40 of the best new books for your collection.
The Teenage Booklist is selected annually by librarians from the Schools Library Service and secondary schools.
Titles from the Teen and Primary lists will be chosen for the Book Award Shortlist in July. Remember to let us know if you want to participate in this event!
The list represents a selection of the best new fiction first published in paperback within the last year, and aims to cover as diverse a range of subjects, genres, authors and interests as possible.
Posters and bookmarks will be sent to subscribing secondary schools from May.
Please contact the library for more information on the Teen List or to request additional posters or bookmarks (subscribing schools only).
View the full list
| Axelsson, Carina | Model under Cover | Despite being the hottest new model on the circuit, Axelle is also really good at solving mysteries, so when a fabulous diamond goes missing, Axelle is on the case! |
| Berry, Julie | All the Truth that’s in Me | After being missing for two years, Judith returns home to her small pioneer community with her tongue cut out. No-one knows what happened to her and she cannot tell anyone, so people assume the worst. There is only one person whose opinion she values – but he is courting someone else… |
| Booth, Anne | Girl with a White Dog | Jessie is learning about Nazi Germany and World War Two at school, but what has this got to do with the white Alsatian puppy that her Gran gets, and why is her Gran so troubled? |
| Colfer, Eoin | Warp: the Reluctant Assassin | History’s deadliest magician has escaped Victorian London and landed here in the present with deadly plans up his sleeve – can Chevie, the FBI’s youngest special agent, do anything to stop him? |
| Brahmachari, Sita | Red Leaves | Aisha is devastated to be leaving her foster mother, Zac is struggling to cope with his parents’ divorce and Iona’s family fell apart and now she finds herself living on the streets. These three lives are about to become entwined. |
| Brugman, Alyssa | Alex as Well | Alex was born intersex and brought up as a boy, but always felt somewhat different and wrong in her chosen body. Spurred on by these feelings Alex decides to stop taking her pills and become the girl that had been there all along – not always an easy journey. |
| Buxton, J. P. (Jamie P.) | Temple Boys | It’s 33AD and Flea, a beggar and wannabe gang member, is living rough on the streets of Jerusalem. Attempting a heist on a visiting magician, he is plunged into a world of betrayal and power struggles. |
| Campbell-Johnston, Rachel | The Child’s Elephant | Can you imagine what it must be like to be snatched from your home and forced to serve in the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda? That is what happened to Bat and his best friend. But Bat has an ally – a baby elephant, Meya, who he rescued but now in the wild – Can Meya come to his aid? |
| Carthew, Natasha | Winter Damage | A gripping and atmospheric thriller set on a remote Cornish moor in winter. Ennor is struggling to look after her family in a caravan, but when circumstances take a turn for the worse she sets out to get help, a decision that will dramatically change her life |
| Casale, Alexia | The Bone Dragon | Evie’s shattered ribs have been a secret for the last four years. Now she has found the strength to tell her adoptive parents, and the physical traces of her past are fixed – the only remaining signs a scar on her side and a fragment of bone taken home from the hospital, which she carves into a dragon which seems to take on a life of its own… |
| Davis, Ben | The Private Blog of Joe Cowley | Joe Cowley’s made sure that his blog is set to private – no way does he want this to go viral. Fed up with his friends trying to kill him to get £250 from “You’ve Been Framed”, it’s time for him to sort his life out… |
| Dowswell, Paul | Red Shadow | Set in Moscow in 1941 with the Germans advancing, two brave Russian boys are forced to battle against Stalin’s dreaded secret police. |
| Earle, Phil | The Bubble Wrap Boy | Charlie’s GOT to be good at something, and he wants that something to be skateboarding – his ticket to popularity. He’s just got to keep it secret from his Mum, who is hiding secrets of her own… |
| Easton, T. S. | Boys Don’t Knit | Following an unfortunate incident with a lollipop lady and a stolen bottle of Martini Rosso, Ben is ordered to give something back to the community. The hot teacher he likes runs a knitting group so Ben, reluctantly at first, gets ‘stuck in’. He just needs to keep it all a secret from his mates and to notice that girl-next-door Megan Hooper has a bit of a thing for him. |
| Gaiman, Neil | The Museum of Unnatural History Presents Unnatural Creatures | Welcome to the menagerie – creatures extraordinary,exotic, extinct, living, dead and undead prowl the pages of this book! |
| Gibbons, Alan | Hate | A girl is murdered one night for no other reason than how she looked. Six months later, Anthony, who witnessed the murder, meets Eve; sister to the murdered girl. The same girl he could have saved. Eve is bitter and full of hatred. She hates the people that killed Rosie. She hates Anthony for not doing anything. Most of all, she hates people who hate. |
| Gourlay, Candy | Shine | A girl living on the dark Asian island of Mirasol, which is rife with superstitions and taboos, is shunned by the other islanders, but, not wanting to leave, she manages to strike up a friendship on the internet. |
| Haddix, Margaret | Full Ride | Becca thought her life was over when her father was sent to prison for embezzlement. It didn’t help when he used her as his excuse: “How else is a guy like me supposed to send his daughter to college?” She and her mother fled their town and their notoriety to start over, but the past has a habit of coming back to haunt you. |
| Hearn, Julie | Dance of the Dark Heart | Jack has good looks, lots of charm and oozes talent – and a voice in his head prompting him to commit acts of extraordinary evil, but he is determined not to be separated from his one true love. |
| Herrndorf, Wolfgang; Mohr, Tim | Why WeTtook the Car | Misfits Tschick and Mike suddenly decide to take a road-trip, with no particular destination in mind. the thrills, encounters and scrapes they get involved in along the way ensure that they can no longer be looked upon as ‘boring’. Winner of the German Teen Literature Prize. |
