The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Starr is a 16-year-old girl living in two worlds. Her neighborhood, where her Dad runs the local grocery store, is what some people would call the ghetto. Her prep school, where she has both female friends and a serious boyfriend, is populated with mostly privileged white students. Starr lives in both worlds, but when she takes a ride from an old friend who is then shot by a white police officer, Starr must make difficult decisions about how to stand up for justice and how to reveal her true self to her school friends. This book successfully navigates between big racial issues and the small details of life. Starr and her family and friends are complicated characters that make mistakes and also make good decisions. As a reader, I became invested in Starr and her parents and their everyday struggles as well as their larger struggles against a system stacked against them. This book is brilliantly written and deserves the National Book Award nomination that it has received. Recommended for 8th grade through adult readers.

Kalahari by Jessica Khoury

This science fiction action-adventure is set in the very real Kalahari semi-desert in Botswana, where the Sarah lives with her father who is a conversation researcher. In order to fund his research, her father has brought a group of 5 teenagers to  experience life in the Kalahari. Sarah, who is not  an outgoing person, must take care of the newly arrived teenagers while her father goes off to confront some wildlife poachers. When her father doesn't return, Sarah and the teens embark on a treacherous journey to find her father and get themselves to safety. It's too much of a spoiler to explain how this book becomes a science fiction story, but it does and it involves human meddling in genetics. It's a fast-paced story that will appeal to students who love wildlife and nature and science, as well as kids who just like action-adventure books.

Nyxia by Scott Reingten

This dystopian book is a huge favorite at my school this year. It's the story of a multinational group of kids who are going to a distant planet to mine a valuable substance called Nyxia. The teenagers have been promised a huge amount of money in exchange for three years of their lives, but it's not until they are on the spaceship that they find out that only some of them will actually get to mine for Nyxia and get the huge financial payout they were promised. Emmett's mother is ill and he desperately needs the money for her to get treatment. He joins into the sometimes violent competition, but begins to question how far he can go to win at the expense of the other competitors. The book is action-packed and full of twists and turns. The worst thing about this book is that we have to wait a whole year to find out what happens next. Highly recommended for fans of dystopian fiction.