Offering a wide range of critical perspectives, this volume explores the moral, ideological and literary landscapes in fiction and other cultural productions aimed at young adults. Examining in depth significant contemporary novels, including those by Julia Alvarez, Stephenie Meyer, Tamora Pierce, Malorie Blackman and Meg Rosoff, among others, Contemporary Adolescent Literature and Culture illuminates the ways in which the cultural constructions 'adolescent' and 'young adult fiction' share some of society's most painful anxieties and contradictions.

Contents: Introduction: time of turmoil, Mary Hilton and Maria Nikolajeva; Adolescence and the natural world in young adult fiction, David Whitley; Nationhood, struggle and identity, Elia Michelle Lafuente; Transgression and transition, Georgie Horrell; Romance, dystopia and the hybrid child, Clémentine Beauvais; Cross-dressing and performativity, Nicole Brugger-Dethmers; Monstrous bodies: writing the incestuously abused adolescent body, Lydia Kokkola; 'The beat of your heart': music in young adult literature and culture, Karen Coats; Emotional connection: representation of emotions in young adult literature, Bettina Kÿmmerling-Meibauer; Brain and behaviour: the coherence of teenage responses to young adult literature, Shirley Brice Heath and Jennifer Lynn Wolf; Selected bibliography; Index.

Mary Hilton is a Senior Research Fellow at Homerton College and Maria Nikolajeva is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK.