Runaway Teens

In an alternate reality a lot like our world, every person's physical size is directly proportional to their wealth. The poorest of the poor are the size of rats, and billionaires are the size of skyscrapers. Warner and his sister Prayer are destitute - and tiny. Their size is not just demeaning, but dangerous: day and night they face mortal dangers that bigger, richer people don't ever have to think about, from being mauled by cats to their house getting stepped on. There are no cars or phones built small enough for them, or schools or hospitals, for that matter - there's no point, when no one that little has any purchasing power....

Introverted Bicycle has lived most of her life at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, D.C. When her guardian, Sister Wanda, announces that Bicycle is going to attend a camp where she will learn to make friends, Bicycle says no way and sets off on her bike for San Francisco to meet her idol, a famous cyclist, certain he will be her first true friend. Who knew that a ghost would haunt her handlebars and that she would have to contend with bike-hating dogs, a bike-loving horse, bike-crushing pigs, and a mysterious lady dressed in black.

Sixteen-year-old Chastity and her mother have been on the run since Chass was a baby, assuming new identities in every town. She doesn't know why they are running, who her father is, or even her real name. But then on the night of Chass' 16th birthday, her mother disappears. The cops find her abandoned car, blood matching her DNA, and a purse containing six ID cards. Chass can't believe her mother is dead; she knows that her mom just had to go on the run again, this time to protect Chass.

In an old, abandoned mill, a girl and her ma take shelter from their memories of life on the streets, and watch the busy world go by. The girl calls it the Castle because it's the biggest place they've ever stayed, a home of her own like no other. The windows are boarded up and the floorboards are falling in, but for her neither of those things matter. Then developers show up, and it's clear that their lives are about to change forever.

'Your Robin Hood thing. Let's do it for the Novel Project,' says Angie. 'Tell everyone?' I shrieked. 'Are you crazy?' Kelly thinks it's all over - her crazy effort to feed the poor. At first it seemed so right, but it became an obsession. And it made her do something so terrible her parents never spoke about it afterwards. Now her best friend is about to start the nightmare all over again...

Tired of being poor, Steven’s father, Corey, is certain that preaching the Word of the Lord is the way to fame and fortune. So father and son take off in their dilapidated truck, with a stolen Bible and a leaky army tent, for a whirlwind tour of small Texas towns. At first, few people come to see the new tent preacher - but each day Corey’s confidence and charisma grow. Soon their fortune is growing, too, especially when they start performing bogus healings. For the first time, they can afford luxuries like expensive hotel rooms, meals in fancy restaurants, even a slick new bike for Steven.

Everyone knows that Chelsea Knot can't keep a secret.... Until now. Because the last secret she shared turned her into a social outcast - and nearly got someone killed. Now Chelsea has taken a vow of silence - to learn to keep her mouth shut, and to stop hurting anyone else. And if she thinks keeping secrets is hard, not speaking up when she's ignored, ridiculed and even attacked is worse. But there's strength in silence, and in the new friends who are, shockingly, coming her way - people she never noticed before; a boy she might even fall for. If only her new friends can forgive what she's done.

Against the backdrop of the high-stakes and intensely competitive equestrian sport of show jumping, Finny, a fifteen-year-old girl in California, adopts an emaciated, untrained horse without her parents' knowledge. Soon after adopting Sky, Finny meets Joe, a sixteen-year-old, who has run away from his cruel uncle in Montana.

Clayton feels most alive when he's with his grandfather, Cool Papa Byrd, and the band of Bluesmen - he can't wait to join them, just as soon as he has a blues song of his own. But then the unthinkable happens. Cool Papa Byrd dies, and Clayton's mother forbids Clayton from playing the blues. And Clayton knows that's no way to live. Armed with his grandfather's brown porkpie hat and his harmonica, he runs away from home in search of the Bluesmen, hoping he can join them on the road.

In a dying country town lives Satchel O'Rye, a young man fighting the future; Chelsea Piper, a young woman fighting the past; and a long-lost creature that can teach them both the art of survival. Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf is a shimmering, ultimately joyful novel, a story of journeying towards courage and freedom, of finding the will to live a life beyond expectation.

