5 YA Crime Families You’ll (Almost) Wish You Could Join

Heist Society, by Ally Carter
Heist Society is a fast-paced adventure that isn’t afraid to address larger themes of family, friendship, and loyalty—basically, it’s everything you want in a crime family caper. Katarina’s doesn’t want any part in the family business, aka art thievery, so she scams her way into a prestigious school, only to get kicked out thanks to her friend Hale. Hale is intent on getting Kat back in the Family Business because her super-crafty thieving skills are needed to save her father, basically the only suspect in the theft of a mobster’s art collection. With the help of a motley crew of teenage art thieves, Kat must travel the globe investigating the sordid history of stolen artwork.

Mafia Girl, by Deborah Blumenthal
Filled with romance, decadent meals, and fabulous clothes, Mafia Girl offers a safe alternative to actually living out your lawless dreams, so you can avoid sleeping with the fishes. Gia might attend an exclusive Manhattan high school, but life’s not easy when your dad is a mafia boss. Those who don’t want to be her, fear her, and Gia herself lives in constant fear of her father going to jail. She longs to be more than her infamous name…and when she falls head over heels for a police officer, her loyalty to her family is tested.

All These Things I’ve Done, by Gabrielle Zevin  
The first in the Birthright series, All These Things I’ve Done is the crime tale meets dystopian meets romance of your dreams. The tale follows Anya, the 16-year-old daughter of a notorious and now-dead crime boss, as she deals with her duties as the new head of family in a not-so-distant future New York City. In one of the scariest futures ever imagined, luxury items—like chocolate and coffee, aka, my life blood—are banned, and crime has taken over the city. When Anya is wrongly accused of killing her ex-boyfriend with tainted chocolate, she must deal with the spotlight being turned squarely on her, while she struggles to decide between following her heart and fulfilling her duties.

White Cat, by Holly Black
White Cat is the first book in the Curse Workers series, which fuses organized crime with outlawed magic. Curse workers have the power to perform magic with just the touch of their hands, but since the practice is illegal, people wear gloves and workers must hide their abilities. Cassel belongs to a powerful crime family, but lacks any worker skill of his own. He’s also pretty sure he murdered his best friend, which has got him understandably down. But when mysterious dreams about a white cat become too pervasive to ignore, Cassel begins to question everything he knows about his family and himself, and concocts a con of his own to suss out the truth.

Hold Me Like a Breath, by Tiffany Schmidt
Penelope is the daughter of one of the three crime families controlling the black market for organ transplants, which should be enough to get you excited about this book. But here’s more: Money is no object for Penny, who has grown up knowing anything can be bought and sold—anything but her freedom. She’s trapped inside her family’s sprawling estate thanks to an autoimmune disorder, which leaves her craving the life of a normal teenage girl. When circumstances finally force her into the dangerous world alone, Penny must learn to survive the power plays of rival criminal families and become a force on her own. The first in the new Once Upon a Crime series, it hits shelves this May.