Difficult Adult Children

Rose and her older sister Ivy have always done everything together. When a car accident sends Ivy into a coma, Rose's world is turned upside-down. The doctors recommend that they pull the plug on Ivy, but Rose's mother hasn't been to the hospital since the accident and refuses to make a decision. Rose must learn to cope with life without Ivy.

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.

Postcard-perfect Jar Island is home to charming tourist shops, pristine beaches, amazing oceanfront homes - and three girls secretly plotting revenge. KAT is sick and tired of being bullied by her former best friend. LILLIA has always looked out for her little sister, so when she discovers that one of her guy friends has been secretly hooking up with her, she’s going to put a stop to it. MARY is perpetually haunted by a traumatic event from years past, and the boy who’s responsible has yet to get what’s coming to him. None of the girls can act on their revenge fantasies alone without being suspected. But together…anything is possible .

Caden Bosch is on a ship that's headed for the deepest point on Earth: Challenger Deep, the southern part of the Marianas Trench. Caden Bosch is a brilliant high school student whose friends are starting to notice his odd behavior.

This spring, Mia's determined to have a good time, despite the fact that the student government over which she presides is suddenly broke. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) Grandmere has an elaborate scheme to simultaneously raise money, catapult Mia to theatrical fame, and link her romantically with an eligible teen bachelor, not her boyfriend. It's no wonder that Michael, the love of her life, seems to think she's a psycho, or worse: not much fun.

Lillia, Kat, and Mary had the perfect plan. Work together in secret to take down the people who wronged them. But things didn’t exactly go the way they’d hoped at the Homecoming Dance. Not even close. For now, it looks like they got away with it. All they have to do is move on and pick up the pieces, forget there ever was a pact. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, burn for a burn. A broken heart for a broken heart. The girls are up to the task. They’ll make Reeve fall in love with Lillia and then they will crush him. It’s the only way he’ll learn.

A story of romance, adventure, and humor, Between the Lines features high-schooler and social outsider Delilah, who discovers a charming fairy tale in the school library and can’t resist turning to it again and again. But one day she finds the book has hidden depths—and that the story’s handsome prince has somehow stepped from the page into her very own world.

For most girls, sleepaway camp is great fun. But for Amy Becker, it's a nightmare. Amy, whose home life is in turmoil, is sent to Camp Takawanda for Girls for the first time as a teenager. Although Amy swears she hates her German-immigrant mother, who is unduly harsh with Amy's autistic younger brother, Amy is less than thrilled about going to camp. At Takawanda she is subjected to a humiliating "initiation" and relentless bullying by the ringleader of the senior campers.

Aaryn, son of Cupid and Psyche, is determined to follow in his father's footsteps. On the night of his first assignment, without first logging in to the high-tech compatibility database, he shoots a ballet prodigy named Karma. Aaryn realizes too late the other arrow in his pack is useless. He can't shoot Danny, Karma's date, which makes the enchantment tragically one-sided. In the year that follows, Karma's destiny is derailed. One pregnancy confirmed. One ballet scholarship lost.

In My Bonny Light Horseman, the infamous pirate, riverboat seductress, master of disguise, and street-urchin-turned-sailor Jacky Faber has been captured by the French and beheaded in full view of her friends and crew.Inconceivable? Yes! The truth is she's secretly forced to pose as an American dancer behind enemy lines in Paris, where she entices a French general into revealing military secrets--all to save her dear friends.

As if simply being 14 years old wasn't bad enough - what with the usual teenage angst and uncertainty, Vicky Austin's always comforting and reliable home life is changing completely. Her brother John is going off to college in the fall. Maggy, an orphan taken in by the Austins two years ago, has gone to live with her legal guardian. And the rest of Vicky's family is moving from their quiet house in the country to the heart of New York City. But before the big move, the entire Austin family is taking a meandering trip across the country.

Princess for president. Student body president, that is. It's all the fault of Princess Mia's power-mad best friend and campaign manager, Lilly, who nominates her in the first place. This is not how Mia imagined kicking off her sophomore year, even if Grandmere thinks ruling her high school makes good practice for ruling Genovia someday.

Vlad’s running out of time. The Elysian Council has given him only weeks to live, and that’s if the Slayer Society doesn’t kill him - along with all the citizens of Bathory - first. Then there’s the issue of Vlad’s father, who may or may not still be alive after all these years. Oh yeah, and that tiny little detail in the Pravus prophecy about Vlad enslaving Vampirekind and the human race. So much for college applications.

Aza Ray is drowning in thin air. Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to speak - to live. All the doctors can do is give her drugs and hope they keep her alive. So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of the medication. But Aza doesn't think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name.

In the affluent town of Weslyn, Connecticut, where most people worry about what to be seen in and who to be seen with, Emma Thomas would rather not be seen at all. She’s more concerned with feigning perfection - pulling down her sleeves to conceal the bruises, not wanting anyone to know how far from perfect her life truly is. Without expecting it, she finds love. It challenges her to recognize her own worth - at the risk of revealing the terrible secret she’s desperate to hide.

It’s another awful year at Bathory High for Vladimir Tod. Joss, a professional vampire slayer and Vlad’s former friend, has moved back to town. The powerful vampire Dorian has an overwhelming desire to drink Vlad’s blood. And his archenemy, D’Ablo, has brought Vlad’s Uncle Otis to trial for crimes against vampires. So much for dating. When the tables turn on Vlad, he has just enough time to return to Bathory for his final good-byes.

Eleven-year-old Isabella’s parents are divorced, so she has to switch lives every week: One week she’s Isabella with her dad, his girlfriend Anastasia, and her son, Darren, living in a fancy house where they are one of the only black families in the neighborhood. The next week she’s Izzy with her mom and her boyfriend, John-Mark, in a small, not-so-fancy house that she loves. Because of this, Isabella has always felt pulled between two worlds. And now that her parents are divorced, it seems their fights are even worse, and they’re always about her.

The letter waits in a book, in a box, in an attic, in an old house in Lambert, South Carolina. It's waiting for Candice Miller. When Candice finds the letter, she isn't sure she should read it. It's addressed to her grandmother, after all, who left Lambert in a cloud of shame. But the letter describes a young woman named Siobhan Washington. An injustice that happened decades ago. A mystery enfolding the letter-writer. And the fortune that awaits the person who solves the puzzle. Grandma tried and failed. But now Candice has another chance.

Marked as special at an early age, Jacinda knows her every move is watched. But she longs for freedom to make her own choices. When she breaks the most sacred tenet among her kind, she nearly pays with her life. Until a beautiful stranger saves her. A stranger who was sent to hunt those like her. For Jacinda is a drakia descendant of dragons whose greatest defense is her secret ability to shift into human form.

In this 2009 National Book Award finalist, Rita Williams-Garcia proves that she has an “uncanny ability to project unique voices” ( Publishers Weekly). Jumped is told in alternating points of view between three girls as they struggle to make tough choices when they become involved in a fight at their urban high school.