Difficult Family

Freshman footballers Jason Roddin and Tom Jefferson are a perfect pair: Jason is a blazing-fast wide-receiver, while his best friend Tom has all the skills a standout quarterback needs. After summer football camp at an elite sports-focused boarding school, the boys are thrilled to be invited back with full-ride scholarships. But on day one of practice, they're shocked when the team's coaching staff makes Tom, a black kid, a receiver and Jason, a white kid, a quarterback.

Ever since his mother was killed in the line of duty in Iraq, Derrick has been absolutely certain that the apocalypse is coming. And he's prepared: he's got plenty of canned goods, he's fully outfitted with HAZMAT suits, and he's building himself a sturdy fallout shelter. When his neighbor Misty insists on helping with the shelter, Derrick doesn't think it's such a good idea. Misty's just had a kidney transplant, and her reaction to her brush with death is the opposite of Derrick's. When Derrick's promised apocalypse day begins, Derrick and Misty have to figure out a way to survive.

Carlos Fuentes doesn't want any part of the life his older brother, Alex, has laid out for him in Boulder, Colorado. He wants to keep living on the edge, and carve his own path - just like Alex did. Unfortunately, his ties to a Mexican gang aren't easy to break, and he soon finds himself being set up by a drug lord. When Alex arranges for Carlos to live with his former professor and his family to keep him from being sent to jail, Carlos feels completely out of place.

Walter Tipple is looking for adventure. He keeps having a dream that his big brother, Tank, appears before him and says, “Let’s you and me go see my world, little man.” But Tank went to the army and never came home, and Walter doesn’t know how to see the world without him. Then he meets Posey, the brash new girl from next door, and an eccentric man named Banjo, who’s off on a bodacious adventure of his own. What follows is a summer of taking chances, becoming braver, and making friends.

A veces, cuando más ganas tenía de ser invisible, era cuando más gente me veía, y en cambio, cuando deseaba que todos me vieran, era cuando a mi cuerpo le daba por desaparecer.

A distinctive new voice: Rex Ogle's story of starting middle school on the free lunch program is timely, heartbreaking, and true. Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle's first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school's free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day in the school lunch line, Rex's is a compelling story of a more profound hunger - that of a child for his parents' love and care.

Prolific writer James Lincoln Collier collaborates with his brother, Christopher, a distinguished historian, and the Revolutionary War comes alive in this contemporary classic for young adults. Here is a war with no clear-cut loyalties - dividing families, friends, and towns. Young Tim Meeker watches his 16-year-old brother, Sam, go off to fight with the Patriots while his father remains a reluctant British Loyalist in the Tory town of Redding Ridge, Connecticut.

Lauren DeStefano makes a stellar debut with this chilling tale. The first installment of a planned trilogy, Wither introduces listeners to a bleak world where a mysterious disease kills most women by the age of 20 and men by the age of 25. Like many girls her age, 16-year-old Rhine has been captured and forced into marriage in an effort to keep the population growing. But, despite her new husband’s wealth, she wants nothing more than to escape her servitude and return home before time runs out.

Dru Anderson is a very special girl - even if she doesn't always feel it. Gifted with "the touch", Dru travels about with her dad, hunting all manner of things that go bump in the night. But then her dad turns up dead - or, er, undead - and everything changes.

Isabel has one rule: no dating. It's easier. It's safer. It's better...for the other person. She's got issues. She's got secrets. She's got rheumatoid arthritis. But then she meets another sick kid. He's got a chronic illness Isabel's never heard of, something she can't even pronounce. He understands what it means to be sick. He understands her more than her healthy friends. He understands her more than her own father, who's a doctor.

On Saturday morning, 13-year-old Dicey Tillerman sits in the car at the shopping mall with her younger sister and two brothers. Momma had said, "You be good." Then she walked away. They wait for a day and a night, but Momma never comes back. Finally, Dicey decides the children should go to Bridgeport, Connecticut where Aunt Cilla lives. Maybe Momma is waiting for them there. But they don't have enough money to take the bus. Determined to keep the family together, Dicey sets off on foot with her siblings.

Before Sloane, Emily didn't go to parties, she barely talked to guys, and she didn't do anything crazy. Enter Sloane, social tornado and the best kind of best friend - someone who yanks you out of your shell. But right before what should have been an epic summer, Sloane just...disappears. No note. No calls. No texts. No Sloane. There's just a random to-do list with 13 bizarre tasks that Emily would never try. But what if they can lead her to Sloane? "Go Skinny Dipping?" Um...

Lupita, a budding actor and poet in a close-knit Mexican American immigrant family, comes of age as she struggles with adult responsibilities during her mother's long illness. As the oldest of eight siblings, Lupita is used to taking the lead—and staying busy behind the scenes to help keep everyone together. But when she discovers Mami has been diagnosed with cancer, Lupita is terrified by the possibility of losing her mother, the anchor of her close-knit Mexican American family.

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.

For most girls, sleepaway camp is great fun. But for Amy Becker, it's a nightmare. Amy, whose home life is in turmoil, is sent to Camp Takawanda for Girls for the first time as a teenager. Although Amy swears she hates her German-immigrant mother, who is unduly harsh with Amy's autistic younger brother, Amy is less than thrilled about going to camp. At Takawanda she is subjected to a humiliating "initiation" and relentless bullying by the ringleader of the senior campers.

"So, my beautiful fat girlfriend, Cassidy, is threatening to kick me to the curb again, my best friend suddenly wants to put the brakes on our lives of fabulous fun, my mom and big sister are plotting a future in which I turn into an atomic vampire, and my dad, well, my dad is a big fat question mark that I'm not sure I want the answer to."

It’s been three years since the Virgil County High School Massacre. Three years since my best friend, Sarah, was killed in a bathroom stall during the mass shooting. Everyone knows Sarah’s story - that she died proclaiming her faith. But it’s not true. I know because I was with her when she died. I didn’t say anything then, and people got hurt because of it. Now Sarah’s parents are publishing a book about her, so this might be my last chance to set the record straight. Except Sarah’s martyrdom is important to a lot of people, people who don’t take kindly to what I’m trying to do.

Why Boys Don’t Listen to Their Mothers reveals eye-opening principles and techniques designed to train adults on the best ways to manage, guide, and treat boys with behavioral problems. It does not disappoint as the content is filled with step-by-step instructions, stories, examples, and scenarios to help you get the results you’ve been searching for.

When a fortuneteller’s tent appears in the market square of the city of Baltese, orphan Peter Augustus Duchene knows the questions that he needs to ask: Does his sister still live? And if so, how can he find her? The fortuneteller’s mysterious answer (An elephant! An elephant will lead him there!) sets off a chain of events so remarkable, so impossible, that Peter can hardly dare to believe it. But it is - all of it - true.

Ernie Castellano, fast-talking wheeler-dealer kid, has come up with his greatest idea yet: pet funerals! With his pals Dusty (an artist in coffins) and Swimming Pool (one of the world's great criers, an asset to any funeral she attends), Ernie creates a thriving business-and manages to land himself in more hot water than he has ever dreamed possible.