If you work with teenagers, you know they're not happy without their music. Teens can't get enough audio content, so it's no surprise they're really embracing audiobooks. These are just some of the titles that are trending right now in the Young Adult category.
The Hunger Games: Special Edition by 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. The Capitol keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to death before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Still, if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love. This special edition audiobook includes a bonus track Q&A with Emmy Award-winning actress and narrator Tatiana Maslany!
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
THE GREAT MODERN CLASSIC AND PRELUDE TO THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Whisked away from his comfortable, unambitious life in his hobbit-hole in Bag End by Gandalf the wizard and a band of dwarves, Bilbo Baggins finds himself caught up in a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. This brand-new unabridged recording is narrated by the acclaimed actor, director and author, Andy Serkis.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The provincial Bennet family, home to five unmarried daughters, is turned upside down when a wealthy bachelor takes up a house nearby. Mr. Bingley enhances his instant popularity by hosting a ball and taking an interest in the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane. Meanwhile, Mr. Darcy, Bingley's even wealthier friend, makes himself equally unpopular by his aloof disdain of country manners. Yet he is drawn in spite of himself to the spirited and intelligent Elizabeth Bennet, who proves to be his match in both wit and pride. Their sparkling repartee is a splendid performance of civilized sparring infused with unacknowledged romantic tension. Pride and Prejudice delightfully captures the affectations and rivalries of class-conscious English families in an age when status and security for women hung entirely on matrimonial ambitions. Austen's characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England. It is also the source of some of the most memorable characters ever written, from the fatuous Mr. Collins, whose proposal to Elizabeth is one of the finest comic passages in English literature, to the beloved heroine Elizabeth, whom the author herself deemed “as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print.”
Between Perfect and Real by Ray Stoeve
Dean Foster knows he’s a trans guy. He’s watched enough YouTube videos and done enough questioning to be sure. 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. He wonders if 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. Dean knows what he needs to do. Can playing a role help Dean be his true self?
Zara Hossain is Here by Sabina Khan
Zara's family has waited years for their visa process to be finalized so that they can officially become US citizens. But it only takes one moment for that dream to come crashing down around them. 17-year-old Pakistani immigrant, Zara Hossain, has been leading a fairly typical life since her family moved to America. While dealing with the Islamophobia that she faces at school, Zara has to lay low, trying not to stir up any trouble and jeopardize their family's dependent visa status while they await their green card approval. One day her tormentor, star football player Tyler Benson, takes things too far, leaving a threatening note in her locker, and gets suspended. As an act of revenge against her for speaking out, Tyler and his friends vandalize Zara's house with racist graffiti, leading to a violent crime that puts Zara's entire future at risk. Now she must pay the ultimate price and choose between fighting to stay in the only place she's ever called home or losing the life she loves and everyone in it.
Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler
Ship of Smoke and Steel is the launch of Django Wexler's action-packed epic fantasy Wells of Sorcery trilogy. In the lower wards of Kahnzoka, the great port city of the Blessed Empire, eighteen-year-old ward boss Isoka enforces the will of her criminal masters with the power of Melos, the Well of Combat. The money she collects goes to keep her little sister living in comfort, far from the bloody streets they grew up on. When Isoka's magic is discovered by the government, she's arrested and brought to the Emperor's spymaster, who sends her on an impossible mission: steal Soliton, a legendary ghost ship—a ship from which no one has ever returned. If she fails, her sister's life is forfeit. On board Soliton, nothing is as simple as it seems. Isoka tries to get close to the ship's mysterious captain, but to do it she must become part of the brutal crew and join their endless battles against twisted creatures. She doesn't expect to have to contend with feelings for a charismatic fighter who shares her combat magic, or for a fearless princess who wields an even darker power.
Crave by Tracy Wolff
My whole world changed when I stepped inside the academy. Nothing is right about this place or the other students in it. Here I am, a mere mortal among gods... or monsters. I still can't decide which of these warring factions I belong to, if I belong at all. I only know the one thing that unites them is their hatred of me. Then there's Jaxon Vega. A vampire with deadly secrets who hasn't felt anything for a hundred years. But there's something about him that calls to me, something broken in him that somehow fits with what's broken in me. Which could spell death for us all. Because Jaxon walled himself off for a reason. And now someone wants to wake a sleeping monster, and I'm wondering if I was brought here intentionally-as the bait.
That Was Then, This is Now by S.E. Hinton
Bryon and Mark aren't related, but they are as close as brothers. Ever since his parents died when he was nine, Mark has lived with Bryon and his mother. Now at 16 they like to reminisce about old times-the fights and pranks at school, smoking and swearing-junk they got into when they were younger. But lately things have been different. Bryon starts spending a lot of time with Cathy, and she makes him feel there are some things worth working for. He grows bored with all the fighting, the dead-end choices of life on the streets. And as Bryon's life takes one direction, Mark's life takes another. When Bryon discovers that Mark is pushing drugs, he faces a choice that could ruin their friendship. S.E. Hinton is the author of The Outsiders, a book she wrote when she was 16. That Was Then, This Is Now is a coming-of-age story set in the 1960s.
Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly
A startling, fiercely feminist re-imagining of Cinderella from the bestselling, award-winning author Jennifer Donnelly. Don't just fracture the fairy tale. Shatter it... Isabelle should be blissfully happy-she's about to win the handsome prince. Except Isabelle isn't the beautiful girl who lost the glass slipper and captured the prince's heart. She's the ugly stepsister who cut off her toes to fit into Cinderella's shoe... which is now filling with blood. Isabelle tried to fit in. She cut away pieces of herself in order to become pretty. Sweet. More like Cinderella. But that only made her mean, jealous, and hollow. Now she has a chance to alter her destiny and prove what ugly stepsisters have always known: it takes more than heartache to break a girl. Evoking the darker, original version of the Cinderella story, Stepsister shows us that ugly is in the eye of the beholder, and uses Jennifer Donnelly's trademark wit and wisdom to send an overlooked character on a journey toward empowerment, redemption... and a new definition of beauty.
Libertie: A Novel by Kaitlyn Greenidge
An unforgettable story about one young Black girl’s attempt to find a place where she can be fully, and only, herself. Coming of age as a freeborn Black girl in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson is all too aware that her purposeful mother, a practicing physician, has a vision for their future together: Libertie is to go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie, drawn more to music than science, feels stifled by her mother’s choices and is hungry for something else. When a young man from Haiti proposes to Libertie and promises she will be his equal on the island, she accepts, only to discover that she is still subordinate to him and all men. As she tries to parse what freedom actually means for a Black woman, Libertie struggles with where she might find it - for herself and for generations to come. Inspired by the life of one of the first Black female doctors in the United States.
If you'd like the spreadsheet version of this list, find it on Google Sheets here.
