Difficult Adult Children

Newbery Honor winner Joan Bauer's new novel will touch your heart.

School is just like a film set: there's The Crew, who make things happen; The Extras, who fill the empty desks; and The Movie Stars, whom everyone wants tagged in their Facebook photos. But Jude doesn't fit in. He's not part of The Crew because he isn't about to do anything unless it's court-appointed; he's not an Extra because nothing about him is anonymous; and he's not a Movie Star because even though everyone knows his name like an A-lister, he isn't invited to the cool parties.

Inge Auerbacher is a happy German girl when the nightmare begins. Six-year-old Inge is made to wear a yellow star to identify her as a Jew. As the Nazis gain power, her family is subjected to greater and greater horrors. Their home and citizenship are taken away. Inge’s relatives are sent away, and she and her parents are forced into the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.

Ever since her sister Kasey was institutionalized, then seeing Lydia Small die a horrible, violent death, Alexis just wants things to go back to the way they were before all of it happened. But normal people don't see decaying bodies haunting photographs. Normal people don't have to deal with regular intrusions from Lydia's angry ghost, sometimes escalating to terrifying attacks. At first it seems that Lydia wants revenge on Alexis alone.

"So, my beautiful fat girlfriend, Cassidy, is threatening to kick me to the curb again, my best friend suddenly wants to put the brakes on our lives of fabulous fun, my mom and big sister are plotting a future in which I turn into an atomic vampire, and my dad, well, my dad is a big fat question mark that I'm not sure I want the answer to."

The town of Wirrawee is emerging from war, slowly, like a flower after a cold snap. Businesses are starting to reopen, the school has re-commenced classes, and local farmers are gradually repossessing their land. But it's not the same Australia as before the war. A new nation exists just a few miles away, a new border that separates Australia from its invaders. Or does it?

Hermione Winters is captain of her cheerleading team, and in tiny Palermo Heights, this doesn't mean what you think it means. At PHHS, the cheerleaders don't cheer for the sports teams; they are the sports team - the pride and joy of a tiny town. The team's summer training camp is Hermione's last and marks the beginning of the end of...she's not sure what. She does know this season could make her a legend. But during a camp party, someone slips something in her drink. And it all goes black.

As soon as Seneca Frazier sees the post on the Case Not Closed website about Helena Kelly, she's hooked. Helena's high-profile disappearance five years earlier is the one that originally got Seneca addicted to true crime. It's the reason she's a member of the site in the first place. So when Maddy Wright, her best friend from the CNC site, invites Seneca to spend spring break in Connecticut looking into the cold case, she immediately packs her bag.

Clara Gardner has recently learned that she's part angel. Having angel blood run through her veins not only makes her smarter, stronger, and faster than humans (a word, she realizes, that no longer applies to her), but it means she has a purpose, something she was put on this earth to do. Figuring out what that is, though, isn't easy.

Join Ann Brashares' beloved sisterhood once again in a dazzling, fearless novel. It's a summer that will forever change the lives of Lena, Carmen, Bee, and Tibby, here and now, past and future, together and apart.

In a world where magic is illegal, Cassel Sharpe has the most deadly ability of all: With one touch, he can transform any object - including a person - into something else entirely. And that makes him a wanted man. The Feds are willing to forgive all his past crimes if he’ll only leave his con-artist family behind and go straight. But why does going straight feel so crooked? For one thing, it means being on the opposite side of the law from Lila, the girl he loves.

Through their love for people, yet ignorance of the unknown, the Finch Family has joined alongside their church and opened their home to an African refugee family who are moving to Connecticut. The Amabo family of four Andre, Celestine, Mattu, and Alake: father, mother, and teenage son and daughter arrive in great hope as they have escaped the tyranny of Africa. What the Finch Family doesnt know is that there are not just four refugees in this Amabo family, but five.

Ollie and Moritz are two teenagers who will never meet. Each of them lives with a life-affecting illness. Contact with electricity sends Ollie into debilitating seizures while Moritz has a heart defect and is kept alive by an electronic pacemaker. If they did meet, Ollie would seize, but turning off the pacemaker would kill Moritz. Through an exchange of letters, the two boys develop a strong bond of friendship that becomes a lifeline during dark times.

Even under the most normal circumstances, high school can be a painful and confusing time. Unfortunately, Lilianna’s circumstances are anything but normal. Only a few people know what caused her sudden change from model student to the withdrawn pessimist she has become, but her situation isn’t about to get any better. When people begin coming down with a quick-spreading illness that doctors are unable to treat, Lil’s worst fears are realized.

Sang Sorenson struggles with her growing feelings when the Academy boys take her in and draw her closer into their world. They work together to uncover the true secrets happening at Ashley Waters High School, where Principal Hendricks will stop at nothing to take them all down. Adding to their complications, Nathan's father shows up, and he's just as ruthless and violent as ever, beating up on Nathan. Sang offers Nathan refuge in her home, but Marie is fed up with the boys.

When Stefan Salvatore's first love turned him into a vampire, his world - and his soul - were destroyed. Now he and his brother, Damon, must flee their hometown, where they risk being discovered...and killed. The brothers head to New Orleans, looking for safe haven. But the city is more dangerous than they ever imagined, full of other vampires and vampire hunters. Will Stefan's eternal life be forever damned?

New kid Jake Garrett seems to have it all figured out. He's a star athlete, he hosts the best parties, and every girl in school wants to date him. But who is Jake Garrett, really? And why has he gone to all the trouble to reinvent himself?

Gordon Korman's brilliant and intense writing and cutting edge dialogue quickly draw listeners into the adolescent struggle of popularity and acceptance.

Seventeen-year-old Caymen Meyers learned early that the rich are not to be trusted. And after years of studying them from behind the cash register of her mom's porcelain-doll shop, she has seen nothing to prove otherwise. Enter Xander Spence-he's tall, handsome, and oozing rich. Despite his charming ways and the fact that he seems to be one of the first people who actually gets her, she's smart enough to know that his interest won't last.

"Cassie recounts harrowing events during late 1941. An engrossing picture of fine young people endeavoring to find the right way in a world that persistently wrongs them." - Kirkus Reviews

I thought I had it bad - living in my dead Dad’s old hunting blind in the woods, barely staying alive on apples and ramen...that was before the storm hit and destroyed the only form of shelter I had left. Enter, Jared. The hottest - and most unavailable - guy at school. Except he wasn’t Jared when he pulled me out of the mud. He wasn’t even human. As if that wasn’t unsettling enough, when he brought me back to his cabin, I found he wasn’t alone. Another guy, one I’d only ever heard about in whispers beneath the bleachers, was there too.