Diverse Book Awards YA Longlist 2024

People like me are devils before we are angels. Hanan has always been good and quiet. She accepts her role as her school's perfect Muslim poster girl. She ignores the racist bullies. A closed mouth is gold - it helps you get home in one piece. Then her friend is murdered and every Muslim is to blame. The world is angry at us again. How can she stay silent while her family is ripped apart? It's time for Hanan to stop being the quiet, good girl. It's time for her to stand up and shout.

Lily is a sixteen-year-old living in Manchester. It is nearly five years since her father's death, and she is soon to return to her birthplace in Nigeria to reunite with her mother and siblings for the anniversary. As cold rain thunders on the streets of Moss Side she looks back over her young life and wonders - how did she get here? As a young girl in Lagos, Lily is the baby of her large family. The daughter of a Nigerian father and Irish mother, she lives in a dual reality: one where moments of bright colour and tenderness exist alongside a sense of danger just beneath the surface of her apparently idyllic life. This is a tension that nobody dares speak out loud and it teaches Lily an early lesson: always blend in, always play the right part. But the truth cannot stay hidden forever.

Set in 1860, this is the story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the intelligent, multilingual Yoruba princess from West Africa who became the goddaughter of the British Queen Victoria. Victoria Princewill reimagines Sarah's life in England, telling the story of a girl living between two cultures, trying to create, and assert, her own identity.

Enslaved on a plantation in Barbados, Obah dreams of freedom. As talk of rebellion bubbles up around her in the Big House, she imagines escape. Meeting a strange boy who's not quite of this world, she decides to put her trust in him. But Jacob is from the twenty-first century. Desperate to give Obah a better life, he takes her back with him. At first it seems like dreams really do come true - until the cracks begin to show and Obah sees that freedom comes at an unimaginable cost.

In the margins of a book's pages, sparks fly as a teenage romance begins. But in this time and place, sparks like these can only ignite trouble. It's 1994 and thanks to Section 28, there can be no mention of gay relationships in UK schools. When a kind librarian leads Jamie to a disguised novel in the library that reflects his own confused feelings towards boys, Jamie sees that he's not the only one who has checked the book out. Will Jamie and this mystery boy have the courage to meet - and if they do, what will it take to hold on to each other?

Gala and her dad, Jordi, have just moved from home in Cataluña to a town in Scotland, to live with Jordi’s boyfriend Ryan. Gala doesn’t speak much English, and feels lost, lonely and unable to be her usual funny self. Until she befriends Natalie, a girl with selective mutism. The two girls find their own ways to communicate, which includes collecting other people's discarded words. They use the words to write anonymous supportive poems for their classmates, but then someone begins leaving nasty messages using the same method – and the girls are blamed. Gala has finally started adapting to her new life in Scotland and is determined to find the culprit. Can she and Natalie show the school who they really are?

After the epic battle of The Balloon Thief, Khadija, Jacob and Darian are heroes. But then Khadija learns that her sister, Talia, has been kidnapped and taken to the jinn realm of Al-Ghaib. Khadija and Darian go to her rescue. But Darian is strangely changed since the battle that cost him his heart. Khadija will need all her wits about her if she's to outfox her sister's captor - and perhaps, save the boy she loves.

Four friends have stolen aboard the Titanic. They're after the Rubaiyat - a book inlaid with priceless jewels. Josefa is a charismatic thief, Hinnah a daring acrobat, Violet an outstanding actress and Emilie a talented artist. It is Josefa's plan, but she needs all of their skills. Despite their very different backgrounds, in a world of first-class passengers and suspicious crew members, the girls must work together to pull off the heist of their lives. But careless mistakes, old grudges and new romances threaten to jeopardise everything they've worked towards.

Now, more than ever, trans people deserve to hear stories of joy and hope, where being trans doesn't have to be defined by fear and dysphoria, but can be experienced through courage, freedom, and the love and acceptance of their chosen families. Through a series of uplifting, generous and beautifully crafted vignettes, T. C. Oakes-Monger gently leads you through the cycle of the seasons - beginning in Autumn and the shedding of leaves and identity, moving through the darkness of Winter, its cold days, and the reality of daily life, into Spring, newness, and change, and ending with the joy of long Summer days and being out and proud - and invites you to find similar moments of joy in your life.

Gwen, the quick-witted Princess of England, and Arthur, future duke and general gadabout, have been betrothed since birth. Unfortunately, the only thing they can agree on is that they hate each other. When Gwen catches Art kissing a boy and Art discovers where Gwen hides her diary (complete with racy entries about Bridget Leclair, the kingdom's only female knight), they become reluctant allies. By pretending to fall for each other, their mutual protection will be assured. But how long can they keep up the ruse? With Gwen growing closer to Bridget, and Art becoming unaccountably fond of Gabriel, Gwen's infuriatingly serious, bookish brother, the path to true love is looking far from straight.

When Hugh Henry Van Boren, one of the most popular and richest kids in Jess Choudhary's school, is found dead, the student body is left reeling and wondering who the murderer could be. Jess, a student under strict instructions to keep her record clean or risk losing her scholarship, finds herself at the centre of the investigation when it's revealed that Hugh died in the exact same way as a character in a short story she wrote. And then Jess receives an anonymous text thanking her for the inspiration. With time running out, Jess knows if she doesn't solve this mystery she'll finally have something in common with Hugh Henry. She'll be dead too.

Juliet believes girls like her - girls with arthritis - don't get their own love stories. She exists at the edges of her friends' social lives, skipping parties to play online chess under a pseudonym with strangers around the world. There, she isn't just 'the girl with crutches'. Ronan is the new kid: good looking, smart, a bad boy plagued by guilt over what happened to his brother Ciaran. Chesslife is his escape. Juliet thinks Ronan thinks someone like Ronan could never be interested in someone like her - and she wouldn't want him to be anyway - he always acts like he's cooler than everyone else. Little do they know they've already discovered each other online, and have more in common than they think.

Maudie and Jake's family is falling to pieces - their mum's been struggling with her grief since they lost Dad and one night she vanishes. When Jake is put into care, Maudie can't take it any more. She comes up with a wild plan to pull their family back together - by kidnapping Jake. On the run in Cornwall, Jake and Maudie each find something they hadn't expected - freedom and love. But can they find Mum and a way to heal together?