Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke and Bookish. Each week the bloggers at The Broke and The Bookish put out a topic, and discuss their top ten options for said topic. This week’s Top Ten is: en Books That Celebrate Diversity/Diverse Characters (example: features minority/religious minority, socioeconomic diversity, disabled MC, neurotypical character, LGBTQ etc etc.)

Ms. Marvel
Kamala Khan is an ordinary girl from Jersey City — until she’s suddenly empowered with extraordinary gifts. But who truly is the new Ms. Marvel? Teenager? Muslim? Inhuman? Find out as she takes the Marvel Universe by storm! When Kamala discovers the dangers of her newfound powers, she unlocks a secret behind them, as well. Is Kamala ready to wield these immense new gifts? Or will the weight of the legacy before her be too much to bear? Kamala has no idea, either. But she’s comin’ for you, Jersey!

Featuring Ms. Marvel because she is a Muslim character, a strong female lead, and a character that holds tight to her values and strong upbringing.

Gangsta.
In the city of Ergastulum, a shady ville filled with made men and petty thieves, whores on the make and cops on the take, there are some deeds too dirty for even its jaded inhabitants to touch. Enter the “Handymen,” Nic and Worick, who take care of the jobs no one else will handle. Until the day when a cop they know on the force requests their help in taking down a new gang muscling in on the territory of a top Mafia family. It seems like business (and mayhem) as usual, but the Handymen are about to find that this job is a lot more than they bargained for.

Featuring Disabled main characters– one being deaf, the other missing an eye. The cast of this manga is racially diverse. There’s some really interesting themes also running through the entire series.

Teeth
Rudy’s life is flipped upside-down when his family moves to a remote island in a last attempt to save his sick younger brother. With nothing to do but worry, Rudy sinks deeper and deeper into loneliness and lies awake at night listening to the screams of the ocean beneath his family’s rickety house.

Featuring Some deeper, seedier themes that are handled very well. A bisexual character.

Obscura Burning
Kyle Wolfe’s world is about to crash and burn. Just weeks away from graduation, a fire kills Kyle’s two best friends and leaves him permanently scarred. A fire that Kyle accidentally set the night he cheated on his boyfriend Danny with their female friend, Shira. That same day, a strange new planet, Obscura, appears in the sky. And suddenly Kyle’s friends aren’t all that dead anymore. Each time Kyle goes to sleep, he awakens to two different realities. In one, his boyfriend Danny is still alive, but Shira is dead. In the other, it’s Shira who’s alive…and now they’re friends with benefits. Shifting between realities is slowly killing him, and he’s not the only one dying. The world is dying with him. He’s pretty sure Obscura has something to do with it, but with his parents’ marriage imploding and realities shifting each time he closes his eyes, Kyle has problems enough without being the one in charge of saving the world…

Featuring a bisexual male lead who has a really great story.

Not Simple
Ian, a young man with a fractured family history, travels from Australia to England to America in the hope of realizing his dreams and reuniting with his beloved sister. His story unfolds backwards through the framing narrative of Jim, a reporter driven to capture Ian’s experiences in a novel: not simple. A story within a story, a book within a book, a tale about the search for family, for an emotional home.

Featuring: A story is so complex, so diverse for a simple manga. The main character Ian is gay and living with AIDS. It is a beautiful, heartwrenching work.

Rocked
When rising rock star Joe Hawk wanders into the diner where Liss works her dark night is brightened by his incredibly blue eyes and sexy smile. The attraction is immediate and every moment is charged with erotic heat.

He’s searching for something real.

The first impression is easy. Taking the next step is much harder. The plus sized beauty has to overcome her insecurities to take a risk on a man whose life is the opposite of everything she’s ever known and changing faster than either of them realizes.

Featuring A plus sized girl featured as a main character–worthy of love and attention.

The Fault in Our Stars
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

Featuring: A character who is terminally ill and attempting to live a normal teenaged life.

Thirteen Reasons Why
Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers thirteen cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, his classmate and crush who committed suicide two weeks earlier.

On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out how he made the list.

Featuring: A narrator with mental issues.

Pierced
Imagine the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets Betty Crocker.

That’s Pierce in a nutshell.

Pierce has been on the run for two years from the man who held her captive in a vampire compound for almost a decade. Life on the run would be a lot simpler if she didn’t suffer from several social disorders and ‘quirks’, have a ten-year-old brat in tow, as well as have two characters from a 1945 classic film living in her head and guiding her at every turn.

Featuring: A girl with mental disorders, social anxiety, an abuse survivor

The Hallowed Ones
Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers can get a taste of the real world. But the real world comes to her in this dystopian tale with a philosophical bent. Rumors of massive unrest on the “Outside” abound. Something murderous is out there. Amish elders make a rule: No one goes outside, and no outsiders come in. But when Katie finds a gravely injured young man, she can’t leave him to die. She smuggles him into her family’s barn—at what cost to her community? The suspense of this vividly told, truly horrific thriller will keep the pages turning.

Featuring: The Amish culture and religion, different narrators, strong female lead.

That was my Top Ten books for this week. If you’ve done a Top Ten Tuesday post, feel free to link it to me in the comments. I’d love to see your responses.