Katniss, they feel your pain. The following protagonists have the weight of the world on their shoulders — and, in at least one case, it's just as the world may be ending.

Katie Coyle's Vivian Apple at the End of the World takes place in a near-future America where the cultish Church of America has converted masses of people into Believers. The morning after the prophesied Rapture the world hasn't ended; but thousands of Believers — Vivian's parents included — have vanished. Skeptic Vivian, her caustic BFF Harp, and cute-and-mysterious Peter (who seems to have insider Church knowledge) embark on a cross-country road trip in search of some answers. Coyle's debut is a unique and unpredictable apocalypse story with intelligent commentary on Fundamentalism and corporate influence in America. (Houghton, 14 years and up)

In Afterworlds, Scott Westerfeld introduces not one but two fierce teen heroines, each the star of her own story. The first chapter follows eighteen-year-old Darcy Patel. She has just written her first YA novel, received a huge advance, and moved to New York City. Chapter two takes place at an airport — where a startlingly violent terrorist attack unfolds before the eyes of narrator Lizzie. Readers will soon realize that Lizzie is the protagonist of Darcy's novel, but Westerfeld has done the trick of putting us disconcertingly off balance. The book (at six hundred pages) moves at a brisk pace, with snappy dialogue and short, page-turning chapters. (Simon Pulse, 14 years and up)

After her boyfriend Reeve's death, Jam Gallahue, star of Meg Wolitzer's Belzhar, is shipped off to a boarding school for "emotionally fragile, highly intelligent" teens. She's placed in an English course in which the semester's only materials are Sylvia Plath's poems, The Bell Jar, and a writing journal. The act of writing in the journal transports her to an alternate realm — "Belzhar" — where all is exactly, blissfully, as it had been with Reeve. Much of this rich, thoughtful book seems to straddle the real and the supernatural, but it's ultimately about the otherworldly things the mind is capable of — in its reaction to trauma but also in its ability to heal. (Dutton, 14 years and up)

The Good Sister by Jamie Kain examines the aftermath of family tragedy. After years of battling childhood cancer, Sarah Kinsey dies in a mysterious hiking accident, leaving her younger sisters to attempt to repair their splintered family. Fifteen-year-old Asha flounders at school while trying to hold on to a complicated relationship with her gender-nonconforming best friend. Middle sister Rachel distances herself from her family with boys, rebellion, and a thick layer of cynicism. In alternating chapters, Rachel and Asha struggle to find their own voices — and their own ways past tragedy; Sarah narrates from somewhere between life and death, her chapters filled with evocative, poetic reflections, tender hopes for her troubled sisters, and tantalizing clues about how she died. (St. Martin's Griffin, 14 years and up)

From the January 2015 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.