Mental Fiction

By day, 17-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game Slay. When a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the Slay world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and Slay is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game.

In a moment of self-absorption, Clara Purdy's life takes a sharp left turn when she crashes into a beat-up car carrying an itinerant family of six. The Gage family had been travelling to a new life in Fort McMurray, but bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer rather than remnants of the accident. Recognizing their need as her responsibility, Clara tries to do the right thing and moves the children, husband, and horrible grandmother into her own house - then has to cope with the consequences of practical goodness.

Tatum Masterson never went through The Program. She never had her memory stripped, never had to fight to remain herself. But when Weston, her longtime boyfriend and love of her life, was taken by handlers, she hoped he'd remember her somehow - that their love would be strong enough. It wasn't.

Clara’s magic has always been wild. But it’s never been dangerous. Then a simple touch causes poisonous flowers to bloom in her father’s chest. The only way to heal him is to cast an extremely difficult spell that requires perfect control. And the only person willing to help is her former best friend, Xavier, who’s grown from a sweet, shy child into someone distant and mysterious.

When a young woman named Talissa answers an advert to carry a child, she cannot begin to imagine the consequences. Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, one they hope no one ever discovers, they set in motion an experiment that is set to upend the human race as we know it.

Andrew Williams’s perfect Delray Beach house has become a pressure cooker. He and his wife, Amy, are struggling to conceive, and it’s fracturing their marriage. When a chance encounter reunites him with Kathryn Moretti, the former love of his life, Kathryn confesses that Andrew is already a father—of a son he didn’t know existed. Though Kathryn’s deception sends him reeling, their secret meetings quickly rekindle old obsessions.

For 18-year-old Sidney Shaw, life pretty much sucks. Her mom's a drunk. Her dad's worse. At school, she's bullied by her ex-best friend. And cutting no longer brings the relief she craves. When Sidney is forced into group counseling, she meets perfect, popular Arianna, the type of girl who grieves over a broken nail. But Arianna has secrets of her own. She might prove herself a friend - if Sidney can let her guard down. Then, there's Lucas, the sweet and funny new guy who sees straight through her tough, snarky facade.

Seven months. That’s how long I was kept captive. My only solace was Mason - one of the other kidnapped teens - and our pact to one day escape together. But when that day finally came, I had to leave him behind. Now that I’m home, my parents and friends want everything to be like it was before I left. But they don’t understand that dining out and shopping trips can’t heal what’s broken inside me. When I ask the detectives assigned to my case about Mason, I get an answer I don’t believe - that there were no traces of any other kidnapped kids.

Hotshot pilot Vesper dreams of becoming a captain, but when she loses her spot to a wisecracking boy from the wrong side of the asteroid belt, she begins to question everything she thought she knew. Trapped on the toxic planet Deva, Cormak will take any chance he can to join the Academy—even if he has to steal someone's identity to get there. Arran was always an outcast on icy Chetire and is looking for a place to belong. He just never thought it would be in the arms of the hottest guy in the galaxy.

It's been a year since Luna's mother, the fashion-model wife of a successful film director, was hit and killed by a taxi in New York's East Village. Luna, her father, and her little brother, Tile, are still struggling with grief. When Luna goes to clean out her mother's old studio, she's stunned to find her mom's cell phone there - charged and holding seven unheard messages. As Luna begins to listen to them, she learns more about her mother's life than she ever wanted to know . . .

It’s been five years since Summer Marks was murdered in the woods. Everyone thinks Mia and Brynn killed their best friend. That driven by their obsession with a novel called The Way into Lovelorn the three girls had imagined themselves into the magical world where their fantasies became twisted, even deadly. The only thing is: They didn’t do it. On the anniversary of Summer’s death, a seemingly insignificant discovery resurrects the mystery and pulls Mia and Brynn back together again, and the girls must confront what really happened in the woods all those years ago.

Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

Seven months ago, on a rainy March night, 16-year- old Willow's parents died in a horrible car accident. Willow was driving. Now her older brother barely speaks to her, her new classmates know her as the killer orphan girl, and Willow is blocking the pain by secretly cutting herself. But when one boy - one sensitive, soulful boy - discovers Willow's secret, it sparks an intense relationship that turns the "safe" world Willow has created for herself upside down.

Kate McAllister is desperate for a change. Something to hit refresh and erase the pain of her mother leaving town without her. So when a group of popular girls folds Kate into their clique, it feels like the answer to all her problems - even if it means ditching Haddie, her childhood bestie. But when Kate’s new friends decide that Haddie is their next target, Kate becomes a passive participant in a cruel incident that could have killed Haddie...had Kate not stepped in, at the last minute, and saved her.

Prince Jones is the guy with all the answers—or so it seems. After all, at seventeen, he has his own segment on Detroit’s popular hip-hop show, Love Radio, where he dishes out advice to the brokenhearted. Prince has always dreamed of becoming a DJ and falling in love. But being the main caretaker for his mother, who has multiple sclerosis, and his little brother means his dreams will stay just that and the only romances in his life are the ones he hears about from his listeners. Until he meets Dani Ford.

Far, far away, in the realm of Enchantia, creatures of legend still exist, magic is the norm and fairy tales are real. Except, fairy tales aren’t based on myths and legends of the past - they are prophecies of the future. Raised in the mortal realm, Everly Morrow has no idea she’s a real-life fairy-tale princess - until she manifests an ability to commune with mirrors. Look. See.... What will one peek hurt? Soon, a horrifying truth is revealed. She is fated to be Snow White’s greatest enemy, the Evil Queen.

Zach is 18. He is bright and articulate. He's also an alcoholic and in rehab instead of high school, but he doesn't remember how he got there. He's not sure he wants to remember. Something bad must have happened. Something really, really bad. Remembering sucks and being alive—well, what's up with that?

Cage York has to choose between a love of the game and a love of the girl in this sultry Sea Breeze novel from New York Times best-selling author Abbi Glines. After waiting for his big break, bad boy Cage York is finally called up to prove his worth in the college baseball arena. But when Cage's girlfriend, Eva, mourns the sudden loss of her father, it's not Cage's comforting arms she runs to, but those of her former fiancé's twin brother, Jeremy. Torn between his baseball dream and the girl of his dreams, Cage must prove he's worthy of Eva's love, or risk losing her to Jeremy forever.

After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in Northern Ohio to the wastelands of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland. So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way.

Just when 17-year-old Matt thinks he can't handle one more piece of terrible news, he meets a girl who’s dealt with a lot more - and who just might be able to clue him in on how to rise up when life keeps knocking him down - in this wry, gritty novel from the author of When I Was the Greatest. Matt wears a black suit every day. No, not because his mom died - although she did, and it sucks.