Dwight Foster Public Library: Young Adult Books: April 2026

Fathom Fall
by Matteo L. Cerilli

The Maze Runner meets Fortnite in this action-packed young YA about a boy who finds out the monsters from his favorite video game are real.
On Fathom Fall's leaderboard, player Wyatt “DoctorDoctor” Docherty ranks at number three. In real life, he's seen only as the privileged kid of head engineers at Hydrexo, the company that supplies 75% of North America's water. He has easy access while others must line up to pay exorbitant prices at public water taps, and he feels totally useless.
To prove he's more than a spoiled Water Baby, Wyatt wants to win the upcoming Fathom Fall competition and finally make a name for himself. But when he starts seeing Bluddites – the water-guzzling monsters from the game – in real life, Wyatt suspects that the tournament is about more than just prize money. Wyatt wants to win, but as the tournament approaches, he starts to worry: Why won't anyone tell them what's really going on? Why would the game – the military, even – be training kids to hunt monsters for them? And how far is he willing to go to prove himself?

What We Did to Survive
by Megan Lally

A vacation in paradise turns deadly when four teens' sailing charter hits stormy seas in this propulsive new thriller from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Megan Lally! Hannah is having an incredible spring break. A week at a resort in Mexico with her best friend Emmy and her family is perfect for de-stressing from senior year, even if it's awkward being around Emmy's older brother, Jackson, who she's had a crush on for as long as she can remember. Still, the beach is gorgeous. So is the guy they meet in the surf. Except Hannah is now the third wheel in Emmy's vacation romance. Eager to impress Emmy, her wealthy new boyfriend charters a private sailboat to make the most of their last day in paradise, and Hannah and Jackson are invited along. As the clouds roll in and the skies darken, their boat is the only one leaving the marina. And the further they get into open water, the more unsettled Hannah becomes. A storm is brewing onboard that's as deadly as the one racing toward them. Forget surviving graduation. Who will make it back to land alive?

Estela, Undrowning
by René Peña-Govea

In her raw and resonant debut novel, René Peña-Govea seamlessly interweaves prose and poetry to uplift the power of language, the courage to fight injustice, and the complex beauty of finding your people—perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X and Carolina Ixta’s Shut Up, This is Serious. Estela Morales is one of the only Latinas who tested into San Francisco’s most exclusive public high school. In her senior year, Estela just wants to keep her head down, eke out a passing grade from her racist Spanish teacher, and get into her dream college.
But after placing second in the Latiné Heritage Poetry Contest behind a non-Latino student, Estela is thrust into citywide debates about merit, identity, and diversity.Things only get messier when her family is threatened with eviction. As Estela’s friends organize against bigotry and her landlady increases the pressure, Estela is suffocating and finds release only in poetry and in a breathless new romance. When tensions finally reach their breaking point, Estela must find a way to undrown the community she loves—and herself.

Her Hidden Fire (a Good Morning America YA Book Club Pick)
by Cliodhna O'Sullivan

In the first book of a heart-pounding, Irish-inspired debut romantasy series set in a world of dragons and magic, one girl must make an impossible decision: watch the boy she loves get exiled for lack of magic, or pass her formidable powers off as his own. How far would you go to empower the one you love? In a world where dragons soar through the skies and magical abilities are an elite privilege, the ruling family of Ailm's Keep is on a knife-edge: Can their son Ion in prove that he can channel magic, or will his entire family be cast out in disgrace? Adha, a servant girl who loves Ion in, is shocked to discover shortly before the test that she can wield magic herself. It's extremely rare for a girl to have this talent, especially outside the few great families. At Ion in's moment of truth, when it's clear he is about to fail, Adha makes a desperate gamble to save him from humiliation by pretending her magic is his, forfeiting her own claim to power. Her decision sends them both to an academy of magic, where she must shield her secret from every grim Master and scheming apprentice--especially the handsome but enigmatic Gry. As Adha enters this whirlwind of patriarchy, class, heartache, and jealousy, she also learns about magic's terrible cost--the human price that Channellers willingly pay to maintain their power.

How to Survive the End of the World: A Graphic Exploration of How to (Maybe) Avoid Extinction
by Katy Doughty

In a full-color debut, a graphic novelist takes an engrossing, gleefully existential deep dive into the many ways that humanity could--and almost did--meet its end. Since 99.9% of all species that have lived are extinct, it's bound to be our turn eventually, right? So what's most likely to kill us? A well-timed asteroid? Some new robot overlords? With wit and dry humor, debut graphic novelist Katy Doughty blends science and history to explore our chances of surviving disasters such as plagues, global warming, and alien invasion. Drawing on interviews with experts in fields like infectious diseases, AI, and interplanetary exploration, she combines cutting-edge research with compelling visuals: mugshots of the deadliest microbes, graphs of the winners and losers of mass extinction events, and a whole lot of dinosaur drawings. For apocalypse aficionados, the morbidly curious, and the just plain curious, this is your antidote to existential dread--a timely, imaginative, and ultimately hopeful take on humankind's ability to survive the odds.