Showing results by narrator "Ali Ahn" in All Categories

Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it.

Teenage girls have a lot to say, and poet Betsy Franco shares some of it in this unique work. In both poetry and prose, the young voices here share their thoughts on topics all teens are familiar with—from self-confidence to body image, from sexuality to loneliness, and everything in between.

An Na has earned critical raves for her young adult fiction. She has won the Michael L. Printz Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. In The Fold, she examines the complications surrounding teenage plastic surgery. Joyce is thrilled when her aunt becomes suddenly wealthy. But when her aunt decides Joyce needs a makeover, Joyce must decide if she is ready to go under the knife to become the popular swan she's always wanted to be.

Set in 1640s Puritan Massachusetts, this "flawlessly crafted" ( Booklist) historical novel by Christy Award finalist Siri Mitchell delivers a heart-wrenching tale of true love and triumphant grace. While Susannah awaits an overdue marriage proposal, a powerful villager takes a fancy to her. But after a dashing military captain comes to town, she's unprepared for the sinister turn her life soon takes.

Ava is a firebug and she can start fires with her mind. However, she's caught in a deadly contract with the Coterie, a magical mafia. She's one of its main hitmen and she doesn't like it one bit. Especially because her mother's death was ordered by Venus and Ava's boss. When Venus asks Ava to kill a family friend, Ava rebels and flees.

Daniel is a freelancer without health insurance or a committed relationship when he suddenly finds himself as the sole caregiver for his dangerously premature daughter. As he grapples with whether he will run from responsibility or grow into fatherhood, he befriends an outspoken neonatal intensive care unit nurse struggling to balance the demands of her job and her own family.

In the future, love is complicated and death is not necessarily the end. Love Minus Eighty follows several interconnected people in a disquieting vision of romantic life. There's Rob, who accidentally kills a jogger, then sacrifices all to visit her in a cryogenic dating facility, seeking forgiveness but instead falling in love. Veronika, a shy dating coach, finds herself coaching the very woman who is stealing the man she loves. And Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in a heterosexual dating center, desperately seeks a way to reunite with her frozen partner as the years pass.

There's more than one recipe for a happy life. Hannah Goodman doesn't grow up like most kids on the Upper East Side. Her mother, Gray, is an award-winning photojournalist with little time for the banalities of child-rearing, and when she's not jetting off to follow the latest scoop, she's camped out at the Hotel Chelsea. The closest thing Hannah's got to a traditional matriarch is her grandmother - a glamorous widow six times over with a sprawling Hampton's estate. But Gray is determined that her daughter resist the siren song of the trust fund set, and make her own way in the world.

The tech boom of our time is changing San Francisco at warp speed. Famously home to artists and activists, and known as the birthplace of the Beats, the Black Panthers, and the LGBTQ movement, the Bay Area has been transformed by Silicon Valley. But the richer the region gets, the more unequal and less diverse it becomes, and the cracks in the city's facade begin to show. Inspired by Studs Terkel's classic works of oral history, writer Cary McClelland has spent years interviewing people at the epicenter of the Bay Area's rapid change: tech innovators, venture capitalists, coders, homeless advocates, pawn brokers, prosecutors, public defenders....

Kris Merrill is a member of a small insurgent group operating within a multi-level metropolis that stretches from San Francisco to the Mexican border. Her attempt at rescuing Ian Miller failed, leaving her alone and her unborn son without a father. Without the trust of the insurgents, Kris is relegated to low-level assignments for them, and trying desperately to keep her pregnancy a secret. She is alone. War has started between the corporations. The people living in the lower levels of San Angeles have become the victims.

Ever since The Night in Question left her with a hideous scar and no memory of what happened, Theo Lane has been hiding. An aspiring filmmaker, she uses a hidden button cam to keep the world at bay. She spends the entire summer in a Manhattan cafe, secretly documenting random "subjects".

Author Elizabeth Atkinson’s debut novel for middleschoolers was included in the Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of 2009. I, Emma Freke tells of one girl’s search for her identity. Smart and shy, Emma is as close to normal as her family gets. Still, she has a terrible time fitting in at school—and things only get worse when Emma attends her family reunion. Soon, she realizes that she’s better off being herself than someone else’s Freke.

Like all mothers, Emily Rapp had ambitious plans for her first and only child, Ronan. He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, and level-headed, but fun. He would be good at crossword puzzles like his father. He would be an avid skier like his mother. Rapp would speak to him in foreign languages and give him the best education. But all of these plans changed when Ronan was diagnosed at nine months old with Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always-fatal degenerative disorder. Ronan was not expected to live beyond the age of three....

Kris Merrill's life changed irrevocably when, a year ago, she was targeted for termination by the Meridian corporation, one of the mega-conglomerates that controls the government in this dystopian future. She hid amongst the underground resistance - but now, right as her training with the anti-corporate movement is nearing its end, their compound is destroyed. Ready or not, Kris and the other trainees are recalled to the dangerous metropolis of San Angeles.

Growing up in the Bronx during the '80s, Korean immigrant teen Joon is forced out on her own as her family crumbles around her. From there Joon comes of age on the streets of New York, balancing on a tightrope between living and surviving while displaying equal measures of street smarts and naivete. Over time, Joon comes to understand herself and her place in the world.

Harley Milano has dreamed of becoming a trapeze artist for as long as she can remember. With parents who run a famous circus in Las Vegas, she spends almost every night in the big top watching their lead aerialist perform, wishing with all her heart and soul that she would be up there herself one day. After a huge fight with her parents, who continue to insist she go to school instead, Harley leaves home, betrays her family, and joins the rival traveling circus Maison du Mystère.

Sixteen-year-old Rosa lives in one of the eight enclosed cities of The Woodlands. Where the lone survivors of a devastating race war have settled in the Russian wilderness because it's the only scrap of land left habitable on the planet. In these circular cities, everyone must abide by the law or face harsh punishment. Rosa's inability to conform and obey the rules brands her a leper and no one wants to be within two feet of her, until she meets Joseph.

In this exquisite, transporting debut, 15-year-old Polly Kimball sets fire to the family farm, killing her abusive father. She and her young brother find shelter in a Massachusetts Shaker community called The City of Hope. It is the Era of Manifestations, when young girls in Shaker enclaves all across the Northeast are experiencing extraordinary mystical visions, earning them the honorific of "Visionist" and bringing renown to their settlements.

At 14, Elizabeth Reid is searching for a place she and her sister Jaime can call home. Neglected by a father with more vices than work ethic and ignored by a mother bent on starting a new life with an ex-con, Liz bounces between distant relatives in California and Utah. But before Liz can find peace, she must come to terms with the ugly deal she struck to ensure Jaime’s safety - one that has a hold on them both.

November is filled with excitement, surprises, and difficult choices for Claudia, Queen of the seventh grade...and no one can make her choices for her.