New Release Spotlight: May 5, 2026

Welcome to May! This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the New Release Spotlight! My very first Spotlight posted on May 16, 2016 – who knew it would still be going a decade later?!

It’s no mistake that the Spotlight started in May. This month is always a huge one for new book releases. I have 9 YA and 7 middle grade titles for you this week.

It was so many that I didn’t even get started on picture books! When creating the Spotlight, I usually do picture books last. As I’ve done in the past, I will feature extra picture books next week to make up for this week.

My top picks:

• As I Dream of You (YA graphic fiction)
• Young World by Soman Chainani (YA dystopia)
• Styx and Stones by Gary D. Schmidt (MG adventure)
• The Brainstormerz: Money Talks by Kwame Alexander and Cassidy Dyce (MG Graphic Fiction)

You can see the full list of May 2026 Spotlight titles here. I will add to the list weekly through the end of May. Because May is such a huge month for new releases, there will be some titles on the May list that do not appear in the Spotlight.

Canva links will be sent out via email on Tuesday morning, May 26, 2026. The links are free to my email list, which is here if you need to sign up.

This week’s titles are #5191 – #5205 on The Ginormous Booklist.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Falling in love is supposed to hurt. That’s what Franny and Sam, two cynical teenagers raised on tales of heartbreak and loss, have come to understand. Yet when they fall for each other, they find the reality of love is something else entirely: it’s electrifying, all-encompassing, and easy.

Theirs is a love that can conquer anything…perhaps even death.

But Franny and Sam’s quest to stay together―no matter the cost―soon blurs the line between reality and fantasy, and their shared dream threatens to turn into a nightmare.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Even if it hurts to leave behind his friends and family in Navajo, New Mexico—especially his great-grandmother, Mildred—Derrick knows his scholarship to an elite East Coast boarding school is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Sagefield Academy is totally different from life on the rez: His new classmates vacation in Europe and take study drugs. Derrick wants to stick to caffeine, but handling sports, school, and a twenty-page term paper, all while dodging comments about his hair and heritage, feels straight-up impossible.

Back home, Másání Mildred’s health is fading quickly. On the phone, she begs Derrick to leave Sagefield. When he realizes her fear comes from her time in federal Native boarding schools, he knows he’s finally found the term paper theme he believes in: carrying her voice into the future.

Derrick will need to shatter a steadfast generational silence to untangle his great-grandmother’s memories–though her story might change him, and his family, forever.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Lola and Lisandro are actors during Hollywood’s Golden Age, but you won’t see them on any silver screen. Instead, these siblings use their talents to scam the rich and famous out of their ill-begotten cash. They have their act down to a science: Lola plays the tragic ghost who haunts the mansions of the wealthy, and Lisandro plays the brave spiritualist who will help her soul find peace. For a small fee, of course.

The siblings have their sights set on their next target: The Coterie, the opulent estate of newspaper tycoon Bixby Fairfax and his famous mistress Blythe Bell. A score this big will allow them to move… well, anywhere but here. But this job requires them to do something they’ve never done before: switch roles. And as strange things keep happening at The Coterie… things that even Lola and Lisandro can’t explain.

As they are drawn deeper into The Coterie’s gleaming façade and tensions rise between brother and sister, one question looms over them. Will they be able to pull off their act? Or will this be their last performance?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Finley has always felt most comfortable in someone else’s shadow. Fortunately, she’s got Colin, her magnetic boyfriend, who sweeps her along for activities, friendships, and future plans. Then she goes on a last-minute trip with her distant mom to a family vacation house that Finley didn’t know existed and is now about to be sold.

Her mom was estranged from her own parents and siblings since leaving home for college, and it’s a novelty for Finley to see her aunts and cousins. There’s also the handful of teens who work at the Egg, her aunt’s diner, and make up a found family of their own—including undeniably handsome guitarist Ben.

Then her relationship with Colin goes into freefall, and Finley’s roadmap for life after high school is gone. She has no choice but to live, for the first time, without plans. The longer Finley stays, the closer she gets to the truth about why her mother stayed away—and why she’s brought Finley here now.

And the closer she grows to new friends at the Egg, the more she starts to fall for charmingly awkward, soulful Ben and to realize how much of herself she’s been missing. By the end of the summer, nothing will be the same—for this community or for Finley herself.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

It is the late summer of 2021, and a girl named Nora is on the Paris Metro.

Nora, whose mother loved her, even though Nora was broken.

Nora, who couldn’t help her mother when her mother needed her most.

