Books for Teens

Books for Teens: A List of Recommendations | keenlykept.com

This is an incomplete list for now, but I will add to it whenever I read a book worthy of recommending to teens or young adults. (I only share books I have fully read.) A few of them can be read by younger ages but are included here, because they would generally be more appreciated by an older reader.

If there is a completed review on this site, the title will link to it. Please let me know through the contact form if there’s a title you’d like me to review, and I’ll try to work it in!

Disclaimer: As little human beings grow older and, subsequently, mature in their literature, so also do my recommendations and content warnings relax and loosen. Books below are not all “safe” or “clean” or even Christian, but all will enrich readers’ lives in one way or another. Yes, even Frankenstein. Ask me how. 🙂

And now, here are recommended books for teenagers, separated by genre:

Fiction for Teens (Realistic)

  • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)
  • Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
  • Anne of Green Gables series (Montgomery)
  • Black Beauty (Sewell)
  • The Black Tulip (Dumas) 15+
  • Bleak House (Dickens) 15+
  • The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky)
  • The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas) 14+
  • Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky) 15+
  • Daddy Long-Legs (Webster)
  • David Copperfield (Dickens) 15+
  • Dead Souls (Gogol)
  • The Death of Ivan Ilych (Tolstoy)
  • The Door in the Dragon’s Throat (Peretti) 13+
  • The Enchanted April (Arnim) 14+
  • Great Expectations (Dickens) 14+
  • Hard Times (Dickens) 14+
  • Heidi (Spyri)
  • Holes (Sachar)
  • Jane Eyre (Brontë) 15+
  • The Labors of Hercules Beal (Schmidt) 14+
  • Lad: A Dog (Terhune)
  • Little Men (Alcott)
  • Little Women (Alcott) 13+
  • Mansfield Park (Austen)
  • Mary Jones and Her Bible (Ropes)
  • Middlemarch (Eliot) 15+
  • The Mill on the Floss (Eliot) 15+
  • Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens) 14+
  • Northanger Abbey (Austen)
  • Okay for Now (Schmidt) 14+
  • Oliver Twist (Dickens) 11+
  • Perfect (Jorgensen) 11+
  • The Portrait of a Lady (James)
  • Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
  • Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)
  • Sense and Sensibility (Austen)
  • Silas Marner (Eliot)
  • Stepping Heavenward (Prentiss)
  • The Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss)
  • Treasure Island (Stevenson)
  • Trouble (Schmidt) 14+
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe)
  • War and Peace (Tolstoy)
  • The Wednesday Wars (Schmidt) 12+
  • Where the Red Fern Grows (Rawls)

Fiction for Teens (Fantasy)

Historical Fiction for Teens

Biographies for Teens

Also see this page for picture book biographies–one of my favorite ways to succinctly learn about other humans.

  • Amy Carmichael: Beauty for Ashes (Murray)
  • Augustine: The Farmer’s Boy of Tagaste (Zeeuw)
  • Becoming Elisabeth Elliot (Vaughn)
  • Betty Greene (Benge)
  • Eric Liddell (Benge)
  • Francis Shaeffer: A Mind and Heart for God (Little)
  • George Müller (Benge)
  • The Hiding Place (Ten Boom) 14+
  • In the Year of Our Lord (Ferguson)
  • The Inextinguishable Symphony (Goldsmith) 15+
  • Jim Elliot (Benge) 10+
  • Killer Angel (Grant) 15+
  • The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Murray)
  • Luther and the Reformation (Sproul)
  • Memories of Sandfields (Lloyd-Jones)
  • Morning Star of the Reformation (Thomson)
  • My Childhood (Gorky)
  • Night (Wiesel)
  • The Other Side of Infamy (Downing)
  • The Princess Bellaheld (Sutter)
  • Street of Eternal Happiness (Schmitz)
  • Through Gates of Splendor (Elliot)
  • Tramp for the Lord (Ten Boom) 14+
  • Trial and Triumph (Hannula)
  • Unbroken (Hillenbrand)
  • Yours, till Heaven (Rhodes)

Christian Non-Fiction for Teens

  • Another Gospel? (Childers)
  • The Bible
  • Chesterton’s Gateway (Nicolle) 15+
  • Chosen by God (Sproul)
  • A Christian Guide to the Classics (Ryken)
  • The Crook in the Lot (Boston) 15+
  • An Experiment in Criticism (Lewis) 16+
  • Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age (Butterfield) 14+
  • The Gospel of Jesus Christ (Washer) 11+
  • Grieving: Your Path Back to Peace (White)
  • Her Hand in Marriage (Wilson) 16+
  • Holiness (Ryle) 15+
  • The Holiness of God (Sproul)
  • How the Bible Works (Foster)
  • How to Eat Your Bible (Pickowicz)
  • Just Do Something (DeYoung) 14+
  • Keeping the Heart (Flavel)
  • The Knowledge of the Holy (Tozer)
  • Let Me Be a Woman (Elliot) 14+
  • Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books (Reinke) 14+
  • Love Thy Body (Pearcey) 15+
  • The Mark of a Christian (Schaeffer)
  • Musing on God’s Music (Aniol)
  • Prayer Changes Things (Sandlin)
  • The Pursuit of Holiness (Bridges) 14+
  • Resolutions and Advice to Young Converts (Edwards) 13+
  • Seeing Green (Dillehay)
  • Strangely Bright (Rigney) 14+
  • Thoughts for Young Men (Ryle)
  • Total Truth (Pearcey) 15+
  • The Toxic War on Masculinity (Pearcey) 15+
  • Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts (Bridges) 14+
  • The Truth War (MacArthur) 14+
  • What Does the Bible Say About That? (Swanson)
  • When People Are Big and God is Small (Welch) 15+
  • Who Am I? Identity in Christ (Bridges)
  • Why Are You Afraid? (Harrison, Walker)
  • You’re Not Enough (and That’s Okay) (Stuckey) 14+

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