Young Realistic Fiction

Will Daughtry is a late bloomer - at least, that's what everyone tells him. On his 16th birthday, Will is just shy of five feet, and he is bitterly resigned to being tiny forever. His only comforts are his best friend and stepbrother, Drew (six-foot-three), and their pal Monica (five-foot-10), the girl Will's been quietly pining for since fifth grade. Everyone else literally overlooks him. But with them, he feels whole. That is, until things take an unexpected turn, and he realizes he's really and truly on his own. That's when he starts to grow. And grow fast. Astonishingly fast.

It’s eighteen-year-old Gita Desai’s first year at Stanford, and the fact that she’s here and not already married off by her traditional Gujarati parents is a miracle. She’s determined to death-grip her good-girl, model student rep all the way to med school. Should be easy: If there’s one thing she’s learned from her family, it’s how to chup-re—to “shut up,” fade into the background. But when childhood memories of her aunt’s desertion and her then-uncle’s best friend resurface, Gita ends up ditching the books night after night in favor of partying and hooking up with strangers.

Gerald Faust knows exactly when he started feeling angry: the day his mother invited a reality television crew into his five-year-old life. Twelve years later, he’s still haunted by his rage-filled youth—which the entire world got to watch from every imaginable angle—and his anger issues have resulted in violent outbursts, zero friends, and clueless adults dumping him in the special education room at school. Nothing is ever going to change. No one cares that he’s tried to learn to control himself, and the girl he likes has no idea who he really is.

Josh's father has gone missing without a trace, and Gran's ready to call social services. If Josh wants to keep himself and and his little brother, Twig, out of the system, he'll have to take to the streets and track down his dad. But when Josh digs too deep, his dad's old accomplices catch up to Josh and plunge him into a dangerous underground where putting his trust in the wrong person could number Josh in a growing pile of bodies.

Everyone knows Emma. Neesha’s her best friend, Aiden’s her basketball star boyfriend, and Evan’s her shadow, following Emma’s every move. Emma stands out, which is hard to do at Redemption Prep, a school where every student has been handpicked to attend its remote campus in the forest of Utah. So when she goes missing in plain sight during mass, everyone notices. And everyone becomes a suspect, especially at a school with so many rules: Don’t skip mass. Don’t break curfew. Don’t go into the woods.

Mike Welles had everything under control. He was a good student, an outfielder on the baseball team, a good son, a loyal friend. But that was before. There's a voice in his head. A friend, trying to help him regain control. More than that: The voice can guide him to become better and stronger than he was before, to rid his life of everything holding him back. To figure out who he is again. If only Mike will listen.

Harper decides to escape her father's divorce by joining a volunteer program to build a house for a family in Tennessee who lost their home in a tornado. Soon she's living in a funky motel and working long days in blazing heat with a group of kids from all over the country. At the site, she works alongside Teddy, and their partnership turns into a summer romance. Learning to trust and love Teddy isn't easy for Harper, but it's the first step toward finding her way back home.

If Susie Jamieson can't take a selfie, she checks her reflection in windows, spoons, car chrome - anything available, really. So when her mother gives her an exquisite full-length mirror that once belonged to her grandmother, Sukie is thrilled. So thrilled that she doesn't listen to her mother's warning: "This mirror will be your best friend and worst enemy."

You don't know who you are. But they do. You wake up on the subway tracks in Los Angeles with no memory of who you are. A backpack is at your feet. Inside is a fresh set of clothes, $1,000 in cash, a phone number, and the instructions "Do not call the police." As you try to figure out your identity, the questions swirl. What is your name? How did you get here? What is the meaning of the tattoo on your wrist of a blackbird and the code FNV02198? There is only one thing you know for sure: People are trying to kill you.

This summer is going to be different. After getting her heart shattered, multiplatinum pop icon Lily Ross is taking herself out of the spotlight and heading to a small island in middle-of-nowhere Maine with her closest friends. She has three months to focus on herself, her music, her new album. Anything but guys.

Alice is on her own for the first time. She has no coach. No friends. Not even clothes that meet the Bastille Invitational’s strict dress code. There’s only the steady drumbeat of guilt inside—pressure to make the tournament’s costly expense “worth it” in the wake of Ba’s unexpected passing. But will a win on court justify the price she paid to get here?

Set in a futuristic New York City after a catastrophic flood called the Wash Out, The Ward is the story of 16-year-old Renata Dane, a daredevil champion racer who will risk everything she has to take care of her sick foster sister, Aven. Ren's sister is suffering from the Blight, an incurable, deadly illness thought to be caused by years of pollution. The disease is ripping through the Ward - formerly known as downtown Manhattan - and since the region is home to the poor and the vagrant, little is being done to help the sick.

In her debut for younger listeners, Aya de León pits a teen spy against the ominous workings of a white nationalist. Fourteen-year-old Andréa Hernández-Baldoquín hails from a family of spies working for the Factory, an international organization dedicated to protecting people of color.

Spring break...heartache? For coder extraordinaire Ashley, high school is all about prepping for college. Her love life? Virtually nonexistent. She's never been on a date. Never been kissed. Never been in love. When her plans veer off course, Ashley realizes she might be missing out on her high school experience. Now that spring break is finally here, Ashley vows to have fun...and, for the first time, follow her heart.

Seventeen-year-old Laurel Graham has a singular, all-consuming ambition in this life: become the most renowned nature photographer and birder in the world. The first step to birding domination is to win the junior nature photographer contest run by prominent Fauna magazine. Her beloved activist and nature-loving grandmother placed when she was a girl. Gran drags Laurel out on a birding expedition where the pair hear a mysterious call that even Gran can’t identify. The pair vow to find out what it is together, but soon after, Gran is involved in a horrible car accident.

When a mysterious man arrives one day on Orange Street, the children who live on the block try to find out who he is and why he’s there. Little do they know that his story - and the story of a very old orange tree - connects to each of their personal worries in ways they never could have imagined. From impressing friends to dealing with an expanding family to understanding a younger sibling’s illness, the characters’ storylines come together around that orange tree. Taking place over the course of a day and a half, Joanne Rocklin’s masterful novel deftly builds a story about family....

When the Brighton Bears suit up on game day, 12-year-old Tommy Gallagher is the toughest kid on the football field. And the bravest. After all, his father Patrick is a Boston firefighter - one of Boston's bravest. Tommy's dad taught him everything he knows about football - and life. Yet even Tommy isn't strong enough for what happens when the sirens ring and, for the first time, they're racing away from the fire. "First man in; last man out" had always been his dad's motto, yet he never said anything about leaving in an ambulance.

Candace used to be the one to take the easy way—but after three seasons working at a crazy amusement park, challenge seems to be her middle name. Then why does the idea of leaving her hometown to attend college on the other side of the country scare her so much? It doesn’t help that her boyfriend, Kurt, and her friend Tamara are both encouraging her to attend the local college and just relax. Or that the more she dreams about her future, the less she sees Kurt being a part of it.

Twelve-year-old Calista Wynn will lose her ability to speak with the dead on her thirteenth birthday. And with only a few weeks left, children have started going missing. When Calista meets the Tall Lady—an angry spirit with a grudge against Calista, her family, and the entire town—she knows she’s found the ghost responsible for the disappearances.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to go. You're just a typical 15-year-old sophomore, an average guy named Kyle Chase. This can't be happening to you. But then, how do you explain all the blood? How do you explain how you got here in the first place? There had to have been signs, had to have been some clues it was coming. Did you miss them, or ignore them? Maybe if you can figure out where it all went wrong, you can still make it right. Or is it already too late? Think fast, Kyle....