Poverty Fiction

Dylan doesn't have a lot of experience with comfort. His room in the falling-down Village Estates can generously be categorized as squalid, and he sure isn't getting any love from his mother, who seems to - no, definitely does - enjoy the perks that go along with being the parent of a "cancer kid". His only escape has been in the form of his favorite video game - World of Warcraft - and the one true friend who makes him feel understood, even if it is just online: Arden.

Leo's running from her past. Finlay's running into trouble. Together, they stumble into a crazy new world of secrets, lies and Chinese food. But someone is on Leo's trail. With Finlay's help, can she escape her pursuer and find what she is desperately searching for? Don't tread on the cracks. If you tread on a crack, it could be him.

In a dying country town lives Satchel O'Rye, a young man fighting the future; Chelsea Piper, a young woman fighting the past; and a long-lost creature that can teach them both the art of survival. Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf is a shimmering, ultimately joyful novel, a story of journeying towards courage and freedom, of finding the will to live a life beyond expectation.

Teenager Moss Trawnleyis in desperate need of work, and so he decides to headout west as a member of Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps to help protect Montana's wildlife from devastating erosion and wildfires. Despite the grueling work, Moss has time to play baseball, make lifelong friends, and rediscover what he almost lost in the Great Depression: himself. Bringing an important era of U.S. history to life, this rivetingcoming-of-age story will appeal to any teen who has dreamed of adventure and survival in the great outdoors.

Bess Cunningham has never been popular, and she plans to do something about it. She's got a fresh style, with plenty of unique clothes, and she's the new stage manager for the musical at her middle school. She couldn't care less about the volunteer work her parents do at a soup kitchen until she meets Grace Jarvis Battle. The kind, elderly woman reminds Bess of her grandmothers except for one significant difference - Grace lives on the street and finds food in dumpsters.

At fifteen, Iris is a hobo of sorts - no home, no family, no plan. Her mother died when she was six, and her selfish father hires her out as a companion to a country doctor's elderly mother. Iris, stuck in the middle of 1920s rural Missouri, discovers that "hobo" is short for "homeward bound," and cultivates an eccentric cast of folks into family, creating the home she never had. But when she learns that a neighboring tenant farmer may have had more than his hands on his pregnant daughter, Iris must intervene to save the girl and her unborn baby.

Baby is a teenager in trouble, and her last chance is a foster home with a husband and wife whose idea of fun is dogsledding. Still, it beats going to the juvenile detention center. Baby comes to love the dogs and takes naturally to sledding, but when her old boyfriend, Bobby, shows up, she can't stop herself from running off with him. Life with Bobby goes bad, and Baby has to make some hard decisions.

When 13-year-old Eric Parrish comes across glowing mushrooms in the woods behind his house, he's sure there's a scientific explanation. But when they start encroaching on the town - covering the football field and popping up from beneath the floorboards - Eric knows something's seriously wrong. Not that much else is going right.... Then a runaway girl from a nearby boarding school warns Eric that the fungus could portend doom.

Right before winter break, 14-year-old Molly Rosenberg reluctantly volunteers to participate in Santa Monica's annual homeless count, just to get her school's community service requirement out of the way. But when she ends up meeting Red, a spirited homeless girl only a few years older than she is, Molly makes it her mission to reunite her with her family in time for Christmas. This turns out to be extremely difficult - because Red refuses to talk about her past. There are things Molly won't talk about either.

When Iggy Corso gets kicked out of high school, there's no one for him to tell. His mother has gone off, his father is stoned on the couch, and because the phone's been disconnected, even the social worker can't get through. So he leaves a note and goes out to make something of his life, but that's not so easy when you're 16, living in public housing, have no skills, and your only friend is a law-school dropout who's thinking about joining the Hare Krishnas.

Through the long years of the Great Depression, Harper Flute watches with a child's clear eyes her family's struggle to survive in a hot and impoverished landscape. As life on the surface grows harsher, her brother Tin escapes ever deeper into a subterranean world of darkness and troubling secrets, until his memory becomes a myth barely whispered around the countryside.

