YA
The Best Young Adult Mysteries, Thriller and Horror Novels of 2023
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The young adult mystery continues to thrive, along with plenty of YA horror thrillers, and this year was distinguished by quality storytelling, careful constructions, and social justice elements placed…
Dark Academia: YA Edition
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If you’re anything like me, you’ll find the winter evenings perfect for immersing yourself in a little dark academia. Whether you enjoy the prestigious school settings, the thrown-together friendships…
What To Read While You’re Waiting for the Next Season of Yellowjackets
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How do you know someone just finished binging both seasons of Yellowjackets? A. They roam around in a daze grabbing random people and asking, “Who is pit girl? Who…
Fighting Toxic Masculinity Through Young Adult Fiction
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When I was dreaming up the plot of my latest young adult thriller, The Revenge Game, I posed the following research question to my social media followers: “It’s hard…
Monster, Survivor, Villain, Victim: The Many Faces of Queer Horror
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Believe it or not, the first time many young queers feel seen in media isn’t in some sweet romcom, it’s in horror. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a…
Safe Places: On Writing Books for Teens about Teen Issues
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I moved ten times before I turned seventeen. That number doesn’t count temporary moves while waiting for housing, like the time we lived in a hotel on Waikiki for…
The Backlist: Revisiting Steven Hamilton’s ‘The Lock Artist’ with Elle Cosimano
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When I started writing crime fiction, what I worried about most was all the stuff you had to know. I had never been a criminal, a detective, a private…
The Albatross of Smartphones in Young Adult Mysteries
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There’s a joke among millennials that our favorite childhood television shows would have sucked if the characters had owned smartphones. Videos of Buffy fighting vampires would have been uploaded…
Celebrating the Iconic Suspense of Lois Duncan
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I still own three of Lois Duncan’s books. Growing up, I read so many, but these are the three I have left: Daughters of Eve, Stranger with My Face,…