Difficult Family Relationships

First time I saw her was in the mirror on my locker door. I'd kicked my swim gear onto the bottom shelf and was reaching to the top for my calc book when she opened her locker across the hall. She had a streaked blonde ponytail dangling out the back of her baseball cap.... We slammed our lockers in unison and turned. Her eyes met mine. "Hi," she said, smiling. My stomach fluttered. "Hi," I answered automatically. She was new. Had to be. I would've noticed her. She sauntered away, but not before I caught a glimpse of her T-shirt. It said: IMRU? Am I what?

When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she isn't sure if she'll ever want to go back. LA is where her friends and family are (along with her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support. But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new...the same girl her brother is in love with.

Emily’s been shipped off to Iowa to live with her uber-conservative cousins. Aria’s boyfriend is behind bars—because of her. Spencer’s afraid she was involved in Ali’s murder. But Hanna’s fate is far worse: She’s clinging to life in the hospital because she knew too much.

To get away from his chaotic, often violent parents, 17-year-old Jesse has moved into an apartment with his brother. They are both taking community college courses in Fresno. But to pay for them, they must take whatever jobs they can find, even backbreaking field work. The path to a good education isn't going to be an easy one for these two young Mexican-Americans. As Jesse absorbs information in his classes, he learns harsher lessons from the people around him.

When Adam Blake lands the best elective ever in his senior year, serving as an aide to the school psychologist, he thinks he's got it made. Sure, it means a lot of sitting around, which isn't easy for a guy with ADHD, but he can't complain, since he gets to spend the period texting all his friends. Then the doctor asks him to track down the troubled freshman who keeps dodging her, and Adam discovers that the boy is Julian - the foster brother he hasn't seen in five years.

This innovative, heartfelt debut novel tells the story of a girl who's literally allergic to the outside world. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she's ever known.

Flashbacks. Guilt. Self-Loathing. Quick is a teenager drowning in the aftermath of an unspeakable tragedy. Estranged from his dysfunctional parents and disconnected from his peers, he numbs his pain with endless distractions, struggling to survive each agonizing day. Meditations. Crystals. Self-Awareness. Quinn, a self-imposed outcast, seeks refuge in the spiritual world. After a heartbreaking loss, she immerses herself in energy healing, embracing nature's solace and striving to move forward with positivity and gratitude.

Kacey is the new girl in Broken Falls. When she moved in with her father, she stepped into a brand-new life. A life with a stepbrother, a stepmother, and, strangest of all, an adoring younger half sister. Kacey's new life is eerily charming compared with the wild highs and lows of the old one she lived with her volatile mother. And everyone is so nice in Broken Falls - she's even been welcomed into a tight new circle of friends. Bailey and Jade invite her to do everything with them.

Difficult brings to life the conflicts that arise for mothers who are confronted with the unexpected and burdensome dependencies of their adult children associated with mental illness, substance use, or chronic unemployment. Through real stories of mothers and their challenging adult children, this book offers accessible, provocative, and, at times, shocking illustrations of the excruciating maternal dilemma: Which takes precedence—the needs of the mother or of the distressed adult child? Difficult addresses a family situation which too many keep secret.

Carlos Fuentes doesn't want any part of the life his older brother, Alex, has laid out for him in Boulder, Colorado. He wants to keep living on the edge, and carve his own path - just like Alex did. Unfortunately, his ties to a Mexican gang aren't easy to break, and he soon finds himself being set up by a drug lord. When Alex arranges for Carlos to live with his former professor and his family to keep him from being sent to jail, Carlos feels completely out of place.

Lewis "Shoe" Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he's not used to is white people being nice to him - people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, especially the Beatles, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family's poverty from George.

Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when the cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her big brother; she still had her home. She was even supposed to be meeting a boy to talk about marriage. Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors. She knows that she should be thinking about leaving, but who will help the people of her beloved country if she doesn't? With her heart so conflicted, her mind has conjured a vision to spur her to action.

Coretta Scott King Award-winner Sharon M. Draper updates Shakespeare's classic Romeo and Juliet in this romantic tale of star-crossed lovers out to control their own destiny. Sisi Aisha Johnson's versatile reading captures the sweeping love and thrilling action of this unforgettable story.

For Lena, the upcoming year is going to be epic—one of opportunities and chances. Until one choice, one moment, destroys everything. Now Lena isn't looking forward to tomorrow. Not when friend time may never be the same. Not when college applications feel all but impossible. Not when Sebastian might never forgive her for what happened. For what she let happen. With the guilt growing each day, Lena knows that her only hope is to move on. But how can she move on when her and her friends' entire existences have been redefined? How can she move on when tomorrow isn't even guaranteed?

What's it like to be undocumented? High school senior M.T. knows all too well. With graduation and an uncertain future looming, she must figure out how to grow up in the only country she's ever called home... a country in which she's "illegal". M.T. was born in Argentina and brought to America as a baby without any official papers. And as questions of college, work, and the future arise, M.T. will have to decide what exactly she wants for herself, knowing someone she loves will unavoidably pay the price for it.

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they'e all criminals. Many become mobsters and con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn't got magic, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail - he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago

Juliet Young always writes letters to her mother, a world-traveling photojournalist. Even after her mother's death, she leaves letters at her grave. It's the only way Juliet can cope. Declan Murphy isn't the sort of guy you want to cross. In the midst of his court-ordered community service at the local cemetery, he's trying to escape the demons of his past. When Declan reads a haunting letter left beside a grave, he can't resist writing back. Soon, he's opening up to a perfect stranger, and their connection is immediate.

Seventeen-year-old Abby Turner's summer isn't going the way she'd planned. She has a not-so-secret but definitely unrequited crush on her best friend, Cooper. She hasn't been able to manage her mother's growing issues with anxiety. And now she's been rejected from an art show because her work "has no heart". So when she gets another opportunity to show her paintings, Abby isn't going to take any chances. Which is where the list comes in. Abby gives herself one month to do 10 things, ranging from face a fear (three) to learn a stranger's story (five) to fall in love (eight).

Mattie Gokey has a word for everything. She collects words, stores them up as a way of fending off the hard truths of her life, the truths that she can't write down in stories.

Seventeen-year-old Stevie is trapped. In her life. And now in an eating-disorder treatment center on the dusty outskirts of the New Mexico desert. Life in the center is regimented and intrusive, a nightmare come true. Nurses and therapists watch Stevie at mealtime, accompany her to the bathroom, and challenge her to eat the foods she's worked so hard to avoid.