YA Genres: Contemporary Fiction (Realistic Fiction)

New York City high school student Mateo dreams of becoming a Broadway star, but his life is transformed after his parents are deported to Mexico.

Fifteen-year-old Nora sparks an investigation into institutional sexism in her small college town after she becomes the target of a fraternity game by athletes.

Luca Mason's audition for the Australian Ballet School is exactly six months, thirteen days, and sixteen hours away. All that stands between him and the rest of his life is a few perfect pliés, a couple impeccable tendus, and a handful of flawless jetés. And Luca has them down — he's been training for this moment for over a decade. Until one missed step on a flight of stairs lands Luca in the hospital with a titanium plate screwed into his foot....

"When you look like us-brown skin, brown eyes, black braids or fades-everyone else thinks you're trouble. No one even blinks twice over a missing black girl from public housing because she must've brought whatever happened to her upon herself. I, Jay Murphy, can admit that, for a minute, I thought my sister Nicole just got caught up with her boyfriend-a drug dealer-and his friends. But she's been gone too long. Nic, where are you? If I hadn't hung...

Daya Wijesinghe sees a bruise as a mixture of comfort and control, but joining a roller derby team push her toward big truths about love, loss, strength, and healing.

"Britt Hanson embarks on a competitive scavenger hunt in England that takes her to the locations of classic British novels--and along the way, she meets a bookish British boy who is not allowed to help her with the clues but might make the trip take someunexpected turns"--

High school senior and pest control technician Hallie Mayhew is desperate to trade her home in Santa Barbara for any east coast college that will take her away from her divorced, bickering parents and her dad's extermination business, but she fears that arigged scholarship competition, wily thieves, and the handsome boy next door will contrive to keep her in California.

In the year following their son's death, May Chen's parents face racist accusations of putting too much pressure on their son and causing his death by suicide, and May attempts to challenge the racism and ugly stereotypes through her writing, only to realize that she still has a lot to learn and that her actions have consequences for her family as well as herself.

"The Flanagan sisters are as different as they come...When their house is vandalized with a shocking racial slur, Margaret rushes home from her summer internship in New York City. She expects outrage. Instead, her sister and mother would rather move on...For Annalie, this was meant to be a summer of new possibilities, and she resents her sister's sudden presence...For Margaret, the summer couldn't possibly get worse, until she crosses paths with someone...

"Overachiever Luz 'Lulu' Zavala has straight As, perfect attendance, and a solid ten-year plan ... Middle sister Milagro wants nothing to do with college or a nerdy class field trip ... On a journey from Baltimore all the way to San Francisco, Lulu and Milagro will become begrudging partners as they unpack weighty family expectations ... and maybe even discover the true meaning of sisterhood"--