Social Skills For Adults

An anxiety disorder disrupts 14-year-old Audrey’s daily life. She has been making slow but steady progress with Dr. Sarah, but when Audrey meets Linus, her brother’s gaming teammate, she is energized. She connects with him. Audrey can talk through her fears with Linus in a way she’s never been able to do with anyone before. As their friendship deepens and her recovery gains momentum, a sweet romantic connection develops, one that helps not just Audrey but also her entire family.

In most fairy tales, princesses are beautiful, dragons are terrifying, and stories are harmless. This isn't most fairy tales. Princess Violet is plain, reckless, and quite possibly too clever for her own good. Particularly when it comes to telling stories. One day she and her best friend, Demetrius, stumble upon a hidden room and find a peculiar book. A forbidden book. It tells a story of an evil being - called the Nybbas - imprisoned in their world. The story cannot be true - not really. But then the whispers start....

Everyone knows Alice slept with two guys at one party. When Healy High star quarterback Brandon Fitzsimmons dies in a car crash, it was because he was sexting with Alice. Ask anybody. Rumor has it Alice Franklin is a slut. It's written all over the "slut stall" in the girls' bathroom: "Alice had sex in exchange for math test answers" and "Alice got an abortion last semester." After Brandon dies, the rumors start to spiral out of control.

It’s Christmas Eve in Harlem, but 12-year-old Lolly Rachpaul and his mom aren’t celebrating. They’re still reeling from his older brother’s death in a gang-related shooting just a few months earlier. Then Lolly’s mother’s girlfriend brings him a gift that will change everything: two enormous bags filled with Legos. Lolly’s always loved Legos, and he prides himself on following the kit instructions exactly. Now, faced with a pile of building blocks and no instructions, Lolly must find his own way forward.

James and Alex have barely anything in common anymore - least of all their experiences in high school, where James is a popular senior and Alex is suddenly an outcast. But at home, there is Henry, the precocious 10-year-old across the street, who eagerly befriends them both. And when Alex takes up running, there is James’s friend Nathen, who unites the brothers in moving and unexpected ways.

We are lonelier than ever. The average American hasn't made a new friend in the last five years. Research has shown that people with close friends are happier, healthier, and live longer than people who lack strong social bonds. But why - when we are seemingly more connected than ever before - can it feel so difficult to keep those bonds alive and well? Why do we spend only four percent of our time with friends? In this warm, inspiring guide, Adam "Smiley" Poswolsky proposes a new solution for the mounting pressures of modern life: Focus on your friendships.

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and Rafe Khatchadorian is just trying to live in it. Life in middle school is finally starting to seem bearable - until Rafe spots his grandmother standing on the free-meal line at the local soup kitchen. In order to help bring in more money, Rafe concocts a brilliant plan - a dog-walking business that soon turns into a huge moneymaking neighborhood empire. He'll even have extra cash to buy his own WormHole Deluxe Multi-Platform GameBox!

"It finally happened: we went to college. We started over. No one knows who we've coveted, what we scored on the SATs,where our parents live, or when we became debaucherous. We've learned new things, made new friends, and maybe even met the loves of our lives. We've changed. Or at least, some of us have. But old habits are hard to break-especially when faced with your former besties and former flames."

It's been 19 days since Isis Blake forgot about him. The boy she can't quite remember. She's stuck in the hospital with a turban-size bandage on her head, more Jell-O than a human being should ever face, and a tiny bit of localized amnesia. Her only goal? To get out of this place before she becomes a complete nut job herself. But as Isis' memories start to return, she realizes there's something important there at the edges of her mind. Something that may mean the difference between life and death.

Fourteen-year-old Terry has parents who never paid him much attention. So when they both disappear after one of their all-too-frequent arguments, Terry isn’t exactly eager for them to come home. On his own, he occupies himself by assembling a car kit that’s been collecting dust in the garage for years. When the car is finished, Terry is pleased to discover it actually runs. Though he doesn’t know much about driving, he gets behind the wheel and heads west, with the notion of visiting an uncle in Oregon. But Terry’s plan takes a detour when he meets Shakespeare-quoting wanderer Waylon Jackson....

Mafatu's name means "Stout Heart," but his people call him a coward. Ever since the sea took his mother's life and spared his own, he has lived with deep fear. By the time he is twelve years old, Mafatu can bear it no longer. He must conquer his fear alone...even if it means certain death. This classic tale of a young boy's hidden strength has been a favorite of readers of all ages since 1940.

Best friends Tamanna and Yasmine cannot believe their good fortune when a school is set up in their Afghan village; however, their dreams for the future are shattered when the Taliban burn down the school and threaten the teacher and students with death. As Tamanna faces an arranged marriage to an older man, and the Taliban target Yasmine’s Western-educated family, the girls realize they must flee.

When a mysterious envelope arrives for Jake Ransom, he and his older sister, Kady, are plunged into a gripping chain of events. An artifact found by their parents - on the expedition from which they never returned - leads Jake and Kady to a strange world inhabited by a peculiar mix of long-lost civilizations, a world that may hold the key to their parents' disappearance.

What begins with a sense that Michael's deceased grandfather might be inhabiting his body soon escalates to "slipping" into to the river of the dead. When Michael slips, he relives moments of his grandfather's life and tries to help him find peace. But each time he ventures into the river it's harder to come out again. Michael will have to depend on an unlikely group of friends to keep him from slipping... permanently. A penetrating twist on the classic ghost story, full of humor and insight about family relationships.

Nick is one of the chosen few at his high school: intelligent, popular, wealthy. People think his life is pretty easy. Except for one thing. Nick has never told anyone about his father's violent temper. In a harrowing journey of self-discovery, Nick learns the truth about himself - and that the phrase "like father, like son" can carry terrifying possibilities.

When you're the smallest kid playing a big man's game, the challenges never stop - especially when your name is Danny Walker. Leading your travel team to the national championship may seem like a dream come true, but for Danny, being at the top just means the competition tries that much harder to knock him off. Now Danny's heading to Right Way basketball camp for the summer, and he knows that with the country's best players in attendance, he's going to need to take his game up a notch if he wants to match up. But it won't be easy.

Eleven-year-old Adam loved to travel throughout 13th-century England with his father, a wandering minstrel, and his dog, Nick. But when Nick is stolen and his father disappears, Adam suddenly finds himself alone.

Blown helplessly off course by a sudden gale, 14-year-old Andy Galloway is washed ashore on Admiralty Island, an immense wilderness known as the "Fortress of the Bears". As he struggles to survive, Andy discovers an unlikely ally in a large dog running with a pack of wolves. The dog leads Andy to food: but also to the strange cave of a mysterious, and almost certainly dangerous, hermit.

She's a tomboy. He's the boy next door. With three older brothers, Charlotte Reynolds, aka Charlie, has always been more comfortable calling the shots on a basketball court than flirting with the opposite sex. So when her police officer dad demands she get a summer job to pay for the latest in a long line of speeding tickets, she's more than a little surprised to find herself working at a chichi boutique and going out with a boy who has never seen her tear it up in a pickup game.

Jazz is a likable teenager. But he's also the son of a (now incarcerated) infamous serial killer, and "Dear Old Dad" has taught Jazz everything he knows. But what Jazz doesn't know is whether or not he is destined to follow in his father's footsteps. He knows he has urges, but he also knows that he has a conscience, that he can follow his own path. And so, in an effort to right his father's wrongs, Jazz decides to help the police (although they don't know it yet) hunt down "The Impressionist" - a new serial killer in town.