Difficult Family Relationships

Trisha Corbin always knew how to hide a bruise. With her momma's boyfriends unable to keep their hands off of her, she had no choice. And as long as it meant the guys wouldn't go near her little brother, Krit, it was worth it. But her days of dreaming that Prince Charming would ever come rescue her are far, far in the past. Rock Taylor always had a plan. Through football, he would rise above the life he was born into. A full ride to play for a major college team was within his reach.

Fifteen-year-old Wonder Blake and her family are trying to recover from the death of Wonder's older sister Lucky, who was about to sign a major record deal when she died. When Lucky's talent manager runs into Wonder at the Dairy Queen where she works, her life takes a dramatic turn. Suddenly, despite her own ambivalence, she is the one signing the record deal. Transformed into a teen idol and thrust into the spotlight, Wonder learns what it takes to be a star, and also what it costs.

Dancing with the Paris Opera ballet is 14-year-old Marie van Goethem's greatest joy. And yet she must honor her father's dying request to keep their poverty-stricken family together. She certainly can't count on the help of her drunken mother or selfish older sister. When famous artist Edgar Degas asks Marie to model for a sculpture, she welcomes the income - although she's hesitant to pose nude.

Victoria Zell doesn't fit in, not that she cares what anyone thinks. She and her homeschooled boyfriend, Andrew, are inseparable. All they need is each other. That is, until Zachary Zimmerman joins her homeroom. Within an hour of meeting, he convinces good-girl Vic to cut class. And she can't get enough of that rush. Despite Vic's loyalty to Andrew, she finds her life slowly entwining with Z's. Soon she's lying to everyone she knows in an effort to unravel Z's secrets. Except Z's not the only one with a past.

Bettina Vasilis can hardly believe it when basketball star Brady Cullen asks her out, and she just about faints when her strict father actually approves of him. Over the course of the summer, Bettina falls in love with Brady - and with the new freedom that comes along with him. But when school starts up again, Brady changes. What happened to the sweet boy she fell in love with? Then she meets a smoldering guy in his twenties, and this "Cowboy" is everything Brady is not.

Princess Ko's been bluffing about the mysterious absence of her father, desperately trying to keep the government running on her own. But if she can't get him back in a matter of weeks, the consequence may be a devastating war. So under the guise of a publicity stunt she gathers a group of teens - each with a special ability - from across the kingdom to crack the unsolvable case of the missing royals of Cello.

Jade and her friends, Jenny, Mads, and Summer, rule their glittering LA circle. Untouchable, they have the kind of power other girls only dream of. Every party is theirs, and the world is at their feet. Until the night of Jade's sweet 16, when they crash a St. Andrew’s Prep party. The night the golden boys choose Jade as their next target. They picked the wrong girl. Sworn to vengeance, Jade transfers to St. Andrew’s Prep. She plots to destroy each boy, one by one. She'll take their power, their lives, and their control of the prep school's hierarchy.

The summer of 1976 should have been the best of times for nature-loving Eli Book, but instead it is filled with terrible changes. His sister begins to hate her country. His beautiful but distant mother is caught between his traumatized Vietnam War vet father and his former antiwar protester aunt, who has come to live with them. And the only person with whom he can be himself, his best friend, Edie, begins to turn inward when her parents split up. Watching from the sidelines while his world falls apart, Eli must take his first courageous steps toward truth-telling and adulthood.

This book is for you―not your parents. Step-by-step, using approaches that are relatively easy but bring big results, you’ll be guided in how to improve the important and super-challenging relationship between you and your parents. This doesn’t mean you’re going to become best friends, but you will learn the skills needed to change how you see one another and how you interact. And ultimately, you will gain control over your own life.

When her best friend Meg drinks a bottle of industrial-strength cleaner alone in a motel room, Cody is understandably shocked and devastated. She and Meg shared everything - so how was there no warning? But when Cody travels to Meg's college town to pack up the belongings left behind, she discovers that there's a lot that Meg never told her. About her old roommates, the sort of people Cody never would have met in her dead-end small town in Washington.

As if her parents' divorce and sister's departure for college weren't bad enough, 14-year-old Ricky Bloom has just been diagnosed with a life-changing chronic illness. Her days consist of cursing everyone out, skipping school - which has become a nightmare - daydreaming about her crush, Julio, and trying to keep her parents from realizing just how bad things are. But she can't keep her ruse up forever.

Sarah - Bean to her friends and family - is an aspiring astronomer and champion mathlete. She lives behind her beloved telescope, with her head in the stars and her feet planted firmly on the ground. For as long as she can remember, she's also lived in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, Scarlett.

After Marty Preston worked so hard to earn the dog Shiloh, he had hoped that his troubles with Judd Travers were over. He could not rescue all the dogs that Judd mistreated, but since Shiloh was the one who ran away and came with him, Shiloh was the one he loved. Judd, however, has other problems. Anyone who cheats, swears, lies, and kicks his dogs has troubles inside himself, and when the man starts drinking, Marty realizes that Shiloh is in danger once again.

After a near-fatal family catastrophe and an unexpected romantic upheaval, Adelaide Buchwald finds herself catapulted into a summer of wild possibility, during which she will fall in and out of love a thousand times—while finally confronting the secrets she keeps, her ideas about love, and the weird grandiosity of the human mind.

Every morning, sixteen-year-old Sol wakes up at the break of dawn in her hometown of Tijuana, Mexico and makes the trip across the border to go to school in the United States. Though the commute is exhausting, this is the best way to achieve her dream: becoming the first person in her family to go to college. When her family’s restaurant starts struggling, Sol must find a part-time job in San Diego to help her dad put food on the table and pay the bills. But her complicated school and work schedules on the US side of the border mean moving in with her best friend and leaving her family behind.

When a blue-haired boy (Ryan) meets a pink-haired boy (Avery) at a dance—a queer prom—both feel an inexplicable but powerful connection. Follow them through their first ten dates as they bridge their initial shyness and fall in love—through snow storms, groundings, meeting parents (Avery's) and not (Ryan's), cast parties, heartbreak, and every day and date in between.

Noah is in love with his online best friend. Which is a huge problem, for the following reasons: 1. His crush has no idea. 2. Noah only knows him as his gaming avatar. 3. There’s zero chance they’ll ever meet in real life. So, when Noah sees an opportunity to secretly meet his crush, he takes it. Even though he’ll have to join the cast of a local production of Chicago with his self-obsessed mother. Even though he’ll need to lie to his best (and only) friend. And even though he’ll have to sing and dance in front of actual people. Because love is worth the risk.

First time I saw her was in the mirror on my locker door. I'd kicked my swim gear onto the bottom shelf and was reaching to the top for my calc book when she opened her locker across the hall. She had a streaked blonde ponytail dangling out the back of her baseball cap.... We slammed our lockers in unison and turned. Her eyes met mine. "Hi," she said, smiling. My stomach fluttered. "Hi," I answered automatically. She was new. Had to be. I would've noticed her. She sauntered away, but not before I caught a glimpse of her T-shirt. It said: IMRU? Am I what?

There are stories where the girl gets her prince, and they live happily ever after. (This is not one of those stories.) Jenna Lord's first 16 years were not exactly a fairy tale. Her father is a controlling psycho and her mother is a drunk. She used to count on her older brother - until he shipped off to Iraq. And then, of course, there was the time she almost died in a fire.

For July Fielding, nothing has been the same since that summer before senior year. Once, she had Alex, her loyal best friend, the one who always had her back. She had Sydney, who pushed her during every cross-country run, and who sometimes seemed to know July better than she knew herself. And she had Sam. Sam, who told her she was everything and left her breathless with his touch.