As a former high school English teacher, I have a place for fall in my chronologically set mind for the fall tying back to the early colonial days in America. Salem’s witch trials always made students pause as they learned how hard life was and how “wicked” people could be. In To the Bone, Ellis is hopeful of a new life in America, where she’ll work for a family for a time and be able to live freely in the new lands. But James Fort is much rougher than she imagined. In the spring and summer, Ellis consoles herself by taking care of the babe in the family she works for as well as finding a small queer romance, supremely forbidden in Colonial America. However, as the food rations dwindle and crops wither for lack of irrigation, Master and Mistress Collins both behave in selfish, survival-of-the-fittest ways that make this dark historical fiction surprising. Everyone will want Ellis to make it through the winter, and she has the inner drive to do it, including living in conditions no one would dream of today. Based on true events, readers will be reminded that early American settlers endured much, and our Indigenous custodians of the land had every right to be skeptical of their reason to want to stay. Still, as Ellis’s journey becomes more and more treacherous, readers become further sucked in and become chilled to the bone.

If you love the maple syrupy-sweet romances of fall on the Hallmark Channel, you will love Falling Like Leaves! Ellis is going into her senior year as a super-motivated, college- and career-focused force of nature. But the winds shifted violently as her mother uproots her from her NYC haunts to the quaint town of Bramble Falls. Instead of interning at a prestigious firm, her fall will be spent doing volunteer projects while sipping autumn-themed coffee drinks whipped up by the hottest barista, who will become her secret crush. Of course, they won’t get along at first. What fun is there if there isn’t the chase? Slowly, Ellis will learn the reason why her mother left town for the countryside, and she will need to decide if the city life of Columbia University is really what she wanted all along. Rather than the super spicy romances that have been flooding the market, this is just the right amount of tension and tastiness to make most readers swoon. Grab your lattes, drop into a comfy position, and drink up Falling Like Leaves by Misty Wilson.

Yulieta Lopez has a passion for the things she loves that she’s kept tamed for a long time as she fills the role of a diligent daughter, smart student, and steadfast friend. A theater nerd, as her junior year begins, she tries out for the lead in the school’s version of Our Town. Despite having the best audition of her life, the conservative teacher’s choice for lead will begin a chain reaction of events that allows Yulieta to have a voice that will reach much further than the school’s stage audience. Written in verse, the author leaves a note on this structure as a preface, encouraging readers to really enjoy the structure because there’s prose and scenes written like a play script as well — multifaceted, just like Yuli. The variety of relationships in Yuli’s life also brings depth to a novel that, on its surface, might seem like an easy read. Worldly lessons that art is activism and finding ways to do activism with the talents that you naturally have are life lessons not only for Yuli but for those connected to her, especially when her favorite teacher gets ensnared in a book-banning campaign by the school board. Yuli will not be seen as the angry black girl but as the self-determined, fully realized young adult who can play many parts even if she never steps foot on a stage again.

High school senior Pernell has a lot on his mind—scratch that, he has the whole world at 3x the speed on his mind, constantly, and has his whole life. And for the third summer in a row, now 1999, Pernell is back in summer school to get his English credit. But this time is going to be different. He aspires to be Cyper King, the best freestyle rapper at the school. His brain is on fire with words and rhymes, which should make any summer school teacher excited to teach him, except Ms. Harding, the teacher who failed him the first three times. Luckily, Pernell has support. His friend, Electra, and his parents are exactly the safety net he needs as he takes two steps forward and one step back multiple times in this six-week course. Told in a “neuro” mix of script-like dialogue, free verse, and rap, Idris Goodwin flexes his own literary prowess with humorous 90’s throwbacks and deft name-drops to present a young man who is smart, witty, and learning that his brain is just fine–he just needs a few supports. The only drawback is the portrayal of the English teacher. Maybe since this is set in the 1990’s, there can be grace, but teachers today would not act as she did. This author had hoped for a better restoration of the relationship and feels it paints all teachers in the same light. Couldn’t there have been at least one positive interaction with the English teacher or any other summer school or regular teacher, just one? The cover art is amazing, and it will be a quick pick for many readers at both the middle and high school levels.