Family Survival Fiction

For the past four years, Rick Walker has been shuffled between foster care and group homes. At 14, he’s a kid nobody wants or cares about. Now he’s headed for Blue Canyon Detention Center. For Rick, life is a maze full of dead ends. But when he is threatened at Blue Canyon and runs away, Rick finds himself in a real maze - the enormous rocky expanse of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. There, Rick meets a biologist who has devoted his life to reintroducing the condor to its natural habitat. As Rick joins him to protect the giant birds, the teenager will begin to see choices instead of dead ends.

Mann is only 13, yet he has already had to deal with more than most go through in a lifetime. His family is still reeling from the tragic shooting death of his little brother, Jason, each person coping with grief in his or her own way.

When Sadie Harlan visits her daughter, Lauren, at her summer internship in Yosemite National Park, it seems like the perfect way to forget about her empty nest and failing marriage back home. But when the two women get lost on what’s meant to be a short hike, they suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives. As they search for food, water, and civilization, they battle injury, exhaustion, and natural predators. Sadie, however, is assaulted by more than just the unforgiving elements.

On Choosing Day, children of Adranna who reach the age of 14 are finally eligible to undergo the tests to determine if they are worthy of bonding a Frostsliver. Only one in a hundred are destined to succeed. If chosen, they will have to climb to the top of the glacier and cut a piece off for themselves, so that they may be granted the powers they've always dreamed of. When Sabira is chosen, an entire world of possibilities opens up to her. But in order to see it through, she'll have to embark on a dangerous pilgrimage to the top of the glacier.

Irréelle fears she’s not quite real. Only the finest magical thread tethers her to life - and to Miss Vesper. But for all her efforts to please her cruel creator, the thread is unraveling. Irréelle is forgetful as she gathers bone dust. She is slow returning from the dark passages beneath the cemetery. Worst of all, she is unmindful of her crooked bones. When Irréelle makes one final, unforgivable mistake by destroying a frightful creature just brought to life, Miss Vesper threatens to imagine her away once and for all.

Twelve-year-old Fernando “Fin” joins his grandfather on a secret quest to find a long-lost treasure swept to sea. But when their first mission takes a near-deadly turn, leaving his abuelo weak and unable to speak, Fin’s left to navigate the hunt alone. Well, not exactly alone—his boring, totally unadventurous dad agrees to help out. With danger lurking at every turn, Fin dives into the mission in order to save Abuelo's life.

Sarah Robinson and her family are shipwrecked on a remote and mysterious island. Their food is scarce, and there's no sign of rescue. They have seen strange creatures, rescued a mysterious girl, and found the Curator, who has captured Sarah's father and stepbrother to use in a bizarre time-travel experiment. And then the only man who knows about the island comes back - he's looking for buried treasure and won't leave without it, even if it means leaving the Robinsons stranded.

The mystery of the island deepens as members of the Robinson family disappear, and strange animals are discovered. Sarah Robinson and her family are shipwrecked on a remote and mysterious island. Their food is running out, and their fear is escalating - there is no sign of rescue. The mysterious girl they found unconscious at the beach is healing, and what she tells them about the strange island and especially about someone called the Keeper has the family on edge.

Newbery Medal winner Lynne Rae Perkins introduces Violet and Jobie, two house mice exiled to the wilderness, in an exceptional read-aloud and read-alone for fans of Skunk and Badger, Nuts to You, and classic animal stories such as Stuart Little. This thrilling—and funny!—animal adventure explores themes of friendship, family, bravery, and the meaning of home. Violet & Jobie in the Wild is illustrated in black-and-white throughout by the author.

Galveston, Texas, may be the booming city of the brand-new twentieth century, filled with opportunities for all, but to Seth it is the end of a dream. He longs to be a carpenter like his father, yet Papa has moved the family to Galveston so that Seth can become a doctor. Still, the last few weeks of summer might not be so bad. Things seem to be looking up - until a storm warning is raised one sweltering afternoon.

Jesse is having the worst year. First a race of homicidal (but very polite) aliens invaded Earth, killing pretty much everyone and enslaving the few people left behind, including Jesse; his best friend, Michael; his sort-of girlfriend, Lauren; and the girl of his dreams, Catlin. Then he and the other survivors discovered that they had some sort of latent telepathic abilities that made them dangerous to the aliens, so their only hope for survival was to run away. But not everyone made it out alive.

The Johnson family's excitement for their long-awaited vacation to Alaska was palpable. Jack and Sarah sat at the kitchen table, pouring over maps and brochures, discussing their plans for exploring the remote beauty of the Arctic landscape. They marveled at the opportunity this trip would provide for their children, Emma and Ethan, to learn and grow through firsthand experiences.

Cort's father is a local expert on hunting and swamp lore in lower Alabama who has been teaching his son everything he knows. But when a deadly Category 3 storm makes landfall, Cort must unexpectedly put all his skills - and bravery - to the test. One catastrophe seems to lead to another, leaving Cort and two neighbor girls to face the storm as best they can. Amid miles of storm-thrashed wetlands filled with dangerous, desperate wild animals, it's up to Cort to win - or lose - the fight for their lives.

Best friends Ray and Jose are not your typical teenagers. They've escaped foster care and juvenile detention centers to live on their own together in an abandoned stationhouse in New York City's Ten Mile River Park. Ray and Jose are as close as brothers. But then they meet Trini, the smart, beautiful, and confident girl from their local barber shop, and they both fall for her immediately. As tension creeps into their relationship, Ray must struggle to find an identity separate from Jose and try to envision a future for himself beyond Jose and Ten Mile River.

She was little and quick and pretty. Her mother nicknamed her Colibri, Spanish for "Hummingbird". At age four she was kidnapped, torn from her parents on a crowded bus in Guatemala City. Since then she's traveled with "Uncle", the ex-soldier and wandering beggar who has renamed her Rosa. Uncle has always told Rosa that he searched for her parents but had no success. There's almost no chance Rosa will ever find them, but Rosa still remembers and longs for them.

A boy and his elephant escape into the jungle when the Viet Cong attack his village immediately after the Vietnam war.

Stanley Potts is just an ordinary boy, but when all the jobs in Fish Quay disappear his Uncle Ernie develops an extraordinary fascination with canning fish. Suddenly their home is filled with the sound of changing machinery and the stench of mackerel, and Uncle Ernie's obsession reaches such heights that he would even can Stan's beloved goldfish! Stan, however, has his own destiny, which leads him - via a hook-a-duck stall - to Pancho Pirelli, the blue-caped madman who swims with piranhas.

Gafferty Sprout is a Smidgen. A Smidgen looks like a human, sounds like a human, and loves chips with curry sauce like a human, if humans were three inches tall. Generations ago there were lots of them, living in a maze of tunnels beneath the human village of Dundoodle. But then something happened and they just disappeared.

For Kirsten McKenna, the world is crumbling. Her parents are barely speaking to each other, and her best friend has come under the spell of the school's queen bee, Brianna. Only Kirsten's younger science-geek sister is on her side. Meanwhile, for Walker Jones, the goal is to survive at the new white private school his mom has sent him to because she thinks he's going to screw up like his cousin.

Sloane Weber is devastated when her older sister dies by suicide. Talley was a bright light who made everyone want to step closer. Why had she made that unthinkable choice? The only clue Talley left behind for Sloane is a puzzle - a list of random places and names, along with the phone number of a boy named Adam, who lives in California and claims he didn’t know Talley. Sloane heads west, enlists Adam’s help, and together they search for answers. But while Sloane is drawn to Adam, she can’t shake the feeling that he’s hiding something.