Thirteen-year-old Hadi Toma and his family are displaced. At least that's what the Lebanese government calls them and the thousands of other Syrian refugees that have flooded into Beirut. But as Hadi tries to earn money to feed his family by selling gum on the street corner, he learns that many people who travel the city don't think they're displaced - they think that they don't belong in this country either. Each day he hears insults, but each day he convinces himself they don't matter, approaching the cars again and again. He hardly dares to dream anymore that this might change.

Best friends Ray and Jose are not your typical teenagers. They've escaped foster care and juvenile detention centers to live on their own together in an abandoned stationhouse in New York City's Ten Mile River Park. Ray and Jose are as close as brothers. But then they meet Trini, the smart, beautiful, and confident girl from their local barber shop, and they both fall for her immediately. As tension creeps into their relationship, Ray must struggle to find an identity separate from Jose and try to envision a future for himself beyond Jose and Ten Mile River.

Everything Aoife thought she knew about the world was a lie. There is no Necrovirus. And Aoife isn't going to succomb to madness because of a latent strain - she will lose her faculties because she is allergic to iron. Aoife isn't human. She is a changeling - half human and half from the land of Thorn. And time is running out for her. When Aoife destroyed the Lovecraft engine she released the monsters from the Thorn Lands into the Iron Lands and now she must find a way to seal the gates and reverse the destruction she's ravaged on the world that's about to poison her.

Blink, man, what were you thinking? Sneaking into the hotel for a hot breakfast  -  hot scraps of someone else’s breakfast, really. Couldn’t you just feel  that it was a wrong place/wrong time scenario? Even before you heard the banging and saw those dudes in suits jet it out of room 1616? Now you’re not only witness to a crime; you’re linked to it, thanks to the smartphone you were stupid enough to jack from the room. And then there’s Caution. As in “Caution: Contents Under Pressure.” She’s also on the run, from a skeezy drug-dealer boyfriend and from a nightmare in her past that won’t let her go.

Ireland, 1948. The potato famine has left the Cavanagh family destitute. Kitty and Peter manage to secure tickets for America - seeking hope in an unknown land. But still fortune will not favour them. On a terrifying crossing of the Irish Sea, Peter vanishes, and with him their tickets. Now, Kitty and her young family are stranded in Liverpool - with not a penny to their name. Facing prejudice and distrust, they move to Blackburn, where the welcome is no warmer, but Kitty at least can gather rags and scraps to exchange for a coin or two.

When Lyddie and her younger brother are hired out as servants to help pay off their family farm's debts, Lyddie is determined to find a way to reunite her family once again. Hearing about all the money a girl can make working in the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, she makes her way there, only to find that her dreams of returning home may never come true.

Is Justine crazy? Everyone thinks so… Her mother. The kids at school, and the teachers and administrators too. Even the police who pick her up from her night rambles. Maybe them most of all. Justine’s therapist says she is ‘troubled’, but it means the same thing. He thinks that her vivid, reoccurring nightmares and atrocious behavior point to some trauma in her past; but Em, Justine’s mother, can’t explain it. Justine used to have Christian, her best friend and skateboard partner. He was the only one who accepted her.

It's the 1940s and WWll is raging! There are six girls and three boys living with Mam in a log cabin with no electricity or running water. Pap comes home only when he feels the notion - so life's not easy. The struggles become even more real when 13-year-old Retha Pogue sees her brother, Wilburn, drafted and going off to war. Surprising twists await in this gripping tale of what life was really like for so many families. And you're invited! Come get to know Mam and the children by listening to their stories.

Simone Fleurier is wrenched from her home on a Provencal lavender farm at the age of 14 after the accidental death of her father. Forced to become a maid at the boarding house of her Aunt Augustine in Marseilles, Simone's life is hard and impoverished. But one of her aunt's boarders, the beautiful Camille Casal, a star at the local music hall, gives Simone a dream: that one day she too will be a famous singer and dancer.