Books that meet high moral standards and contain limited foul language, sexual content, and descriptions of violence.
- Before using this list, please read my disclaimer.
- Every book on this list meets “My Clean Reading Criteria” and is one that I finished, liked, and felt was worth my time to read. To learn more about the purpose of this list please see “About Novaun Novels.”
- For information on how I classify religious fiction, please see “Is Fiction Marketed to Latter-day Saints ‘Christian Fiction’?” For how I evaluate religious content in the books I read, please see “What About Doctrinal Differences?“
- All descriptions in quotation marks come from the book jackets or other descriptions from the publishers. Follow the title links to the page, post, or Goodreads review that contains my commentary on the book.
Belliston, Rebecca
Citizens of Logan Pond (Young Adult dystopian)
1. Life
“The economy crashed, the country is floundering, and Carrie Ashworth struggles to keep her siblings alive. She has two jobs in her newly-formed, newly-outlawed clan: grow crops to feed thirty-six people, and maintain contact with Oliver Simmons, their local patrolman. Carrie’s life is almost content when Greg Pierce shows up. A man with the ambition to help them survive. A man determined to hate her.”
2. Liberty
3. The Pursuit
Condie, Ally
Atlantia (Young Adult dystopian with elements of magic)
“For as long as she can remember, Rio has dreamed of the sand and sky Above—of life beyond her underwater city of Atlantia. But in a single moment, all Rio’s hopes for the future are shattered when her twin sister, Bay, makes an unexpected choice, stranding Rio Below. Alone, ripped away from the last person who knew Rio’s true self—and the powerful siren voice she has long silenced—she has nothing left to lose.”
The Matched series:
1. Matched (Young Adult dystopian)
“Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander’s face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows he is her ideal mate . . . until she sees Ky Markham’s face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. The Society tells her it’s a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she’s destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can’t stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society’s infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.”
2. Crossed
3. Reached
DuPrau, Jeanne
Books of Ember series:
1. The City of Ember (Juvenile post-apocalyptic)
“Many hundreds of years ago, the city of Ember was created by the Builders to contain everything needed for human survival. It worked…but now the storerooms are almost out of food, crops are blighted, corruption is spreading through the city and worst of all—the lights are failing. Soon Ember could be engulfed by darkness…
“But when two children, Lina and Doon, discover fragments of an ancient parchment, they begin to wonder if there could be a way out of Ember. Can they decipher the words from long ago and find a new future for everyone? Will the people of Ember listen to them?”
2. The People of Sparks (Juvenile post-apocalyptic)
3. The Diamond of Darkhold (Juvenile post-apocalyptic)
4. The Prophet of Yonwood (Juvenile apocalyptic)
Elwood, Roger (editor)
The Other Side of Tomorrow (Young Adult science fiction stories)
“What will life be like for the young people of the future? What will they inherit from today, and what strange new situations will they face? Nine popular science fiction writers confront these questions in lively stories created especially for this collection. Their answers are intriguing and remarkably varied. Each author presents a possible world of the future. And each examines the lives of young people who are balancing their own dreams against the peculiar demands of their world.”
Henderson, Zenna
Ingathering: The Complete People Stories (classic science fiction)
“Zenna Henderson is best remembered for her stories of the People which appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from the early 50s to the middle 70s. The People escaped the destruction of their home planet and crashed on Earth in the Southwest just before the turn of the century. Fully human in appearance, they possessed many extraordinary powers. Henderson’s People stories tell of their struggles to fit in and to live their lives as ordinary people, unmolested by fearful and ignorant neighbors. The People are ‘us at our best, as we hope to be, and where (with work and with luck) we may be in some future.’”
Note: While the People stories fall officially in the classic science fiction genre, many of the characters in them are young, and I believe their adventures will appeal more to teens than to adults.
Jones, Diana Wynne
A Tale of Time City (Young Adult science fiction)
“Time City — built far in the future on a patch of space outside time — holds the formidable task of overseeing history, yet it’s starting to decay, crumble …. What does that say for the future of the world … for the past … for the present? Two Time City boys, determined to save it all, think they have the answer in Vivian Smith, a young Twenty Century girl whom they pluck from a British train station at the start of World War II. But not only have they broken every rule in the book by traveling back in time — they have the wrong person! Unable to return safely, Vivian’s only choice is to help the boys restore Time City or risk being stuck outside time forever…”
L’Engle, Madeleine
Time Quintet (Juvenile science fiction)
1. A Wrinkle in Time
“Meg’s father had been experimenting with time-travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?”
2. A Wind in the Door
“Meg Murry can’t help but be worried when her six-year-old brother, Charles Wallace, announces there are dragons in the vegetable garden. He’s so bright and so different from other kids, he’s getting bullied at school, and he is also strangely, seriously ill.”
3. A Swiftly Tilting Planet
“Fifteen-year-old Charles Wallace and the unicorn Gaudior undertake a perilous journey through time in a desperate attempt to stop the destruction of the world by the mad dictator Madog Branzillo.
Lowry, Lois
The Giver (Young Adult dystopian)
“The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.”
Padilla, Katherine
Heirs of Novaun series (general faith-based Young Adult science fiction)
1. The Double-Edged Choice (dystopian)
Captured and sent to serve as a cadet aboard an Earthon base ship, Novaunian agent Myke Zarek must use a new telepathic procedure to escape without giving its formula to his enemies. He must decide whether the mysterious twins Paul and Deia Sheldon are his allies or agents for their uncle―Earth’s Director of Intelligence.
2. Twin Witness to Betrayal (utopian)
3. Travail of a Traitor (utopian)
4. Bond With a Terrorist (utopian)
Note: While these books aren’t listed in any youth categories on booksellers’ websites, they are Young Adult fiction. I gave them to my own children to read at ages 13 & 14.
Shusterman, Neal
Downsiders (Young Adult science fiction)
“Talon lives Downside, that is, underneath New York City . . . when Talon accidentally meets a young woman named Lindsay, who is a Topsider . . . the two worlds inevitably collide.”
Todd, Ilima
1. Remake (Young Adult dystopian)
“Nine is the ninth female born in her batch of ten females and ten males. . . . But Nine isn’t like every other batcher. She harbors indecision and worries about her upcoming Remake Day—her seventeenth birthday, the age when batchers fly to the Remake facility and have the freedom to choose who and what they’ll be. When Nine discovers the truth about life outside of Freedom Province, including the secret plan of the Prime Maker, she is pulled between two worlds and two lives.”
2. Resist (Young Adult dystopian)
“Having been rescued, Remade, and returned to Freedom, Theron must now face a life without Nine. Though he’s chosen to be a healer, he uses all the vices Freedom affords to try and dull the pain of losing Nine. But he can’t find the peace he so desperately needs. Until he meets Catcher, a man who shows him the dark truths behind Freedom’s Batcher program.”
The featured image “Sinister Gray Eye” is Copyright © 2022 by Katherine Padilla. All rights reserved.
