Difficult Relationships

Bobby Seed has questions. What's another word for 'thesaurus'? How can I tell Bel I want her as my girl friend, not my girlfriend? How much pain is Mum in today? Has she taken her pills? And sometimes, secretly, Why us? Bobby's little brother, Danny, has questions, too. Will Bobby let him have Rice Krispies for dinner? And can he stay up late on the computer? And why won't Mum's stupid illness just go away? But it's Mum's question for Bobby that could turn everything on its head. It's the Big One. The Unthinkable One. If Bobby agrees, he won't just be soothing her pain. He'll be helping to end it. Would he? Could he?

Sixteen-year-old Virginia Shreves' life is finally back on course: She's accepted who she is inside and out and is rebuilding her relationship with brother Byron, whose date-rape charge shattered everything. But just as she adjusts to her new normal, her world turns upside down again. Sparks with boyfriend Froggy fade, her best friend bombshells bad news, and then the police arrest Byron.

In the sandy Mojave Desert, Madison is a small town on the road between nothing and nowhere. But Eldon wouldn't want to live anywhere else because in Madison, everyone gets one wish - and that wish always comes true. Some people wish for money; some people wish for love. But Eldon has seen how wishes have broken the people around him. And with the lives of his family and friends in chaos, he's left with more questions than answers. Can he make their lives better?

Daria Esfandyar is Iranian-American and proud of her heritage, unlike some of the “Nose Jobs” in the clique led by her former best friend, Heidi Javadi. Daria and her friends call themselves the Authentics, because they pride themselves on always keeping it real. But in the course of researching a school project, Daria learns something shocking about her past, which launches her on a journey of self-discovery. It seems everyone is keeping secrets. And it’s getting harder to know who she even is any longer.

Emma O'Donovan bor i en lille by, hun er 18 år gammel, smuk, populær og selvsikker. Men en aften tager hun til en fest, som ændrer alt. Dagen efter vågner hun foran sin hoveddør. Hun kan ikke huske, hvad der er sket. Hun ved ikke, hvordan hun er endt der. Hun ved ikke, hvorfor hun har ondt. Men det gør alle andre. Der er taget billeder af, hvad der skete til festen - af hvad de gjorde ved Emmas krop. Alle har set dem, og de siger, at det er hendes egens skyld.

Dana Fields's father never knew his parents. When Dana secretly does a DNA test for her dad, hoping to find him some distant relatives for his birthday, her entire world implodes. Instead of a few third cousins, Dana discovers a half-brother her age whose very existence means her parents' happy marriage is a lie. Dana's desire to know her half-brother, Brandon, and the extent of her dad's deception, clashes with her wish not to destroy her family.

Four months ago, Sara Zapata's best friend disappeared, kidnapped by the web of criminals who terrorize Juarez. Four hours ago, Sara received a death threat - and, with it, a clue to the place where her friend is locked away. Four weeks ago, Emiliano Zapata fell in love with Perla Rubi, who will never be his so long as he's poor. Four minutes ago, Emiliano got the chance to make more money than he ever dreamed - just by joining the web.

What if your town was sliding underwater, and everyone was ordered to pack up and leave? How would you and your friends spend your last days together? While the adults plan for the future, box up their possessions, and find new places to live, Keeley Hewitt and her friends decide to go out with a bang.

It’s the fall of 1966, and 12-year-old Dewey Turner is determined to start the school year right. No more being the butt of every joke. He’ll be cool — a Lone Wolf like his older brother, Wayne. But an accident with shoe polish dashes these hopes — and earns Dewey his worst nickname yet. He finds an unlikely friend in Darla Turkel, the only person at Sand Mountain High who is more of an outcast than he is.

When Caroline's little brother is kidnapped, his subsequent rescue leads to the discovery of Ethan, a teenager who has been living with the kidnapper since he was a young child himself. In the aftermath Caroline can't help but wonder what Ethan knows about everything that happened to her brother, who is not readjusting well to life at home. And although Ethan is desperate for a friend, he can't see Caroline without experiencing a resurgence of traumatic memories.

