Friendship Fiction

How did she arrive in this cozy dwelling, stocked carefully with bookshelves and oatmeal accoutrements? And who has been leaving a trail of clues composed in delicate purple handwriting? So begins the adventure of a brave girl’s search for identity and healing in celebrated author Lawrence Hill’s magical debut for young listeners.

I start my story with the day I first saw Jesse Pegler. That was when my whole life first started changing. Sixteen-year-old Opal Ringer is the daughter of Royal Ringer, the Pentecostal leader of a motley flock of down-on-their-luck believers. Jesse Pegler is the son of Brother Pegler. An "evangelist for Jesus", the elder Pegler is a flashy minister who appears regularly on television in his blue robes and gold tassels. Opal and Jesse meet at a faith healing at the Helping Hand Tabernacle church, where Opal's daddy preaches.

Three girls find romance and friendship while working at the most exclusive ski resort in Europe. At Le Trois Alpes, Harley, Melissa, and Lily (a.k.a. Dove) find a place to run away from their pasts. Small-town Colorado girl Harley scored the coveted hostess job - even though she's got attitude to spare. She hopes to start a new life with rich and famous friends - and perhaps a cute guy. Melissa just arrived from Australia and is ready to cook. But things heat up fast for her when her ski-pro ex-boyfriend just happens to make his way to the slopes.

Love Bukowski is finally in London! Her term abroad at the London Academy of Drama and Music promises to be anything but average. After leaving Hadley Hall - as well as her dad, who’s got a new girlfriend, and her beloved Aunt Mable, who is fighting serious health issues - Love faces a new set of challenges across the pond: Voice lessons, keeping up with Arabella and her new friends, and falling for a Brit who is completely off limits.

Springtime blooms, but for Love Bukowski, life at home is chilly. After an incredible semester at the London Academy of Drama and Music, Love Bukowski is back at Hadley Hall. Unfortunately, it feels as though her fabulous British life (and boyfriend) are on hold. Love wants only to be at Aunt Mable’s side during her fight with breast cancer. But Love’s English boyfriend, Asher, suddenly doesn’t seem to want to talk to her, and her ex-boyfriend Jacob has popped back into her life. Love’s dad is struggling with the way she’s changed (i.e., grown up), and Aunt Mable has new information about Love’s mysterious mother.

It’s been a year since Peter and his pet fox, Pax, have seen each other. Once inseparable, they now lead very different lives. Pax and his mate, Bristle, have welcomed a litter of kits they must protect in a dangerous world. Meanwhile Peter - newly orphaned after the war, racked with guilt and loneliness - leaves his adopted home with Vola to join the Water Warriors, a group of people determined to heal the land from the scars of the war.

Come with us to an Enchanted Place, a forest where Winnie-the-Pooh lived with Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, Eeyore, Kanga, and Little Roo. The stories are about Christopher Robin and these good companions having wonderful times getting in and out of trouble. It is all very exciting and, really, quite thrilling no matter how young or old you may be. It is painful to try and imagine what the world would be like without them.

New York Times best-selling author Gordon Korman harkens back to his No More Dead Dogs days in this stand-alone that takes a tone more serious than you've ever heard from him before. A boy who's been a bully and hanging out with the wrong friends gets a new start after a memory-loss-inducing accident. But can someone really change who he is, or will the old him merely come back over time?

What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it. A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams.

Charlotte Collins, nee Lucas, is the respectable wife of Hunsford’s vicar, and sees to her duties by rote: keeping house, caring for their adorable daughter, visiting parishioners, and patiently tolerating the lectures of her awkward husband and his condescending patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Intelligent, pragmatic, and anxious to escape the shame of spinsterhood, Charlotte chose this life, an inevitable one so socially acceptable that its quietness threatens to overwhelm her. Then she makes the acquaintance of Mr. Travis, a local farmer and tenant of Lady Catherine.

Maya Andersson and Benji Ovich, two young people who left in search of a life far from the forest town, come home and joyfully reunite with their closest childhood friends. There is a new sense of optimism and purpose in the town, embodied in the impressive new ice rink that has been built down by the lake. Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move on, but there’s something about this place that prevents it.

Ana Ramos may not have a dog of her own, but she does get to walk her neighbor's adorable pug, Osito. One day, at the park, Osito befriends another pug, Pancake, whose owner just happens to be a cute new boy named Calvin. When Calvin assumes that Osito belongs to Ana, she doesn't correct him. No big deal, right?

In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different. “Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves,” they envision each other as artistic collaborators and embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity. By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier.

Don and Rosie are back in Melbourne after a decade in New York, and they're about to face their most important project. Their son, Hudson, is having trouble at school: His teachers say he isn't fitting in with the other kids. Meanwhile, Rosie is battling Judas at work, and Don is in hot water after the Genetics Lecture Outrage. The life-contentment graph, recently at its highest point, is curving downwards.

Ivan is an easygoing gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly ever thinks about it at all. Instead, Ivan thinks about TV shows he's seen and about his friends Stella, an elderly elephant, and Bob, a stray dog. But mostly Ivan thinks about art and how to capture the taste of a mango or the sound of leaves with color and a well-placed line.

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.

The students at the School for Good and Evil thought they had found their final Ever After when they vanquished the malevolent School Master. Now, on their required fourth-year quests, the students face obstacles both dangerous and unpredictable, and the stakes are high: Success brings eternal adoration, and failure means obscurity forever.

Teens and pre-teens flock to any new offering from New York Times best-selling author Gordon Korman. Told through multiple viewpoints, Ungifted follows Donovan Curtis through his year at a magnet school for gifted and talented kids. Thanks to an administrative foul-up, the decidedly mediocre student Donovan finds himself enrolled in the Academy of Scholastic Distinction. Out of place and out of luck, Donovan joins the robotics team. And while he learns a few lessons from his gifted classmates, he also teaches a few of his own.

Twelve-year-old Marvel is afraid of absolutely everything - amusement-park rides, food poisoning, earthquakes, and that big island of plastic floating through the ocean. She also obsesses about smaller worries like making friends, getting called on by the teacher, and walking home alone. But when Marvel stumbles on a group of older kids teasing a baby goat that has mysteriously shown up on the soccer field, she momentarily forgets to be afraid and rescues the frightened animal.

Old friends Renée and Flo couldn’t be more different. Flo wants to be invisible, Renée wants to be a somebody. But old friendships are magnetic. In their early twenties, and on the cusp of the rest of their lives, Renée and Flo both fly home to Guernsey: to the island where it all began. Back in the place of their youth, yet spreading their wings into adulthood, will they flail and fall? Or will growing up be the making of them?