Difficult Teens

Is your life difficult because of an out-of-control teen? Are you scared witless for your out-of-control teen? Do you stay up at night worrying and feeling guilty, wondering how things got so bad? Do you wish you knew what to do to change the situation and, maybe, even feel a little bit of peace? Lisa G. Nichols is the mom of a former difficult teen. She went through hell and back with her son and learned the biggest lessons of her life, which she shares with you in Out-of-Control Teen.

Darren Shan and his best friend, Steve, get tickets to the Cirque du Freak, a wonderfully gothic freak show featuring weird, frightening half human/half animals who interact terrifyingly with the audience. In the midst of the excitement, true terror raises its head when Steve recognizes that one of the performers - Mr. Crepsley - is a vampire! Steve confronts the vampire after the show finishes - but his motives are surprising!

The trials: There are seventeen ways to die unless the luck of the vampire is with you. Darren Shan must pass five of these fearsome trials to prove himself to the vampire clan - or face the stakes of the Hall of Death. But Vampire Mountain holds hidden threats. Sinister, potent forces are gathering in the darkness. In this nightmarish world of bloodshed and betrayal, death may be a blessing.

Emily Starr had never known what it was to be lonely - until her beloved father died. In this, the first of the Emily novels, young Emily is orphaned and goes to live with her mother's snobbish relatives at New Moon Farm. Sure that she'll never be happy there, Emily endures her stern Aunt Elizabeth and malicious classmates by holding her head high and using her quick wit.

Darren, the vampire's assistant, gets a taste of the city when he leaves the Cirque du Freak with Evra the snake-boy and Mr. Crepsley. When corpses are discovered - corpses drained of blood - Darren and Evra are compelled to hunt down whatever foul creature is committing such horrendous acts. Meanwhile, beneath the streets, evil stalks Darren and Evra, and all clues point to Mr. Crepsley. Can they escape, or are they doomed to perish in the tunnels of blood?

Darren has settled into life as a vampire's assistant and feels at home in the Cirque du Freak. But now he must leave the freak show and his friends behind. With Mr. Crepsley as a traveling companion, he embarks on a dangerous trek to the very heart of the vampire world. But they face more than the cold on Vampire Mountain - the vampaneze have been there before them. Will a meeting with the Vampire Princes restore Darren's human side or turn him further toward the darkness? Only one thing is certain: Darren's initiation into the vampire clan is more deadly than he can ever have imagined.

After six years of living in Vampire Mountain, Darren Shan,the Vampire Prince, leaves on a life-and-death mission. As part of an elite force, Darren searches the world for the Vampaneze Lord, who is determined to lead his forces to victory against the vampires. But the road ahead is long and dangerous - and lined with the bodies of the damned. Hunters of the Dusk is the start of an action-packed, three-part Darren Shan adventure, a tale of quests, friendship, treachery, despair, and bloodshed....

Darren Shan, Vampire Prince and "vampaneze" killer, faces his worst nightmare yet - school. But homework is the least of Darren's problems. Bodies are piling up, time is running out, and the past is catching up with the hunters fast. Darren must forge new alliances and try to unravel the mystery behind the malevolent forces that have been set in motion against him. In this second part of the Hunters trilogy, the stakes are raised and the pace quickens to keep listeners on the edge of their seats.

Lexi is a survivor; she has spent her whole life moving from one abusive foster home to the next, until she decided to take charge of her own life. Living in abandoned buildings, couch surfing, and working at a strip clubs were a huge improvement on what she had before. All she needs is enough money to feed herself, finish high school, and hopefully go to college. She has a plan. That is until she is caught and sent to live with a strange foster family upstate.

Vivian Carter's mom was a Riot Grrrl in the 1990s, but now she and Viv live a pretty quiet life in a small Texas town. When Viv witnesses a series of sexist incidents at her high school, she takes a page from her mom's past and makes a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. Viv is just blowing off steam, but before she knows it she's started a revolution.

Sixteen-year-old Lexi Stevens has never been kissed - never even been asked on a date. So when she humiliates herself in front of her crush and her brother's best friend offers to be her fake boyfriend for the week to make him jealous, she doesn't know if it's the stupidest idea ever or a dream come true. Noah Taylor gets kicked out of his house by his abusive stepdad. When his new "girlfriend" discovers him sleeping in his car and offers to let him sleep in her closet, he starts to wonder if he's found someone he can confide in after all.

After an embarrassing loss to her ex-girlfriend in their first basketball game of the season, Scottie Zajac gets into a fender bender with the worst possible person: her nemesis, Irene Abraham, who is as beautiful as she is mean. When the damage sends Irene's car to the shop for weeks' worth of repairs, the girls are forced to carpool for the foreseeable future.

Lylah and her friends can't wait to spend a night out together. Partying is the perfect way to let loose from the stress of life and school, and Lylah hopes that hitting the dance floor with Chace, her best friend, will bring them closer. She's been crushing on him since they met. If only he thought of her the same way.... The girls are touching up their makeup, and the guys are sliding on their coats when the doorbell rings. No one is there. An envelope sits on the doormat. It's an anonymous note addressed to their friend Sonny. A secret admirer? Maybe. They all laugh it off.

Poland, 1940. The Russian army invades the beautiful city streets of Vilna. Soldiers storm 10-year-old Esther Rudomin's house and arrest her entire family. The Rudomins, the soldiers say, are "capitalists - enemies of the people". Forced from their home and friends, the Rudomins are herded onto crowded cattle cars. Their destination: the endless steppe of Siberia.

A distinctive new voice: Rex Ogle's story of starting middle school on the free lunch program is timely, heartbreaking, and true. Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle's first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school's free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day in the school lunch line, Rex's is a compelling story of a more profound hunger - that of a child for his parents' love and care.

Just say know! With drug education for children more important than ever, this nonfiction book draws on the experiences of the New York Times best-selling father-and-son team to provide all the information teens and 'tweens need to know about drugs, alcohol, and addiction. From David Sheff, author of Beautiful Boy, and Nic Sheff, author of Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines, comes the ultimate resource for learning about the realities of drugs and alcohol for middle-grade listeners.

I knew I'd ruffle feathers, but the day I walked into Rockport High, I had no idea the cheap shots that were to follow. You see, the Ballers and I have a history. They play basketball. I play basketball. But they hate that I play basketball as good as them. And the only thing they hate more than that, is me. That's right. I'm a girl, and I. Can. Play. Make no mistake about it. The Ballers can do their worst, but I will earn a spot on the RHS boys' team. This is my last resort to make a name for myself, and I can't let them interfere.

When Oakley Nelson loses her older brother, Lucas, to cancer, she thinks she'll never recover. Between her parents' arguing and the battle she's fighting with depression, she feels nothing inside but a hollow emptiness. When Mom suggests they spend a few months in California with Aunt Jo, Oakley isn't sure a change of scenery will alter anything, but she's willing to give it a try.

Find out what happens to Connor, Risa, and Lev now that they've finally destroyed the Proactive Citizenry in this collection of short stories set in the world of the New York Times best-selling Unwind Dystology by Neal Shusterman. Connor Lassiter's fight to bring down Proactive Citizenry and find a suitable alternative to unwinding concluded in UnDivided. Now, Connor, Risa, and Lev are free to live in a peaceful future - or are they?

Meg Cabot is the New York Times best-selling author of The Princess Diaries series. Susannah Simon is a teenager who can see ghosts. As a bridge between the living and the dead, she gets called on to help ghosts take care of unfinished business. After she and her mother move from New York City to sunny California, Suze meets the sexiest boy she's ever seen, too bad he's a ghost, too.