton, a washed-up child prodigy with a Judge Judy-obsessed best friend, embarks on a quest to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which will affect all of his future relationships and change his life.

When brain surgery makes a mouse into a genius, dull-witted Charlie Gordon wonders if it might also work for him. It does … but then the mouse begins to regress.

When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing 13 cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah’s voice recount the events leading up to her death.

The Tuck family is confronted with an agonizing situation when they discover that a 10-year-old girl and a malicious stranger now share their secret, about a spring of magical water that prevents the drinker from ever growing any older.

During their first summer break spent apart, longtime friends Lena, Tibby, Carmen and Bridget each embark on adventures that they share with each other through a pair of jeans that they have decided will be worn by all, and so will absorb all of their stories.

When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other’s best friend, who produces a play revealing his relationship with them both.

The eldest of three sisters in a land where being the eldest is considered a misfortune, Sophie is resigned to her fate as a hat shop apprentice — until a witch turns her into an old woman, and she finds herself in the castle of the greatly feared wizard Howl.Literary Award Winner

Mica Area High School has never seen anything like Susan “Stargirl” Caraway, a classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl who wears Native American buckskins, plays the ukulele and cheers for both teams at sporting events. A story about the perils of popularity, the courage of nonconformity, and the thrill of first love.

Introverted, intellectual Gene and his daredevil best friend, Phineas, are roommates at a posh New England boarding school just before World War II, but a conflict of loyalties leads them to tragedy.

Two years after a horrible incident made them run away, vampire princess Lissa and her guardian-in-training Rose are found and returned to St. Vladimir’s Academy, where one girl focuses on mastering magic, the other on physical training, while both try to avoid the perils of gossip, cliques, gruesome pranks and sinister plots.

In the Old Kingdom, magic is real and the dead walk — and sometimes, they walk right across the magical Wall and into the New Kingdom. The series follows skilled necromancer Sabriel and her companions as they fight to send the dead back into the realm of Death.

Paul Atreides, the son of a betrayed duke, is given up for dead on a treacherous desert planet and adopted by its fierce, nomadic people, who help him unravel his most unexpected destiny.

Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Anna begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures, and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body.

Five novels steeped in British and Welsh mythology follow the story of 11-year old Will Stanton, seventh son of a seventh son and last of the Old Ones, in his quest to vanquish the powers of the Dark.

Yearning for knowledge and power, Sparrowhawk, a young student at the School for Wizards, becomes overanxious and tries his dangerous powers too soon, unleashing a terrible evil throughout the land, as he prepares for his destiny as the greatest sorcerer in the history of Earthsea.

Fourteen-year-old Mia, who is trying to lead a normal life as a teenage girl in New York City, is shocked to learn that her father is the Prince of Genovia, a small European principality, and that she is a princess and the heir to the throne.

Eleven-year-old Alanna wants to be a knight. Her brother Thom wants to be a wizard. So she disguises herself as a boy and the two switch places, leading Alanna to a lifetime of adventure as the Kingdom of Tortall’s first Lady Knight.

While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, an innkeeper and her son find a treasure map that leads them across the Spanish Main to a notorious pirate’s treasure. This classic novel introduced the world to the dreaded Long John Silver.

In a dystopian near future America, the government has classified love as a disease. All citizens, once they turn 18, receive a government operation to cure the unwanted emotion. Lena looks forward to her operation and a safe, predictable and happy life — until, just a few months before her 18th birthday, she meets the mysterious Alex and falls in love.

When Anna’s romance-novelist father sends her to an elite American boarding school in Paris for her senior year of high school, she goes reluctantly — and meets the amazing Etienne St. Clair. Will their year of near-misses lead to love?

When 17-year-old Ginny receives a bequest — a packet of mysterious envelopes — from her favorite aunt Peg, she leaves New Jersey to crisscross Europe on a whirlwind tour and scavenger hunt that transforms her life.

An ambitious new student at Manhattan’s prestigious Executive Pre-Professional High School, Craig Gilner suddenly discovers that he has become an average kid among a group of brilliant students, a discovery that leads to increasing anxiety and a battle with clinical depression, during which he encounters a motley crew of fellow patients battling their own problems.

After the suspicious death of her mother in 1895, 16-year-old Gemma returns to England, after many years in India, to attend a finishing school. There, she becomes aware of her magical powers and ability to see into the spirit world. But what will she find in that strange world?

