The Maze Runner by James Dashner

A teenager with no memory must navigate a deadly maze to survive in book one of this post-apocalyptic phenomenon. When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone. Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive. Everything is going to change. Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.

Remember. Survive. Run. 

The Hunger Games 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 is cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12-18 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 takes her sister's place in the Games. If she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

The Stand by Stephen King

A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge—Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious “Dark Man,” who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them—and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.

The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne

Three teenage boys, the sole survivors of a shipwreck, find themselves marooned on a deserted island. With little more than a telescope and a broken knife, they must find food and shelter and learn to survive. But though the coral island is a tropical paradise, dangers and adventures abound: sharks, pirates, and even bloodthirsty cannibals! While it is similar to Lord of the Flies in terms of its motifs of adventure, morality, and the clash between civilization and the natural world-- it offers a decidedly different take than Golding's more cynical view.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

(Non-fiction) — In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional woman and the tightly knit Black community there. These lessons carried her throughout the hardships she endured later in life, including a tragic occurrence while visiting her mother in St. Louis and her formative years spent in California--where an unwanted pregnancy changed her life forever. With her gift for language and observation, Angelou's memoir is both poignant and provocative, revealing how one can persevere through trauma.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Composed of a series of interconnected vignettes, this is the story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago. For Esperanza, Mango Street is a desolate landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, where she discovers the hard realities of life--the fetters of class and gender, the specter of racial enmity, the mysteries of sexuality, and more. Capturing her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories, Esperanza is able to rise above hopelessness, and create for herself  "a house all my own quiet as snow, a space for myself to go," in the midst of her oppressive surroundings. Cisneros's writing is pure poetry, and I use vignettes from this book in creative writing class as a model for showing rather than telling in writing. --Ms. Mc

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Song of Solomon is the epic story of Macon (Milkman) Dead and his life-time journey toward an understanding of his own identity and ancestry. Milkman is born burdened with the materialistic values of his father and the weight of a racist society; over the course of his odyssey, he reconnects to his deeper family values and history, rids himself of the burden of his father's expectations and society's limitations, and literally learns to fly.  This novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was chosen for Oprah Winfrey's popular book club, and was cited by the Swedish Academy in awarding Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. 

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Told through a series of letters, The Color Purple is the story of Celie, a woman lashed by waves of deep trouble—abandonment, incest, physical and emotional abuse—and her triumphant journey to self-discovery, womanhood, and independence. Celie's story is a pointed commentary on the men in her life—men who betrayed and abused her, worked her like a mule and suppressed her independence—but it is also a moving portrayal of the psychic bonds that exist between women and the indestructible nature of the human spirit. The Color Purple was an international bestseller, won both the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1985 was made into a movie directed by Steven Spielberg. 

Black Boy by Richard Wright

(Non-fiction) —Richard Wright's memoir, first published in 1945, was highly acclaimed because of its raw and realistic depictions of race in America. For the same reasons, it was frequently banned in schools. Wright describes his youth in the South: Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee, and his eventual move to Chicago, where he established his writing career. In each chapter, Wright examines his tortured years in the Jim Crow South from 1912 to 1927.  Although Wright, as the narrator of his memoir, maintains an adult voice throughout the story, each chapter is told from the perspective that a child might possess. By the end, as Richard comes of age, the voice of the narrator and of the nineteen-year-old young man he has become merge into one. While there remains some controversy over whether or not the book is entirely true, the message remains the same.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter Movement, The Hate U Give tells the story of 16-year-old Starr Carter who witnesses her friend's shooting by a police officer. Starr moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Published in 1989, The Joy Luck Club explores the complex relationships between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. The story revolves around four Chinese women and their four American-born daughters, who are part of a mahjong-playing group called the Joy Luck Club. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the memories that display these women’s strength, worries, and determination. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Intimate and moving, The Joy Luck Club shows the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, especially across cultural barriers. Tan suggests the inheritance of pain and unspoken secrets can lead to  misunderstanding, yet love can still offer the promise of reconciliation. 

