Top picks: Lucy and the Dark by Melina Szymanik & Vasanti Unkam, Foxlight by Katya Balen and Sunshine on Vinegar Street by Karen Comer. Photos / Supplied
Young Adults
Before George
by Deborah Robertson (Huia)
A powerful and moving story about identity, set immediately after the Tangiwai rail disaster. South Africa-born George, previously known as Marnya, reconstructs her life after surviving the train derailment in which 151 died, including, it seems, her mother and sister.
Borderland
by Graham Akhurst (UWA Publishing)
Rite-of-passage stories don’t come much more authentic than this first novel from an Aboriginal writer and lecturer. City-born indigenous teens Jono and Jenny head into the Queensland desert for their first gig – a doco promo for a mining company which might be encroaching on sacred land.
Different for Boys
by Patrick Ness & Tea Bendix (Walker)
Ness’s brilliant novella matched with pared-back pencil and collage spreads from Danish illustrator Bendix perfectly support the problematic masculinity playing out in a class of college boys “too young to read about the stuff we actually do”.
Glimpse
by Jane Higgins (Text)
For Christchurch teen Jonah, five years out from the first quakes, survival is a constant struggle: finding food, dodging document-checking border-control agents, and avoiding buildings that should have been demolished long ago. An audacious concept, grounded in reality.