New Release Tuesday: YA New Releases August 18th 2026

Young Adult New Releases August 18th 2026

Time to celebrate most of today’s YA new releases! And if any of these are intriguing to you we work with independent affiliates to bring you anti-billionaire corporate alternatives. Libro.fm for all your audiobooks & ebooks (NEW!) and Bookshop.org for all your digital or physical editions and the great thing is that local bookshops also earn money each time you shop!

A (Dead) Thing Like Me

by E.G. Young
Published by: Holiday House
on August 18, 2026
Genres: Paranormal, Young Adult
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A teenage ghost in love with life becomes bound to the house of the grieving artist who summoned her via Ouija board in this darkly funny YA paranormal.

One hot dog with banana peppers. That’s all Hot Dog wants. An invisible teenage ghost, she haunts a food cart outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Until one night, she’s accidentally summoned via Ouija board to a house party in Florida . . . where finally finally finally, people can see her.
All the party guests scatter, except for Logan: the cool artist girl who doesn’t just see Hot Dog, she actually wants to talk to her. Logan, who isn’t scared of Hot Dog’s stitched mouth or chattering dress. Logan, who’s grieving her own dead BFF—and called Hot Dog by mistake.

Hot Dog wants to prove it’s not a mistake.

She can be Logan’s new best friend. She can go to Logan’s Halloween party. She can eat snacks, have sleepovers, and hang out. She can definitely smile without scaring people. Exactly like a real, human girl.

There’s one problem: Hog Dog’s not a real, living human girl, and something in Logan’s sprawling house knows it. It scratches like rats in the walls. It opens a secret door in Logan’s attic. It wants to drag Hot Dog into the nothingness where dead things go. And unless Hot Dog can confront the dark truth of how she died, it will unmake Logan too.

Gorgeously strange and stunningly written, this YA paranormal masterfully melds camp and creep into a beyond-the-grave coming-of-age.

Suhwa (Guardians of Dawn, #4)

by S. Jae-Jones
Published by: Wednesday Books
on August 18, 2026
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
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The final entry in the Guardians of Dawn series.

Shadows fade. Illusions break. The dawn returns.

Min Suhwa has always longed to see the greater world outside the small, cloistered convent in which she was raised. Hidden there for her safety when she was a small child, Suhwa has learned to keep her unusual illusion magic to herself, but when the Bangtan Brothers come to town to perform, she can’t resist the chance to go see them for herself. But the world outside her convent is dangerous—the Morning Realms have fallen to civil war, and Huntsmen prowl the land in search of magicians and the fabled Guardians of Dawn, legendary elemental warriors with incredible powers. When Suhwa’s illusion magic brings her afoul of one of the Huntsmen, she must flee for her life.

Meanwhile, the Guardians of Dawn and their allies are fighting a war on two fronts—against the northern insurrection seeking to claim the Sunburst Throne and destroy all magicians, and against the rising threat of the Mother of Ten Thousand Demons. Zhara, Ami, and Yuli must travel to the Azure Isles to seek the Guardian of Water and save the Morning Realms from annihilation, restoring balance to order and chaos once and for all.

Bound by Fury

by Noelle Monét
Published by: Margaret K. McElderry Books
on August 18, 2026
Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Young Adult
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For the first printing only! This hardcover features sprayed stenciled edges while the special edition supply lasts.

Legendborn meets The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in this captivating contemporary fantasy debut about a teen whose newly awakened magical abilities send her searching for answers at an elite boarding school that has a mysterious connection to her family’s history.

Harper grew up loving her grandma Gigi’s stories about pretty brown girls with magic from the stars, but they were just that—stories…until Gigi’s sudden death awakens a dangerous power building beneath Harper’s skin. Desperate for answers, Harper finds herself drawn to an elite boarding school in the Appalachian Mountains.

A school that Gigi herself attended, and one rumored to be haunted by the ghosts of witches past.

Harper arrives at Black Mountain Academy determined to learn about her burgeoning power, even if that means dealing with Kai, her grumpy ex-best friend now hellbent on getting her to leave campus, and his cousin, Lucas, who won’t let her forget the almost-kiss from last summer. But Black Mountain Academy was built on secrets, and the deeper Harper digs, the moresinister rot she finds lurking beneath.

When Harper unearths a chilling local legend about the gruesome death of twelve witches on campus, she feels an uncanny connection to the women. But someone doesn’t want her exposing the school’s dark past, and when it becomes clear they’ll kill to stop her, Harper has to decide whether to leave her history behind or risk everything for the truth of her own identity.

