Social Justice and Social Change

Grab your marching shoes and posters! Here are a few books coming out in 2022 that are all about social justice and social change.

Seton Girls, Charlene Thomas
Penguin Random House, August 30th 2022

Get ready to become immersed inside a prep school with as many successes as it has secrets. World changing secrets a small group of girls might just expose.
https://www.22debuts.com/charlene-thomas.html

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Mindwalker, Kate Dylan
Hodder Books, September 1, 2022

Eighteen-year-old Sil Sarrah is determined to die a legend. In the ten years she's been rescuing imperilled field agents for the Syntex Corporation—by commandeering their minds from afar and leading them to safety—Sil hasn't lost a single life. And she's not about to start now.
https://www.22debuts.com/kate-dylan.html

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The Last Feather, Shameez Patel Papathanasiou
Flame Tree Press, July 19, 2022

Perfect for fans of Suzanne Collins, VE Schwab, or Sarah J Mass. Twenty-two-year-old Cassia goes on the adventure of a lifetime to save her dying sister to another realm. In this realm, she finds her missing best friend Lucas who is apart of a community of Reborns. To keep the Reborn numbers manageable, the king of the Firsts releases a curse to cull them and Cassia finds herself in the middle of it. She needs to break the curse before her time runs out, otherwise she will be trapped there forever.
https://www.22debuts.com/shameez-patel-papathanasiou.html

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Other Side of the Tracks, Charity Alyse
Simon Teen, November 22, 2022

Other Side of the Tracks tells the story of a racially divided town separated by train tracks and what happens when Black blood is spilled on the white side of town. Get ready for mystery, Black love, forbidden romance (like Romeo and Juliet but make it interracial!) jazz, dream chasing, and historic town blood feuds. This story will wreck you and put you back together all over again.
https://www.22debuts.com/charity-alyse.html

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The Sleepless, Victor Manibo
Erewhon Books, August 2, 2022

Journalist Jamie Vega is Sleepless: he can’t sleep, nor does he need to. When his boss dies on the eve of a controversial corporate takeover, Jamie doesn’t buy the too-convenient explanation of suicide, and launches an investigation of his own. Things don't stop there, Jamie discovers that he was the last person who saw Simon alive. Not only do the police suspect him, Jamie himself has no memory of that night. Get ready to be immersed in a story that's larger than life.
https://www.22debuts.com/victor-manibo.html

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The Turning Pointe, Vanessa L Torres
Knopf, February 22, 2022

A novel about a teenage Latinx girl finding freedom through dance and breaking expectations in 1980s Minnesota. Prince! Dance. What more can you ask for? This is a love story of family, self, and romance. I personally read The Turning Pointe in two days and I LOVED IT. This is one of the best books of 2022!
https://www.22debuts.com/vanessa-l-torres.html

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Portrait of a Thief, Grace D. Li
Penguin Publishing Group, April 5, 2022

History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now. Will Chen plans to steal them back. (Psst! This book is soon to be a movie!)
https://www.22debuts.com/grace-d-li.html

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The Blue Bar, Damyanti Biswas
Thomas & Mercer, October 25, 2022

On the dark streets of Mumbai, the paths of a missing dancer, a serial killer, and an inspector with a haunted past converge in an evocative thriller about lost love and murderous obsession.
https://www.22debuts.com/damyanti-biswas.html

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Air, Monica Roe
FSG/Macmillan, March 15, 2022

An action-packed, empowering middle grade novel about a girl who has to speak up when her wheelchair motocross dreams get turned upside down.
https://www.22debuts.com/monica-roe.html

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Monsters Born and Made, Tanvi Berwah
Sourcebooks/Fire, September 6, 2022

Koral grew up battling the monsters that live in the black seas, but it couldn't prepare her to face the cunning cruelty of the ruling elite. Perfect for fans of The Hunger Games and Fable, this South Asian-inspired fantasy is a gripping debut about the power of the elite, the price of glory, and one girl's chance to change it all.
https://www.22debuts.com/tanvi-berwah.html

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The Bruising of Qilwa, Naseem Jamnia
Tachyon Publications, August 9, 2022

In this intricately layered debut fantasy, a nonbinary refugee practitioner of blood magic discovers a strange disease causing political rifts in their new homeland. Persian-American author Naseem Jamnia has crafted a gripping narrative with a moving, nuanced exploration of immigration, gender, healing, and family.
https://www.22debuts.com/naseem-jamnia.html

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Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win, Susan Azim Boyer
Wednesday Books, November 1, 2022

Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win features a bitingly funny, Mindy Kaling-esque, Iranian American heroine, who makes messy, complicated choices that snowball into an avalanche when an international incident intrudes on her high school election, forcing her to reckon with her identity in a way she never has before.
https://www.22debuts.com/susan-azim-boyer.html

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Nura and the Immortal Palace, M.T. Khan
Little Brown Books for Young Readers, July 5, 2022

Look at this GORGEOUS COVER! Pakistani 12-year-old Nura works as a mica miner to help her sweatshop worker mother. But when the mines collapse and her best friend is ruled dead, Nura digs deeper to find a portal world of jinn, and that the kids aren’t dead—they’ve been stolen.
https://www.22debuts.com/maeeda-khan.html

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Let the Mountains Be My Grave, Francesca Tacchi
Neon Hemlock Press, May 17, 2022

Let the Mountains Be My Grave unfolds at breakneck pace in 1944 Italy, where partisan Veleno thinks of nothing but killing as many Nazis as he can before leaving this world. Beloved by the ancient Italic goddess Angitia, Veleno is the perfect person to recover a strange weapon the Nazis are planning to use against the Allies in the battle of Montecassino, but doing so may force him to confront his death differently than he expects.
https://www.22debuts.com/francesca-tacchi.html

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Pride and Protest, Nikki Payne
Berkley, November 15, 2022

A woman goes head-to-head with the CEO of a corporation threatening to destroy her neighborhood in this fresh and modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice by debut author Nikki Payne.
https://www.22debuts.com/nikki-payne.html

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List curated by: Charity Alyse
Posted to the blog by: Ren Hutchings