Teens Growing

Samantha Kingston has it all: the world's most crush-worthy boyfriend, three amazing best friends, and first pick of everything at Thomas Jefferson High—from the best table in the cafeteria to the choicest parking spot. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last. Then she gets a second chance. Seven chances, in fact.

When Kelly Quinn and her two BFFs discover a dusty old cookbook while cleaning out the attic, the girls decide to try a few of the mysterious and supposedly magical recipes that are inside. To their surprise, the Keep 'Em Quiet Cobbler actually silences Kelly's pesky little brother and the Hexberry Tart puts a curse on mean girl Charlotte. Is it possible that the recipes really are magic? Who wrote them and where did they come from? And most importantly of all, when boys get involved, what kind of trouble are the girls stirring up for themselves?

Middle school is all about labels. Izzy is the dreamer. There’s nothing Izzy loves more than acting in skits and making up funny stories. The downside? She can never quite focus enough to get her schoolwork done. Bri is the brain. But she wants people to see there’s more to her than just a report card full of "A"s. At the same time, she wishes her mom would accept her the way she is and stop bugging her to “break out of her shell” and join drama club. The girls’ lives converge in unexpected ways....

Up until senior year, Greg has maintained total social invisibility. He only has one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time - when not playing video games and avoiding Earl's terrifying brothers - making movies, their own versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics. Greg would be the first one to tell you his movies are f*@$ing terrible, but he and Earl don't make them for other people. Until Rachel.

London, April 1812. Eighteen-year-old Lady Helen Wrexhall is on the eve of her debut presentation to the Queen. Her life should be about gowns and dancing, and securing a suitable marriage. Instead, when one of her family's housemaids goes missing, Lady Helen is drawn to the shadows of Regency London. There, she finds William, the Earl of Carlston. He has noticed the disappearance, too, and is one of the few who can stop the perpetrators: a cabal of powerful demons that has infiltrated every level of society.

September is a girl who longs for adventure. When she is invited to Fairyland by a Green Wind and a Leopard, well, of course she accepts. (Mightn’t you?) But Fairyland is in turmoil, and it will take one 12-year-old girl, a book-loving dragon, and a strange and almost human boy named Saturday to vanquish an evil Marquess and restore order.

Connaissez-vous l'omelette au sucre ? Rien de moins compliqué à préparer. Prenez une famille de cinq garçons. Ajoutez-y un nouveau bébé à naître, une tortue, un cochon d'Inde et une poignée de souris blanches. Mélangez bien le tout, sans oublier une mère très organisée, un père champion du bricolage et quelques copains d'école à l'imagination débordante. Saupoudrez d'une pincée de malice et d'émotion, et servez aussitôt. C'est prêt... À consommer sans modération !

The Lockwood brothers are supposed to be able to survive anything. Their dad, a hardcore believer in self-reliance, has stockpiled enough food and water at their isolated Nevada home to last for months. But when they are robbed of all their supplies during a massive blackout while their dad is out of town, John and Stew must walk 96 miles in the stark desert sun to get help. Along the way, they’re forced to question their dad’s insistence on self-reliance and ask just what it is that we owe to our neighbors, our kin, and to ourselves.

With Father in Washington and Cuffy away visiting a sick cousin, almost anything might happen to the Melendys left behind at the Four-Story Mistake. In the Melendy family, adventures are inevitable: Mr. Titus and the catfish; the villainy of the DeLacey brothers; Rush's composition of Opus Three; Mona's first rhubarb pie and all the canning; Randy's arrowhead; the auction and fair for the Red Cross.

That was where she needed to be, in a field of purple flowers, where no one could bother her. She would sit there until the confusion left her head and the stink of the camp left her nostrils. Shauzia has a dream. She dreams of getting away from the refugee camp in Pakistan and travelling to France. There she knows she would find a better life, away from the war in her home country of Afghanistan...But escape is not so easy. Once she leaves the camp, she has no money, no food - and only her dog Jasper for company. But Shauzia is determined to find a new future for herself...

