Summer Reading 2021: Grades 9 - 12 Book List

Two hundred years after Cinderella found her prince, the fairy tale is over. Teen girls are now required to appear at the Annual Ball, where the men of the kingdom select wives based on a girl's display of finery. If a suitable match is not found, the girls not chosen are never heard from again. Sophia, together with Constance, the last known descendant of Cinderella, Sophia vows to bring down the king once and for all.

Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths.

For fourteen-year-old budding artist Minoru Ito, her two brothers, her friends, and the other members of the Japanese-American community in southern California, the three months since Pearl Harbor was attacked have become a waking nightmare: attacked, spat on, and abused with no way to retaliate--and now things are about to get worse, their lives forever changed by the mass incarcerations in the relocation camps.

When seventeen-year-old Veronica's photograph of her introverted girlfriend goes viral, they are sent into a spiral of fame and lethal danger as they navigate the turbulent waters of their relationship, secrets, acclaim, and the underground San Diego art scene.

Everyone thinks you’re trouble when you look like us. No one even blinks twice over a missing black girl because she must’ve brought whatever happened to her upon herself. Jay Murphy can admit, for a minute, he thought his sister Nicole just got caught up with her drug dealer boyfriend and his friends. But she’s been gone too long. It’s time to step up, to do what the Newport News police department won’t. Bring her home.

Claude's mom whisks them both away to a remote, mosquito-infested island off the coast of Georgia, a place where the two of them can start the painful process of mending their broken hearts after Claude's father asks for a divorce. It's the last place Claude can imagine finding her footing, but then Jeremiah Crew happens. Miah is a local trail guide who seems to see Claude for who she wants to be.

As the Kingdom of Aloriya prospered for hundred of years, the woods grew dark and cursed. Cerys knows this all too well after narrowly escaping as the woods killed her mother. As a new queen is crowned things long hidden in the woods descend on the kingdom itself. Cerys is forced on the run to find the legendary Lady of the Wilds and beg for a way to save her home.

When seventeen-year-old Nora O'Malley, the daughter of a con artist, is taken hostage in a bank heist, every secret she is keeping close begins to unravel.

Challenging herself to overcome long-held insecurities at the beginning of her junior year, Liv lands an unexpected role in her high school's hip-hopera production of Othello that helps launch her journey of self-empowerment.

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. Suddenly Amal's future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art.

It's the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone's going through changes--but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. As he navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can't stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance.

Real life isn't a fairytale. But Tié̂n still enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It's hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Tié̂n, he doesn't even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he's going through?

The year is 2421. Awkward and shy, Pepper buries herself in the universe of the classic fictional superhero Supernova to avoid dealing with the perils of the 9th grade. But then fate intervenes when Pepper encounters a strange cat named Mister McKittens and stumbles into a volatile science experiment run by a sinister substitute teacher named Doctor Killian.

Seventeen-year-old Clara runs away from home to join a vigilante monster-flghting squad, only to discover that sometimes the most dangerous monsters are where you least expect them.

To discover the truth behind her mother's mysterious death, a teen girl infiltrates a magical secret society claiming to be the descendants of King Arthur and his knights.

In the first book in Tricia Levenseller's exciting new YA fantasy duology, a teenage blacksmith with social anxiety is forced to go on the run to protect the world from the most powerful magical sword she's ever made.

Working as a waitress at a cheesy medieval-themed restaurant in the Chicago suburbs, Kit Sweetly wishes she could be a Knight like her brother. Company policy allows only guys to be Knights, so when Kit takes her brother's place, clobbers the Green Knight, and reveals her identity at the end of the show, she rockets into Internet fame and a whole lot of trouble with the management. Other Wenches and cast members join her quest with, a protest. They'll prove that gender restrictions should stay medieval--if they don't get fired first.

While visiting her father who lives in Jamaica, eighteen-year-old Tilla faces a storm of dark secrets that threaten to unravel her own life, while an actual storm, Hurricane Gustav, threatens the lives of those she loves.

Dean Foster has watched enough YouTube videos and done enough questioning to be sure he's a trans guy. But everyone at his high school thinks he's a lesbian-- including his girlfriend Zoe, and his theater director, who just cast him as a "nontraditional" Romeo. Maybe it would be easier to wait until college to come out. But as he plays Romeo every day in rehearsals, Dean realizes he wants everyone to see him as he really is now- not just on the stage, but everywhere in his life. Can playing a role help Dean be his true self?

When legendary R&B artist Korey Fields spots Enchanted Jones at an audition, her dreams of being a famous singer take flight. Until Enchanted wakes up with blood on her hands and zero memory of the previous night. Who killed Korey Fields? Before there was a dead body, Enchanted's dreams had turned into a nightmare. Because behind Korey's charm and star power was a controlling dark side. Now he's dead, the police are at the door, and all signs point to Enchanted

As an aspiring pastry chef, Penelope Prado has always dreamed of opening her own pastelería next to her father's restaurant, Nacho's Tacos. Xander Amaro has been searching for home since he was a little boy. For him, a job at Nacho's is an opportunity for just that -- a chance at a normal life. When both the restaurant and Xander's immigrant status are threatened, he will do whatever it takes to protect his new found family and himself.

Struggling with emotional problems and an eating disorder, Jayne, a Korean American college student living in New York City, is estranged from her accomplished older sister June, until June gets cancer.

Sixteen-year-old Alex Rufus's curse of seeing the future distracts him from being and doing his best, but when he sees his little brother Isaiah's imminent death, he races against time, death, and circumstances to save him.

Murdered on the way to her high school graduation party, eighteen-year-old Nami Miyamoto finds herself in an afterlife ruled by Ophelia, a virtual assistant planning to eradicate human existence.

Max, a data whiz at the social media company Wren, has gotten a firsthand glimpse of the dark side of big tech. When he questions what his company does with the data they collect, he's fired...then black-balled across Silicon Valley. With time on his hands and revenge on his mind, Max and his longtime friend Akiko, decide to get even by rebooting the internet. After all, in order to fix things, sometimes you have to break them. But when Max and Akiko join forces with a reclusive tech baron, they learn that breaking things can have unintended--and catastrophic--consequences

When someone attempts to frame his best friend for murder at St. Benedict's boarding school, junior Luke Chase starts investigating on his own and discovers multiple suspects with darks secrets in their past.

Pendt Harland's family sees her as a waste of food on their long-haul space cruiser when her genes reveal an undesirable mutation. But if she plays her cards right she might have a chance to do much more than survive. During a space-station layover, Pendt escapes and forms a lucky bond with the Brannick twins, the teenage heirs of the powerful family that owns the station. Against all odds, the trio hatches a long-shot scheme to take over the station and thwart the destinies they never wished for.

Seventeen-year-old aspiring lawyer Lizzie Bennet seeks to solve a murder before her rival Mr. Darcy beats her to it.

While in Charlestown Prison in the 1940s, young Malcolm Little reads all the books in the library, joins the debate team and the Nation of Islam, and emerges as Malcolm X.

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father--despite his hard-won citizenship--Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day

Though they've attended the same schools, Isaiah and Angel never really interacted, until their English teacher offers them a job on her mobile library, a three-wheel, two-seater bike. Angel can't turn down the money and Isaiah is soon eager to be in such close quarters with Angel every afternoon. But life changes on May 31, 1921 when a vicious white mob storms the community of Greenwood, leaving the town destroyed and thousands of residents displaced. Only then, Isaiah, Angel, and their peers realize who their real enemies are