Social Pressure

Despite Jessica's shocking appearance and the fear she evokes in him and most of the seventh-grade class, Tom slowly develops a tentative friendship with Jessica that changes his life. Firegirl is a powerful story that will show listeners that even the smallest of gestures can have a profound impact on someone's life.

Remember when it wasn't cool to be a geek? That's so yesterday! Retro Geeks chronicles the (mis)adventures of two self-proclaimed geek girls, Molly and Ally, as they attempt to land super-hot dates for their senior prom. The '80s-obsessed BFFs attempt a variety of date-finding schemes, including spying on the popular girls for the 411 on fitting in, in their quest for top-tier prom dates.

Paul is new to Gate, a school whose rich students make life miserable for anyone not like them. And Paul is definitely not like them. Then, one day something incredible happens. Charlie Good, a star student and athlete, invites Paul to join his elite inner circle. All Charlie wants is a few things in return - small things that Paul does willingly. And then, one day, Charlie wants something big - really big. Now Paul has to decide how far he'll go to be one of the gang.

Small town 17-year-old Vivienne Taylor is a talented equestrian with Olympic dreams and a little something extra going on - she is also an "equine empath", someone who has the ability to read horses’ minds and moods. When she receives a full scholarship to attend Fairmont Riding Academy, a prep school with a famous riding program, she struggles with homesickness, hazing by the school’s snooty drama queen, intense competition in the sport of three-day-eventing, and the not-altogether-unwelcome interest of a hot guy. On top of all of that the horse given to Vivienne via the scholarship is an animal that she cannot "read" or understand.

In Under Pressure, Carl Honoré shows how the pressure to give our children the best of everything and make them the best at everything is backfiring on kids, parents and society as a whole. He maps out how we can rescue childhood from the excesses of the 21st century.

Josh feels like he's starting to make it big! Jaden, the school reporter, says he's going to take the baseball team to number one. Then his dad pulls him off the field and signs him up with Coach Rocky Valentine's youth championship team, the Titans. He says Josh has what it takes to be a baseball great and the Titans will help him get there. Now Josh is gulping down Rocky's "Super Stax" milkshakes to build muscle and trying to fit in with his new teammates.

When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as listeners start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach.

Something very strange starts happening in Nightshade the summer that the eldest Giordano sister, Rose, gets a job working at Dr. Franken's research laboratory. People are starting to see double. Doppelgngers of Nightshade residents are popping up all over town. Daisy, Rose, and Poppy think it's a coincidence, until the rumors start that their father, who disappeared several years ago, has been spotted in town.

After Massie Block gets kicked off her high horse and out of her ultra exclusive Westchester riding camp, her parents force her to do the unthinkable-find a summer job. Not one for dog-walking or brat-sitting, Massie comes up with the ah-bvious solution: She'll be a sales rep for the cosmetics brand Be Pretty. Massie fully hearts her new role as fairy gawdmother of makeup-until she discovers transforming LBRs into glam-girls takes more than a swish of her royal purple mascara wand.

Miriam's doctor didn't believe she had breast cancer. She did. Sophie navigates being the only Black scientist in her lab while studying the very disease, HIV, that she hides from her coworkers. For Victoria, coming out as a transgender woman was less difficult than coming out as bipolar. Michele Lent Hirsch knew she couldn't be the only woman who's faced serious health issues at a young age, as well as the resulting effects on her career, her relationships, and her sense of self. What she found was a surprisingly large population with important stories to tell.

Eleven-year-old Imogene (Impy) has grown up with two parents working at the Renaissance Faire, and she's eager to begin her own training as a squire. First, though, she'll need to prove her bravery. Luckily, Impy has just the quest in mind - she'll go to public school after a life of being homeschooled! But it's not easy to act like a noble knight-in-training in middle school. When her new friends encourage her to do something mean, Impy goes along with it. Before long, Impy doesn't even recognize herself. Is she the dragon in her own story or the heroic knight?

Pippa Park picks up right where she left off . . . trying to balance basketball, school, friends, working at the struggling family laundromat, and fitting in. Eliot, her math tutor—and the cutest boy at school—is finally paying attention to her. And Marvel—her childhood friend—is making her required volunteering much more interesting. But things with the Royals, her new friends and teammates who rule the school, still feel a bit rocky. Especially because Caroline, a head Royal, would like nothing more than to see Pippa fail.

In journal entries alternating between two timelines―before and after a tragic accident―Jennie Englund’s heartfelt coming-of-age story follows the year that changes one girl’s life forever. Through everything, Taylor has her notebook, a diary of the year that one fatal accident tears her life apart. In entries alternating between the first and second semester of her eighth-grade year, she navigates joy and grief, gain and loss, hope and depression.

It's Halloween: Candy-snatching time. For the past few years, twelve-year-old Jonas and his friends have competed to see how much candy they can snatch from unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. No one’s supposed to get hurt. So Jonas is taken by surprise when one of his smaller targets fights back against his candy-snatching attempt. He’s even more surprised when he starts to receive anonymous notes from someone who seems to know what happened that night.

Sadie thought joining the Pack would be the wildest thing to happen to her this year, but the school year is becoming even harder. On top of classes, Sadie has to navigate her growing feelings for her crush, taming her powers during cheer practice and troublemaking hyenas trying to take her crown. Then there is the massive secret she is keeping from her BFF Lindsey—that could destroy their friendship and The Pack as they know it. Will the shocking truth come out to bite them?

Maple Mehta-Cohen has been keeping a secret: she can’t read all that well. She has an impressive vocabulary and loves dictating stories into her recorder - especially the adventures of a daring sleuth who’s half Indian and half Jewish like Maple herself - but words on the page just don’t seem to make sense to her. Despite all Maple’s clever tricks to hide her troubles with reading, her teacher is on to her, and now Maple has to repeat fifth grade. Maple is devastated - what will her friends think? Will they forget about her?

Popular girl Bliss Merino is ready to have the perfect prom. But when she catches her boyfriend making out with her best friend in the back of the limo, she has only one thought: revenge.... Bad girl Jolene Nelson is the last person anyone expected to see at prom. Yet here she is, dressed in pink ruffles and feeling like a fool for believing that he would actually show up.... Meg Rose Zuckerman is ready to stop being a wallflower and start experiencing life firsthand. But when her date stands her up, she finds herself on the outside yet again....

Beyond soccer leagues, music camps, and drama lessons, today's youth are in an education arms race that begins in elementary school. In Hyper Education, Pawan Dhingra uncovers the growing world of high-achievement education and the after-school learning centers, spelling bees, and math competitions that it has spawned.

Pinkalicious loves the color pink, but all the girls at school like black. They tease her, saying that pink stinks and pink is for babies. But Pinkalicious doesn't think so - that is, until her friends stop playing with her. Now Pinkalicious has a case of the blues. But could she ever turn her back on her favorite color?

Things have changed in the Tibbs house, and Mya isn’t happy about it. She’s stuck in the middle between an exceptionally cute baby sister and an exceptionally smart older brother. And her tired parents seem to only notice the "exceptional" kids in the house. So when a class project lassoes Mya into starting her own school newspaper, she’s sure this will earn her the star status she wants from her parents. But the same project also gives Mya’s archenemy, Naomi Jackson, a chance to prove she is a better friend to the twins, Skye and Starr, than Mya is.