Nora, from whom the pandemic has taken nearly everything, save the object she clings to: a cylinder containing her mother’s ashes.

With no family left, no friends to speak of, and no way to turn back time, Nora has come to France to keep a promise she never got to make: to spread the ashes in a place her mother never got to see. But instead, Nora finds herself on the run through a forest in the night, taking refuge in a dark holloway. And when she wakes, and tries to make her way back to something she recognizes, she realizes that is impossible.

Because it is no longer 2021.

Questioning everything—including her own sanity—Nora sets out on a journey through a time and place completely foreign to her, and yet one that, much like the time and place she came from, is defined by death, loss, fear, and uncertainty. A journey in which she must find a way to honor her mother—and heal herself—in a world that feels irrevocably broken.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

When superstar Blair Baker is murdered moments before her triumphant homecoming concert, her younger sister, Stevie, knows she has one chance to find out who’s responsible.

The thing is, Stevie’s been here before, desperately searching for clues that might reveal who hurt someone she loves…but Stevie was younger then, just a kid. This time, she won’t let the truth slip through her fingers.

What begins as a search for answers about Blair’s death turns into a dangerous journey through the darker side of global fame. Soon, Stevie begins to uncover dark secrets closer to home—secrets that someone wants desperately to keep hidden. Is Stevie ready to confront what the truth reveals?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Sixteen-year-old Kori struggles to be a dutiful heiress to the Daylands, a post-cataclysmic society reliant on chip implants to retain memory. With a strict routine and an overly cautious mother, Kori has only one friend, Aspect—an industrial robot she’s repurposed. Determined to awaken sentience in her metal companion, Kori crash-lands in enemy territory while hunting for a memory that might do the trick.

Ravaged by radiation from a meteorite, the citizens of the Shadowlands have evolved into beast-like creatures with supernatural abilities. Adria, a winged mutant, has wrested control of the Shadowlands from her bloodthirsty parents—but not everyone is so willing to embrace her leadership. What better way to instill confidence in her court than by capturing a foreign princess and demanding ransom?

However, what began as a political maneuver transforms into a potent attraction as Kori’s longing for relationship echoes Adria’s own. Granted free rein of Adria’s fortress, Kori stumbles upon a startling revelation that could upend the Daylands entirely. As rebellion grows and Adria’s precarious hold on her throne wavers, Adria and Kori must join forces to avert all-out war. Does a queen of shadows really stand a chance with a princess of sunlight? Or has the chasm between their nations grown too wide?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

America is on the brink of collapse, and the youth have lost all faith in their leaders. As a pivotal election approaches, Benton Young, a high school senior trying to impress a girl, impulsively uploads a video, daring everyone to interfere with the vote and write him in for President.

The video explodes online, igniting election chaos and a national revolt, until the Supreme Court intervenes to put Benton in the White House. Galvanized by Benton’s rise, more global youth take to the streets, and more governments fall, until eight of the world’s most powerful nations are led by teenagers.

When these young leaders convene at their first summit in Sweden, they face the monumental task of setting a new course for history. But the first night, their unity is shattered when a leader is murdered in cold blood . . . and Benton is the only suspect. Hunted by enemies young and old, he must untangle a deadly web of secrets, betrayal, and power plays—while the future of the world hangs in the balance.

With globe-spanning action, stunning twists, and an electric new brand of storytelling, Young World is a heart-stopping thriller that asks: What happens when the future really does belong to the young?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

For the world’s wealthiest, Kōpaʻa Island Resort is more than a destination. It’s the ultimate escape. With no cell service or Wi-Fi, the Hawaiian island is a coveted wellness retreat renowned for its persimmon orchard and promises of rejuvenation.

But their dream vacation is Lehua’s nightmare. When her twin sister, Ohia, goes missing, Lehua follows her trail to Kōpaʻa to find her. Instead, Lehua is cut off from civilization—and help—after the island’s boat leaves without her, stranding her with the resort’s lavish guests and enigmatic staff.

As Lehua investigates Ohia’s disappearance, she discovers her missing sister isn’t the island’s only mystery. Kōpaʻa’s rich exterior and sweet persimmons hide its dark plantation past. And Lehua can’t ignore the dreams haunting her each night—nor the warning telling her to leave the island at once. To uncover what happened to Ohia, Lehua will have to unearth the island’s bloody history and face the horrors that lurk within its sugarcane fields—or risk being consumed by them.

