7 YA Noirs That Will Take You to Dark Places

High and Dry, by Sarah Skilton (that’s me!)
The Trouble: After being dumped, framed, and blackmailed, high school soccer player Charlie Dixon scrambles to clear his name, save his best friend from a life of crime, and win back the girl of his dreams, all while trying to escape a past that may be responsible for all his current problems.
The Setting: Palm Valley, California, a deadend desert town. “If a mirage makes you see things that aren’t really there, in Palm Valley you see things that are really there but shouldn’t be. There shouldn’t be a golf course, flowers, or any kind of tree, Joshua or otherwise… Since there was no reason to live here, there was no reason to leave; if you had somewhere better to go, you’d have gone there in the first place.”

Dead to Me, by Mary McCoy
The Trouble: In this historical YA set in golden age Hollywood (be sure to read our interview with McCoy), high school student Alice searches for the powerful people responsible for putting her estranged older sister in a coma.
The Setting: 1948 Hollywood, California. “The battered sign for the Stratford Arms dangled from a pair of chains, though the apartments themselves were hidden from view by a canopy of neglected shrubs and ragged-looking palm trees.”

Endangered, by Lamar Giles
The Trouble: Anonymous photographer Lauren “Panda” Daniels runs a blog in which she avenges wrongdoing and exposes cruelty and bullying among her high-school classmates. But after capturing a particularly shocking coupling, she’s taunted and blackmailed by a mysterious competitor who challenges her to one-up his disturbing images, or he’ll blow the whistle on her true identity.
The Setting: Portside, Virginia, an area known for its floods. “There’s a bad storm forecast for tomorrow night, and whenever that happens, there’s a run on bread and water…Looking through my windshield is like looking into a pool, and my wipers fight the water like bad swimmers, breaking the surface long enough to gasp before going under again.”

Ask the Dark, by Henry Turner
The Trouble: In this thrilling debut, 15-year-old Billy Zeets is an unlikely hero “with a stain on his soul” who attempts to make money after learning his dad is $48,000 in debt. While searching his neighborhood for odd jobs, he stumbles upon evidence of a horrific crime.
The Setting: Church Lane, off Denton Ave. “Most nights I just stayed in the neighborhood. Nothing was going on. Just houses dark and yards empty… House is the one that’s all gray, with them towers coming off the roof shaped like cones, and they’re black, and the shingles ain’t just flat and square but shaped in little round chips and sort of pretty, and the whole house would be pretty too and like something in a carnival at the beach if it was painted bright, but right now looks like nothing but a big old dead birthday cake, turned all black and gray.”

Langdon Prep Series, Kimberly Reid
The Trouble: The daughter of an undercover cop, Chanti Evans knows a thing or two about investigating crimes. She uses her skills to uncover thievery and frame jobs at the elite private school she recently began attending. Her amateur sleuthing wins her the admiration of gorgeous Marco, but also frenemies who may not be who they seem.
The Setting: Denver Heights, CO. “The line in the Center Street Bodega is five deep because it’s Freebie Friday and the tamales are buy one, get one. I don’t mind the wait—the scent of green chili reminds me how lucky I am to live on Aurora Avenue, just two blocks from the best tamales on the planet. Seeing how it’s smack in the middle of Metro’s second worst police zone, there isn’t a lot to appreciate about the Ave., so that’s saying something about these tamales.”

Shine, by Lauren Myracle
The Trouble: When her estranged best friend becomes the victim of a deplorable crime, Cat won’t rest until she finds out who’s to blame, even if that means dealing with people from her past who have already caused her considerable pain.
The Setting: Black Creek, North Carolina, a rural, drug-ridden, poverty-stricken town (population 743) decimated by Wal-Mart and cut off from other towns by a dam. There’s nothing for local boys to do. “They liked to hang out at the abandoned Frostee Top, drinking beer and smoking pot. Sometimes they raced their motorcycles up to Suicide Rock.”

The Girl is Murder, by Kathryn Miller Haines
The Trouble: Teenaged Iris is the daughter of a wartime-era detective who lost a leg in Pearl Harbor and a mother who may or may not have committed suicide. Demoted from private school to public, she adjusts to culture shock and helps her dad out on the sly with his investigations.
The Setting: 1942 Lower East Side, New York City. “From the moment I entered the doors of P.S. 110, I was dodging, ducking, and holding my breath, hoping that whatever I just saw would pass by without doing me harm. The kids were rough in the way that feral cats were rough; it was like they were fighting to survive and didn’t give a damn what it took to make that happen. Public school was exactly what I imagined trench warfare was like.”