Difficult Adult Children

Eve is haunted by her dead cats, Willie is not content to turn a blind eye to suffering, and Maria carries on lengthy conversations with a silent caller. Theirs are the odd, but strangely realistic stories you will find in this collection. Avi’s stories address real concerns in a way young people can relate to. Always entertaining, they broach difficult topics like divorce, teenage runaways, adolescent cruelty, and homelessness.

Mara Todd wakes in a field of dead grass, a heavy mist pressing down on her. She is terrified, afraid that she is dead. She can't remember who she is or anything about her past. Is it because of the boy who appears? He calls himself the Messenger of Fear. If the world does not bring justice to those who do evil, the Messenger will. He offers the wicked a game. If they win, they go free. If they lose, they will live their greatest fear. Either way, their sanity will be challenged.

After investigating multiple homicides and her family's decades-old skeletons in the closet, Tandy Angel is finally reunited with her lost love in Paris. But as he grows increasingly distant, Tandy is confronted with disturbing questions about him, as well as what really happened to her long-dead sister. With no way to tell anymore who in her life she can trust, how will Tandy ever get to the bottom of the countless secrets her parents kept from her?

Lauren DeStefano’s Wither was called a “thought-provoking debut, reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale” by Kirkus Reviews. Its chilling follow-up, Fever, continues 16-year-old Rhine’s tale - set in a dark future in which men and women die by age 25, and young girls are sold into marriage to keep the population growing. Rhine has finally escaped her marriage. But what hope can the outside world offer when death looms ever closer?

Help young listeners understand the problems of poverty and hunger in Third World countries with this powerful, moving story by award-winning author Gary Paulsen. An orphan in a Mexican border town meets an American army sergeant - and hopes the sergeant will help him cross the border to a better life in the United States.

Gabie drives a Mini Cooper. She also delivers pizzas part-time. One night, Kayla, another delivery girl at Pete’s Pizza, goes out with an order and never comes back. To Gabie's horror, she learns that the man who called in the fake pizza order had asked if the girl in the Mini Cooper was working that night. Was Kayla’s fate really meant for Gabie? Obsessed with finding Kayla, Gabie teams up with Drew, who also works at Pete’s. Together they set out to prove Kayla isn’t dead - and to find her before she is.

Sarah Miller's accomplished debut presents a fictionalized account of Anne Sullivan's life and her time as Helen Keller's teacher. Arriving at Ivy Green in 1887, Anne was a partially blind orphan who had been tasked with teaching the difficult blind, deaf, and mute girl to communicate. Anne quickly learned, along with Helen, that "words are a miracle".

Struck by Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal follows the story of outcast high school senior Carson Phillips who blackmails the most popular students in his school into contributing to his literary journal to bolster his college application; his goal in life is to get into Northwestern and eventually become the editor of The New Yorker. At once laugh-out-loud funny, deliciously dark, and remarkably smart, Struck By Lightning unearths the dirt that lies just below the surface of high school.

In the violent country of Ludania, the language you speak determines what class you are, and there are harsh punishments if you forget your place - looking a member of a higher class in the eye can result in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina (Charlie for short) can understand all languages, a dangerous ability she's been hiding her whole life. Her only place of release is the drug-filled underground club scene, where people go to shake off the oppressive rules of the world they live in.

World War II, 1942. A court decision makes women subject to the draft and eligible for service. The unproven American army is going up against the greatest fighting force ever assembled: the armed forces of Nazi Germany. Three girls sign up to fight. Rio Richlin, Frangie Marr, and Rainy Schulterman are average girls, girls with dreams and aspirations, at the start of their lives, at the start of their loves.

Carter Jones is astonished early one morning when he finds a real English butler, bowler hat and all, on the doorstep - one who stays to help the Jones family, which is a little bit broken. In addition to figuring out middle school, Carter has to adjust to the unwelcome presence of this new know-it-all adult in his life and navigate the butler's notions of decorum. And ultimately, when his burden of grief and anger from the past can no longer be ignored, Carter learns that a burden becomes lighter when it is shared.

I’m not your average hero. I actually wasn’t your average anything. Just a poor guy working an after-school job at a South Beach shoe repair shop to help his mom make ends meet. But a little magic changed it all. It all started with a curse. And a frognapping. And one hot-looking princess, who asked me to lead a rescue mission. There wasn’t a fairy godmother or any of that. And even though I fell in love along the way, what happened to me is unlike any fairy tale I’ve ever heard.

Now nearly a full-fledged member of the Agency, the all-female detective unit operating out of Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls, Mary Quinn is back for another action-packed adventure. Disguised as a poor apprentice builder and a boy, she must brave the grimy underbelly of Victorian London - as well as childhood memories of fear, hunger, and constant want - to unmask the identity of a murderer.

Lucy Scarborough is 17 when she discovers that the women of her family have been cursed through the generations, forced to attempt three seemingly impossible tasks or to fall into madness upon their child's birth. How can Lucy succeed when all of her ancestors have tried and failed? But Lucy is the first girl who won't be alone as she tackles the list. She has her fiercely protective foster parents beside her. And she has Zach, whose strength amazes her more each day. Do they have enough love and resolve to overcome an age-old evil?

Jonathan’s older brother is away fighting with General Washington in Pennsylvania. But at 13, Jonathan is too young to fight. Still too young. Then one morning, April 3, 1778, the tavern bell sounds, calling men to arms. Eager to prove his mettle, with blood pounding in his ears, Jonathan joins the gathering men at the tavern to hear the news. With a 12-pound, six-foot-long flintlock musket loaned to him by the tavern keeper, Jonathan finds a place in with the other men, marching to battle.

In books like Buried Onions and Boys at Work, Gary Soto displays a gift for revealing the tough, heart-breaking life of contemporary urban kids. In Petty Crimes, Soto offers 10 stories about the risky situations and dangerous little scams faced by young people growing up on the harsh streets of the city.

Maddie Fynn is a shy high school junior, cursed with an eerie intuitive ability: she sees a series of unique digits hovering above the foreheads of each person she encounters. Her earliest memories are marked by these numbers, but it takes her father's premature death for Maddie and her family to realize that these mysterious digits are actually death dates, and just like birthdays, everyone has one.

Zoe, Jake, Mia, Gregor, and Whitney meet at freshman orientation. At the end of that first day, they make a promise to reunite after graduation. So much can happen in those in-between years....

On the morning of September 11, 2001, 16-year-old Kyle Donohue watches the first twin tower come down from the window of Stuyvesant High School. Moments later, terrified and fleeing home to safety across the Brooklyn Bridge, he stumbles across a girl perched in the shadows, covered in ash, and wearing a pair of costume wings.

"I was told to beware the accursed spindle, but it was so enchanting, so hypnotic. I was looking for a little adventure the day I ditched my tour group. But finding a comatose town, with a hot-looking chick asleep in it, was so not what I had in mind. I awakened in the same place but in another time – to a stranger’s soft kiss."