Best new YA October reads: thieves, ghosts and immortal paintings

“All over the house there were trophies from jobs spanning continents and decades ... Grand-Papa swiped that book off a shelf in the US Library of Congress. That still life? It was in storage under the Louvre until Great-Aunt Sara got there. The coins in the bowl where we kept the keys? Auntie pocketed them off the president of Uganda’s chief of staff.” The aptly-named Rosalyn “Ross” Quest is the latest in a long line of notorious thieves, trained from childhood to break, enter and escape. It’s not the life she wants for herself, but on what she considers to be her last job, her mother is kidnapped and held for ransom.

Enter the shadowy organisation behind the Thieves’ Gambit, a high-stakes competition for teenage thieves (just run with it) and, as far as Ross is concerned, the only option for getting the necessary cash. “I knew I’d do anything to have my momma back,” she reflects after an early proof-of-life call. But her mother’s constant reminders to “trust no one” can’t keep her from bonding with her fellow competitors, particularly the charming Devroe, much as she’d like to try.

Kavyion Lewis’s debut Thieves’ Gambit (Simon & Schuster, £8.99) arrives amid much publicity buzz, with the film rights already acquired by Lionsgate in a bidding war. Fast-paced and twisty, and featuring glamorous locations, priceless artefacts and dramatic heists, it gets the balance right between the high-stakes scenarios and the realistic interactions between the young people involved. It’s also notable in having a genuinely international cast, with occasional cultural misunderstandings, rather than featuring a group of mostly-white Americans in “exotic” places; without being too pointed there are also a few nods to how their stealing of treasures isn’t too dissimilar from how colonial powers have acquired them in the past (the British Museum doesn’t come out well here). A fun, action-packed page-turner.

Kate Dylan’s Mindbreaker (Hodderscape, £18.99) further explores her Mindwalker universe, a tech-fuelled dystopia (one could argue it’s only about two minutes away from our current world) in which hacking into people’s brains is par for the course when it comes to giant corporations. Indra has been raised in an isolated religious commune, a space that deliberately minimises its reliance on technology, but a terminal illness has led to a deal with the devil.

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“Neural Transcendence, they call it. The process of uploading a human mind to an artificial drive. A MindDrive. Housed in a fully titanium shell. A technological marvel. An ungodly abomination.” When Indra wakes up, she’s herself and yet not – a stronger, deadlier version of herself but also programmable. There are memory lapses she can’t explain and she becomes convinced she’s being used as an assassin. How can she escape the company’s control if they’re able to control her mind?

This deeply satisfying thriller poses questions about the nature of humanity and our relationship with artificial intelligence and other technologies, without letting itself indulge in philosophical musings. It’s tremendously enjoyable, if also a worryingly-believable portrayal of a potential future.

“I kind of feel like I was never a kid. For as long as I can remember, there’s been something very old and tired inside me.” Deirdre Sullivan explores horrors of a different kind in her latest novel, Wise Creatures (Hot Key Books, £8.99), in which 15-year-old Daisy’s past as a child psychic, exploited by her now-dead mother, is dragged back into focus as her beloved cousin Nina experiences a haunting of her own. Is Nina really encountering the voices and spirits that Daisy used to speak to, or is it a bid for attention after a relationship has ended badly?

Sullivan deftly blends the supernatural with an exploration of trauma, with Daisy reflecting, “bad things happened to me when I was young and that changes the way I move through the world. It gives me something to carry, that other people may not have. And sometimes it’s a light thing, like a handbag, but other times it’s heavy like a rock.” Her aunt Susan tries to reassure her, and to view what happened as her mother’s abuse rather than a genuine haunting. Maybe it really “was all her, doing things to me ... what I am remembering is stories she told me, lies she wove, pressure that I should not have been under.” This is an unsettling, beautifully-written book, with a sharp twist of an ending.

Grapefruit Moon, the latest from Shirley-Anne McMillan (Little Island, €10.99), features particularly sharp observations on class in Northern Ireland, with working-class Drew arriving at a posh academy and getting sucked into the world of the Stewards, an elite organisation that gathers blackmailable material on others. Among those affected is Charlotte, who seems perfect but is desperately trying to find her own path in her life, rather than adhere to what’s expected of her. Via a shared love of poetry, both written and performed, the two teenagers find a way through. It is a little too sudden in its resolution, although perhaps that’s just another way of saying that another hundred pages about these characters would have been delightful.

Joining a prestigious school as a scholarship student is also explored in Tomi Oyemakinde’s debut, The Changing Man (Macmillan, £8.99), with “Urban Achiever” Ife finding that in this new environment, “the demands are higher even than the expectations of my very Nigerian parents, which says a lot”. More worrying than the harassment she experiences from her peers, though, is the urban legend about the Changing Man, a tale she initially dismisses but then, as students keep vanishing or turning up with new personalities, becomes determined to investigate. This is an intriguing mystery with some pleasingly unexpected turns.

Another elite academic institution, Dorian Drama Academy, serves as the setting for Laura Steven’s Every Exquisite Thing (Electric Monkey, £8.99) a reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray that delves into the beauty industry and the value placed on physical appearance, particularly in a world of constant photographs. “It is neither normal nor natural to be so aware of our every unfortunate angle, our every perceived flaw. And it is neither normal nor natural for us to be so frequently immortalised.”

Protagonist Penny, daughter of a supermodel, has always been taught that her beauty is her most valuable asset. Arriving at the drama academy, she’s determined to hold on to it, particularly when – via a little blackmail – she lands the coveted role of Lady Macbeth. Her mentor, an acclaimed actor with extraordinarily well-preserved looks, suggests a visit to the Masked Painter, an artist whose portraits hang in an underground gallery full of celebrities. With a minor blood sacrifice, Penny can be painted and preserved just as she is now, which she realises, too late, means being forever cold and hungry.

This is a smart and thought-provoking retelling, a supernatural murder mystery that sees Penny realise that while beauty may indeed be currency, “the money – the power – did not flow towards me. It flowed towards the billion-dollar industries. It flowed towards the diet clubs, the shapewear brands, the detox teas”. There’s also a swoon-worthy romance element between Penny and her endearing new friend Catalina, who serves as a reminder that beauty comes in many forms.