“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood"

We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson
New York : Viking Press, 1962

18 year-old Merricat lives with her older sister, Constance and poorly uncle, Julian in a crumbling mansion on the outskirts of town. Merricat is an intoxicating and mysterious narrator with one of the most distinctive voices in literature. We slowly learn that the rest of her family were poisoned, possibly by someone who stills lives in the castle and soon, there will be fresh threats for Merricat to battle.

Written in 1962, this slender volume feels timeless and is still freshly, thrillingly dark. 

"Obviously, Doctor," she said, "you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

New York : Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 1993.

From the opening paragraph, it becomes apparent that this book is different. Written in the rare first person plural, the book is told from the perspective of a group of teenage boys obsessed with the memory of five sisters, the Lisbons, who committed suicide and who, many years later, they have not forgotten. Set in a dreamy, nostalgic version of the 1970s but released in the 1990s (along with a career-making film adaptation by Sofia Coppola), the book offers lots in the way of atmosphere and emotion, but little in the way of answers.

“When someone won't let you in, eventually you stop knocking.”

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Philadelphia, Penn. : Quirk Books, c2011.

Jacob Portman’s grandfather believes in monsters and he believes that they are after him. After witnessing his brutal death, suddenly 16 year-old Jacob believes in them too. Fearing he has gone mad, his parents consent to him leaving for a atmospheric Welsh island, where his grandfather lived during the war after being plucked from a concentration camp, hoping that this will cure his grief. There he goes looking for Miss Peregrine and her bunch of misfits that populated his grandfather’s stories. Could there really be a boy who can reanimate the dead? Or a girl with the power of fire? A potent blend of realism and fantasy.

“To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.”

Gifts by Ursula Le Guin
Orlando, Fla. : Harcourt, c2004.

Gifts, the first of the Annals of the Western Shore fantasy trilogy, follows the story of Young Orrec and his friend, Gry. They are Uplanders, differentiated from the Lowlanders by their supernatural gifts. Gry, whose power is to speak to beasts, refuses to use her gift to call them to the hunt. Orrec’s gift is terrible, the power to ‘unmake’. After he is shown the extent of this ‘gift’ from his father, he agrees to be blindfolded, as he can’t control it. It's a powerful question, what to do with the gifts we have, and Le Guin’s story is masterful and utterly haunting.

“Nature is all very well in her place, but she must not be allowed to make things untidy.”

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
London : Longmans, 1932

Flora Poste is a plucky nineteen-year old London orphan. She goes to stay with her Aunt Ada Doom (yes, really) in gloomy rural England. With her modern thinking and common sense, she attempts to fix all of the inhabitants of the farm who, in the tradition of Victorian agricultural literature, are somewhat backwards thinking and labouring with emotional issues.

Written in the early 1930s, this book is hysterically funny and warmly comforting.

“To speak behind others' backs is the ventilator of the heart.”

Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi
New York, N.Y. : Pantheon Books, 2005.

By the author of the critically acclaimed Persepolis, Embroideries is written as one long conversation between three generations of Iranian women. The reader takes the place of a main protagonist and we listen to the astonishing (and frequently blush-worthy) tales of the older women. A realist memoir rendered in beautiful graphic form, this one is a fast read that you’ll want to take a closer look at. 

"Who is to say that it is not everything else that is the dream?”

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd
London : Walker Books, 2011.

Every night, at 12.07, a monster calls on thirteen year-old Conor. He lives in England with his mother, who is slowly but surely dying of cancer. This book is based on a story idea by Siobhan Dowd, but cancer took her life before she was able to finish it. Patrick Ness, author of the utterly brilliant Chaos Walking trilogy, finished it off, and his dark, compelling voice illuminates the pages.

"I was dying, of course, but then we all are."

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
New York, N.Y. : Wendy Lamb Books, c2004.

A shockingly fresh and engaging book, ‘How I Live Now’ focuses on Daisy, a cool Manhattinite sent to stay with her English cousins in the countryside in the near future. She falls instantly and deeply in love with her cousins (each of them in slightly different ways). Shortly after her arrival, war breaks out, and with her cousins, she is forced to try and live through it. Taught, passionate, full and luminous, this is a modern classic.

May the odds be ever in your favour

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
New York : Scholastic Press, 2008.

15 year-old Katniss has grown up in a brutally poor district in the rigidly totalitarian Panem, a dystopian USA. When she volunteers in place of her sister to participate in the almost certainly fatal “Hunger Games’, she makes what might be the ultimate sacrifice for those she loves. Fortunately for Katniss, she is unimpeachably tough and has phenomenal skills with a bow and arrow. She’s a calm, cool heroine for her times.

Fast-paced and unrelentingly tense, this book (and the two that follow in the trilogy) will keep you reading far into the night.

Home is the hunter, home from the hill, and the sailor home from the sea.

Homecoming by Cynthia Voight
New York : Atheneum, c1981
At thirteen years-old, Dicey is old enough to see that there is something wrong with her mother. Poverty and hardship have chipped away at her sanity. Her worst fears are confirmed when, en route to visit an aunt they've never met, her mother leaves her and three siblings in a car while she goes to the supermarket, and they don’t see her again. Armed with almost no money, but steely inner strength, a sharp mind and a glimmer of hope, Dicey must do what seems impossible to keep her family together and walks them across America, into the unknown.

Set in the early eighties, this book reads well as a stand-alone novel but was extended into a cycle of seven books for those who wish to keep reading.