The Best Books for Precocious High School Students

A “sparkling debut” (National Book Review), “disturbing and magical” (NPR Books), “lyrical” (Publishers Weekly), “full of lush, mesmerizing detail” (The "New Yorker), The Strays is “a haunting evocation of life-changing friendship” and “a novel not to be missed” (Booklist). 

When Lily befriends the three daughters of a famous avant-garde painter, she finds herself drawn into the bohemian lifestyle of the Trentham family—but the seemingly utopian world of the artists hides secrets that will test the bonds of friendship in this “powerful, creative coming-of-age tale” (BookPage).

Sherman Alexie’s first novel in more than 10 years “elegantly mixes free-floating young adult cynicism with a charged, idiosyncratic view of American history” (Publishers Weekly). Fleeing his 20th foster home, 15-year-old Zits has lived a hard life in a short time. 

But when he commits an act of shocking violence, he is flung backward through time, to live and experience much more, as he finds himself in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights movement, a child at the battle of Little Big Horn, an airline pilot instructor whose pupil commits an act of terror, and even his own father, before returning to the present for a moment of unlikely redemption in this “moving” (Bookmarks Magazine) novel.

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Pigeon English is “intelligent, observant” (The New Yorker), “continually surprising and endearing” (Washington Post), and “a work of deep sympathy and imagination” (Boston Globe). 

Harrison Opoku is a young boy who is in love with life, the city he calls home, and gummy candy—and he and his best friend have just launched their own investigation into the murder of a classmate, one that may put them both in more danger than they bargained for in this unforgettable book that is “in turns funny and tragic” (Huffington Post).

“Every so often a novel comes along that is so ambitious in its intention and so confident of its voice that it reminds us what a singular and potent thing a novel can be,” writes the San Francisco Chronicle of Edmund White’s classic semi-autobiographical novel of love, shame, yearning, and identity. 

“Edmund White has crossed J. D. Salinger with Oscar Wilde to create an extraordinary novel” (New York Times Book Review). Originally published in 1982, A Boy’s Own Story has become a landmark text of homosexuality and coming-of-age that remains as beloved today as in its original release.

The first of Mervyn Peake’s legendary Gormenghast novels, Titus Groan introduces readers to the infant Titus, to the ambitious kitchen servant Steerpike, and, perhaps most importantly, to the sprawling, gothic Gormenghast Castle. 

Within its walls, the people are shackled to strange rituals whose origins are lost to history, and ultimately both Steerpike and Titus himself will pave the way toward a new way of life, both within the dim halls of Gormenghast and beyond. “A moody, melancholy comedy with an underlying wit and profundity that cannot be denied” (Speculiction), Titus Groan kicks off “Mervyn Peake’s gothic masterpiece” with a “feast of words unlike anything else in the world of fantasy” (SFF Book Reviews).

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Kirkus Prize, and named one of TIME magazine’s “10 Best Fiction Books of the Decade,” this bestselling book from “one of the most gifted novelists in America today” (NPR) was called a “necessary read” by former President Barack Obama. 

Unfortunately inspired by real events, it tells the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reformatory school called Nickel Academy in Tallahassee in the Jim Crow 1960s. As the two become friends, their friendship is tested by the grueling conditions of their incarceration, leading to a decision with repercussions that will echo for decades in a book that “should further cement Whitehead as one of his generation’s best” (Entertainment Weekly).

On October 9, 2012, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen on her way to school. The daughter of an education activist, Malala had stood up for her right to an education at a time when the Taliban were forbidding girls from going to school. 

Miraculously, she survived, and two years later became the youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her courageous advocacy. In this “remarkable” (Marie Claire) memoir, she tells her story, and it is “difficult to imagine a chronicle of war more moving, apart from perhaps the diary of Anne Frank” (Washington Post).

There are precocious books, and then there is Miguel Cervantes’ classic novel, which has been hailed as one of the first and most important novels ever written, and whose protagonist is so unique as to have lent his name to a word that means “unrealistic and impractical.” 

Its story of a man who becomes so entranced with chivalric romances that he decides to become a knight himself, even though he lives in a much more banal world, has loomed large over the world of literature for more than 400 years, and no less a personage than Fyodor Dostoevsky once declared it “the final and greatest utterance of the human mind.”

From the acclaimed and bestselling author of Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go won the Nobel Prize in Literature and was named one of the “10 Best Books of the 21st Century” by the New York Times. 

A “Gothic tour de force” (New York Times) that is “superbly unsettling, impeccably controlled” (Entertainment Weekly), Never Let Me Go tells the story of three students in a prestigious and mysterious boarding school secluded in the English countryside – and what becomes of them as they grow up and discover the tragic truth behind their insular world. It was adapted into the award-winning 2010 film by screenwriter Alex Garland and director Mark Romanek.

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, Susan Choi’s story of love within a prestigious and highly competitive performing arts school has been hailed as “electrifying” (People), “masterly” (The Guardian), “ingenious” (Financial Times), “remarkable” (USA Today), “delicious” (New York Times), “dramatic and memorable” (The New Yorker), and much more. 

A story that upends readers’ ideas of truth and fiction, and their understanding of the lives and capacities of young adults, Trust Exercise was named one of the best books of the year by a staggering array of publications and has enamored countless readers young and old.