Dear Peaches,America is perfect!I love it here. I wish you could come visit -- we could go shopping onMarket Street and you could meet all my new friends. And my newboyfriend. He looks exactly like Tobey Maguire (from Spider-Man, not Seabiscuit). We'll be the hottest couple at the Soirée!I miss you!! xxxooo,V.Okay, so Vicenza isn't being totally honest with Peaches, her best friend back in Manila. But what fun is it being the new girl at snooty Grosvernor High? Or rooting through the Salvation Army for unholey cashmere sweaters? Or having culture-shocked, embarrassingly clueless parents? Maybe being Claude Caligari's ignored geometry partner is sort of fun, but Vicenza would rather be his girlfriend ... or at least his date to the annual fancy-schmancy Soirée d'Hiver. Instead, she's stuck going with scrawny family friend Freddie in an outlet-purchased, coupon-reduced dress that is nothing short of disaster!But Vicenza won't be friendless, fashionless, or "fresh off the boat" for long -- it's only a matter of time before she sees what's right before her eyes, and her luck begins to change.

The girls of Sacred Heart Holy Angels eye the good dancers at the all-ages club Metropolis. They waste afternoons at the mall, check out parties on the lake, burn through candid, casual sex.Everybody calls them the Whores on the Hill, but they don't care.It is the mid-'80s and they go to the last all-girls' school in Milwaukee, where innocence is scarce and happiness is something to grabbed at in the backseat of a fast car.Meet exuberant, uninhibited Astrid, her nervy, troubled friend Juli and Thisbe, the shy, ascetic newcomer. They are fifteen years old. And they believe they can take on the world, no matter what it calls them.But when euphoric promiscuity mixes with a series of dangerous, deadly pranks, their world at Sacred Heart Holy Angels can never be the same.

Here's a radical concept: Most girls are happy, and so are their mothers. Most girls are not destined for depression, eating disorders, low self-esteem, and raging fights with their parents-that's just a very noisy minority. In My Girl, Karen Stabiner tells the story of one girl's journey into adolescence, and of her own efforts to find a way to guide her daughter through life's real thickets-not the scary but rare ones we hear so much about. When Sarah reached sixth grade, horror stories about the coming teenage years began drifting her parents' way. The media reinforced the idea of mothers and daughters as adversaries, and the fashion industry promoted styles that fairly guaranteed a battle. But as Stabiner approached that supposedly stormy time, she found something quite different. The world was full of daughters who were sick of being told how wretched they were and mothers who found that the passage to adolescence was both exciting and enjoyable-despite the inevitable conflicts. Even the happiest adolescence is full of challenges, though, and Karen Stabiner has gathered a lifesaving breadth of expert instruction ("Even when it's difficult, the onus is on the mother to be an adult"), enlightenment ("Ninety-seven percent of girls do not have a diagnosable eating disorder"), and support (conflict is "an incredible compliment to a mother," the safe person in her daughter's life). Sarah grows from a child who still likes to be carried to bed occasionally into a teen mastering a demanding sport and navigating friendships, and Karen Stabiner tells the story of that transition in scenes that will be both familiar and instructive to all mothers. Along the way, she learns to let go a little and to adjust the balance of her own life. With warmth, humor, and sharp insight, My Girl charts those first years of adolescence-and engagingly debunks the prevailing assumption that they are inevitably miserable.

Sixteen-year-old Adrienne Lewis is in charge of eight-year-old Emma Warner, the youngest member of the snooty Warner family. Emma is an evil genius who has gotten all five previous nannies fired -- and she's the good news. Because then there's Emma's half brother, Graydon, who goes to college -- yet always seems to be lurking around waiting to hit on Adrienne. But worst of all is Emma's beautiful seventeen-year-old half sister, Cameron, whose reputation as a wild girl, a liar, and a user is known to everyone . . . everyone, that is, except Adrienne.