Caro Mitchell considers herself an only child - and she likes it that way. After all, her much older sister, Hannah, left home eight years ago, and Caro barely remembers her. So when Caro's parents drop the bombshell news that Hannah is returning to live with them, Caro feels as if an interloper is crashing her family. To her, Hannah's a total stranger, someone who haunts their home with her meek and withdrawn presence, and who refuses to talk about her life and why she went away.

Everyone knows that Chelsea Knot can't keep a secret.... Until now. Because the last secret she shared turned her into a social outcast - and nearly got someone killed. Now Chelsea has taken a vow of silence - to learn to keep her mouth shut, and to stop hurting anyone else. And if she thinks keeping secrets is hard, not speaking up when she's ignored, ridiculed and even attacked is worse. But there's strength in silence, and in the new friends who are, shockingly, coming her way - people she never noticed before; a boy she might even fall for. If only her new friends can forgive what she's done.

Johanna is steadfast, patient, reliable; the go-to girl, the one everyone can count on. But always being there for others can’t give Johanna everything she needs - it can’t give her Reeve Hartt. Reeve is fierce, beautiful, wounded, elusive; a flame that draws Johanna’s fluttering moth. Johanna is determined to get her, against all advice, and to help her, against all reason. But love isn’t always reasonable, right? In the precarious place where attraction and need collide, a teenager experiences the dark side of a first love, and struggles to find her way into a new light.

Being yourself can be such a bad idea. For 16-year-old Badi Hessamizadeh, life is a series of humiliations. After withdrawing from public school under mysterious circumstances, Badi enters Magnificat Academy. To make things "easier", his dad has even given him a new name: Bud Hess. Grappling with his Iranian-American identity, clinical depression, bullying, and a barely bottled rage, Bud is an outcast who copes by resorting to small revenges and covert acts of defiance, but the pressures of his home life and the unrequited affection of his new friend, Nikki, prime him for a more dangerous revolution.

Fourteen-year-old Charlie Law has lived in Little Town, on the border with Old Country, all his life. He knows the rules: no going out after dark; no drinking; no litter; no fighting. You don't want to get on the wrong side of the people who run Little Town. When he meets Pavel Duda, a refugee from Old Country, the rules start to get broken. Then the bombs come and the soldiers from Old Country, and Little Town changes forever.

Award-winning author Melina Marchetta reopens the story of the group of friends from her acclaimed novel Saving Francesca - but five years have passed, and now it's Thomas Mackee who needs saving. After his favorite uncle was blown to bits on his way to work in a foreign city, Tom watched his family implode. He quit school and turned his back on his music and everyone that mattered, including the girl he can't forget. Shooting for oblivion, he's hit rock bottom, forced to live with his single, pregnant aunt; work at the Union pub with his former friends; and reckon with his grieving, alcoholic father.

Dark Dude captures New York City in the 1960s - violent, decaying, slouching away from the American dream - and brings to life a character who has no choice but to head out west in search of something better. But, when Rico and his ex-druggie friend arrive in Wisconsin, they discover that picket-fenced apple-pie people can be just as violent and judgmental as the neighbors they left behind.

High-school junior Jordan MacKenzie’s life was pretty typical: fractured family, new boyfriends, dead-end job. She’d been living with her father (the predictable optometrist) since her mother (the hippie holdover) had become too embarrassing to be around. Jordan felt that she finally had as normal a life as she could. Then came Gayle D’Angelo. Jordan knew her father was dating Gayle and that Gayle was married.

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.

Things Mischa "Ish" Love will miss when she goes to Mars: lying on the living room floor watching TV, ice cream, her parrot Buzz Aldrin. Things Ish Love will not miss when she goes to Mars: mosquitoes, heat waves, missing her former best friend Tig. Ish is convinced that she'll be one of the first settlers on Mars. She's applied to - and been rejected from - the Mars Now project 47 times, but the mission won't leave for 10 years, and Ish hasn't given up hope. When Ish collapses on the first day of seventh grade, she gets a diagnosis that threatens all her future plans.