Boy's Life by Robert McCammon

Boy's Life is a coming-of-age story set in 1960s Zephyr, Alabama, following young Cory Mackenson as he experiences the magic and wonder of childhood alongside the harsh realities of loss and evil. The story begins with Cory and his father witnessing a car plunge into a lake, revealing a murdered man handcuffed to the steering wheel. This event shatters the town's idyllic facade and forces Cory to confront the darker aspects of his seemingly peaceful world. As Cory grows, he navigates the complexities of life, love, and loss, encountering both the supernatural and the sinister forces lurking beneath the surface of Zephyr.  

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a 1999 young adult novel set in the early 1990s. The novel follows Charlie, an introverted and observant teenager, through his freshman year of high school in a Pittsburgh suburb. Charlie's unconventional style of thinking makes him feel like a wallflower as he navigates between the worlds of adolescence and adulthood, finding and making friends as he attempts to deal with poignant life questions.  The novel addresses themes permeating adolescence, including sexuality, drug use, rape, and mental health, making it a frequently banned book in the United States.

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

This novel tells the story of Vivian Carter who is fed up with an administration at her high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong, fed up with sexist dress codes, hallway harassment, and gross comments from guys during class. Viv's mom was a tough-as-nails, punk rock Riot Grrrl in the '90s, and now Viv takes a page from her mother's past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She's just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. As Viv forges friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution. 

The Institute by Stephen King

From the great mind of Stephen King comes another coming-of-age book: In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet suburban street, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and Avery. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.” 

E.E. Cummings Complete Poems Edited by George J. Firmage  

E. E. Cummings remains a celebrated figure in American poetry, known for his unconventional style. Cummings's work broke from traditional poetic forms, experimenting with syntax, punctuation, and visual presentation. He embraced lowercase letters, unusual line breaks, and creative spacing to create visual impact, disrupting traditional grammatical structures and challenging readers' expectations. His themes often centered on love, individuality, and the beauty of the natural world, but he expressed these ideas in a way that challenged readers to reconsider familiar concepts. Reading Cummings is often like figuring out a complex but rewarding puzzle. --Ms. Mc

The Hours by Michael Cunningham 

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The narrative of Woolf's last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the fictional stories of Richard, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.  This book is beautifully written and the prose gives me chills. --Ms. Mc

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

Astrid Magnussen, the teenage narrator of Janet Fitch's engrossing first novel, White Oleander, has a mother who is as sharp as a new knife. An uncompromising poet, Ingrid despises weakness and self-pity, telling her daughter that they are descendants of Vikings, savages who fought fiercely to survive. And when one of Ingrid's boyfriends abandons her, she illustrates her point, killing the man with the poison of oleander flowers. This leads to a life sentence in prison, leaving Astrid to teach herself the art of survival in a string of Los Angeles foster homes.  Once again, the writing in addition to the story itself is compelling. Fitch is a beautiful writer and the story stayed with me. --Ms. Mc

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes. This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family.  And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again. One of my favorite books of the last decade. It will make you laugh and cry -- like all my favorite books do. --Ms. Mc 

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy 

This novel tells the tragic story of Tess Durbeyfield, a young woman from rural England who is forced to confront the harsh realities of Victorian society after a series of unfortunate events. Sent to claim kinship with the wealthy d'Urbervilles family, she is seduced and abandoned, facing societal scorn despite her innocence. Ultimately, Tess's struggle highlights the hypocrisy and double standards of Victorian morality, especially as it pertains to women. Thomas Hardy's impassioned story tells of hope and disappointment, rejection and enduring love.  I first read this in my 12th grade AP Lit course back in high school, and I fell in love with the writing. --Ms. Mc

The Complete Poems of Langston Hughes  Edited by Arnold Rampersad

Here, for the first time, are all the poems that Langston Hughes published during his lifetime, arranged in the general order in which he wrote them. Lyrical, passionate, and at times political, the result is a treasure of a book. Spanning five decades and comprising 868 poems (nearly 300 of which have never before appeared in book form), this volume is the definitive sampling of a writer who was the voice of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes is one of my favorite poets! --Ms. Mc

