For fans of Firekeeper’s Daughter, this is an edge-of-your-seat Indigenous YA murder mystery set in Costa Rica from Pura Belpré and Walter Dean Myers Award-winning author of Saints of the Household.

This enthralling murder mystery follows Ulá Dominguez, a Bribri-American teenager, searching for the truth behind her land-activist father’s mysterious death on their Native territory in Costa Rica. Ulá and her brother face off against illegal loggers, kidnappers, settlers, and the Costa Rican government while hunting for clues. Their only ally is a local journalist, who may be in danger himself.

Inspired by real-world missing, dead, and attacked Indigenous activists, award-winning author and poet Ari Tison writes her first novel in prose and pushes the envelope yet again by pulling together a propulsive story full of grief, environmental justice, and the fight for retribution that will resonate with teen readers.

Told in multiple points of view, the narrative also invokes the collective voice of Bribri ancestors. “Together we see” is the literal translation of the Bribri phrase for “goodbye.” Tison challenges the reader to sit with Ulá’s grief, to acknowledge the cost of greed, and to ask themselves “How far would you go to protect your land?”

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This lyrical YA novel by the author of And Other Mistakes follows a girl who struggles to find hope with her sisters, her best friend, and a new crush, as the country navigates a pandemic & protests against police brutality—perfect for fans of Darius the Great is Not Okay.

“I just want to enjoy being alive. Can’t that be enough?”

Tia doesn’t know how much more she can take. Things have been weird with her best friend Drew, her older sister Mel is in a coma after a mental health crisis, a global pandemic has stolen her senior year, and racial tensions are high across the country following the killing of another unarmed Black man by a police officer.

So when Tia’s oldest sister Alexis invites her to stay at her place, Tia jumps at the chance to get out of the house and away from her daily life, if only for a little while. But getting to know the cute girl she meets while walking her sister’s pandemic puppy is not enough to distract her from the weight of her world. Will Mel finally wake up? Is Alexis also on the edge of breaking? Will her friendship with Drew survive the summer? Is protest and quarantine all Tia can look forward to?

With so much unrest in the world and in her life, Tia will have to figure out how to keep from losing hope and losing her mind.

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From the bestselling author Kelly Quindlen comes a whip-smart, heart-squeezing YA rom-com about saving a gay bar, falling for the enemy, and building the kind of community you never thought you’d have.

When eighteen-year-old Louisa Wade inherits a gay bar from her late great-uncle, she figures there’s been some kind of mistake. There’s no way Uncle George—football legend and hometown hero of Rustin, Alabama—could have secretly owned a queer bar… right?

But The Frisky Cricket is real, and so is the messy legacy Uncle George left behind—including his grumpy ex-partner, Hatch, who wants nothing more than to sell the bar. Louisa may have zero business experience, but she’s determined to keep it open for the vibrant queer community that calls it home.

As the summer heats up, Louisa’s crusade puts her on a collision course with Aubrey Calhoun: the pretty, popular, and sharp-tongued daughter of Rustin University’s newly crowned football coach. The girls start off on the wrong foot, but a tentative truce leads to late nights, shared secrets, and a growing spark.

But things threaten to sputter out when Coach Calhoun sets his sights on The Frisky Cricket, scheming to replace it with a new athletic facility—celebrating Uncle George’s football career while erasing his queerness. Now Louisa must decide if she can fight for Uncle George’s legacy without losing sight of herself in the process.

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From the New York Times-bestselling author of A Crane Among Wolves comes a warm and romantic homage to Jane Austen set in historical Korea, about a reader and a writer who secretly fight against government book banning and find themselves irresistibly drawn together.

As the dutiful second-eldest daughter of a poor family, society would have Haewon believe that her only hope of a decent life is to marry well. But during a time of rampant government censorship and book banning, she instead works as an illegal book transcriber in order to make a little extra money. It’s dangerous work, but she loves it—especially when she gets to transcribe the work of her favorite author, known as Black Lotus.

When her older sister becomes smitten with a wealthy young gentleman, Haewon is roped into chaperoning them during their courtship. Which wouldn’t be so terrible… if it weren’t for the young man’s uptight and annoying best friend who also accompanies them.

As the only son of a noble, Seojun has a lot expected of him. Wealth. Status. Respectability. Certainly not frivolous and often illicit activities such as reading fiction. But Seojun loves to do something even more scandalous: writing. He’s kept his work secret from his father and friends, but with each passing day, the pressure of being his father’s son and the dispiriting actions of the government make Seojun question the purpose of it all. The only thing keeping him going are the encouraging letters he receives from his transcriber, known only as Magpie.

When his best friend falls hard for a girl of lower social status, Seojun finds himself forced to act as chaperone to the infatuated couple—along with the girl’s younger sister, who is as irritating as she is judgmental. But as Haewon and Seojun spend more time together, they begin to suspect they may have judged each other too quickly…

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A stunning and uplifting contemporary YA about a young teen who explores her queerness and navigates her grief through an unlikely friendship with her deceased father’s boyfriend.

When her mother refuses entry to a stranger named Richard at her father’s funeral, 17-year-old Mira Howard doesn’t understand why. But snooping through her father’s things reveals that Richard was her father’s boyfriend—a boyfriend she never knew about. In fact, Mira never even knew for sure that her dad was gay. Hoping to feel more connected to her late father, Mira reaches out to Richard without telling her mom, who is still angry from the divorce. As Mira and Richard become closer, Mira gains more and more insight into the side of her father that she never got to see.

