In Real Life

Don't Turn Around

A Girl Named Digit

The Last Gate of the Emperor

Knightley & Son

The Pearl Thief: Code Name Verity

Things Hoped For

Starters

Little Brother

In Cory Doctorow's wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco―an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state.

A few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus's hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It's incendiary stuff―and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier.

Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him―but he can't admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He's surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can't even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He's not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he's gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do.

Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they're used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want.

Discover Your Child's Next Read

In Real Life

Cory Doctorow, Jen Wang, 2014

Don't Turn Around

Michelle Gagnon, 2012

A Girl Named Digit

Annabel Monaghan, 2012

The Last Gate of the Emperor

Kwame Mbalia, Prince Joel Makonnen, 2021

Knightley & Son

Rohan Gavin, 2014

The Pearl Thief: Code Name Verity

Elizabeth Wein, 2017

Things Hoped For

Andrew Clements, 2006

Starters

Lissa Price, 2012