Sharply observed and gorgeously written, That Which Feeds Us explores the true cost of paradise as Lehua must fight to reclaim the land, the stories, and the very souls of her people.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Electric James, or Lex, as his friends call him, is finally turning ten, and that means one thing: he’s getting a phone! And with the hottest phone on the market—the Apollo XL—he’s sure to become the coolest kid at Roberto Clemente Elementary School. But when his parents break the news that the Apollo XL is way out of their price range, Lex is crushed.

Luckily, he has his best friends DJ and Cass. Together, they’re the Brainstormerz—and they’ve never met a problem they couldn’t solve! All they need to do now is figure out how to raise the money for the phone themselves. How hard could it be? 

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Twelve-year-old Trip’s summer to-do list has exactly one thing on it: win the local Little League championship. But then Dad unexpectedly deploys overseas just before the season starts. And Sam (short for Samantha) joins the team, which changes more than just the line-up.

Suddenly nothing feels right at home or on the field—the two places he’s always belonged.

The season isn’t what he imagined, but Trip sticks with it. Until news about Dad leaves him convinced that he has to choose between family and baseball. Feeling more unsure than ever about who he’s supposed to be and where he belongs, Trip makes an impossible decision. But what if he doesn’t need to choose at all?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Saachi is a storyteller. At school, she’s surrounded by kids she’s known forever — including her best friend, Lyla, who shares Saachi’s love of fantasy novels and creating new worlds.

But as seventh grade starts, kids are changing. Suddenly, it matters who you like and if you can find a boyfriend or girlfriend. Even Lyla seems more interested in hanging out with her new boyfriend than in writing and drawing with Saachi anymore. Saachi’s not interested in any of that boy/girl stuff. Why can’t things just stay the way they were?

Saachi also doesn’t love all the ways her body is changing. What if she doesn’t feel like a girl — or like a boy, either? In a world where there is so much either/or, Saachi is going to need to find her own options . . . and create her own story.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Calla has always had smart-girl energy. She’s Josiah the track star’s practical younger sister. Charlee and Jacoby’s problem-solving best friend. Attorney Dionne Howard’s model daughter. So it’s nice when someone seems to see her for her, outside of all that.

But what if that person is a grown-up who maybe isn’t as trustworthy as Calla thought? Calla’s mom likes to say “Always do what you know is right.” But what if you don’t know what the right thing is?

These are the questions Calla faces on the last day of seventh grade, when she finds out that her favorite teacher has been accused of inappropriate conduct at his old school. Calla doesn’t know what really happened. She does know that people are saying mean things about the girls who have spoken out—and that can’t be right . . . can it?

Inspired by her favorite newsblogger, EboniNews (whose motto is Amplify. Connect. Truth. ACT.), Calla has an idea. Can she find a way to ACT?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Simon expected more from life than being orphaned in ancient Greece and stuck in the Underworld for eternity. Determined not to forget who he is, he commits himself to escaping Hades.

Along the way, he faces the monster Cerberus, befriends the tormented Sisyphus, and becomes Persephone’s favorite servant. Then, after centuries of failed attempts, he is finally thrust into modern times—and into the stall of a middle school bathroom. Naked.

With the help of Zeke, a nerdy rich kid on the social fringes, Simon learns to navigate this amazing and bewildering world. And with Simon’s help, Zeke begins to question his comfortable life and understand the true meaning of friendship. Everything seems to be going great . . . until the god of the Underworld sends a demon girl to bring Simon back.

And suddenly, it’s not just the secret of Simon’s past that’s threatened, but their very lives—and everyone’s around them, too. Is their friendship strong enough to withstand the Will of Hades and save St. Nikolaos Academy Middle School?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Fran doesn’t want to stay with her aunt and uncle and her snooty cousin, Imogen. But when she arrives at their home on the grounds of Stillness Hall, Imogen isn’t there. Her aunt and uncle say they’ve never heard of Imogen—or even had a daughter. So it’s up to Fran, and Imogen’s best friend, Bex, to find her.

Except Bex doesn’t know who Imogen is either. How will Fran find her cousin if no one will admit she ever existed? Could a locked and dangerous garden and a mysterious old tale of enchantment and death hold the answers?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Cyril’s mom has been dragging him to open houses for as long as he can remember. It’s been her dream that one day the two of them will have a house of their own.

So, when she decides she’ll never find one they can afford, Cyril is relieved, but also sad for her.

Which leads him to an idea: What if they moved in with an older person living alone who needs companionship and housekeeping? And what if that person then leaves the house to his mom in their will? It’s a big “what if.”

But one elderly gentleman named Mr. Hartt actually seems open to it. Could this grouchy, stubborn old man be their dream come true? Or will he turn out to be their worst nightmare?