Books

The big ideas from popular books, without giving the whole thing away. Get the GIST, then decide if you want the REST.

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16 summaries

Patrick Ness

A Monster Calls

A thirteen-year-old whose mother is gravely ill is visited at 12:07 by a monster made from a yew tree, who trades three stories for the one truth the boy cannot say.

8 min read
Tiffany D. Jackson

Allegedly

Convicted as a small child of killing a baby, sixteen-year-old Mary finally has a reason to tell what really happened that night.

7 min read
Victoria Aveyard

Broken Throne

Victoria Aveyard's farewell to the Red Queen world: five novellas and a scholar's records that trace a kingdom from its apocalyptic birth to the hard, hopeful work of peace.

Fantasy Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Dark Age

Ten years after the revolution, Darrow's army is besieged on Mercury, the Republic's Senate is torn apart and Mars is overrun in the saga's darkest book.

Science Fiction
Politics and History
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Golden Son

Darrow, a Red miner remade as a Gold, turns his enemies on each other and carries his secret rebellion from Mars into a war across the solar system.

Science Fiction
Politics and History
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Iron Gold

Ten years after the revolution, its hero, its victims and its exiles discover what freedom really costs.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
7 min read
Pierce Brown

Light Bringer

A beaten Darrow crosses the Solar System to find allies while his rival Lysander reaches for a crown.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Morning Star

Broken by a year in the dark, a slave-born revolutionary rises again to lead a solar-system-wide war against the tyrants who rule it in the finale of the Red Rising trilogy.

Science Fiction
Space Exploration
8 min read
Karen M. McManus

One of Us Is Lying

Five students walk into detention and only four come out alive, each with a secret the dead boy was about to publish, in Karen M. McManus's fast, addictive teen mystery.

7 min read
Victoria Aveyard

Red Queen

In a kingdom split by blood, a poor Red thief discovers she has a power only the ruling Silvers should have, and is hidden at the heart of their court.

Young Adult Fantasy
Dystopia
7 min read
Pierce Brown

Red Rising

A teenage miner on Mars is remade as one of the ruling Golds to bring down the empire that hanged his wife.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Suzanne Collins

Sunrise on the Reaping

Sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy is forced into the fiftieth Hunger Games and decides to fight the arena itself, in Suzanne Collins's prequel about propaganda and the cost of defiance.

7 min read
K.L. Walther

The Summer of Broken Rules

A grieving teenager returns to Martha's Vineyard for a family wedding, a week-long water-gun game of Assassin, and a groomsman she did not plan on.

8 min read
Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel

The Telomere Effect

Victoria Aveyard's farewell to the Red Queen world: five novellas and a scholar's records that trace a kingdom from its apocalyptic birth to the hard, hopeful work of peace.

Fantasy Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Jay Asher

Thirteen Reasons Why

A high school boy spends one night listening to cassette tapes left by a classmate who took her own life, each side naming a person who played a part.

Mental Health
7 min read
E. Lockhart

We Were Liars

A wealthy family, a private island, four inseparable teenagers, and one summer the narrator cannot remember, however hard she tries.

7 min read