Darcie Little Badger (Lipan Apache)

Abigail Rajunov

From the peerless master of contemporary fantasy comes a tale of three cousins and the world of creatures, ghosts, and murderers that surrounds their trailer park. Illustrated throughout with comics pages!

Maisie: hasn’t gotten her life back on track since her best friend died and she saw Owl, harbinger of ill tidings and doom.

Joel: Streaming prodigy with questionable decision-making who’s been exiled to a summer of kitten fostering.

Verona: will do anything to leave their trailer park behind, even watch a house she knows is haunted.

Owl: son of Big Owl, who can’t help who he is, or how much he cares about these aforementioned humans.

Their four stories intertwine with a ghost bent on justice, an adorable feline Animal Person, and a vengeful monster headed straight for them in this singular YA fantasy novel from Newbery Honor-winning Darcie Little Badger.

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Andrea L. Rogers (Cherokee Nation)

The author of the Walter Award-winning Man Made Monsters and the Caldecott Medal-winning Chooch Helped delivers a thriller that reads like Holes for a new generation―a murder mystery interwoven with Cherokee history and culture.

The hills of northeastern Oklahoma. 1968. Cynthia and her family have moved onto their grandfather’s ranch in the hills of Oklahoma. There’s any number of problems she can see with her new situation, but the main one is plain: Grandfather Wilson is not a good man. But with her sisters and her parents―and the opportunity to reconnect with her Cherokee heritage―it’s at least manageable.

Until a strange girl shows up on the ranch and Cynthia’s life is changed forever. For she soon realizes that death lurks within the beautiful prairie grass around them…and a terrible secret that will tear their family apart if she lets it.

From the matchless pen of Andrea L. Rogers comes a story as sharp as the unseen blade and as soft as a baby chick, impossible to let go.

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Kauakanilehua Mahoe Adams (Kanaka Maoli)

Fans of The Poet X will fall for this powerful, romantic debut novel-in-verse about a Native Hawaiian girl’s fight to find belonging in a fracturing family, sharing a message of love with resounding emotional truth.

Aouli Elizabeth Smith is adrift: unheard at home and an unbeliever at church, fighting her sister and losing her best friend. Overflowing with feeling, she pours her secrets and herself into her song journal when the world threatens to sweep her away. The one place she feels tied down to earth is at her Aunty Ehu’s house. Those joyous Saturdays with her extended Native Hawaiian community living in Western Washington are precious to her. Under the maple trees, the fragments of her life fit together, if only for an afternoon.

Then, an unspeakable truth about her father shatters this one perfect corner of her life.

As Aouli’s world constricts around what others wish she could be, language fails her. But when a new boy, Nalu, turns up with eyes that seem to pierce right into her soul, maybe it’s love that can give her the words to set herself free.

Publishers Weekly: “Via distinctive and emotionally resonant verse, Adams crafts an evocative story about identity, devotion, and belonging.“

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Booklist: “…creative placement of spare, expressive free verse on pages generous with white space will appeal to both literary and reluctant readers, as will Aouli’s fervent love for her sister and Nalu, for the blue sky, and for the big blue sea.”

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Shelf Awareness: “…as is so often true of poetry, its specificity is what lends to its universality—in the wide expanse of space between Aouli’s words, anyone might find a piece of themselves reflected.”

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Kirk Van Brunt (Colville-Secwepemc)

A talented yet cynical Indigenous teen hockey player escapes a dangerous situation in the foster care system in this powerful and timely YA novel.

It’s not easy to miss Nokes Lasley, especially when she’s on the ice. Towering over the competition at over six feet tall, she routinely dominates on the right wing—and her no-nonsense approach and fiery temper have helped to solidify her reputation as a hockey superstar. Despite her tenuous situation at home, she dreams of hitting the Olympics one day and proving that she can compete in the big leagues.

But suddenly, Nokes’s life is turned upside-down when her father is arrested for murder and she’s forced to enter the foster care system. Nokes bounces from home to home, from one dangerous setting to the next… until she decides to escape across the border to Minnesota, where the promise of a family friend with professional hockey connections far outweighs the abuse she’s experiencing in her home province of Ontario.

Through careful lies, and with the help of Aiden, an attractive new friend, Nokes is able to start a new life in a new country—and, most importantly, keep playing hockey. But the past has a nasty way of catching up to her, and soon Nokes has to make a terrible choice: keep running or face her past head-on… and maybe even come to terms with her Indigenous heritage.

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Jen Ferguson (Métis and white)

From award-winning author Jen Ferguson (Métis) comes the luminous story of a family steeped in grief and love.

When Tatum Nova Lambert boards a plane to Chamonix, a town in the French Alps, she has one half-formed plan: to drag her Michelin-star-winning dad home. Since her older sister Bronwyn’s death a year ago, Tate and her dad don’t talk. They barely even text. So when he doesn’t pick her up at the transit station like he said he would, it’s no surprise.

What is a complete and very unwelcome surprise? Her dad is unexpectedly living in Bronwyn’s apartment, and Tate discovers she’ll be sleeping in her sister’s bed—the one Bronwyn died in. In the apartment and at her dad’s restaurant, it’s hard to bear both her dad’s broken promises and her sister’s ghost.

While trying to untangle the secret life Tate’s sister left behind, Tate meets Agatha, a schedule-obsessed Olympic ski-jump hopeful, and Beetle, a pickpocket and general teenaged dirtbag. As the unlikely trio explore in the mountains’ shadow, Tate brings her distinct kind of chaos to everyone’s lives—all while she tries to figure out if she can forgive her dad and her sister for leaving her behind

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Byron Graves (Red Lake Ojibwe and Lakota)

The American Indian Youth Literature and Morris Award-winning author of Rez Ball returns with the unforgettable story of a gifted young Ojibwe athlete learning to ride in his father’s footsteps while practicing for a skateboarding championship.

