Winter Moon is saving up her money and looking forward to when she and her grandmother can escape. But her mother steals Winter’s money and blows it, rendering Winter’s plans even further off. But Winter’s going to do something she doesn’t know she should: she’s going to reach out to her estranged father for help.

He strikes a deal with her, in that she spends time with him in exchange for payment. But this relationship isn’t easy, and when Winter experiences an unexpected loss, it’ll be a budding relationship with a new boy at her school that helps her navigate the complicated realities of grief, family, and, well, maybe first love, too.

Lainey is having a rough time in 10th grade. Her twin brother has just moved away to live with their father and step mother, and Lainey’s come to realize that the people she thought were her friends weren’t. They were friends with her bother.

The good news is that she’s still got Bliss. Bliss is everything Lainey wishes she were, and Bliss’s confidence and go-get-it nature is inspiring.

But there are secrets in Bliss’s life, and when she begins to struggle, ultimately disappearing all together, Lainey wants to know what’s happening. What she finds forever changes her perception of Bliss and Bliss’s life.

Corie Nielson was born into a family of beauty queens, and she’s already taken home the prize of Miss Indiana. Next? Miss America. She’ll be able to take home a nice scholarship and use the platform to work toward her ultimate goal of becoming a horror movie scream queen.

There’s a lot going on in Corie’s life though, and her undiagnosed ADHD isn’t helping things. So when sees a local horror show is running a monster costume contest, she’s excited to take part. It’s one more thing on her plate, but she knows she’s got the chops. Now to balance it all . . . and convince Everett, a special effects artist, to help her out. But will her feelings for Everett be another distraction from everything she’s got to balance?

Watson’s most recent YA book explores coming of age as a Black girl at the intersections of race, class, and gender. The poetry includes all kinds of formats and is not only Watson’s story, but it’s a call for Black girls today to take the time to know themselves, love themselves, and champion themselves.

Vesper is aboard a 10 day cruise that she thought would be an amazing time away. But this isn’t an ordinary cruise. This is No Exit, a program intended to reeducate bullies. Vesper and her fellow shipmates will now be forced to deal with their darkest secrets with no where for them to go when things get tough because they’re out in open water with no escape.

Regent Academy is notorious. It’s known for making young people into great leaders . . . and both the Academy and surrounding forest are known for other things, too.

Douglas is not going to play games while at Regent. He just wants to get through. But when a student is found murdered and no one on campus seems to remember that kid except for Douglas, he knows he has to step up into a role he never asked for. Too bad for Douglas, though, that in trying to uncover what happened to his peer, he awakens a vengeful creature in the forest ready to exact revenge for centuries’ worth of secrets.

This one has been compared to Ace of Spades and Get Out.

Readers looking for a bloody Western need look no further. Faolan Kelly’s grandfather has died and she’s rendered homeless. The local authorities don’t think she’s mature enough at 16 to take over her grandfather’s homestead. Those authorities also think Falan is a guy, as her true identity has been a closely guarded secret by her grandfather. Were they to find out the truth, then she’d be married off ASAP.

The solution to Faolan and the town’s problem is proposed by the mayor: ship her off to the Settlement. That’s where social outcasts are shipped off to so they can be minded by His Benevolence Gideon Dillard.

Strange noises and Dillard himself are keeping Faolan from getting sleep or relaxing, and as she discovers the dead body of a fellow boarder, Faolan knows this is no “ordinary” murder. Something is out to get them all.

This collection has such a killer—excuse that there—roster of authors, including Kalynn Bayron, Lamar Giles, Tiffany D. Jackson, Kendare Blake, and others, and it flips the all-too-common horror trope of the character of color dying first in horror on its head. In this collection, it’s the white character who goes down first. Stories include those of haunted houses (my favorite), killer clowns, cannibals, and more.

I’m currently elbow-deep in Rob Costello’s We Mostly Come Out at Night, a short story collection that came out earlier this year and that explores the idea of what makes a monster through a queer lens, and I’ll be picking up Benton-Walker’s trope-defying collection as soon as I’m done.