American Ghosts — Mark Delaney

After her parents' divorce, seventeen-year-old Maia Tierney and her mother move from their beach house in California to their new home in rural Tennessee. From the moment she arrives, Maia finds her life filled with new friends, new enemies, and sudden, inexplicable terror. When nineteen of her schoolmates die in a single, horrifying act of violence, a ghost of one of the victims soon arrives to haunt Maia. At first the ghost is a shadowy figure sitting in a chair in Maia's room, staring at Maia through empty eye sockets. Then she's outside Maia's home late at night, beckoning Maia to follow her into a dark forest. Is the ghost real, Maia wonders, or has the trauma of her experience affected her mind? One late night, in a forest clearing, the ghost enlists Maia to complete a mission--a mission that forces Maia to ask herself how far she is willing to go to prevent a grave wrong from ever happening again. She can't bring her friends back, but is it possible to change a nation? Maia decides to try. When she embarrasses a senator on live television, she finds herself the focal point of a media firestorm and the leader of a national movement. All the while she faces anonymous threats from online trolls and ever more violent threats from those who want to silence her. Written by the award winning author of the Misfits, Inc. series and Pepperland, American Ghosts is a supernatural thriller, a romance, an homage to student journalism, and a profound look at a group of high school students as they adjust to, and fight against, an often violent world.