Book excerpt: Focusing on dystopian novels featuring a female protagonist, this collection explores the liminal nature of a young woman contending with societal and governmental threats at the same time that she is navigating the treacherous waters of young adulthood. Essays on writers that include Libba Bray, Scott Westerfeld, Tahereh Mafi, Veronica Roth, Ally Condie, and Suzanne Collins show how this rebellious figure interrogates the competing constructions of adolescent womanhood in late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century culture.