Whether your interests are in solving a mystery or getting into the mind of a criminal, these titles have something for you, from missing persons to murder to a touch of the supernatural.
Compiled by:
Fern S.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Abike)
Devon Richards and Chiamaka Adebayo, two students at Niveus Private Academy, are selected to be part of the elite school's senior class prefects and struggle against an anonymous bully who reveals all of their secrets.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lord)
Reeling from the death of her cousin, Hannah concocts a risky plan to enroll in her cousin's elite private school and find who gave her the lethal pills, but the deeper Hannah goes the more she risks losing everything.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Otis)
High school junior Quinn Calvet gets caught up in the disappearance of kids in a nearby town, soon beginning to suspect more to the story than anyone understands, and it is up to her to figure out what's going on.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Sarif)
Jessie Archer is a member of the Athena Protocol, an elite organization of female spies who enact vigilante justice around the world. Athena operatives are never supposed to shoot to kill--so when Jessie can't stop herself from pulling the trigger, she gets kicked out of the organization, right before a huge mission to take down a human trafficker in Belgrade. Jessie needs to right her wrong and prove herself, so she starts her own investigation into the trafficking.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Barrow)
Luca lives on Parris, an idyllic but cursed island with a history of unsolved deaths, but when Luca's sister becomes the latest victim, she is determined to find the murderer and soon comes face to face with the curse she has been running from her whole life.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Winans)
Nonbinary teen birder Bianca Torre must face their large list of fears to solve a murder they witnessed or they might be next.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Emill)
When Nova, Lovett High School's first black homecoming queen, is murdered the night of her coronation, her best friend, Duchess, finds an unlikely ally in her search for the killer—her prime suspect, Tinsley, the white rival nominee for queen.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Bentonw)
Twins Clement and Cristina feel lost after their father's death, but find a new sense of purpose as they work to quell the rising tensions between New Orleans's magic and non-magic communities and find out who cursed their mother.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Sain)
In a small town deep in the bayou, seventeen-year-old Grey searches for answers about the disappearance of her best friend, uncovering long-held secrets that threaten everything she believed about herself, her family, her friends, and her home.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Bray)
17-year-old Evangeline O'Neill can divine information from objects, something that embarrasses her Midwestern parents, and is therefore promptly sent to stay with her uncle who owns a museum of folklore and the occult in 1920s Manhattan. Evie enjoys both the speakeasy nightlife and being involved in the other-worldly murders.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Kamal)
Trisha's trying to break the chain, channeling her violent impulses into Muay Thai kickboxing, an unlikely sport for a slightly built girl of Trinidadian descent. One night her dad wanders out drunk in front of the car Trisha is driving, practicing on her learner's permit, her mother in the passenger seat. Her father is killed, and her mother seems strangely at peace.Trisha doesn't know exactly what happened that night, but she's afraid it's going to happen again. Her mom has a new man in her life and the patterns, they are repeating.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Jackson)
Red Kenny is on a road trip for spring break with five friends, when their RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere with no cell service, they soon realize this is no accident. They have been trapped by someone out there in the dark, someone who clearly wants one of them dead. With eight hours until dawn, the six friends must escape, or figure out which of them is the target. But is there a liar among them?
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Buford)
Casey's life in Langston has been charmed. She can't wait to leave the whole town of Langston behind her. That is until her father loses his job and she finds herself on the brink of losing her ticket out of town. Everyone who lives in town has heard the rumors at some point-- there is a treasure buried deep below the surface that no one has ever been able to find. Casey falls in with a new group of friends who are exactly the opposite of her usual crowd, but are more accepting. Together they devise a plan to find the elusive treasure, in a quest to get the money and save Casey's family and her future.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Milford)
At Greenglass House, a smuggler's inn, twelve-year-old Milo, the innkeepers' adopted son, plans to spend his winter holidays relaxing but soon guests are arriving with strange stories about the house, sending Milo and Meddy, the cook's daughter, on an adventure.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Grimoir)
Told from more than a dozen alternating viewpoints, this spellbinding collection of stories follows eighteen students at the Galileo Academy for the Extraordinary as they each try to solve the murder of a professor, discovering that magic doesn't always play by the rules.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Summers)
When Georgia finds the dead body of Ashley James outside the gates of an exclusive resort, she teams up with Ashley's older sister Nora to find the killer. She is thrown into a world of unimaginable wealth and privilege-- and the fight for her life. As Ashley's killer closes in, it may not be a matter of who is guilty, but who is guiltiest.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Barnes)
When a Connecticut teenager inherits vast wealth and an eccentric estate from the richest man in Texas, she must also live with his surviving family and solve a series of puzzles to discover how she earned her inheritance.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Johnson)
After spending six months in a juvenile detention center for a crime he did not commit, Andre Jackson returns home and tries to adapt to a Covid-19 world and find his missing best friend.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Dean)
As the newly crowned first Black king of England, James faces intense media scrutiny and a blackmailer intent on disclosing his deepest secrets, including his sexuality and hidden relationship.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Mcginni)
Both Lydia and Bristal need one more credit to graduate. An unexpected partnership forms as the two remake Lydia's town history podcast to investigate the Long Stretch of Bad Days—a week when Henley was hit by a tornado, a flash flood, as well as its first—and only—unsolved murder.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Kann)
Chosen to compete in a mystery treasure hunt at the private estate of the creator of a massively popular video-sharing app, three girls soon realize that they are playing for more than just money--they are playing for their lives.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Woon)
Hana is a fixer, she can fix anything. Except her own life, which was destroyed when her father, was arrested for an accident that left one woman nearly dead. When she gets a job from an anonymous client called 'Three' to follow her former best friend, Luce Herrera, Hana realizes this might be her way of getting back her old life.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Allen)
Four months have passed since his best friend Ed was killed by a white man in a Brooklyn parking lot. When Singer, the man who killed Ed, is found dead in the same spot where Ed was murdered, all signs point to Jack, VZ's other best friend, as the prime suspect. VZ's determined to complete the video game Ed never finished and figure out who actually killed Singer.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Brooks)
J.B., Ramón, and Trey, students of the Urban Promise Prep School, must follow the school's strict rules, but when their principal is murdered, the three boys must band together to track down the real killer before they are arrested.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Frick)
In Cancún, Mexico, the Mayweather family gathers for a family reunion to bring them all together, but each brings their own agenda, old grudges, and dangerous secrets that ultimately lead to murder.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Rosenbl)
In one of the most elite private high schools in the nation, Quinn, Charlotte and Max question everything they thought they knew about themselves and the school when Quinn's sexual assault becomes public, implicating one of the top-tier athletes on campus.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Armstro)
When their friend Gabrielle is found covered in blood in front of their dead principal, with no recollection of what happened, Blythe, Tucker, and Tanya soon discover their lives are a lie as the walls built around their real memories come crashing down.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Douglass)
When a murderous ghost begins to haunt sixteen-year-old Jake Livingston, high school soon becomes a different kind of survival game.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Johnson)
When Stevie Bell, an amateur detective, begins her first year at a famous private school in Vermont, she sets a plan to solve the cold case involving the kidnapping of the founder's wife and daughter shortly after the school opened. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym "Truly, Devious."
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Boulley)
With the rising number of missing Indigenous women, her family's involvement in a murder investigation, and grave robbers profiting off her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry takes matters into her own hands to solve the mystery and reclaim her people's inheritance.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Jackson)
Believing her new home to actually be alive, especially when her brother almost dies, Marigold and her new blended family won't be safe until she brings the truth to light once and for all.