Lucy in Between

by Sarah Callender
Published by: Holiday House
on August 18, 2026
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
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Things People Ought to Know About Me: After my brother died, I didn’t cry.

Thirteen-year-old Lucy Bains is smarter than your average seventh grader, but there is a lot she doesn't understand: how her brother Henry, a seventeen-year-old violin virtuoso, can possibly be depressed when he's one of classical music's brightest rising stars; why her mother is far more interested in Henry's music career than in Lucy's talents as an aspiring mime artist; and why her archeologist father—who left them years ago and now lives in Peru—suddenly wants to come for a visit. And most baffling of all, when did her best friend Charles become someone she might like to kiss?

After Henry dies by suicide, Lucy and her mother—grief-stricken, desperate, and seeking any solace or distraction Lucy's father can provide—escape to Peru. But when a local bookstore owner (and unapologetic poetry pusher), who, like Lucy, is no stranger to grief, proves more present than either of her parents, Lucy must confront some hard truths about love and family, guilt and grief.

With searing prose and a poetic voice, debut author Sarah Callender tackles one of the most difficult losses a family can experience in an unforgettable young adult novel.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Barbie: Dreamscape

by Alex Aster
Published by: Mattel Press
on August 18, 2026
Genres: Media Tie-In, Young Adult
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Step out of the box and into the unexpected with Barbie--like you've never seen her before!--in an immersive, pink-tastic tale from the premier voice in teen fiction.

Out of the box. Into the unexpected.

Barbie’s life is perfect. She lives in a pink-hued paradise called Heartland where everything is in order and everyone has a role to play, thanks to the mysterious and all-powerful beings who will soon assign her a Fate at graduation from the enchanted Swancrest Academy. She’s worked hard to earn a good one. Her years of endless studying and acing every challenge are about to pay off. But when the unthinkable happens and Barbie is left Fateless—the first in Heartland’s history—her carefully ordered world shatters.

Shaken and uncertain, Barbie must confront a future she never imagined: one with no clear path forward at all. Yet when a mysterious necklace begins to pulse with hidden power, she is drawn beyond Heartland’s protective mists into a daring journey across extraordinary lands. From sun-drenched shores to treacherous, ever-shifting landscapes, to shadowed forests steeped in secrets and magic, each realm will test Barbie’s courage, sharpen her wits, and awaken strengths she never knew she possessed—all while drawing her ever closer to a buried truth that could change her world forever.

A richly imagined coming-of-age tale from the premier voice in teen fiction, this is a story about defying expectations, rewriting the rules, and discovering that the greatest possibilities lie in stepping out of the box…and into the unexpected.

Lights! Camera! Frendo! (Clown in a Cornfield, #4)

by Adam Cesare
Published by: HarperCollins
on August 18 2026
Genres: Horror, Young Adult
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Let the killing continue in Lights! Camera! Frendo! It’s the fourth installment of Adam Cesare’s Bram Stoker Award-winning series, and this time Frendo goes Hollywood – with all the blood, guts, and mayhem you’d expect from the series that spawned the blockbuster motion picture.

Sabrina Alvarez is pretty much a nobody—until she lands the starring role in the big budget film based on the Kettle Springs Massacre. Sabrina knows she should be on top of the world. She’s going to be THE Quinn Maybrook, Final Girl of Final Girls, national hero and certified badass. But as soon as Sabrina gets to Kettle Springs, she just can’t quite shake the feeling that something’s off. A spate of deaths, an out-of-control director, a town decimated by loss and divided by anger, and a movie designed to glorify it all. Something bad is brewing, and this time, it’s all on film.

A meditation on the villains inside us all, it’s the latest installment of Adam Cesare’s Bram Stoker Award-winning series, Clown in a Cornfield.

Outline

by Michèle Fischels
Published by: Oni Press
on August 18, 2026
Genres: Contemporary, Graphic Novel, Young Adult
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The last year of school before graduation has begun . . . a time when the world seems the same but when everything will change.

For Ben, who is determined to enjoy the end of summer with his girlfriend, Clara, the mood gradually darkens as she begins to withdraw in a similar manner as his best friend, Andreas, had, and without explanation.

While tensions grow between Ben and Clara through the school year, Andreas struggles with his own demons, and suddenly final exams are upon them along with the inevitable questions from friends and family alike: What are you doing after school? Where will you enroll? Will you move out? What’s next? Maybe the answer for Ben and his classmates is to simply slow down and take a deep breath . . .

Outline is creator Michèle Fischels’s impressive graphic novel debut, in which she demonstrates a deep relatability for that special phase in which we cautiously leave childhood behind and look to the future with uncertainty and anticipation.