Here are three books for teens set in fictional places you’ll want to visit yourself, from the good tradish food and open-air movies of the Legendary Frybread Drive-In to the wild and misty shores of Orcas Island and the densely populated, culturally rich Oluwan City.

Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories ed. by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Heartdrum, 2025. ISBN 9780063314269. Read from a library copy.

Just around the corner and through the woods is the Legendary Frybread Drive-In, where Native teens especially can find a safe space to meet up and maybe more – perhaps falling in love, perhaps finding a wise elder to help them through a hard time. There are 17 stories, each by a different Native author, including familiar-to-me names like Darcie Little Badger, Angeline Boulley, David Robertson, and Brian Young, as well as new-to-me and debut authors. It’s really hard to sum up an anthology like this – the authors and characters are from a variety of Native nations, and while shared characters thread through the stories, they are only loosely tied together. The Legendary Frybread Drive-In isn’t really tied to any particular place – or perhaps paths from anywhere can lead to it. At any rate, there is something here for everyone, and I was thrilled when it won the Printz award shortly after I read it. It would be perfect paired with the middle grade story collection Ancestor Approved. For more short story collections for teens, I also enjoyed At Midnight: Fifteen Beloved Fairy Tales Reimagined, edited by Dahlia Adler.

Heiress of Nowhere by Stacey Lee. Read by Katharine Chin. Sarah Barley Books / Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2026. ISBN 978-1665978965. Listened to audiobook on Libby.

Lucy Nowhere washed up on the shore of Orcas Island, off the coast of Washington, as a baby, and was adopted by the wealthy businessman who founded it in this romantic history mystery with a dash of magic. Around the time she was born, a human head was found washed up on a beach. Since then, she’s been given a good education but also works in the kitchen helping the cook, who raised her. More recently, seal heads have been found on the beach, and one terrible day, she finds the head of Mr. Sanders, her benefactor, on the beach as well. Shockingly, Lucy, rather than his nephew Nash, is named heir to his fortune. But being orphaned and not clearly white, Lucy must solve the mystery of who killed Mr. Sanders and learn how to run his estate very quickly indeed before the other powers on the island find a way to disinherit her or worse. Along with this, the other two major businessmen on the island want to hunt the orcas who live around the island, and with whom Lucy shares a mystical bond. Can she find a way to prove that the “sea wolves” are not as dangerous as they seem? Meanwhile, two handsome young men are vying for her attention – Nash, the spendthrift nephew who shared a kiss with her a year ago, and her childhood best friend Koa, who encourages her to carry on with her previous plan of going to college.

Reading this, I remembered why I keep reading Stacey Lee’s book (see Under a Painted Sky and Outrun the Moon)- I felt immersed in the period, really caring about Lucy and how she might be able to resolve all the different forces pulling on her. If you are strictly anti-love triangle, you will probably not enjoy this aspect of the book, but I thought that Lee did a good job of having two love interests who were desireable as well as symbolic of the choices that Lucy had to make. Too often, I feel that the story poses things as a love triangle when it’s clear from the beginning who the right person is going to be. I’m not the best at guessing mysteries, but I’m happy to report that I was very surprised by the solution here. All in all, this is a book that I’d be happy to recommend and that encourages me to keep watching for Ms. Lee’s new books.

The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko. Harry M. Abrams, 2024. ISBN 978-1419764356. Read from a library copy.

Ten years after the events of Redemptor, an orphaned teen named Small Sade (pronounced SHAH-day) has just gotten too old to live at the orphanage anymore. Now she must try to find a new job. Her best skill is working as a maid – not only can she clean well in the usual way, she is also a Curse-Eater, able to clean the grime of depression, guilt, and resentment out of spaces along with the dust. But since no one else can see the soul silt, she has to work to convince people that she actually can do what she says, and that her foot, maimed in a factory accident years ago, won’t get in the way. But when in the market trying to find a job, she’s followed by a gecko – and while spirit messengers are a pretty common sight for a girl with a maimed foot and speckled skin like herself, having one actually talk to her is definitely both out of the ordinary and unwanted – for who wants the attention of a bored deity?

The gecko leads Small Sade to the Crocodile, a minor deity rumored to eat pretty girls, with a curse himself. Crocodile, however, just wants Small Sade to help him with the pain from the wound his curse caused, even if she can’t stop the slow-moving curse itself. But Small Sade has accidentally bound herself to the Crocodile, meaning that even when she finds work as a maid at a run-down hotel catering to the wealthy, she still has his attention all the time. This is a problem – her life experience has led her to believe that the best way for her to survive is to stay in her place, unnoticed, and to remember that she is an ant among giants. Being noticed by a god is definitely not what she wants. But the more her new boss abuses her curse eating powers and the more she sees the disregard that the rich have for the suffering of the poor, the harder it is for her to be content to stay an ant.

This was such a delight to read! I loved how sure Small Sade is of herself and her abilities, even at the beginning when she’s trying to stay small and unnoticed. I enjoyed the slow-burn romance and the view of Oluwan City from a very different perspective than Tarisai’s in Raybearer. Though I’ve really only talked about Small Sade and Crocodile here, Small Sade’s coworkers, boss, and boss’s young adult daughter are all interesting characters whose relationships with Small Sade affect her life. Having a main character who struggles with a disabled foot reminded me of Rae in Intisar Khanani’s The Theft of Sunlight and A Darkness at the Door, books I also wholeheartedly recommend.