Even before Jen disappeared, Jimmy knew his best friend was leaving him behind. While she attracts stares from boys and men, fifteen-year-old Jimmy still passes for a child at the movies. He takes refuge in the past, before their friendship and life became so complicated. She’s his favorite subject―in front of the camera and otherwise―but photos can’t capture what he really wants. Yet Jimmy remains devoted, even lying for her when she runs off with strangers―men―she’s met online.
Jimmy feels that Jen’s disappearance is his fault, just like the twelve-acre blaze he starts in the canyon near their trailer park. And he’s holding on to a secret that no one can drag out of him―not the taunting kids at school, an apathetic psychologist, or his despairing mother.
Revolving between past and present, Paul W. Buchanan’s vivid “snapshot” vignettes evoke a young man’s struggle with oncoming adulthood, heartbreak, and incredible loss.
What's happening in New York City?
Giant Squirrels.
A Haunted Mansion.
Six fierce friends with fiercer secrets.
Ananka is in danger of being sent to a remote boarding school; Kiki's life (as always) is in danger, Betty seems to have found love in all the wrong places, and Oona….well, Oona's the one in the most serious trouble of all. From Chinatown to Fifth Avenue, whether they are rescuing kidnapped children or resuscitating an ancient Empress at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Irregulars have a knack for finding trouble, and putting it out of its misery.
Jamie O’Neill is back on earth, where no one but his best friend, Ramsay, knows he’s the hero of a great war that saved an alien nation. Now he’s back to being a kid with one arm, no girlfriend, and a band that plays bad songs about intergalactic romance. Then news breaks on the Internet: A space probe has picked up a coded message from far across the galaxy. NASA’s best scientists can’t figure out what it says. Only Jamie and Ramsay realize it’s a message from Altair. They’re needed again.
This thrilling sequel to The Lighthouse Land is packed with even more adventure, battles, and humor than its predecessor, and secures Adrian McKinty’s place as one of science fiction’s most exciting new voices.
Two teens, a shadowy mission, and no turning back. . . . This lavish 1920s journal kicks off a three-part series recounting the adventures of two intrepid siblings tracking their parents’ disappearance. Starting aboard their uncle’s research ship, the saga moves at a breathless pace through the streets of Shanghai and on to a terrifying island fortress. Chinese mercenaries, a hateful pirate warlord, and a highminded secret society all play a part in a thrilling tale of intrigue packed with nonstop action and novelty features.
A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
An Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Award Winner
Luckily the people in charge have a plan: Create three perfect Heroes, the best of each world, and send them on a quest to find the Objects of Power that will restore the balance. But things go wrong when the Heroes are needed ten years earlier than expected, and three confused kids set off to save the worlds. Madlen, Bryn, and Cam have no idea what they're looking for or where they'll find it. What they do know is that to fail would mean unthinkable disaster.
It's a pity, then, that someone is determined to stop them...
From the icebound city of the dragons to the magical kitchen of The London House, Joan Lennon has crafter a highly inventive story that is fast-paced, fantastical, and funny.
The extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller that is now a major motion picture, Markus Zusak's unforgettable story is about the ability of books to feed the soul.
Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.
When Death has a story to tell, you listen.
It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.
Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.
“The kind of book that can be life-changing.” —The New York Times
“Deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.” —USA Today
When her mother dies, fifteen-year-old Keelie Heartwood is forced to leave her beloved California to live with her nomadic father at a renaissance festival in Colorado. After arriving, Keelie finds men in tights and women in trailer trash-tight bodices roaming half-drunk, calling each other lady and lord even after closing time! Playacting the Dark Ages is an L.A. girl’s worst nightmare.
Keelie has a plan to ditch this medieval geekland ASAP, but while she plots, strange things start happening―eerie, yet familiar. When Keelie starts seeing fairies and communicating with trees, she uncovers a secret that links her to a community of elves. As Keelie tries to come to grips with her elfin roots, disaster strikes, and Keelie’s identity isn’t the only thing that’s threatened.
One part human determination and one part elfin magic, Keelie Heartwood is a witty new heroine in a world where fantasy and reality mix with extraordinary results.
When sixteen-year-old Lily Willison and her friends Nikki, Arielle, and Grazia start up a girls' soccer club and name their team the Weregirls, they soon find themselves drawn into a battle between good and evil. Lily's father, a supernatural guardian, makes contact with Lily after his death and reveals that she has magical powers―as do her friends.
As the girls learn more about their powers, they inadvertently awaken the Breed, sworn enemies of the Weregirls. To fight the Weregirls, the Breed Master calls upon Lily's soccer rival―the rich, conceited, and arrogant Andra Hewlit. Desperate for powers of her own, Andra will do anything she can to destroy Lily and the Weregirls….
A young man's quest to reconcile his deafness in an unforgiving world leads to a remarkable sojourn in a remote African village that pulsates with beauty and violence
These are hearing aids. They take the sounds of the world and amplify them." Josh Swiller recited this speech to himself on the day he arrived in Mununga, a dusty village on the shores of Lake Mweru. Deaf since a young age, Swiller spent his formative years in frustrated limbo on the sidelines of the hearing world, encouraged by his family to use lipreading and the strident approximations of hearing aids to blend in. It didn't work. So he decided to ditch the well-trodden path after college, setting out to find a place so far removed that his deafness would become irrelevant.
That place turned out to be Zambia, where Swiller worked as a Peace Corps volunteer for two years. There he would encounter a world where violence, disease, and poverty were the mundane facts of life. But despite the culture shock, Swiller finally commanded attention―everyone always listened carefully to the white man, even if they didn't always follow his instruction. Spending his days working in the health clinic with Augustine Jere, a chubby, world-weary chess aficionado and a steadfast friend, Swiller had finally found, he believed, a place where his deafness didn't interfere, a place he could call home. Until, that is, a nightmarish incident blasted away his newfound convictions.
At once a poignant account of friendship through adversity, a hilarious comedy of errors, and a gripping narrative of escalating violence, The Unheard is an unforgettable story from a noteworthy new talent.