The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

The Hotel New Hampshire tells the story of the eccentric Berry family, who run a series of hotels, including one in New Hampshire. The novel follows them through decades of love, loss, and strange encounters, including a rape that deeply impacts the family and a terrorist plot in Vienna. The story explores themes of family, trauma, and the challenges of navigating life's absurdities, all while featuring Irving's signature blend of humor, darkness, and memorable characters.  I first read this novel in high school and was obsessed with it. So many quotable quotes. It is absurd, and funny, and poignant. --Ms. Mc 

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving 

This often hilarious yet always poignant novel tells the story of two boys, John Wheelwright and Owen Meany, growing up in New Hampshire, and the extraordinary bond they share. Owen, a tiny, precocious boy with a distinctive voice, believes he is an instrument of God, a belief solidified when his foul ball accidentally kills John's mother. This tragic event shapes their lives, leading them through adolescence, the Vietnam War, and Owen's unwavering conviction of his divine purpose. As Owen prepares for his fate, John grapples with his own identity and the mysteries of faith, family, and destiny. You'll laugh and cry and never forget Owen Meany. --Ms. Mc

The Stand by Stephen King

Survivors of a chemical weapon called superflu confront pure evil in this 1978 saga. But that lethal virus is almost benign compared to the satanic force gathering minions from those still alive to destroy humanity and create a world populated by evil. Arguably the greatest horror novel ever written by the greatest horror novelist, this is a true modern classic.  I read this in college and couldn't put it down. It is an epic saga, but you'll fall in love with the characters. And you'll never go through the Lincoln Tunnel in the same way again. --Ms. Mc

She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb

Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded from multiple events. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. Overweight and very sensitive, Dolores grows from a painful childhood, through excruciating adolescence, to lonely adulthood, experiencing the heartache of being a misfit in a confusing world. However, her suffering —  obesity, sexual ambiguity, self-delusion, and madness — is the precursor to a radiant rebirth. Both hilarious and moving. A great coming-of-age story. --Ms. Mc

Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller

Chanel Miller, previously known to the public only as Emily Doe, tells her truth as a survivor of sexual assault in the Stanford University rape case that stunned the world. Miller's memoir shares the obstacles facing victims of sexual assault, even those in cases that seem clear cut, as well as her journey to healing. This breathtaking memoir "gives readers the privilege of knowing her not just as Emily Doe, but as Chanel Miller the writer, the artist, the survivor, the fighter" (The Wrap). This book is amazing. You will cry not just because of what she experienced, but because of how she healed from it. --Ms. Mc

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

Berie Carr, an American woman visiting Paris with her husband, summons up for us a summer in 1972 when she was fifteen, living in upstate New York and working as a ticket taker at Storyland, an amusement park where her beautiful best friend, Sils, was Cinderella in a papier-mache pumpkin coach. We see these two girls together - Berie and Sils - intense, brash, set apart by adolescence and an appetite for danger. Driven by their own restlessness and making their own rules, they embark on a summer that both shatters and intensifies the bond between them. This is a great introduction to one of my all-time favorite contemporary writers. Both hilarious and sad. --Ms. Mc

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which families struggle  to understand one another.  This book rocked me. It's heart-wrenching and beautiful. Celeste Ng is one of my favorite contemporary writers. --Ms. Mc

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger  

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant. It is an enchanting  and spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love. This is easily on my list of favorite books of all time. Magical realism at its finest. --Ms. Mc

Devotions by Mary Oliver 

Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Carefully curated by Oliver herself, these 200 plus poems feature Oliver's work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through her most recent collection, Felicity, published in 2015. Within these pages, she provides readers with an extraordinary and invaluable collection of her passionate, perceptive, and much-treasured observations of the natural world. Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets. Her work is inspirational and beautiful. --Ms. Mc

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. 

