Among the titles hitting bookshelves next week are a metafictive picture book, a middle grade novel set amidst a plague-ridden 1920s San Francisco, an illustrated look at Hurricane Katrina, two YA novels that look at unexpected loves, a dystopian YA from a trio of authors, and the latest from two Newbery Medalists.

Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid. Harlequin Teen, $17.99 ISBN 978-0-373-21154-8. Alsaid’s second novel follows two teens who at the beginning of high school wrote a list of clichéd activities that they vowed never to do, but then decide to try everything in their senior year, and discover that their feelings for each other might be deeper than they realized.

Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans by Don Brown. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $18.99 ISBN 978-0-544-15777-4. This heavily illustrated nonfiction charts the hurricane and the devastation left in its wake, and earned a starred review from PW.

Chasing Secrets by Gennifer Choldenko. Random/Lamb, $16.99 ISBN 978-0-385-74253-5. Choldenko, author of Al Capone Does My Shirts returns to historical fiction with her latest, set in plague-ridden 1920s San Francisco, where the main character befriends the child of her family’s servant in spite of social mores against it.

I Will Chomp You! by Jory John, illus. by Bob Shea. Random, $17.99 ISBN 978-0-385-38986-0. Centering on a metafictional device in which the protagonist of the book threatens to bite the reader if any more pages are turned, the first collaboration between John and Shea makes for a strong read-aloud.

After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga, with Peter Facinelli and Robert DeFranco. Little, Brown, $18 ISBN 978-0-316-40603-1. This dystopian YA novel brings together YA author Lyga with actor Facinelli (the Twilight series) and movie producer DeFranco for a glimpse of Earth plagued by poverty and environmental collapse, in which a 16-year-old girl and a mysterious boy meet amid an uprising.

Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar. Delacorte, $16.99 ISBN 978-0-385-74378-5. The Holes author offers a book that is at turns an environmental cautionary tale and a celebration of friendship.

Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead. Random/Lamb, $16.99 ISBN 978-0-385-74317-4. Newbery-winner Stead returns with a middle-grade novel about two friends who promise never to fight, and tells what happens when one of them starts to attract boys and the other gets involved in social justice. The book earned a starred review from PW.

Trouble Is a Friend of Mine by Stephanie Tromly. Penguin/Dawson, $17.99 ISBN 978-0-5254-2840-4. This debut YA novel is a screwball mystery following odd couple Zoe and Digby on a hunt for a missing classmate.

For more children’s and YA titles on sale throughout the month of August, check out PW’s full On-Sale Calendar.