Neal Shusterman Books in Order

Written for families, this guide uses clear explanations and short, thought‑provoking stories to show the health and social consequences of smoking and drinking, encouraging kids to make their own informed, confident choices to refuse.

Tired of always being second best, Jared and his friends form the Shadow Club to play secret pranks on the “unbeatables” at their school. The jokes soon escalate into dangerous sabotage, and when someone starts framing them for even worse acts, Jared is forced to face how far they have fallen.

In an oppressive future society, a group of teens begins to question the truths they have been taught and the authorities who enforce them. As they slip from quiet doubt into open resistance, they must choose between safety and the chance to change a rigid system.

Preston’s life shatters when his father murders his mother and goes to prison. Told from Preston’s point of view, the novel follows him through shock, rage, and years of silence as he struggles to understand how to live with the legacy of his father’s crime and whether forgiveness is possible.

Aimed at younger readers, this book spotlights kids placed in extraordinary situations, showing how courage, quick thinking, and loyalty can turn ordinary children into heroes at home, at school, and in their communities.

Ordinary, accident‑prone Nolan Byrd suddenly develops impossible speed and strength after a freak incident, leading him to experiment with being a real‑life superhero. As he juggles secret rescues with school and family, he has to decide what kind of hero he wants to be, if any.

Kevin Midas finds a pair of mysterious sunglasses on a mountain trip and discovers that whatever he imagines while wearing them comes true. At first the wishes are fun, but as his fantasies grow darker and the glasses tighten their hold, Kevin risks losing himself to his own desires.

A collection of twenty twisted tales, this volume traps kids in other people’s nightmares, strands them on vanishing roller coasters, and delivers mail that should never have been opened. It is a grab‑bag of chilling what‑ifs designed to unsettle without going fully into adult horror.

In this rhyming picture book, enthusiastic martial arts student Marshall McGumbo attempts an over‑the‑top kick and ends up tangled in a human knot. His slapstick misadventures on the way to mastering his moves make for a playful introduction to perseverance.

This follow‑up collection delivers more standalone horror stories for young readers, from a yard that fights back to a “security blanket” with a mind of its own. Each short piece takes a simple fear and pushes it just far enough to linger after the lights go out.

Six teenagers across the globe are plagued by disturbing powers and compulsions they barely understand. Drawn together by shared visions tied to a distant exploding star, they discover their lives are linked and that something hungry is feeding on the havoc they create.

Based on an episode of The X‑Files, this novelization follows agents Mulder and Scully to a small town where strange astrological alignments seem to be driving teens toward violence. As paranoia and mob mentality rise, they must untangle superstition from something truly otherworldly at work.

The first MindQuakes volume gathers eerie, ironic tales that read like mini Twilight Zone episodes. Each story begins in a familiar setting and then takes a sharp turn, leaving characters and readers to grapple with the unexpected consequences of a single odd choice or wish.

In this collection of scary stories, a cruise turns into a nightmare, a time traveler from hundreds of millions of years ago visits a modern teen, and a wrong suitcase contains clothes that do not seem made for humans. Each tale offers a quick plunge into a different, unsettling scenario.

Jason has always thought his small town was painfully ordinary, until a friend’s death and a strange metallic glove reveal otherwise. As neighbors begin acting oddly and secrets come out, he learns that his community hides an alien agenda and that he may not be as human as he believed.

A companion to MindQuakes, this collection serves up more short, high‑concept stories where ordinary kids stumble into the impossible. Bowling balls morph into strange cylinders, a mall kiosk sells bottled alternate universes, and one boy’s very presence makes people around him vanish.

In New York City, Talon belongs to the Downsiders, a secret community living in tunnels and forgotten chambers beneath the streets. When he meets Lindsay, a Topsider girl curious about what lies below, their friendship threatens both worlds and forces hidden truths about the city to the surface.

Now aware that star shards inside them are both gift and curse, Dillon and the others find their powers spiraling out of control. As an ancient soul‑eating entity known as the Bringer manipulates them, they must confront how easily they can become monsters in the name of using their abilities.

This MindQuakes collection offers a set of bizarre, fast‑moving short stories where reality constantly twists. From a shop that sells alternative lives to a boy whose thoughts warp the world, each tale bends logic and leaves readers with a jolt of unease or dark laughter.

In the final Star Shards book, the six teens whose souls carry pieces of a shattered star struggle with powers that have grown godlike. As the parasitic Bringer pushes them toward greater destruction, they must decide whether they are instruments of ruin or the only ones who can stop it.

The original Shadow Club is long gone, but when a perfect new student begins suffering vicious pranks, everyone blames Jared. Tired of being the scapegoat, he pretends to bring the club back while secretly investigating, only to find that envy and revenge are still very much alive at his school.