When Bryce’s mom walks out on her abusive boyfriend and back into jail for breaking her probation, he’s left facing the summer of his junior year with no parents, no phone, and only the clothes on his back.

With nowhere to call home, Bryce crashes at his grandparents’ house on Wolf Creek reservation. Wolf Creek is full of memories and old friends—including Robbie and Mikayla, who hang out at the local skate park.

Skateboarding reminds Bryce of his late dad: carefree, riding like he could fly. If Bryce could learn to ride like that, he’d take his crew to the top of the skateboarding championship at the end of the summer, and finally prove he’s not a loser, especially to the online-famous, captivating Mikayla. Summer is looking up, even as he’s falling on his face.

But when a fresh loss takes Bryce down, he’ll need to learn to lean on his Ojibwe community to get back on the board. Only then can he discover his father’s real legacy—and the true meaning of unconditional love.

Booklist: “Graves says the book was inspired by their own experience learning to skateboard during a low point in their life, and readers will feel their passion and resilience on every page.”

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Publishers Weekly: “…sincere portrait of grief, growth, and finding balance on and off the board.”

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This guide from HarperStacks, designed for teen book clubs, includes discussion questions for various titles.

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Manuia Heinrich (Tahitian Chinese)

An Indigenous teen fights to clear her brother of a murder charge by embracing her gift of hearing the sea’s prophetic thoughts in this debut young adult speculative thriller that’s Firekeeper’s Daughter meets Moana.

Eighteen-year-old Moe hears the sea’s prophetic thoughts. Not just hear them—she feels them. That’s how she experienced her father’s death before he did and how she felt her mother’s relief when she abandoned Moe and her younger brother, Tao, months later.

So when the sea warns Moe that Tao will drown, she’s determined to get in fate’s way and soon secures them a way off their island home. But those plans are ruined when Tao’s girlfriend goes missing and Tao is found where she was last seen…with blood on his hands—and no memory of what happened.

Moe will do anything she can to clear her brother’s name, even if it means swallowing her pride and teaming up with her annoyingly clever school rival, Temanea. Even if it means relying on the sea’s prophecies.

Because her dreaded gift may be the only way to save her brother—and uncover a sickness lurking in their community before it poisons them all.

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Brian Lee Young (Diné)

In his first YA novel, award-winning author Brian Lee Young (Diné) bridges the generational divide between a Navajo teen at an elite prep school and his great-grandmother’s experience at a federal boarding school for Indigenous students. The book is an eye-opening call for community healing and a profound coming-of-age story.

Even if it hurts to leave behind his friends and family in Navajo, New Mexico—especially his great-grandmother, Mildred—Derrick knows his scholarship to an elite East Coast boarding school is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Sagefield Academy is totally different from life on the rez: His new classmates vacation in Europe and take study drugs. Derrick wants to stick to caffeine, but handling sports, school, and a twenty-page term paper, all while dodging comments about his hair and heritage, feels straight-up impossible.

Back home, Másání Mildred’s health is fading quickly. On the phone, she begs Derrick to leave Sagefield. When he realizes her fear comes from her time in federal Native boarding schools, he knows he’s finally found the term paper theme he believes in: carrying her voice into the future.

Derrick will need to shatter a steadfast generational silence to untangle his great-grandmother’s memories–though her story might change him, and his family, forever.

Publishers Weekly: “Young, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, draws on personal experience to craft a gripping story about an Indigenous teenager’s grappling with exciting and frightening new experiences upon leaving his childhood home. An illuminating author’s note underscores the novel’s cultural and historical grounding, which entrenches readers in a fully fleshed-out world enriched by extensive use of Navajo language and cultural specificity.”

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Kirkus: “A superlative, culturally relevant coming-of-age story.”

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Keala Kendall (Native Hawaiian)

A Native Hawaiian teen travels to a luxury island resort in search of her missing twin and uncovers the dark side of paradise, in this riveting supernatural thriller.

For the world’s wealthiest, Kōpaʻa Island Resort is more than a destination. It’s the ultimate escape. With no cell service or Wi-Fi, the Hawaiian island is a coveted wellness retreat renowned for its persimmon orchard and promises of rejuvenation.

But their dream vacation is Lehua’s nightmare. When her twin sister, Ohia, goes missing, Lehua follows her trail to Kōpaʻa to find her. Instead, Lehua is cut off from civilization—and help—after the island’s boat leaves without her, stranding her with the resort’s lavish guests and enigmatic staff.

As Lehua investigates Ohia’s disappearance, she discovers her missing sister isn’t the island’s only mystery. Kōpaʻa’s rich exterior and sweet persimmons hide its dark plantation past. And Lehua can’t ignore the dreams haunting her each night—nor the warning telling her to leave the island at once. To uncover what happened to Ohia, Lehua will have to unearth the island’s bloody history and face the horrors that lurk within its sugarcane fields—or risk being consumed by them.

Sharply observed and gorgeously written, That Which Feeds Us explores the true cost of paradise as Lehua must fight to reclaim the land, the stories, and the very souls of her people.

Publishers Weekly: “Kendall effectively leverages colonialism’s horrors and its effects on Hawaii’s history to maximize tension and terror.”

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Booklist: “Deeply infused with indigenous folklore, squirm-inducing body horror, and brief interludes of romance, this exploration . . . requires readers to sit with uncertainty before a blockbuster conclusion. A creative horror mystery steeped in cultural knowledge.”

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