CV SCHOOLS HIGH SCHOOL SUMMER READING LIST 2024 (2024)

by Veronica Roth

In a dystopian future-era Chicago, 16-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she uncovers powerful secrets and truths about her identity, her family, and the order of her society.

by Marie Lu

Raised in an elite military family in a war-torn nation that was once the Western United States, 15-year-old June embarks on a revelatory cat-and-mouse manhunt for criminal youth Day, who is declared a prime suspect in the murder of June's brother.

by Richard Yancey

It's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself.

by Suzanne Collins

Set in the cruel Capital of the nation of Panem, the annual Hunger Games pits young children against one another in a battle to the death on national TV, so when Katniss is ordered to represent her district, she knows an important decision between survival and the love of another will have to be made when she is called to enter the ring.

by Ben Oliver

Enduring a tortuous existence on a futuristic death row for teens where inmates can delay their execution date in exchange for becoming laboratory subjects, Luka uncovers rumors about chaos spreading throughout the outside world before he becomes targeted by his crazed fellow prisoners.

by Sabaa Tahir

Going undercover as a slave in her brutal empire's military academy when her brother is arrested for treason, scholar Laia bonds with a talented but reluctant soldier who is being forced to participate in a ferocious contest to determine the next Martial emperor.

Legacy of Orisha Series
by Tomi Adeyemi

Coming of age in a land where her magi mother was killed by the zealous king's guards along with other former wielders of magic, Zelie embarks on a journey alongside her brother and a fugitive princess to restore her people's magical abilities.

by Leigh Bardugo

A talented young king journeys to his country's most magical places to vanquish a dark magical force within him that is challenging his efforts to forge new alliances and build a defense against a rising threat.

by Tracy Deonn

Wanting to escape her previous life after the accidental death of her mother, 16-year-old Bree enrolls in a program for high school students at the local university. Then, she witnesses a magical attack that reveals her undiscovered powers as well as sinister truths about her mother's death.

by Leigh Bardugo

Orphaned by the Border Wars, Alina Starkov is taken from obscurity and her only friend, Mal, to join the mysterious Darkling, who trains her to join the magical elite in the belief that she is the Sun Summoner, who can destroy the monsters of the Fold.

by Alexandra Bracken

To recover a powerful ring of Arthurian legend, which is her last hope of saving her brother, Tamsin teams up with her rival Emrys and together they enter a world of dark magic to edge out their competitors, where a deadly secret is exposed.

by Don Brown

This story of senseless destruction, patriotism, and grit against all odds focuses on the people of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol who stayed to defend their home against Russian forces, which came with a devastating price.

by Andrew Donkin

In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil.

by Gene Luen Yang

An introverted reader starts understanding local enthusiasm about sports in his school when he gets to know some of his talented athletic peers and discovers that their stories are just as thrilling as the comics he loves.

by Thien Pham

Told through the lens of meaningful food and meals, this graphic novel chronicles the author's childhood immigration to America where food takes on new meaning as he and his family search for belonging, for happiness and for the American dream.

by Anthony Doerr

A blind French girl on the run from the German occupation and a German orphan-turned-Resistance tracker struggle with their respective beliefs after meeting on the Brittany coast.

by Ruta Sepetys

Frantically racing to freedom with thousands of other refugees as Russian forces close in on their homes in East Prussia, Joana, Emilia, and Florian meet aboard the doomed Wilhelm Gustloff and are forced to trust each other in order to survive.

by Elana K. Arnold

Based on the author's grandmother's true experiences during the Holocaust in Romania, this harrowing story follows Rieke Teitler as she must decide whether holding on to her life might mean letting go of everything that has ever mattered to her.

by Markus Zusak

Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel, a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

by Antonio Iturbe

A tale based on true events follows the experiences of a teen prisoner in Auschwitz who risks her life to keep the magic of books alive during the Holocaust.

by Holly Jackson

Five years after the shattering murder and suicide of two popular teens, a skeptical high school student reexamines the case before uncovering disturbing clues about what really happened.

by Angeline Boulley

Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths.

by Jennifer Barnes

When a Connecticut teenager inherits vast wealth and an eccentric estate from the richest man in Texas, she must also live with his surviving family and solve a series of puzzles to discover how she earned her inheritance.

