Here are our reading groups’ favorite young adult books of 2015 based on our 2015 survey results.
THE BOOK THIEF
Markus Zusak
Liesel Meminger is only nine years old when she is taken to live with the Hubermanns, a foster family, on Himmel Street in Molching, Germany, in the late 1930s. She arrives with few possessions, but among them is The Grave Digger's Handbook, a book that she stole from her brother's…
THE HUNGER GAMES
Suzanne Collins
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and…
WONDER
R J Palacio
I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse. August Pullman was born with a facial deformity that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as…
WE WERE LIARS
Emily Lockhart
The New York Times bestseller We Were Liars is now available as a not-to-be-missed hardcover deluxe edition! Whether you know how it ends (shh . . . don’t tell!) or have let too many seasons go by without discovering the truth about the Liars for yourself, you will want to…
MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN
Ransom Riggs
#1 New York Times Bestseller On the New York Times Best Seller List for more than 52 consecutive weeks A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that…
HOLLOW CITY
Ransom Riggs
The extraordinary journey that began in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children continues as Jacob Portman and his newfound friends journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. There, they hope to find a cure for their beloved headmistress, Miss Peregrine. But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk…
THE HIRED GIRL
Laura Amy Schlitz
Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz brings her sharp wit and keen eye to early twentieth-century America in a comedic tour de force destined to become a modern classic. Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs yearns for real life and true love—like the heroines in her beloved novels experience. But what hope is there for…
THE STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL SORROWS OF AVA LAVENDER
Leslye Walton
Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava — in all other ways a normal girl — is born with the wings…
THE THING ABOUT JELLYFISH
Ali Benjamin
Now available in paperback, this 2015 National Book Award finalist and instant New York Times bestseller is a stunning debut novel about grief and wonder. Everyone says that it was an accident... that sometimes things "just happen". But Suzy won't believe it. Ever. After her best friend dies in a…
EGG & SPOON
Gregory Maguire
In this tour de force, master storyteller Gregory Maguire offers a dazzling novel for fantasy lovers of all ages. Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. One of her brothers has been conscripted into the Tsar’s army, the other taken as a…
THE SILENCED
James DeVita
Marena struggles to remember what life was like before the Zero Tolerance Party installed listening devices in every home. Before they murdered her mother and put her father under house arrest. A time when difference was celebrated. When the new Minister of Education cracks down in her school, eliminating personal…