For seventh-grader Mila, it starts with some boys giving her an unwanted hug on the school blacktop. A few days later, at recess, one of the boys (and fellow trumpet player), Callum, tells Mila it's his birthday, and asks her for a "birthday hug." He's just being friendly, isn't he? And how can she say no? But Callum's hug lasts a few seconds too long, and feels...weird. According to her friend, Zara, Mila is being immature and overreacting. Doesn't she know what flirting looks like? But the boys don't leave Mila alone.

With Tara still in the clutches of the Elite Elgen Guard Unit the Chasqui and their malevolent leader, the Sovereign Amash, Michael Vey and the Electroclan have no choice but to continue the fierce battle that has been waging since their arrival in Peru. But saving one of their own means battling a onetime teammate, as Jack has turned traitor and joined forces with Amash and his men. At the same time, the clan must work with the Alpha Team to act before the Chasqui can put their plan to destroy the city of Arequipa into motion.

Matt Thorsen knows every Norse myth, saga, and god as if it was family history - because it is family history. Most people in the modern-day town of Blackwell, South Dakota, in fact, are direct descendants of either Thor or Loki, including Matt's classmates Fen and Laurie. When the rune readers reveal that the monsters of Ragnarok are coming and kids will stand in for the gods in the final battle, Matt can hardly believe it. Matt and his friends must race to put together an unstoppable team to prevent the end of the world.

Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris - until she meets Etienne St. Clair: Perfect, Parisian (and English and American, which makes for a swoon-worthy accent), and utterly irresistible. The only problem is that he's taken, and Anna might be, too, if anything comes of her almost-relationship back home.

For two years, Cyrus and Antigone Smith have run a sagging roadside motel with their older brother, Daniel. Nothing ever seems to happen. Then a strange old man with bone tattoos arrives, demanding a specific room. Less than 24 hours later, the old man is dead. The motel has burned, and Daniel is missing. And Cyrus and Antigone are kneeling in a crowded hall, swearing an oath to an order of explorers who have long served as caretakers of the world's secrets, keepers of powerful relics from lost civilizations, and jailers to unkillable criminals.

In rural North Carolina, in 1951, despite parental reassurances, a typhoid shot hurt. It hurt even more when the children saw who would be administering the shot: Miss Winnie, a large, dictatorial nurse who had been "especially built by the nursing school so she would never blow away in a hard wind".

When Adam Blake lands the best elective ever in his senior year, serving as an aide to the school psychologist, he thinks he's got it made. Sure, it means a lot of sitting around, which isn't easy for a guy with ADHD, but he can't complain, since he gets to spend the period texting all his friends. Then the doctor asks him to track down the troubled freshman who keeps dodging her, and Adam discovers that the boy is Julian - the foster brother he hasn't seen in five years.

Leigh Botts has been author Boyd Henshaw's number one fan ever since he was in second grade. Now in sixth grade, Leigh lives with his mother and is the new kid at school. He's lonely, troubled by the absence of his father, a cross-country trucker, and angry because a mysterious thief steals from his lunchbag. Then Leigh's teacher assigns a letter-writing project. Naturally Leigh chooses to write to Mr. Henshaw, whose surprising answer changes Leigh's life.

Since Stacey's parents got divorced, it hasn't been easy. Stacey hates being put between them, and she misses her dad sometimes even though she gets to see him often. And now both of her parents are depending on Stacey. They each need her badly. And she can't be in Stoneybrook and in New York at the same time. How will Stacey choose between her mom and her dad...again?

There's a murderer on the loose - but that doesn't stop the girls of St. Etheldreda's from attempting to hide the death of their headmistress in this rollicking farce. The students of St. Etheldreda's School for Girls face a bothersome dilemma. Their irascible headmistress, Mrs. Plackett, and her surly brother, Mr. Godding, have been most inconveniently poisoned at Sunday dinner.