Foster Teens

"Trouble Twins" Dallas and Florida have been shuffled between foster families and the orphanage all their lives. All they want is a loving place to call home, but they are mistrustful that one exists for the likes of them.

Introverted Bicycle has lived most of her life at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, D.C. When her guardian, Sister Wanda, announces that Bicycle is going to attend a camp where she will learn to make friends, Bicycle says no way and sets off on her bike for San Francisco to meet her idol, a famous cyclist, certain he will be her first true friend. Who knew that a ghost would haunt her handlebars and that she would have to contend with bike-hating dogs, a bike-loving horse, bike-crushing pigs, and a mysterious lady dressed in black.

Esther struggles with depression and low self-esteem due to the lack of parental involvement in her life while growing up. The constant desire for acceptance from her parents, especially her father, caused her to make many impulsive decisions. As she reminisces on her teen years with appreciation, she realizes every obstacle she came in contact with helped her grow into the strong young woman she is today.

Francis Joseph Cassavant is eighteen. He has just returned home from the Second World War, and he has no face. He does have a gun and a mission: to murder his childhood hero. Francis lost most of his face when he fell on a grenade in France. He received the Silver Star for bravery, but was it really an act of heroism? Now, having survived, he is looking for a man he once admired and respected, a man adored by many people, a man who also received a Silver Star for bravery. A man who destroyed Francis's life.

Martine's parents are killed in a fire, and she must leave her home in England to live on a wildlife reserve in Africa with a grandmother she never even knew she had. As soon as Martine arrives at the reserve, she hears whisperings of a mythical animal living there, a white giraffe. No one has ever seen the animal, but it leaves footprints behind.

Life at St. Agatha's School for Girls is anything but a fairy tale. With ratty blankets and a torturous device called the box, it's not hard to understand Eliza's desperation to escape. When the timing is right, Eliza manages to run away with her best friend, Millie, heading through the Louisiana swamps to the town on the other side. But the swamps may be even more dangerous than the orphanage. Silver and black fairies invite the girls to experience a world where they can have it all, but Eliza doesn't trust the sparkling beauty.

Poppy, Dash, Azumi, and Dylan may have made it out of Shadow House - but the grounds are a whole new nightmare. Someone they thought was a friend is hunting them, and there's no place that's safe now that they've woken the shadow creature. If they want to survive, they'll have to figure out once and for all what the house wants from them, and what - or who - they'll need to leave behind in order to escape...or risk being trapped within Shadow House forever.

For years, 16-year-old Hattie's been shuttled between relatives. Tired of being Hattie Here-and-There, she courageously leaves Iowa to prove up on her late uncle's homestead claim near Vida, Montana. With a stubborn stick-to-itiveness, Hattie faces frost, drought, and blizzards. Despite many hardships, Hattie forges ahead, sharing her adventures with her friends, especially Charlie, fighting in France, through letters and articles for her hometown paper.

Molly Moon is back, and this time she's hypnotizing her way to the Academy Awards in Los Angeles. Along with Rocky and Petula the pug, Molly is tracking the sinister activities of American billionaire Primo Cell, who wants to become president and take over the world. He has all the Hollywood celebrities in his power, but Molly Moon has an amazing power of her own, which even she doesn't know about.

Forced to live on his own after his mom dies and her boyfriend abandons him, 12-year-old Jayson does whatever it takes to get by. He will do anything to avoid the foster care system. Besides, his real home has always been the beat-up basketball court behind the projects in the North Carolina hills, and his family has always been his friends and teammates. He manages to get away with his deception until the day he gets caught stealing a new pair of basketball sneakers. Game over. Within a day a social worker places him with a family from the other side of town, the Lawtons.

Kek comes from Africa. In America, he sees snow for the first time, and feels its sting. He’s never walked on ice, and he falls. He wonders if the people in this new place will be like the winter - cold and unkind. In Africa, Kek lived with his mother, father, and brother. But only he and his mother have survived, and now she’s missing. Kek is on his own. Slowly, he makes friends: A girl who is in foster care, an old woman who owns a rundown farm, and a cow whose name means “family” in his native language.

April had absolutely no intention of becoming the only person who knows that Gabriel Winterborne, the missing-and-presumed-dead billionaire, is actually living in the basement of Winterborne House, sharpening his swords and looking for vengeance. Now it’s up to April to keep him alive. But there’s only so much a 12-year-old girl can do, so April must turn to the other orphans for help. Together, they’ll have to unravel the riddle of a missing heir and a creepy legend, and find a secret key, before the only home they’ve ever known is lost to them forever.

Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this accessible and inspiring memoir, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards - ordinary and extraordinary - of her life.

With renewed interest in Alexander Key's extraordinary 1968 novel, fans can dive into Escape to Witch Mountain as it was meant to be listened to. The powerful, thrilling story of Tony and Tia - twins joined by their paranormal gifts, on the run from evil forces that seek to suppress their forgotten pasts - is more gripping and relevant than ever.

There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres. These tales from fifteen bestselling, acclaimed, and emerging adoptee authors genuinely and authentically reflect the complexity, breadth, and depth of adoptee experiences.

Littlest One is a tiny creature slowly learning her job of giving dreams to humans. Each night she and her teacher, Thin Elderly, visit an old woman’s home where she softly touches beloved objects, gathering happy memories, and drops of old scents and sounds. Littlest One pieces these bits together and presents them to her sleeping human in the form of pleasant dreams. But the dreaded Sinisteeds, dark fearsome creatures that plague their victims with nightmares, are always at work against the dreamgivers.

Charlie longed for the love of a family; what he got was something else when the foster care system put him with Barbara Norse. Only Caroline, who also came to live with Barbara, provided him any sense of belonging. Vowing to be there for each other, they find that sometimes life has a way of tearing people apart, especially when the system forgets about you and forces you to fight for your family.

When Liv Hall and her friends find boxes of letters hidden in her grandfather’s attic, they discover hundreds of psychic predictions addressed to the Premonitions Bureau, a bureau to investigate psychic abilities that mysteriously closed in 1993. As the group reads decades-old premonitions, they stumble on letters from powerful psychics who mailed in their predictions and then disappeared.

Kyle Stilleno is the invisible student, toiling through high school in the middle of Nowhere, Texas. Brad Greymark is the baseball star of Foster High. When they bond over their mutual damage during a night of history tutoring, Kyle thinks maybe his life has changed for good. But the promise of fairy-tale love is a lie when you're gay and falling for the most popular boy in school. A coming of age story in the same vein of John Hughes, Tales from Foster High shows an unflinching vision of the ups and downs of teenage love and what it is like to grow up gay.

When Pollyanna Whittier's loving but impoverished father dies, she is left orphaned and alone. Her wealthy spinster aunt, Aunt Polly, agrees to take her in, so she and her few belongs are packed onto an eastbound train. Pollyanna looks forward to living with her aunt, but Aunt Polly is cold and strict. She puts Pollyanna in a musty attic room and expects her to keep quiet and stay out of the way.