by Karen M. McManus

When one of five students in detention is found dead, his high-profile classmates, including a brainy intellectual, a popular beauty, a drug dealer on probation, and an all-star athlete, are investigated and revealed to be the subjects of the victim's latest gossip postings.

by Maureen Johnson

A first entry in a new series by the best-selling author of 13 Little Blue Envelopes introduces sharp and funny detective Stevie Bell, whose first year at an elite boarding school finds her unraveling two mysteries, including one from the school's past and one in the present.

by Laura Hillenbrand

The inspirational true story of how Louis Zamperini, a juvenile delinquent-turned-Olympic athlete and World War II pilot, crashed into the ocean and survived for weeks on a life raft only to become a prisoner of war.

by Sabaa Tahir

When his attempts to save his family's motel spiral out of control, Salahudin and his best friend Noor, two outcasts in their town, must decide what their friendship is worth and how they can defeat the monsters of their past and in their midst.

by Rachael Lippincott

A teen on the waiting list for a lung transplant faces an impossible choice when her infection risks prevent her from getting within five feet of the boy she loves, a fellow patient who is determined to experience life outside the hospital.

by Becky Albertalli

Pretending to be her queer best friend Lili's former girlfriend, heterosexual Imogen Scott spends a lot of time with Lili's friend Tessa and starts to wonder if her truth was ever all that straight to begin with.

by Ibi Aanu Zoboi

When her mother disappears, Nigeria Jones, the daughter of a Black liberation group leader, must search for her. Her journey uncovers a shocking truth which leads her to question everything she thought she knew about her life and family.

by Abdi Nazemian

Set against the backdrop of Tehran and Los Angeles, this sweeping intergenerational story, examining queer identity at the end of different decades, follows three boys in the same Iranian family as they each gain a new understanding of their history, culture, and themselves.

by Ari Tison

After breaking up a fight that harms their school's star soccer player in the process, two Bribri American brothers have to lay low due to their physically abusive father and grapple with the weight of their actions to find their way forward.

by A. S. King

Centering around an unforgettable cast of characters and their strange and surprising collections, including a nonbinary kid collecting pieces of other people's collections, this anthology features contributions by such award-winning and best-selling authors as David Levithan and Jenny Torres Sanchez.

by John Green

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few more years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis, but when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at the Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

by Jenny Han

Keeping private love letters written to five secret crushes she has had, Lara Jean Song finds her personal life going from imaginary to out of control when the letters are unexpectedly mailed.

by Neal Shusterman

Forced to become trained killers in a disease-free world where people can only die if eliminated by professional assassins, teens Citra and Rowan reluctantly train under a master reaper who informs them that the one who successfully kills the other will become his apprentice.

by Amie Kaufman

Relegated by a misguided act of heroism to a squad comprised of his school's hopeless misfits, a graduating cadet in a 24th-century space academy rescues a centuries-hibernating girl from interdimensional space only to be swept up in an interstellar war millions of years in the making.

by Marissa Meyer

Follows the experiences of a talented cyborg and her friends as they try to repel an attack from Queen Levana and her lunar forces.

by Pittacus Lore

John Smith, one of nine aliens from the planet Lorien, struggles to outrun his past, discover his future, and live a normal life in Paradise, Ohio, as one by one his fellow Loriens are being killed by evil beings.

by Brendan Reichs

Murdered every two years by the same mysterious person before waking up unhurt with all evidence erased, Min resolves to end the violent cycle before uncovering a conspiracy involving her classmates, a boy who suffers from destructive nightmares, and a giant asteroid on a collision course with the Earth.

by Ernest Cline

Immersing himself in a technological virtual utopia to escape an ugly real world of famine, poverty, and disease, Wade Watts joins an increasingly violent effort to solve a series of puzzles by the virtual world's creator.

by Marie Lu

A teen hacker and competitive bounty hunter who tracks down rule breakers of a wildly popular alternate-reality game accidentally glitches herself into a championship tournament. There, she becomes an overnight sensation and is recruited as a spy for the game's billionaire developer.

by George Orwell

Portrays a terrifying vision of life in the future when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities, becoming more powerful as time goes by.

by George Orwell

The classic allegory on totalitarianism in whicha farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality.

by J. D. Salinger

In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City.

by Ray Bradbury

A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners, Guy Montag, suddenly realizes their merit.

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A young man, newly rich, tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she has married.

by J. R. R.Tolkien

Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit-hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return.

by Harper Lee

Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice.