These Shallow Graves and More Historical YAs About Wayward Women

Jennifer Donnelly’s latest, These Shallow Graves, is the story of one such young woman. Seventeen-year-old Jo Montfort seems to have it all. She’s the daughter of one of New York’s wealthiest men, she’s strikingly beautiful, and she’ll make a fine catch once she’s completed finishing school. But Jo doesn’t want that life—she longs to be a writer, at least until tragedy strikes.
When Jo’s father, a newspaper magnate, is found dead, having apparently shot himself, her world unravels. She knows her father was too careful to have accidentally killed himself, and equally sure it wasn’t suicide. This may not have been the story Jo wanted to cover, but she won’t rest until she gets to the bottom of her father’s death, no matter what it does to her high-society reputation.
Jo isn’t the only leading lady who’s getting her hands a dirty. Check out some of these recent releases starring other slippery, complicated, pioneering, and difficult young women.

A Madness So Discreet, by Mindy McGinnis
Things are going even worse for Grace in McGinnis’s haunting tale of false imprisonment and the power of secrets. Grace is far from insane, but her father packs her away to an asylum to hide a traumatic family history and the child in her belly. Grace is sane, but she’s surrounded by madness. Then, at her lowest moment, she’s plucked from this hell by a young doctor, who sees a clever young woman perfect to serve as his assistant at crime scenes. But Grace may be entering a world even more mad than the one she left.

Under a Painted Sky, by Stacey Lee
The drama in Under a Painted Sky works precisely because of its protagonists: two girls on the fringes of 19th-century American society. There’s Samantha, a 15-year-old Chinese American who wants nothing more than to pursue a music career. And then there’s Annamae, a 16-year-old runaway slave who longs for freedom. Together, they shed their unwelcome pasts on the Oregon Trail, disguising themselves as boys for safety and making some unexpected allies. It’s a striking tale of adventure, danger, and survival.

Da Vinci’s Tiger, by L.M. Elliott
Behind every great artist is an even greater muse, which is exactly what Ginevra de’ Benci finds herself becoming. At 17, she’s already trapped in a lifeless arranged marriage, but her creative instincts can’t be suppressed so easily. When Ginevra wins the eye of a Venetian ambassador, she sets herself on a collision course with the great, though still young, Leonardo da Vinci. She finds herself lost in an unexpectedly intimate new friendship in a politically fraught Italy. It’s fitting for someone who’s both a lady and a “mountain tiger.”

The Wrath and the Dawn, by Renee Ahdieh
The story may be inspired by a folktale (“The Thousand and One Nights”), but Ahdieh’s vivid rendering of 16-year-old Shahrzad is as fully realized as any historically accurate tale. In her imagined land, the young Caliph of Khorasan takes a new wife each night, only to execute her the following morning. This leads to a barely suppressed terror among his citizens—except Shazi, who’s angry enough and clever enough to hatch a plan to do something about it. She volunteers herself as the newest bride of Khalid, and manages to survive until the dawn…and the next one, and the one after that, and on and on and on.