Difficult Teens

¿Por qué Justyce McAllister ha logrado entrar a Yale, pero su amigo de la infancia Vernell Laquan Banks ha terminado en la cárcel? Si los dos crecieron a una cuadra de distancia en el vecindario Wynwood Hieghts de la Atlanta sureña. “¿Cómo lo lograste?”, le pregunta Quan a Justyce, el joven protagonista de Querido Martin, en las cartas que le envía desde el Centro Regional de Detención Juvenil.

Lucky loves her grandparents, and they are all the family she really has. True, her grandma forgets things … like turning off the stove, or Lucky’s name. But her grandpa takes such good care of them that Lucky doesn’t realize how bad things are. That is until he’s gone. When her grandma accidentally sets the kitchen on fire, Lucky can’t hide what’s happening any longer, and she is sent into foster care. She quickly learns that some foster families are okay. Some aren’t. And some really, really aren’t.

People kill people. Guns just make it easier. A gun is sold in the classifieds after killing a spouse, bought by a teenager for needed protection. But which was it? Each has the incentive to pick up a gun, to fire it. Was it Rand or Cami, married teenagers with a young son? Was it Silas or Ashlyn, members of a white supremacist youth organization? Daniel, who fears retaliation because of his race, who possessively clings to Grace, the love of his life? Or Noelle, who lost everything after a devastating accident, and has sunk quietly into depression?

It’s another sucky year at Bathory High for Vladimir Tod. The evil vampire D’Ablo is hunting for the ritual that could steal Vlad’s powers. His best friend Henry doesn’t want to be his drudge anymore. And as if all that weren’t enough, it’s getting harder for Vlad to resist feeding on the people around him. When months go by with no word from Uncle Otis and D’Ablo shows up demanding Vlad’s father’s journal, Vlad realizes that having a normal high school year is the least of his concerns.

When 16-year-old Tariq Johnson dies from two gunshot wounds, his community is thrown into an uproar. Tariq was black. The shooter, Jack Franklin, is white. In the aftermath of Tariq's death, everyone has something to say, but no two accounts of the events line up. Day by day, new twists further obscure the truth. Tariq's friends, family, and community struggle to make sense of the tragedy, and to cope with the hole left behind when a life is cut short.

Larkin lost two years of her life to post-concussion syndrome. As she stands at the beginning of her new life, she wonders if she’s even the same person she once was. Abandoned by friends when she was injured, she takes her first step toward her future: alone. Was it a mistake for her to go back to school for her senior year? Will they laugh at her panic attacks? Will they notice she isn’t eating? Will she even make it through the first day?

Brynn had a group of best friends, a boyfriend who loved her, a growing talent for pottery. She had a life. And then . . . she had none. Everything was lost. The boy she now knew never loved her. The friends who felt she betrayed their trust. The new life just beginning to grow inside her. Brynn believes her future is as empty as her body until Christian, the boy next door, starts coming around.

"Boys, let us get up a club." Six restless young men raided the linens at a friend's mansion, pulled pillowcases over their heads, hopped on horses, and cavorted through the streets of Pulaski, Tennessee. The six friends named their club the Ku Klux Klan, and, all too quickly, their club grew into the self-proclaimed Invisible Empire with secret dens spread across the South. This is the story of how a secret terrorist group took root in America's democracy.

In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man - a bioengineered war beast named Tool - who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses.

'The Wide, Wide Sea' is a Chaos Walking short story. Set before the Spackle War in a small fishing village by the sea, this is a heartbreaking tale of love and loyalty in a divided world. Best listened to immediately after The Ask and the Answer, it features familiar characters such as Mistress Coyle but gives a new perspective on the shocking events in the award-winning trilogy.

Heartache, betrayal, and abuse: These are Mia’s lifelong companions, inflicted upon her by parents who wish she’d never been born. The night she was kicked out of the house, Mia would have frozen to death—if not literally, then emotionally—were it not for the love of her best friend’s family. Intuition, love, and wonder: These are Sophie’s gifts, unleashed by her struggle with Cystic Fibrosis and her determination to live fully. When Mia tells Sophie about the long walk down the mountain in the snow, Sophie instinctively knows there is more to the story of Mia’s survival.

In the affluent town of Weslyn, Connecticut, where most people worry about what to be seen in and who to be seen with, Emma Thomas would rather not be seen at all. She’s more concerned with feigning perfection - pulling down her sleeves to conceal the bruises, not wanting anyone to know how far from perfect her life truly is. Without expecting it, she finds love. It challenges her to recognize her own worth - at the risk of revealing the terrible secret she’s desperate to hide.

A peaceful summer night is shattered by gunfire as an unseen assailant tries to murder police officer John Busby. Though horribly wounded, Busby survives. But the perpetrator remains at large, meaning neither Busby, nor his wife, nor their three children are safe. In separate chapters John and his daughter, Cylin, who was nine at the time, recount the story of that year. John writes graphically, and movingly, of his wounds, his pain, his multiple surgeries, and his rage.

Who will be the next to die? They've taken the children. And the son of a general. But that isn't enough. More horrors must come…

Twins Mary Lee and Madrigal are living double lives - with some shocking secrets. Mary Lee and Madrigal are twin sisters, beautiful and deeply attached to each other. Then in high school, Mary Lee and Madrigal's parents decide to send Mary Lee away to boarding school - cruelly separating the girls. The twins have only been apart a handful of times in their lives. Mary Lee is devastated at first, and then horrified as Madrigal betrays her by approving of their parents' shocking plan.

He was supposed to be my escape for the weekend. I wasn’t supposed to fall for him. I want to be a good daughter, but I’m tired of being looked over. So when I run into Jet Miller, the bad boy with a motorcycle, I pay him to take me away for the weekend. Two days of freedom quickly change into something more, and I find myself falling for Jet. Only, he doesn’t know that once our 48 hour escape is over, I’m gone. And I don’t know how to tell him. Some rules are meant to be broken.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, cofounder of the notorious Crips gang, is a death-row inmate. But in his two decades of incarceration, Williams has also become a respected author and activist whose dedication to ending gang warfare in the lives of inner-city children has earned him a 2001 Nobel Peace Prize nomination. In this award-winning book, which has drawn praise from educators, government leaders, and families alike. Williams describes the brutal reality of being an inmate.

Adam gave up everything for a new chance at life. Now with a cutting-edge digital mind, he is smarter, faster, better than a normal teen. But this new life isn't free. He's indebted to the government program that gave him this ability - and freedom comes at a price. Adam and his teammates, the six Pioneers, swore to defend humanity against Sigma, the most ruthless artificial intelligence program ever designed.

It's the summer of 1955. For Ethan Harper, a biracial kid raised mostly by his White father, race has always been a distant conversation. When he's sent to spend the summer with his aunt and uncle in small-town Alabama, his blackness is suddenly front and center, and no one is shy about making it known he's not welcome there. Enter Juniper Jones. The town's resident oddball and free spirit, she's everything the townspeople aren't-open, kind, and accepting.

In the first book of the Shaw Confessions, the companion series to the New York Times best-selling Mara Dyer novels, old skeletons are laid bare and new promises prove deadly. This is what happens after happily ever after. Everyone thinks 17-year-old Noah Shaw has the world on a string. They're wrong. Mara Dyer is the only one he trusts with his secrets and his future. He shouldn't. And both are scared that uncovering the truth about themselves will force them apart. They're right.