| Holland, L.Tam | The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong | With his parents stubborn about telling him about his heritage, Vee makes up a whole new family tree for a school assignment, including a forged letter from is supposed grandfather inviting him to visit him in China – and suddenly he is off to meet his new extended family! |
| Kazerooni, Abbas | On Two Feet and Wings | Close to his tenth birthday, Abbas has to leave his parents and friends to escape Tehran. The Iran-Iraq War is at its bloodiest. If Abbas doesn’t leave soon, he will have to join the army and go to war. In the strange and often frightening city of Istanbul, Abbas has to grow up fast. An amazing true story. |
| Lingard, Joan | Trouble on Cable Street | London 1936: riots are brewing in the East End of London. With one brother running away to fight in Spain and the other lured by the increasing powerful fascist movement, Isabella is faced with a conflict of her own. |
| McCaughrean, Geraldine | The Middle of Nowhere | When a deadly snake kills her mother, Comity’s life in the Australian outback changes for ever. She turns to the yard boy for friendship. Skinny little Fred is a storyteller by nature and delights Comity with his Aboriginal tales. But a new employee arrives with a crystal-topped cane and a cruel eye for sport, and Comity’s home becomes as dangerous as the landscape |
| McKenzie, Sophie | The One and Only | Eve has been sent away to school in Spain to keep her out of Luke’s arms. Lonely without her, Luke turns to someone else…But then Eve turns up, wanting to take their relationship to the next stage. She wants Luke to be her ‘first’. She thought she was Luke’s one and only – he just wishes she was… |
| Murdoch, Emily | If You Find Me | A camper van hidden deep in a forest is the only home fifteen-year-old Carey and her sister can remember. All they have is each other, as their mentally ill mother comes and goes with greater frequency. Until one fateful day when their mother disappears for good, and the girls are found by their father. Now, Carey must come to terms with the truth of why their mother spirited them away ten years ago… |
| Mussi, Sarah | Riot | Too many people – not enough money, so the government decides to force the sterilisation of all school leavers without university places or guaranteed employment. The country is aghast, but the politicians are unshakeable. It’s time for the young to take to the streets. It’s time for them to RIOT |
| Ness, Patrick | More than This | Seth drowns, desperate and alone. But then he wakes. Naked, thirsty, starving. But alive. And where is he? The street seems familiar, but everything is abandoned, overgrown, covered in dust. He remembers dying, his skull bashed against the rocks. Has he woken up in his own personal hell? Is there more to this life, or perhaps this afterlife? |
| Robert, Naima B. | She Wore Red Trainers | Ali and Amirah can’t stop thinking about each other – but they both want to be good Muslims and Amirah wants to abide by her family’s choice of husband for her – can Ali and Amirah ever be together? |
| Rosoff, Meg | Picture Me Gone | Mila has an exceptional talent for discerning the truth and making sense of clues. So when her father’s best friend, Matthew, goes missing, Mila’s skills are needed. But just when she’s closest to solving the mystery, a shocking betrayal calls into question her trust in the one person she thought she could read best. |
| Sáenz, Benjamin Alire | Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe | Two Oddball teenagers, with seemingly little in common, forge a special friendship, which changes their views on life. Great characters, engaging and often hilarious |
| Sedgwick, Marcus | She is not Invisible | Laureth sets out to find her father, a famous writer, who has gone missing in America, taking her little brother Benjamin with her. Ahead lie challenges and threats, all of which are that much tougher for Laureth than they would be for any other 16-year old, because Laureth is blind. |
| Slater, Kim | Smart | Kieran has skills – not socialising or getting on with people skills, but drawing and detective skills – which ought to come in handy when a homeless man is murdered down by the canal….. |
| Sutcliffe, William | The Wall | The Wall divides Israeli and Palestinian communities – when Joshua finds a secret tunnel that goes under it, he is too curious not to go through it. What he finds changes him forever |
| Takoudes, Greg | When We Wuz Famous | Francisco Ortiz is excited to be leaving Spanish Harlem in New York on a scholarship to an elite boarding school. His future seems promising. But his new classmates assume the worst and pepper him with questions about drugs and gangs. It’s made even more complicated when Francisco realizes that back home in the hood, he no longer fits in. In a desperate attempt to keep friendships, Francisco makes a terrible decision. |
| Vacco, Corina | My Chemical Mountain | Although they ride their bikes in the wasteland and swim in the now-orange river, the teenagers hate the chemical company that has made polluted their town, and vow revenge, but is it that easy? |
| Walsh, Aoife | Look After Me | When your parents are foster carers, life can become a little hectic, so when Phoebe and her brother Adam find an abandoned baby in the garden shed, it seems sensible to look after the baby themselves… |
| Williamson, Lisa | The Art of Being Normal | Two boys. Two secrets. David has always been an outsider. His parents think he’s gay. The school bully thinks he’s a freak. Only his two best friends know the real truth – David wants to be a girl. On the first day at his new school Leo Denton only wants be invisible. Attracting the attention of the most beautiful girl in year 11 is definitely not part of that plan. When Leo stands up for David in a fight, an unlikely friendship forms. |
| Yousafzai, Malala; McCormick, Patricia | Malala: the girl who stood up for education and changed the world | Malala Yousafzai was only ten years old when the Taliban took control of her country and refused to allow girls to go to school. Malala was shot for fighting for her right to be educated. This is her story. |
| Zephaniah, Benjamin | Terror Kid | Rico loves computers and he is brilliant at fixing them. And at hacking… Rico also believes in protest – but he hates trouble and does everything he can to avoid it. But he makes one terrible mistake and now must prove his innocence when the police are accusing him of terrorism and murder. |
Poster and bookmark design by Angela Wraight