Straight‑laced Blake accepts a mysterious invitation to an eerie carnival where he must ride seven terrifying attractions or be trapped forever. As each ride forces him to face fears and buried memories, Blake races to rescue his reckless younger brother and escape a park that feeds on people’s darkest secrets.

Eighth grader Antsy Bonano is one of the few people who notices Calvin Schwa, a kid so forgettable that people literally fail to see him. Their friendship, a series of dares, and a job walking dogs for a cranky old neighbor pull them into a story about invisibility, family, and the need to be seen.

Bored rich kid Parker Baer is fascinated by Tara, the glamorous new girl whose golden dreadlocks never seem to move quite naturally. As Tara charms her way through school, her chosen friends grow pale and lethargic while Parker develops strange hungers, leading him to suspect that the Medusa myth may be more than a story.

Back in his old neighborhood, Red discovers that a gang called the Wolves is terrorizing the streets and has attacked his grandmother. Determined to take them down, he joins the Wolves to learn their secrets, only to find that they are actual werewolves and that part of him is tempted to run with the pack.

Cara DeFido is so unnervingly ugly that mirrors shatter and cameras short out around her, and her town treats her like a monster. When a mysterious note leads her to a hidden valley of beautiful people and a miraculous spring, she seizes the chance to transform, only to find that revenge comes at a deadly cost.

Killed in a car crash, Nick and Allie wake up in Everlost, a shadowy world between life and death where only children exist. Guided by a boy named Lief, they navigate ghostly landmarks, a ruthless “mother” of lost souls, and the monster McGill as they search for a way to truly move on.

In a society that solves social problems by “unwinding” unwanted teens for their body parts, Connor, Risa, and Lev are scheduled for harvest. A chance escape throws them together on the run, forcing them to survive in hiding while the country debates whether people can truly live on in pieces.

When Antsy’s moody classmate Gunnar claims he has only six months to live, Antsy impulsively signs a contract donating a month of his own life to him. Soon the whole school is “giving time,” and Antsy must deal with runaway rumors, media attention, and what it really means to value a life.

Nick, now known as the Chocolate Ogre, travels Everlost trying to help Afterlights reach the light, while Mary Hightower builds a growing empire of lost souls. Allie journeys with Mikey toward her old home, experimenting with the dangerous thrill of skinjacking the living and discovering a startling truth about herself.

Twins Tennyson and Brontë are drawn to Brewster, a boy their classmates fear and misunderstand. They slowly discover that Brewster literally absorbs the injuries and emotional pain of the people he cares about, forcing them to confront what it means to let someone else suffer in your place.

Mary Hightower’s followers are carrying out a plan that could end the living world, drawing more children into Everlost. Nick, Allie, Mikey, and new allies like Jix and Clarence must challenge her growing cult of Afterlights and face the ultimate question of what it means to move on.

This companion novella to Unwind follows Lev after he leaves CyFi and finds refuge on a wealthy ChanceFolk reservation. Taken in by the Tashi’ne family, he confronts a very different culture, a gifted musician facing unwinding, and the choice that sets him on the path to becoming a clapper.

Unwinding is booming business, and the Graveyard’s uneasy truce with the authorities is starting to crumble. While Connor struggles to lead hundreds of fugitive unwinds, Risa resists being used as propaganda, and a new creation named Cam, stitched together from unwound parts, forces everyone to rethink what a person is.

Living near Alaska’s Harding Icefield, Anika loves the nearby glacier until a tragic accident on the ice seems to awaken something ancient within it. As the glacier advances toward town and halts ominously over the cemetery, she and an on‑again, off‑again boyfriend confront a chilling force looking for bodies to claim.

On a Caribbean cruise with his loud extended family, Antsy Bonano expects boredom and buffet lines. Instead he gets tangled up with a mysterious girl, immigration issues, and a tangle of secrets below deck, forcing him to decide how much trouble he is willing to risk to do the right thing.

Aboard the colony ship T‑Bin, humanity hurtles toward a new world after years in deep space. Teen passenger Tanner begins to suspect that their mission is not what it seems, and that the dirt on everyone’s shoes hides a more sinister plan for their future.

As public opinion turns and new science deepens the horror of unwinding, Connor and Lev go underground in search of answers, while Risa is coerced into becoming the face of a powerful pro‑unwind corporation. Their separate paths expose the system’s darkest corners and hint at ways it might be undone.

After a garage sale of junk from his new attic, Nick discovers that the items he sold are actually Nikola Tesla’s dangerous inventions. Teaming up with classmates who bought the artifacts, he must track them down again while a secret society of scientists will do anything to seize them.

