Summer of Love, by Emily Franklin, is part of a series about a girl named Love Bukowski, this time focusing on the summer before her senior year. As the book begins she looks forward to a great summer with her best friend and to using the summer to discover the mysteries of her past, like the whereabouts of her previously absent mother. She soon finds some of the fun she was seeking but with it comes new confusion about her past.
Just in Case is the story of a boy who wants desperately to escape fate. He runs and runs from fate, but can't ever seem to go quick enough to escape. First he changes his name from David to Justin, with the mentality that he can trick fate into forgetting his existence. He changes his physical state, his wardrobe, even his friends, but all in vain. Fate is not so easily fooled. As the book progresses Justin's fate plays out in many unexpected and refreshingly peculiar ways.
The Rules of Survival is about a boy, Matt, and his two sisters, Callie and Emmy, who live with their slightly unstable mother, Nikki, in South Boston. One fateful night when Matt and Callie risk walking down to the local grocer store (while their mother is out for the night, of course) they witness a man helping a young boy whose father is screaming at him. That incident sparks a curiosity in Matt and he sets out to find this mysterious, strong stranger. Fate plays out and Matt's neurotic mother and the man, Murdoch, begin having a relationship.
The Bad Mother's Handbook by Kate Long is the story of three generations of women experiencing very different times and how they cope with one another. Charlotte is a struggling seventeen-year- old who finds herself pregnant in the middle of her junior year with the father consciously ignoring the baby's existence. Meanwhile, Karen, Charlotte's mother has problems of her own. Aside from finding the perfect man, and becoming a grandmother when she's only thirty-three, she has just unearthed a huge secret about her past.
King Dork is the story of a sophomore boy named Tom, who is your average, unexpected protagonist. He is a loser. He gets beat up in school, chicks aren't into him (well not at first anyway), his home-life is messy, he loves and truly appreciates Rock and Roll, and has only one friend like figure. Yet he still manages to view the world through a cynical, witty, and slightly askew eye. Throughout the book he yearns to sew the mystery of his father's death into his present, by reading his father's old books and tracking down people his father once knew.
Dead Connection by Charlie Price is a mystery about the people surrounding a teen cheerleader's death. Murray, a social pariah who has the ability to speak with the dead, hangs out in the local cemetery. Just as he finally makes his first friend in the caretaker's daughter, Pearl, he begins to hear a new voice lurking around the graves. They are immediately convinced that it is the cheerleader trying to communicate with them. The only problem is finding her.
