Best Young Adult Novels

During the high-stakes SAT exam, tragedy strikes when a student suffers a massive heart attack. Her mother, serving as the room's invigilator, ignores her daughter's desperate pleas for help. Convinced the medical emergency is a manipulative stunt to overshadow her sister's minor stomach ache, the mother violently rejects her. This horror novel explores the fatal consequences of that neglect as the girl dies in the hospital, leaving behind a family shattered by guilt and dark secrets.

While celebrating the holidays at his wife Victoria's family home, a man's life is upended when his mother-in-law's gold bracelet vanishes. Jonathan Zane, a childhood friend, publicly accuses him of being a lifelong thief, citing a supposed criminal past and a recent sighting at a police station. However, the accuser is unaware of the truth: the protagonist is actually a presiding district court judge who was at the station on official judicial business.