Teenager Moss Trawnleyis in desperate need of work, and so he decides to headout west as a member of Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps to help protect Montana's wildlife from devastating erosion and wildfires. Despite the grueling work, Moss has time to play baseball, make lifelong friends, and rediscover what he almost lost in the Great Depression: himself. Bringing an important era of U.S. history to life, this rivetingcoming-of-age story will appeal to any teen who has dreamed of adventure and survival in the great outdoors.

What if the last hope to save your family is the person who broke it up to begin with? Michelle and her little siblings Cass and Denny are African-American and living on the poverty line in urban Baltimore, struggling to keep it together with their mom in jail and only Michelle’s part-time job at the Taco Bell to sustain them. Leah and her stepbrother Tim are White and middle class from suburban Maryland, with few worries beyond winning lacrosse games and getting college applications in on time.

At fifteen, Iris is a hobo of sorts - no home, no family, no plan. Her mother died when she was six, and her selfish father hires her out as a companion to a country doctor's elderly mother. Iris, stuck in the middle of 1920s rural Missouri, discovers that "hobo" is short for "homeward bound," and cultivates an eccentric cast of folks into family, creating the home she never had. But when she learns that a neighboring tenant farmer may have had more than his hands on his pregnant daughter, Iris must intervene to save the girl and her unborn baby.

Fourteen-year-old Stark McClellan (nicknamed Stick because he’s tall and thin) is bullied for being "deformed" - he was born with only one ear. His older brother, Bosten, is always there to defend Stick. But the boys can’t defend each other from their abusive parents. When Stick realizes Bosten is gay, he knows that to survive his father's anger, Bosten must leave home. Stick has to find his brother, or he will never feel whole again. In his search, he will encounter good people, bad people, and people who are simply indifferent to kids from the wrong side of the tracks. But he never loses hope of finding love - and his brother.

Right before winter break, 14-year-old Molly Rosenberg reluctantly volunteers to participate in Santa Monica's annual homeless count, just to get her school's community service requirement out of the way. But when she ends up meeting Red, a spirited homeless girl only a few years older than she is, Molly makes it her mission to reunite her with her family in time for Christmas. This turns out to be extremely difficult - because Red refuses to talk about her past. There are things Molly won't talk about either.

When Iggy Corso gets kicked out of high school, there's no one for him to tell. His mother has gone off, his father is stoned on the couch, and because the phone's been disconnected, even the social worker can't get through. So he leaves a note and goes out to make something of his life, but that's not so easy when you're 16, living in public housing, have no skills, and your only friend is a law-school dropout who's thinking about joining the Hare Krishnas.

Ashley Mitchell thinks she has the perfect life: popularity, a hot boyfriend, and great fashion sense. But Ashley's world falls apart when her mother is accused of embezzling a million dollars, and no one can find her. Before she can say Dolce & Gabbana, Ashley's life goes from perfect to pathetic.

In the forest, armed men from the new settlement ventured to investigate strange lights and found three fires burning, a child at their center, tethered to a stake. The boy appeared to be white, perhaps three or four years old, unable to speak. He watched the men with the darting, fearful eyes of a wild animal and at their approach he crouched, snatched a stick from a fire, and snarled. So begins Dirk Wildlight's life in the tiny Victorian settlement of Tilmore.

Through the long years of the Great Depression, Harper Flute watches with a child's clear eyes her family's struggle to survive in a hot and impoverished landscape. As life on the surface grows harsher, her brother Tin escapes ever deeper into a subterranean world of darkness and troubling secrets, until his memory becomes a myth barely whispered around the countryside.

At the age of 14, Francisco Jiménez, together with his older brother Roberto and his mother, are caught by la migra. Forced to leave their home, the entire family travels all night for 20 hours by bus, arriving at the U.S. and Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona. In the months and years that follow, Francisco, his mother and father, and his seven brothers and sister not only struggle to keep their family together, but also face crushing poverty, long hours of labor, and blatant prejudice.