Friendship Fiction

Tom Tin, an innocent convict, is aboard a ship bound for Australia where he will serve a lengthy sentence in prison. To avoid this horrible fate, Tom jumps ship to nearby islands, but finds that the refuge he hoped for may just be another struggle for his freedom - and his life. Acclaimed author Iain Lawrence delivers another exotic adventure tale for young readers.

Nikki Maxwell develops a sudden interest in student journalism that may or may not (okay, definitely does) have to do with the fact that mean girl Mackenzie has started writing a gossip column. And there just might be some info involving Nikki’s crush, Brandon, that Nikki doesn’t want Mackenzie reporting to the world. So Nikki joins the school newspaper staff - and ends up as an advice columnist! It’s fun at first, answering other kids’ letters. But when Miss Know-It-All’s inbox is overflowing, Nikki feels in need of some help herself.

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night - dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q...until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q.

Bitterblue is now queen of Monsea. But the influence of her father, a violent psychopath with mind-altering abilities, lives on. Her advisors, who have run things since Leck died, believe in a forward-thinking plan: Pardon all who committed terrible acts under Leck's reign, and forget anything bad ever happened. But when Bitterblue begins sneaking outside the castle - disguised and alone - to walk the streets of her own city, she starts realizing that the kingdom has been under the 35-year spell of a madman.

Love Bukowski is a new sophomore at Hadley Hall, the posh prep school where her father is now principal. Raised by her single dad (with more than a little help from her funky aunt Mable), almost-sixteen-year-old Love is strong willed, with a wry sense of humor - but will she fit into the world of Hadley Hall? In the made-for-TV version of her life, she’s got cool friends and hot guys galore. But being a "fac brat" makes new friends hard to come by, and the guys - well, that remains to be seen. Now Love's got to step it up if she's going to overcome her less-than-glamorous reality and get that walk-on role in her own fantasies.

From marriage, infidelity, and the mayhem of motherhood to scandal, tragedy, and illness - three women seek peace and comfort in Nantucket as they cope with life's challenges. Three women - burdened with small children, unwieldy straw hats, and some obvious emotional issues - tumble onto the Nantucket airport tarmac one hot June day. Vicki is trying to sort through the news that she has a serious illness. Her sister, Brenda, has just left her job after being caught in an affair with a student. And their friend Melanie, after seven failed in vitro attempts, is pregnant at last.

Karen's best friend, Hannie, just got a new kitten. Now all her friends have cats. And Karen has a great idea. She can start a club like her big sister, Kristy. It will be a Kittycat Club! What will the club do? Karen can't babysit like Kristy...but she can cat-sit! Will anyone want Karen as a cat-sitter? They'd better - running a club is hard work!

Writer Carrie Colts hopes a move to Montauk will be a rejuvenating change of pace for her family. The last thing she expects to see is her former college roommate on her doorstep. Newly widowed, and with a daughter of her own, Maya would love to reconnect. As a gesture to an old friend in mourning, Carrie extends an invitation to stay. Just for a few days. After all, there are reasons that Carrie and Maya are estranged.

I’d always think of it as the summer that I loved a girl... Seventeen-year-old Lang Penner and his mother are spending the summer in the caretaker’s cottage at Roundelay, the sprawling East Hampton estate of legendary rocker Ben Nevada. Lang passes the time walking on the beach and hoping for a glimpse of his idol. When they finally meet, Nevada is very different from the man Lang imagined. He finds himself confiding in the retired star about his homosexuality.

Buying and moving into the run-down Jewel Motor Inn in upstate New York wasn't 11-year-old Miriam Brockman's dream, but at least its an adventure. Miriam befriends Kate, whose grandmother owns the diner next door, and finds comfort in the company of Maria, the motel's housekeeper, and her Uncle Mordy, who comes to help out for the summer. She spends her free time helping Kate's grandmother make her famous grape pies and begins to face her fears by taking swimming lessons in the motels pool.

Monday Rent Boy begins in Somerset, England, in the mid-1980s, with the winning and heart-warming story of two 13-year-old friends and fellow altar boys, Arthur Barnes and Ernie Castlefrank. Endearing outcasts, they try not to speak of the secret tie that binds them: both boys are routinely preyed on by The Zipper, their nickname for Father Ziperto, the local Catholic priest. Still, they find adventure and release in the mischief they get up to together, as each also tries to survive in other ways.

Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren. Formed by human desires and fed by their worship, there are countless gods in the world—but after a great war, the new king outlawed them and now pays “godkillers” to destroy any who try to rise from the shadows. As a child, Kissen saw her family murdered by a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing them and enjoys it. But all this changes when Kissen is tasked with helping a young noble girl with a god problem. The child’s soul is bonded to a tiny god of white lies, and Kissen can’t kill it without ending the girl’s life too.

It’s winter break at St. Vladimir’s, but Rose is feeling anything but festive. A massive Strigoi attack has put the school on high alert, and now the Academy’s crawling with Guardians - including Rose’s hard-hitting mother, Janine Hathaway. And if hand-to- hand combat with her mom wasn’t bad enough, Rose’s tutor Dimitri has his eye on someone else, her friend Mason’s got a huge crush on her, and Rose keeps getting stuck in Lissa’s head while she’s making out with her boyfriend, Christian.

It’s been a minute—or five years—since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation from Berkeley when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living.

One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Now her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice. In short, waiting for a miracle to happen. For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises. The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to offer the world. In a heartbeat, though, something happens that changes everything for him.

Speed and self-confidence, that’s Astrid’s motto. Nicknamed “the little thunderbolt,” she loves to spend her days racing down the hillside on her sled, singing loudly as she goes, and visiting Gunnvald, her grumpy, septuagenarian best friend and godfather, who makes hot chocolate from real chocolate bars. She just wishes there were other children to share her hair-raising adventures with. But Astrid’s world is about to be turned upside down by two startling arrivals to the village of Glimmerdal: first a new family, then a mysterious, towering woman who everyone seems to know.

Best-selling author Rick Riordan presents Kwame Mbalia's epic fantasy, a middle grade American Gods set in a richly-imagined world populated with African American folk heroes and West African gods. Tristan is dreading the month he's going to spend on his grandparents' farm in Alabama, where he's being sent to heal from a tragedy. But on his first night there, he accidentally ripps open a chasm into the MidPass, a volatile place with a burning sea, haunted bone ships, and iron monsters that are hunting the inhabitants of this world.

Following the life-altering events at the conclusion of The Unwanteds, the stark world of Quill and the magical haven of ArtimÉ are now home to whoever wants to live there, whether they are Wanteds, Unwanteds, or Necessaries. In ArtimÉ, Alex Stowe and his friends continue to hone their artistic magical spells while welcoming newcomers, wondering how long this peace between Quill and ArtimÉ will last. Alex is stunned when Mr. Today comes to him with a very special request - one Alex questions his readiness for, until circumstances offer a dramatic answer.

In a rural Wilshire town lies the Devil’s Corridor—a haunted road which has witnessed eerie happenings, from unexplained deaths to the sounds of a child crying in the night.

While Isa is off at sleepaway orchestra camp, Jessie, Oliver, Hyacinth, and Laney are stuck at home in the brownstone with nothing to do but get on one another's nerves. But when catastrophe strikes their beloved upstairs neighbor, their sleepy summer transforms in an instant as the Vanderbeeker children band together to do what they do best: make a plan. They will create the most magical healing garden in all of Harlem.