Grieving that she never got to connect with her dad about their shared queerness, Mira asks that Richard teach her “how to be queer” while she navigates a new crush on her co-worker, which brings her out of her diary and into the real world.

But as Mira grows more confident in herself, she finds it hard to keep her relationship with Richard a secret, questioning why her family never talked about her father’s sexuality in the first place. Soon Mira has to decide if she wants to keep the peace or honor her father’s memory by being her truest self.

The post In Between Days first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

Three wishes. One prom queen celebrating at the Jersey Shore. And one monster who will keep killing until her wishes are paid for.

Seven years ago, Sundae Valentine made a deal with a monster she met at the bottom of a motel pool. She didn’t know the wishes he offered had a price—or that the third wish, the one she still hasn’t made, will cost her life.

Back then, she barely escaped Wildwood alive. Now, the cheerleaders and football players are headed to the Jersey Shore for prom weekend—leaving Sundae no choice but to return to the scene of her sun-bleached nightmares.

Sundae tries to forget, throwing herself into the rides on the pier, the tequila-fueled dance parties, and the guitar-strumming girl she can’t quite look away from. She hopes the beast has forgotten, too.

But there are eyes like silver coins watching from the shadows, and teeth like a rusty saw glinting in the light of the boardwalk. Because Sundae still owes a debt. And whatever it takes, whoever he has to kill, this time the monster’s determined to collect.

Story Locale: Wildwood, New Jersey boardwalk and beach

The post Body Count first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

In this new mystery from CL Montblanc, the author of Pride or Die, two internet enemies are forced to work together after a true crime meetup turns into a deadly case of its own.

Seventeen-year-old Sam Tombs hopes to get more eyes on the videos they make to raise awareness of crimes against LGBTQ+ teens. A true crime content creator event seems like the perfect opportunity to grow their channel—until the group becomes stranded at an eerie Victorian mansion, and one of them is killed in the night.

Sam’s alibi, and the only person they can trust, happens to be their mean, dorky internet nemesis Dylan. But the two must now put aside their rivalry and use their investigative skills to figure out who among the remaining teens is the killer, before their own deaths become tomorrow’s trending content.

The post They Want Us Dead first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

An ambitious teen enrolls at an elite science institute in Morbid Curiosities, a young adult thriller novel from author S. Hati.

When the Institute’s invitation arrived at my doorstep, it felt like it had been inked in my blood, sweat, and tears.

Aarya’s life plan has been set for as long as she can remember: finish high school with a bang, attend the best college she can get into, then land a prestigious biology research job. Her ticket to this dream is a one-year program at the Elizabethan Institute, the preeminent organization for life sciences in the United States, currently on the cusp of revealing a major project that could transform the worlds of biology and medicine.

But as Aarya tries to settle in to a school with sky-high academic expectations and research cloaked in mystery, it becomes clear that someone doesn’t want her there. As the scholarship student surrounded by rich, cutthroat peers who seem all too willing to torment her, she never expected to make friends, but the notes warning her to run rattle her to her core. She finds an ally in Sofia, a mysterious girl who claims to be the subject of closed-door experiments at the Institute and begs for Aarya’s help in figuring out what the Institute is really working on.

As rumors of mutated flora and fauna in the nearby city circulate and a murder investigation rocks the Institute, Aarya will have to navigate Sofia’s growing paranoia and her own increasingly unreliable memory to determine which classmates she can trust—and which would rather see her dead.

The post Morbid Curiosities first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.

Short, sharp, and expertly crafted, this realistic YA is a portrait of a girl who will do whatever it takes to carve out a place for herself in the world.

Destiny cannot count on anyone but herself. Her mother has struggled with addiction for all of Destiny’s seventeen years, moving them from town to town, bad boyfriend to bad boyfriend—including a particularly dark period in Texas, where Destiny ended up in a psychiatric hospital. But now they’re in a small town in a new state and her mother’s new boyfriend is sober and stable. And even more remarkable, Destiny has caught the eye of local golden boy Ryan.

But Destiny’s fairy tale bubble bursts when Ryan says their summer romance has to give way to football season. Destiny spirals hard, retreating into the same delusional and dissociative patterns that landed her in psychiatric care as a child, but this time the breakdown culminates in a pregnancy that can’t possibly be real.

Destiny’s skill as an artist is alternately a lifeline and a millstone as she struggles to resurface and reconnect with reality.

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A contemporary YA with a speculative twist about a college-bound girl who is struck by lightning and a storm cloud attuned to her emotions begins to follow her everywhere.

“I was struck by lightning and now there’s rain following me around. I was struck by lightning and now there’s rain following me around.”

Megh is a Desi girl whose plans to escape to college on the West Coast are complicated when she gets struck by lightning in the first week of a prestigious summer internship. What results is a storm cloud that follows her everywhere, which seems to react in direct response to her emotions. Megh’s struggles with depression, fear of leaving her home and loved ones, and uncertainty about her future cause the cloud to act up, and in order not to disrupt her future she’s determined to find a way to control her feelings–with the help of a fellow intern with kind eyes and warm smile.

With its sweet friends-to-lovers romance, beautiful female friendships, and an original and sensitive take on what it’s like to struggle with strong negative emotions, RIGHT AS RAIN has the emotional complexity and fantastical elements of THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER and the modern attitude of EMERGENCY CONTACT. It’s the perfect laugh/cry read to accompany a hot, humid New York summer: charming and poignant and an all-around winsome teen read that speaks to living with depression honestly and movingly.

The post Right as Rain first appeared on Shelves Bookstore.