After a family tragedy, Jacob feels compelled to explore an abandoned orphanage on an island off the coast of Wales, discovering that the children once kept there — including his own grandfather — may have been dangerous, and may be still alive.

For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements. She tries to rise above the hopelessness, and come into her own power.

Struggling to confront her grandfather’s impending death, 16-year-old Vicky Austin finds herself the center of attention for three young men, one of whom is a dolphin researcher. When the inevitable crisis comes, she must rely on the love of others — both human and dolphin — to overcome her grief.

When alchemist Sydney is ordered into hiding to protect the life of Moroi princess Jill Dragomir, the last place she expects to be sent is a human private school in Palm Springs, Calif. There, amid the wealthy students, Sydney and Jill must attempt to pass as normal.

Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain lives with her older sister, blocked-writer father and bohemian stepmother in a crumbling English castle. Then, a well-to-do American family buys the castle, becoming the Mortmains’ landlords. Cassandra uses a diary to record the tumultuous months that follow.

High school student Nick O’Leary, member of a rock band, meets college-bound Norah Silverberg and asks her to be his girlfriend for five minutes in order to avoid his ex-sweetheart. That fateful five minutes leads to an all-night quest to find their favorite band’s secret show.

In a future world where those between the ages of 13 and 18 can have their lives “unwound” and their body parts harvested for use by others, three teens go to extreme lengths to survive until they turn 18.

Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter, until she meets a boy who introduces her to drugs. She becomes a very different person, struggling to control her life and her mind, as she grows up and has children of her own.

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her, so when Xander appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows he is her ideal mate — until Ky Markham’s face appears for an instant before the screen fades to black.

Cammie Morgan can speak 14 different languages, hack CIA computer codes and kill a man seven different ways. She and her friends are students at the elite Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, where martial arts and chemical warfare are on the curriculum, and the real mission is training spies.

The dull and drab life of Ed, an underage cab driver with a coffee-addicted dog, takes an unexpected turn when he accidentally stops a bank robbery and finds himself being placed in charge of watching out for the entire town.

Princess Cimorene of Lindenwall decides she’s had enough of being a princess, and hires herself out to cook for the dragon Kazul. This boxed set follows her adventures, and those of her son Daystar.

Having been sent to Winding Circle Temple, Daja, Briar, Tris and Sandry begin to feel that they have finally found a place where their magical gifts are respected. As they learn and grow in their skills, they must face down everything from pirates to strange diseases.

Seventeen-year-old Karou, a lovely, enigmatic art student living in Prague, has a necklace of wish-granting beads and a sketchbook of hideous, frightening monsters — the chimaerae who form the only family she has ever known.

In the future, most people will have a Feed chip implanted in their heads that connects everyone to an evolved version of the Internet — at the cost of even basic privacy. During spring break on the moon, Titus and Violet meet and build a relationship when their Feeds are hacked.

Five novels of life in a magical modern Los Angeles, where Weetzie Bat and her friends and family — Dirk, Duck, My Secret Agent Lover Man and baby Cherokee — interact with ghosts from their past and with each other as they search for love, connection and acceptance.

When Auden goes to stay with her father, stepmother and new baby sister the summer before she starts college, all the trauma of her parents’ divorce is revived, even as she is making new friends and learning that there’s more to life than schoolwork and perfectionism.

The lives and loves of British teenager Georgia Nicolson and her friends in the “Ace Gang,” and also Georgia’s mad cat Angus. Can Georgia choose between hunky Robbie, Italian stallion Masimo and close friend Dave? And can she keep Angus out of trouble?

It’s 1914 and Europe is on the precipice of war — the German Clankers and British Darwinists are armed with futuristic weaponry and biotechnology; in the midst of the chaos, Alek, a royal and potential threat to the throne, and Deryn, a common Darwinist, meet on the run and forge an uneasy alliance that will dramatically change the course of the Great War and their lives.

When everyone over the age of 14 suddenly disappears from a California town, a battle erupts between the remaining residents and the students from a local school, as well as those who have “The Power” and those who do not.

Aerin, with the guidance of the wizard Luthe and the help of the blue sword Gonturan, wins the birthright due her as the daughter of the Damarian king and a witchwoman of the mysterious, demon-haunted North.

The classic Betsy-Tacy series follows Minnesota girl Betsy Ray and her friends Tacy and Tib as they grow from making piano-box playhouses to traveling the world and getting married.