Esther Greenwood is a gifted young woman but faces a mental breakdown when she begins a summer internship as a junior editor at a women's magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. As Esther grapples with her ambitions, desires, and mental health, she finds herself trapped in a metaphorical bell jar—an oppressive glass enclosure that isolates her from the world. A thinly veiled autobiography, this book reveals some of the real life pain of author and poet Sylvia Plath, who committed committed suicide just one month after the book's publication in 1963. An acclaimed and enduring novel,  Plath captures the pain of mental illness and societal pressures, especially for women. One of my all-time favorite books. --Ms. Mc

The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed

When Grace learns that Lucy Moynihan, the former occupant of her new home, was run out of town for having accused the popular guys at school of gang rape, she’s incensed that Lucy never had justice. For their own personal reasons, Rosina and Erin feel equally deeply about Lucy’s tragedy, so they form an anonymous group of girls at Prescott High to resist the sexist culture at their school. Told in alternating perspectives, this groundbreaking novel is an indictment of rape culture and explores with bold honesty the deepest questions about teen girls and sexuality. I wish I'd had this book when I was in high school. It's such an empowering read! --Ms. Mc

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

This young adult novel tells the story of two sixteen-year-old misfits who bond over music and comic books while riding the school bus in Omaha, Nebraska in 1986. Eleanor is described as "chubby" and new to the school, while Park is half-Korean and navigates his own insecurities. The story follows their relationship over the course of one school year, exploring themes of first love, identity, and the challenges of navigating high school and family. Set over one school year and told in alternating perspectives, Eleanor & Park is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. I'm a sucker for a good love story and this fits the bill. The characters are wonderful. --Ms. Mc

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger 

Since the publication of The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, the works of J.D. Salinger have been acclaimed for their humor, intensity, and their lack of phoniness. A collection of short fiction, Nine Stories contains works with those qualities that make Salinger such a well-loved author. The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage. Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups (even the materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances--some neurotic, others deeply unsympathetic, all complex. If you love Catcher in the Rye like me, you'll appreciate the quirky, interesting characters of Salinger's short stories. --Ms. Mc

Shakespeare's Sonnets 

Few collections of poems—indeed, few literary works in general—intrigue, challenge, tantalize, and reward as do Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Almost all of them love poems, the Sonnets philosophize, celebrate, attack, plead, and express pain, longing, and despair, all in a tone of voice that rarely rises above a reflective murmur, all spoken as if in an inner monologue or dialogue, and all within the tight structure of the English sonnet form. Love, betrayal, despair, commitment, regret, spirituality, life, and death are explored in these eloquent poems penned by one of the greatest playwrights and poets in the English language. The language in these poems is incredible. Learn from a master. --Ms. Mc

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck 

This classic novella follows an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick," and Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet together they have formed a family, clinging to each other in the face of loneliness, alienation, and hardship. Laborers in California's dusty fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. The powerlessness of the laboring class is a recurring theme in Steinbeck's work, but this book also contains a universal theme: friendship and a shared dream makes life meaningful. If you missed it in 9th grade, read it. It's one of my all-time favorites--the book that made me fall in love with literature. --Ms. Mc

Our Town by Thorton Wilder

First produced and published in 1938, this Pulitzer Prize--winning drama of life in a small town has become an American classic and is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play. Set in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, the play features a narrator, the Stage Manager, who sits at the side of the unadorned stage and explains the action. Through flashbacks, dialogue, and direct monologues the other characters reveal themselves to the audience.Through everyday moments, the play examines human existence against time and space, revealing the value in life's smallest events. This is a classic play that makes you feel all the feelings. Simple but beautiful, and probably more compelling if you grew up in a small town like me. --Ms. Mc

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams 

"The Glass Menagerie" is a memory play narrated by Tom Wingfield, who reflects on his life with his overbearing mother Amanda and his fragile, withdrawn sister Laura who takes refuge in her collection of glass animals. Set in St. Louis during the Depression, the play explores themes of illusion, escape, and family dynamics as Amanda desperately tries to secure a "gentleman caller" for Laura. This one-act drama was produced in 1944 and published in 1945. Considered by some critics to be Williams' finest drama, The Glass Menagerie launched his career. Another classic play, the symbolism and characterization in this one is incredible. It's stayed with me since I first read it in 9th grade! --Ms. Mc

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 

In this exhilarating novel, two friends, Sam and Sadie—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, the novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. One of my absolute favorites of the last decade. This book rocked me. You will fall in love with the characters and never want the saga to end. --Ms. Mc