Friendship Fiction

Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he's still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.

Mackenzie Blue is a star! Or she will be...as soon as she gets the part of an aspiring singer on a new TV pilot! But juggling auditions and the rest of her life turns out to be harder than Zee thought. Zee's friends are helping her hold everything together. But Zee doesn't like having to bail on plans--and her friends--to run to another audition. Is being a star worth it?

After an emergency leaves her short on rent, thirty-year-old Freya Arnalds bails on her lackluster life as bartender in Maine and returns to her suburban hometown of Somers, New York, to live in the house she inherited from her estranged parents. Despite attempts to lay low, Freya encounters childhood friends, familial enemies, and old flames—as well as her fifteen-year-old niece, Aubrey, who is secretly living in the derelict home. As they reconnect, Freya and Aubrey lean on each other, working to restore the house and come to terms with the devastating events that pulled them apart.

The prettiest: It’s the last thing Eve Hoffmann expected to be, the only thing Sophie Kane wants to be, and something Nessa Flores-Brady knows she’ll never be...until a list appears online, ranking the top 50 prettiest girls in the eighth grade. It’s time for a takedown. As the three girls band together, they begin to stand up not just for themselves, but for one another, too.

Eleven-year-old Anthoni Gillis is not the kind of kid who believes in fairies, unicorns, or even the word maybe. She's more of a comic-book girl. So when her mom brings her to Thunder Lake for a summer at the Showboat Resort, she doesn't believe the local rumors about the Boulay Mermaid. Anthoni has bigger fish to fry. She's always wanted a true-blue friend. But it's been hard to find one, since for the past five years she's been bouncing from town to town, helping her mother sell Beauty & the Bee cosmetic products to keep them both afloat. This summer will be different, though.

The complete five-book set of Judy Blume's bestselling Fudge books! A perfect gift for anyone dealing with the universal experience of grade school—or any adult looking for a classic book from a beloved author.

Miss Small, the gym teacher, is teaching A.J., Andrea, and the gang to juggle scarves, balance feathers, and do the Chicken Dance! Is this any way to stay in shape? Whatever happened to good old dodgeball? In fact, all the grown-ups at A.J.'s school seem to have something wrong with them. What's going on here? What are A.J. and the kids in his class going to do? They've got to convince Miss Small to act her age before the end of the year! Never before has school been this mixed up -- or this much fun.

Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic” books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.

The windows between the many worlds have been sealed, and the momentous adventures of Lyra Silvertongue’s youth are long behind her - or so she thought. Lyra is now a 20-year-old undergraduate at St. Sophia’s College, and intrigue is swirling around her once more. Her daemon, Pantalaimon, is witness to a brutal murder, and the dying man entrusts them with secrets that carry echoes from their past. The more Lyra is drawn into these mysteries, the less she is sure of.

Hollis Shaw, creator of the popular food blog, Hungry with Hollis, is shocked when her heart surgeon husband, Matthew, is killed in a one-car accident on a snowy morning. The cracks in Hollis’s perfect life—her strained marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Caroline—grow deeper. So when Hollis hears about something called a “Five-Star Weekend”—one woman organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife—she decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket.

Renowned storyteller Philip Pullman returns to the parallel world of Lyra Belacqua and His Dark Materials for a thrilling and epic adventure in which daemons, alethiometers, and the Magisterium all play parts.

1941. Audrey Coltrane has always wanted to fly. It's why she implored her father to teach her at the little airfield back home in Texas. It’s why she signed up to train military pilots in Hawaii when the war in Europe began. And it’s why she insists she is not interested in any dream-derailing romantic involvements, even with the disarming Lieutenant James Hart, who fast becomes a friend as treasured as the women with whom she flies. Then one fateful day, she gets caught in the air over Pearl Harbor just as the bombs begin to fall, and suddenly, nowhere feels safe.

In this sweeping story based on the true experiences of nurses dubbed "the Angels of Bataan," three women shift in and out of each other's lives through the darkest days of the war, buoyed by their unwavering friendship and distant dreams of liberation.

Alicia Ramirez has always loved baking. Her family owns Say It with Flour, the small bakery in town. And Ali's specialties are cake pops: delicious confections on a stick. But Ali's sweet life turns sour when a sleek coffee shop opens across the street, giving her bakery a run for its money. Worst of all, the owner's son, Dane McGuire, likes to bake, too. He's the new kid in Ali's school...and happens to be annoyingly cute. When Dane and Ali engage in a bake-off to prove who is the cake-pop master, it's Ali's chance to save Say It with Flour. But will she be able to rise to occasion?

Harriet, Jack, and Toby are treasure hunters, searching the Minecraft world for its most valuable hidden secrets. In an abandoned mineshaft, they discovered the first of three lost journals that once belonged to William, a legendary explorer who has gone missing. The journals have taken them on a daring adventure to a secret temple deep within a desert biome, then into the perilous depths of the Nether. Now the treasure hunters are facing their greatest challenge yet.

Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers. She is nothing like her lifelong best friend - the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content. But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”

Thirteen-year-old Annabelle struggles in school, no matter how hard she tries. But as soon as she dives into the pool, she's unstoppable. She's the fastest girl on the middle school swim team, and when she's asked to join the high school team over the summer, everything changes. Suddenly, she's got new friends, and a high school boy starts treating her like she's somebody special - and Annabelle thinks she'll finally stand out in a good way.

Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren’t really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes—in a plain, green journal—the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It’s run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves - and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica’s Café.

Donald J. Sobol’s pint-sized amateur detective has been a hit with young readers for over three decades. For 25 cents a day—plus expenses—Encyclopedia Brown will solve any case, big or small for the kids in his neighborhood. He also secretly works with his police chief father to crack the toughest investigations and keep the streets of Idaville safe. Here are 10 more beguiling mysteries that will have listeners scratching their heads.