Torchfire
Moira Buffini (Faber)
In her 2024 YA debut Songlight, Buffini plunged young adult readers into a dystopian landscape inspired by John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, with nations bitterly divided by attitudes to telepathy. The second in the trilogy pits the Brightlanders, who persecute those with “songlight”, against the Aylish, who prize them – and the Teroans, spacefaring telepaths who see ordinary humans as disposable. As multiple finely drawn protagonists – including Elsa, searching desperately for sanctuary, Nightingale, forced to appease a terrifying captor, and Rye, trying to understand an extraordinary discovery – fight to find love, acceptance and safety, the book blazes like its title, consuming the reader more fiercely with every page. Fans will find it hard to wait for the final instalment.
We Are Your Children
David Roberts (Two Hoots)
“Words, when hurled like stones, wound deeply,” asserts Roberts, introducing his bright, brilliant history of LGBTQ+ activism by describing his own childhood experience of homophobic bullying. The power of words to wound, but also to tell of authentic living, courage and change, delivered via sit-ins, marches and protests on every scale, is apparent throughout this book, which chronicles queer activism in the UK and US from the 1950s to the early 21st century. Though it contains many stories of violence and suffering, from the assassination of Harvey Milk to the ravages of HIV/Aids, the prevalent mood, emphasised by Roberts’s bold, colourful, expressive artwork, is of defiance, joy and proud hope – from Quentin Crisp’s flamboyance to the iterations of the Pride flag, Julian Hows wearing a skirt as a London Underground worker in the 70s to the first same-sex pre-watershed kiss. An outstanding achievement, setting out via individual, accessible narratives the hard-won rights that remain continually under threat.
No Refuge
Patrice Aggs and Joe Brady (DFB)
This standalone sequel to the superlative No Country is set in a horribly plausible war-torn Britain, where hostile bureaucracy preys on refugee children. Now that civil war has reached their home, Hannah, Bea and their little brother Dom flee, leaving their father behind; following The Plan, they hope to be reunited, but hiding from Free Kingdom soldiers and keeping themselves safe becomes steadily harder, even before they find themselves trapped in the oppressively policed Green Zone on the way to their rendezvous. Aggs’s dynamic images, muted colours and unsettling perspectives create a pervasive sense of fear in this empathy-honing, finely crafted and compelling graphic novel.
What Happens Online
Nathanael Lessore (Hot Key)
Fred’s life is tough. His dad works away, his mum’s struggling to cope, and at school he’s a nonentity with no friends. Online, though, Fred’s alter ego Existor is a gamer and streamer with an off-the-charts follower count – the polar opposite of his unpopular creator. Two worlds collide when Fred is tempted to use Existor’s influence to seed rumours about his bullying classmates – but when his lies spread like wildfire, the eventual consequences are damaging and painful. Who is Fred really, and who is willing to accept his offline self? With his deadpan humorous light touch, the award-winning Lessore investigates self-esteem, identity and on- and offline realities in a standout 13+ story that effortlessly blends the serious and comic, tackling the tough stuff without ever feeling preachy.
Feminist History for Every Day of the Year
Kate Mosse, illustrated by Sophie Bass (Pan Macmillan)
Spirited and inspiring, this compendium of “trailblazers through time and space” features a genuinely impressive range of iconic women – anti-apartheid campaigner Lilian Ngoyi and bra-designing Caresse Cosby stand alongside Florence Nightingale, Mary Wollstonecraft and Boudicca – while thought-provoking essays on subjects such as the climate emergency, male feminism, names and fashion introduce each month. Acknowledging that the views of some of her chosen heroes might tempt younger readers to “cancel” them, Mosse argues persuasively for not simply “leav[ing] out those we don’t agree with or don’t like” – since “women, like men, contain contradictions”. A deeply absorbing resource for anyone interested in fairness.
• To browse all children’s and young adult books included in the Guardian’s best books of 2025, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