In the conclusion to the Unwind Dystology, unwinding has become an accepted, industrialized solution to social problems. As Connor, Risa, Lev, and Cam fight converging battles against harvest camps, corporate interests, and political spin, the fragile compromise that enabled unwinding finally shatters.

Caden Bosch drifts between his life as a high school student and vivid hallucinations of serving on a ship headed for the deepest point in the ocean. As his schizophrenia worsens and he’s hospitalized, the overlapping narratives trace his frightening descent and slow, fragile climb toward stability.

This edition of the novel originally published as What Daddy Did follows Preston, whose father killed his mother, as he grows from traumatized child into a young man. Through therapy, family tensions, and a long‑delayed prison visit, he wrestles with anger, loyalty, and the possibility of forgiving the unforgivable.

Nick and his friends are hunting down more of Tesla’s bizarre inventions before the Accelerati can claim them. As strange electromagnetic phenomena sweep their town and the sinister Dr. Jorgenson closes in, the teens discover just how dangerous free energy can be in the wrong hands.

This collection of novellas and short stories set in the Unwind universe fills in hidden moments and side plots. From origins of key characters to life inside harvest camps and the Graveyard, it offers new angles on how unwinding reshapes families, politics, and the black market.

In the final Accelerati book, Nick is forced to help the secret society complete Tesla’s world‑changing device to save his father and brother. With his friends scattered across the globe and time and space beginning to warp, he races to locate the last components before reality tears apart.

In a future where death has been conquered, two teens are chosen to apprentice as Scythes, the only people allowed to kill. As Citra and Rowan learn to glean, they uncover corruption in the Scythedom and must decide what kind of death dealers they will become.

When a historic drought leads the taps in Southern California to run dry, Alyssa’s neighborhood descends into panic and violence. Forced onto the road with her younger brother, a prepper neighbor, and two uneasy allies, she must navigate wildfire, mobs, and betrayal in a desperate search for water.

The Thunderhead, a near‑omniscient AI, watches as the Scythedom fractures into rival factions. While Scythe Anastasia tries to reform gleaning from within and Rowan wages a one‑man war on corrupt Scythes, the system that holds their perfect world together begins to crack.

Three years after Endura sinks, the world is fractured, the Thunderhead is silent to almost everyone, and Scythe Goddard rules with increasing cruelty. Greyson, Citra, and Rowan move along separate paths that converge in a final struggle over who controls death, and what humanity’s future will be.

After a brutal tackle on the football field, Ash Bowman begins slipping into alternate realities where key parts of his world have changed. Each shift forces him to confront issues of race, class, gender, and identity, until he has to decide what kind of universe he wants to fight for.

Siblings Isaac and Ivy each slide into addiction, guided by personified voices of prescription and street drugs who narrate like seductive gods. As painkillers, stimulants, and tranquilizers battle for control, the novel traces how easy it is to fall from casual use into deadly dependence.

Told as a graphic novel, this work weaves five interlocking stories that blend Holocaust history with Jewish folklore and surreal imagery. Through golems, witches, alternate timelines, and ordinary people, it explores resistance, hope, and what it means to dream in the face of attempted annihilation.

A collection of tales set throughout the Arc of a Scythe timeline, these stories reveal origin moments, side characters, and hidden corners of the Scythedom. From Scythe Curie’s past to post‑Toll fallout and experimental new gleanings, it deepens the world for returning readers.

Fourteen‑year‑old Noah Prime discovers he can channel the abilities of animals, from walrus blubber to cheetah speed, just as aliens and shadowy forces begin hunting him. With his sister and two friends, he uncovers a wild conspiracy that turns his small Oregon town into the center of a galactic chase.

Adriana is determined to keep her head down for the last months of her sentence at Compass juvenile detention, pouring her feelings into a private journal. When a boy on the other side of the gender‑segregated facility starts secretly writing back in its pages, their connection grows into a risky lifeline that challenges the rules holding them both.

Now a fugitive after saving the world once, Noah Prime thinks he can finally lay low. But when a friend buys a star as a gift and it turns out to be actual off‑world property, aliens abduct a classmate, and Noah and his crew must cross the cosmos to rescue her and stop body‑snatching worms.

In a post‑Covid world, a new virus called Crown Royale kills some but leaves survivors in a state of permanent contentment, free from anxiety or despair. As governments, corporations, and activists clash over whether to eradicate or spread this “happiness disease,” three very different teens find themselves at the center of a global fight over what people owe to their own joy.

Gathering classic and new tales from across his career, this hefty collection showcases Shusterman’s strangest short fiction. From apocalyptic swarms of bats to haunted hot tubs and soul‑stealing soup, the stories range from creepy to awe‑filled, all designed to stretch the imagination.