Difficult Teens

Kaeleigh and Raeanne are 16-year-old identical twins, the daughters of a district court judge father and politician mother running for U.S. Congress. Everything on the surface seems fine, but underneath run very deep and damaging secrets. When the girls were nine, Daddy turned to his beloved Kaeleigh in ways a father never should. Raeanne needs to numb the pain of not being Daddy's favorite; Kaeleigh wants to do everything she can to feel something normal, even if it means cutting herself and vomiting after every binge.

As an obedient orphan of the U.N.A. (the super-country that was once Mexico, the US, and Canada), Alenna learned at an early age to blend in and be quiet - having your parents taken by the police will do that to a girl. But Alenna can’t help standing out when she fails a test that all 16-year-olds have to take: The test says she has a high capacity for brutal violence, and so she is sent to the wheel, an island where all would-be criminals end up.

There are countless good reasons to hate seventeen-year-old Jess Lanza, Stone Bridge High’s premier autistic theater nerd and Champion of Questionable Life Choices. Unfortunately, the cyberbullies that hounded her all summer are stuck on last year’s life-ruining mistake, the one that earned Jess the title “Boyfriend Stealing Slutbag.” To relieve the bullies of their stale content, Jess vows to dazzle them with online posts about her own ridiculous fails and embarrassing character traits.

In Mary's world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth. But, slowly, Mary's truths are failing her. She's learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness.

It's been eight months since all the adults disappeared. Gone. They've survived hunger. They've survived lies. But the stakes keep rising, and the dystopian horror keeps building. Yet despite the simmering unrest left behind by so many battles, power struggles, and angry divides, there is a momentary calm in Perdido Beach. But enemies in the FAYZ don't just fade away, and in the quiet, deadly things are stirring, mutating, and finding their way free.

Dinah Lance was eight years old when she overheard the impossible: the sound of a girl singing. It was something she was never meant to hear - not in her lifetime and not in Gotham City, taken over by the vicious, patriarchal Court of Owls. The sinister organization rules Gotham City as a dictatorship and has stripped women of everything - their right to work, to make music, to learn, to be free.

"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."

Despite my best intentions, I was beginning to understand how my dad saw the world. The shadows haunting every living thing. The secrets inside the lies wrapped in bullshit. Even Gracie’s box of pills was beginning to make sense. For the past five years, Hayley Kincain and her father, Andy, have been on the road, trying to outrun the memories that haunt them both. They moved back to Andy’s hometown to try a “normal” life, but the horrors he saw in the war threaten to destroy their lives.

Miranda's disbelief turns to fear in a split second when a meteor knocks the Moon closer to the Earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun?

Randi Lewis isn't your typical seventh-grader. She's a damaged girl with a secret life who just wants to be a normal, happy teenager. And on her first day of seventh grade, she vows to make this the year she turns it all around. This will be the year that she'll finally let go of her pain and her anger and be happy again. All she has to do is ignore all the mean looks, pointed whispers, trash talk, and name-calling - from kids and adults alike.

May Falkner's past two years have been a craptastic road. When her father suddenly passes away, May needs to find a job to help out her mom and possibly find some laughter along the way. Working at the bookstore helps with that problem. It also leads her to cross paths with Nico Evitts, who begins as just a coworker, but becomes so much more. When life finally seems like it's almost normal again, reality steps in and pitches another curveball May's way, causing things to crack a bit. What May has to learn is, eventually, you just have to rip the bandage off.

'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.

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.

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.

It's Newfoundland, 1986. Fourteen-year-old Bun O'Keefe has lived a solitary life in an unsafe, unsanitary house. Her mother is a compulsive hoarder, and Bun has had little contact with the outside world. When Bun's mother tells Bun to leave one day, she does. Hitchhiking out of town, Bun ends up on the streets of St. John's, Newfoundland. Fortunately, the first person she meets is Busker Boy, a street musician who senses her naivety and takes her in. Together they live in a house with an eclectic cast of characters.

Joy McCullough's bold novel in verse is a portrait of an artist as a young woman, filled with the soaring highs of creative inspiration and the devastating setbacks of a system built to break her. McCullough weaves Artemisia's heartbreaking story with the stories of the ancient heroines, Susanna and Judith, who become not only the subjects of two of Artemisia's most famous paintings but sources of strength as she battles to paint a woman's timeless truth in the face of unspeakable and all-too-familiar violence.

OCD-afflicted Griffin has just lost his first love, Theo, in a drowning accident. In an attempt to hold on to every piece of the past, he forges a friendship with Theo's last boyfriend, Jackson. When Jackson begins to exhibit signs of guilt, Griffin suspects he's hiding something and will stop at nothing to get to the truth about Theo's death. But as the grieving pair grows closer, listeners will question Griffin's own version of the truth - in terms of both what he's willing to hide and what true love means.

When Marcus moves to a new town, he doesn't have any friends. While practicing football for impending tryouts, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with former NFL star Charlie Popovich, nicknamed "The King of Pop". Charlie is a charismatic prankster, and the best football player Marcus has ever seen. But when his behavior starts getting more and more erratic, Marcus learns a secret: Charlie is suffering from early onset Alzheimer's from the concussions he sustained while playing professional football.

Delsie loves tracking the weather - lately, though, it seems the squalls are in her own life. She's always lived with her kindhearted Grammy, but now, she's looking at their life with new eyes and wishing she could have a "regular family". Delsie observes other changes in the air, too - the most painful being a friend who's outgrown her. Luckily, she has neighbors with strong shoulders to support her, and Ronan, a new friend who is caring and courageous but also troubled by the losses he's endured.

Julia no es la hija mexicana perfecta. Ese era el rol de su hermana Olga. Olga no fue a la universidad, se quedó en casa para cuidar a sus padres, limpiar la casa y trabajar a medio tiempo. Julia tiene grandes sueños y no quiere formar parte del camino de su hermana mayor. Pero un solo error, que ocurre mientras enviaba un mensaje de texto al mismo tiempo que cruzaba la calle más concurrida de Chicago, resulta en la muerte de Olga, dejando atrás a Julia para ocuparse de las secuelas.