Allen Zadoff, Jeff Zentner and Ibi Zoboi Yusef Salaam
Allen Zadoff - Boy Nobody
Teen.
340 pages.
They needed the perfect assassin. Boy Nobody is the perennial new kid in school, the one few notice and nobody thinks much about. He shows up in a new high school in a new town under a new name, makes a few friends, and doesn't stay long. Just long enough for someone in his new friend's family to die-of "natural causes." Mission accomplished, Boy Nobody disappears, moving on to the next target. But when he's assigned to the mayor of New York City, things change. And when memories and questions surface, his handlers at The Program are watching.
Jeff Zentner - In the Wild Light
Teen 11-14.
432 pages.
Life in a small Tennessee town is not easy. Cash lost his mother to an opioid addiction and his Papaw is dying slowly from emphysema. Dodging drug dealers and watching out for his smart but troubled best friend, Delaney, is second nature to Cash. But when Delaney manages to secure both of them full scholarships to an elite school in Connecticut, Cash will have to grapple with his need to protect and love Delaney, and his fears about abandoning his old life.
Ibi Zoboi Yusef Salaam - Punching the Air
Teen 14+.
400 pages.
From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Suddenly, at just 16 years old, Amal Shahid's bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?