Pumpkin Spice Season, cable knit sweaters, and the scarf/knee-high boot combination that creates the look we all know and love all begin in September. So pick up the top 12 new Young Adult books for September while you’re enjoying your coffee (don’t try to fool us; we know you’re loving it)!
The Ballad of Never After
Stephanie Garber
After Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, betrays her, Evangeline Fox swears she’ll never trust him again. Now that she’s discovered her own magic, Evangeline believes she can use it to restore the chance at happily ever after that Jacks stole away.
But when a new terrifying curse is revealed, Evangeline finds herself entering into a tenuous partnership with the Prince of Hearts again. Only this time, the rules have changed. Jacks isn’t the only force Evangeline needs to be wary of. In fact, he might be the only one she can trust, despite her desire to despise him.
Release Date: September 13, 2022
Foul Lady Fortune
Chloe Gong
It’s 1931 in Shanghai, and the stage is set for a new decade of intrigue.
Four years ago, Rosalind Lang was brought back from the brink of death, but the strange experiment that saved her also stopped her from sleeping and aging—and allows her to heal from any wound.
In short, Rosalind cannot die. Now, desperate for redemption for her traitorous past, she uses her abilities as an assassin for her country.
Code name: Fortune.
Release Date: September 27, 2022
Demon in the Wood
Leigh Bardugo and Dani Pendergast
Before he led Ravka’s Second Army, before he created the Fold, and long before he became the Darkling, he was just a lonely boy burdened by an extraordinary power.
Eryk and his mother, Lena, have spent their lives on the run. But they will never find a safe haven. They are not only Grisha—they are the deadliest and rarest of their kind. Feared by those who wish to destroy them and hunted by those who would exploit their gifts, they must hide their true abilities wherever they go.
Release Date: September 27, 2022
The Sunbearer Trials
Aiden Thomas
As each new decade begins, the Sun’s power must be replenished so that Sol can keep traveling along the sky and keep the chaotic Obsidian gods at bay. Sol selects ten of the most worthy semidioses to compete in the Sunbearer Trials. The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser has the greatest honor of all—they will be sacrificed to Sol, their body melted down to refuel the Sun Stones, protecting the world for another ten years.
Teo, a seventeen-year-old Jade semidiós and the trans son of the goddess of birds, isn’t worried about the Trials . . . at least, not for himself.
Release Date: September 6, 2022
Defend the Dawn
Brigid Kemmerer
Tessa Cade has gone from masked outlaw to palace advisor, but even with her newfound power, she can’t stop the sickness still raging. And the kingdom’s supply of Moonflower elixir dwindles all the while.
Prince Corrick is trying to find a new way to lead, but it isn’t easy to repair the rift between the royals and the people–or the one growing between himself and Tessa.
When an emissary from a neighboring kingdom arrives with an intriguing offer, Tessa and Corrick set out on an uncertain journey to find a new source of the lifesaving elixir.
Release Date: September 13, 2022
Seoulmates
Susan Lee
Hannah Cho had the next year all planned out—the perfect summer with her boyfriend, Nate, and then a fun senior year with their friends.
But then Nate does what everyone else in Hannah’s life seems to do—he leaves her, claiming they have nothing in common. He and all her friends are newly obsessed with K-pop and K-dramas, and Hannah is not.
After years of trying to embrace the American part and shunning the Korean side of her Korean American identity to fit in, Hannah finds that’s exactly what now has her on the outs.
Release Date: September 20, 2022
The Weight of Blood
Tiffany D. Jackson
When Springville residents—at least the ones still alive—are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation . . . Maddy did it.
An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she’s dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father, Thomas Washington.
Release Date: September 6, 2022
Secrets So Deep
Ginny Myers Sain
Twelve years ago, Avril’s mother drowned at Whisper Cove theater, just off the rocky Connecticut coastline. It was ruled an accident, but Avril’s never been totally convinced.
Local legend claims that the women in the waves—ghosts from old whaling stories—called her mother into the ocean with their whispering. Because, as they say at Whisper Cove, what the sea wants, the sea will have.
While Avril doesn’t believe in ghosts, she knows there are lots of different ways for places, and people, to be haunted.
Release Date: September 27, 2022
Kingdom of the Feared
Kerri Maniscalco
Emilia is reeling from a shocking discovery about her sister, Vittoria. But before she faces the demons of her past, Emilia yearns to claim her king, the seductive Prince of Wrath, in the flesh. She doesn’t just desire his body; she wants his heart and soul—but that’s something the enigmatic demon can’t promise her.
When a high-ranking member of House Greed is assassinated, damning evidence somehow points to Vittoria as the murderer. Now, Emilia will do anything to get to the bottom of these accusations against the sister she thought she knew.
Release Date: September 27, 2022
The Depths
Nicole Lesperance
Eulalie Island should be a paradise, but to Addie Spencer, it’s more like a prison. Forced to tag along to the remote island on her mother’s honeymoon, Addie isn’t thrilled about being trapped there for two weeks. The island is stunning, with its secluded beaches and forests full of white flowers. But there’s something eerie and unsettling about the place.
After Addie meets an enigmatic boy on the beach, all the flowers start turning pink. The island loves you, he tells her. But she can’t stop sleepwalking at night, the birds keep calling her name, and there’s a strange little girl in the woods who wants to play hide-and-seek.
Release Date: September 13, 2022
The Killing Code
Ellie Marney
Virginia, 1943: World War II is raging in Europe and on the Pacific front when Kit Sutherland is recruited to help the war effort as a codebreaker at Arlington Hall, a former girls’ college now serving as the site of a secret US Signal Intelligence facility. But Kit is soon involved in another kind of fight: government girls are being brutally murdered in Washington DC, and when Kit stumbles onto a bloody homicide scene, she is drawn into the hunt for the killer.
To find the man responsible for the gruesome murders and bring him to justice, Kit joins forces with other female codebreakers at Arlington Hall.
Release Date: September 20, 2022
Raising the Horseman
Serena Valentino
From the New York Times best-selling author of Disney’s Villains series comes a ghostly new stand-alone novel that reimagines The Legend of Sleepy Hollow through the eyes of a modern teen. The two-hundredth anniversary of the Headless Horseman’s legendary haunting of Sleepy Hollow is approaching, but Kat van Tassel wants nothing to do with the town’s superstitious celebrations. As a descendant of the original Katrina van Tassel, Kat knows she’s expected to fulfill her ancestor’s legacy by someday marrying her longtime boyfriend and running the prestigious family estate. But Kat dreams of a life outside Sleepy Hollow.
Release Date: September 6, 2022