Difficult Family

If Naomi had picked tails, she would have won the coin toss. She wouldn't have had to go back for the yearbook camera, and she wouldn't have hit her head on the steps. She wouldn't have woken up in an ambulance with amnesia. She certainly would have remembered her boyfriend, Ace. She might even have remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place. She would understand why her best friend, Will, keeps calling her "Chief".

Morgan was born with a hole in her middle: a perfectly smooth, sealed, fist-sized chunk of nothing near her belly button. At 16, she's tired of keeping her physical abnormality a secret. One night, after a lifetime of hiding behind lumpy sweaters and a smart mouth, she decides to bare all. At first, she feels liberated. But the fallout is more than she bargained for. A few photos snowball into a media frenzy, and suddenly she is desperate to get back to her own strange version of normal.

Tallulah Liddell had been defined by her appearance for as long as she could remember. Overweight and insecure, she preferred to fly under the radar, drawing as little attention to herself as possible, so no one can hurt her. The only boy who did seem to ever notice her was her longtime crush, Nash Lee. But when he laughs at a joke aimed at Tallulah the summer before their senior year, Tallulah’s love dissipates.

November Nelson lost her boyfriend Josh when a high school hazing incident went horribly wrong. She thinks life can't get worse - then she learns she is carrying Josh's child. She seeks comfort from Josh's cousin and best friend Jericho, who himself is trying to hide the pain of his friend's death by diving into his sports and music. Listeners will get to hear November's story as well as Jericho's as they come to terms with Josh's death.

Der 15-jährige Daniel ist vor allem eins: wütend. Sein Vater ist weg, seine Mutter schleppt einen Liebhaber nach dem anderen an. Doc, ihr neuester Freund, ist der Mann, der Daniels Hund eingeschläfert hat. Trotzdem gewinnt Daniel ihn lieb. Bis zu einem tödlichen Unfall nach einer Party, durch den Daniel ein schrecklicher Verdacht kommt. Kann er seinen Erinnerungen an diese Nacht glauben? Oder spiegeln sie nur wider, was er gerne glauben würde?

Trapped by the limitations of her middle school adjective and the realities of her mother's alcohol addiction, Sophie's perspective on what being pretty really means changes drastically in the second adjective-busting novel by the author of Husky, Justin Sayre. Set three months after Husky's conclusion and narrated by Sophie, Davis' best friend, Sayre details the private and public life of someone saddled with the adjective of pretty.

I know what you think. You think I’m fixable, don’t you? You want to fix the bad guy. You don’t know the half of it. Tod Munn is a bully. He’s tough, but times are even tougher. The wimps have stopped coughing up their lunch money. The administration is cracking down. Then to make things worse, Tod and his friends get busted doing something bad. Something really bad. Lucky Tod must spend his daily detention in a hot, empty room with Mrs. Woodrow, a no-nonsense guidance counselor. He doesn’t know why he’s there, but she does.

Meet Will Carter, but feel free to call him Carter. (Yes, he knows it's a lazy nickname, but he didn't have much say in the matter.) He has a stuttering problem, particularly around boobs and belly buttons. He battles Attention Deficit Disorder every minute of every day...unless he gets distracted. He's a virgin, mostly because he's no good at talking to girls.

It’s the last few days of an amazing trip to Pakistan, and Amina finds it hard to leave the sights, the shops, and most of all, her family. As she heads back to Greendale to start seventh grade, the experience has changed her, and she’s eager to share it with her friends. At home, though, Amina discovers her friends don’t seem interested in hearing about her trip. With everyone growing in different directions, Amina wonders where she belongs - especially after her school presentation on Malala goes sideways, leaving her feeling like nobody understands both her worlds.

Katsuyamas never quit - but 17-year-old CJ doesn’t even know where to start. She’s never lived up to her mom’s type A ambition, and she’s perfectly happy just helping her aunt Hannah at their family’s flower shop. She doesn’t buy into Hannah’s romantic ideas about flowers and their hidden meanings, but when it comes to arranging the perfect bouquet, CJ discovers a knack she never knew she had. A skill of which she might even be proud. Then her mom decides to sell the shop - to the family who swindled CJ’s grandparents during WWII.

Red’s inexplicable power over the wind comes from her mother. Whenever Ruby "Red" Byrd is scared or angry, the wind picks up. And being placed in foster care, moving from family to family, tends to keep her skies stormy. Red knows she has to learn to control it, but can’t figure out how. This time, the wind blows Red into the home of the Grooves, a quirky couple who run a petting zoo, complete with a dancing donkey and a giant tortoise. But just when Red starts to settle into her new life, a fresh storm rolls in, one she knows all too well: her mother.

In this powerful middle-grade novel from the acclaimed author of Things You Can't Say, a young girl navigates the social growing pains of middle school and struggles to find her place while her older brother fights to overcome opioid addiction. When Emma starts sixth grade, things finally begin to change. She may still be in the shadow of her older brother, Austin, the popular high school quarterback, but she's made artsy new friends who get her way more than her bookish best friend, Becca. But things are changing for Austin, too.

Where is Early's father? He's not the kind of father who you think would disappear. But he's gone. And he's left a whole lot of trouble behind. As danger closes in, Early, her mom, and her brother have to flee their apartment. With nowhere else to go, they are forced to move into Chicago's shelter system. Once there, Early starts asking questions and looking for answers. There are patterns and rhythms to what's happened, and Early might be the only one who can use them to track him down and make her way out of a very tough place.

Adam is in Doha, Qatar, making a map of the Hijra, a historic migration from Mecca to Medina, and worried about where his next paycheck will come from. Zayneb is in Chicago, where school and extracurricular stresses are piling on top of a terrible frenemy situation, making her miserable. Then a marvel occurs: Adam and Zayneb get the chance to spend Thanksgiving week on the Umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia.

In the end, all that's left is an Echo. Before, Violet's morbid ability to sense the dead led her to uncover dark murders and long-buried secrets in her small town. Now that she's workingwith a special investigative team, Violet hopes she can help even more people - whether by saving a life or catching a killer. Although she's relieved to finally be honest about what she can do, her instant connection with her mysterious partner, Rafe, is both confusing and unsettling, and their unique bond creates tension with her boyfriend, Jay. When she discovers the body of a college student murdered by "the collector," Violet refuses to give upon the case.

Take two sisters making it on their own: brainy 12-year-old GiGi (short for Galileo Galilei, a name she never says out loud) and junior-high-dropout-turned-hairstylist DiDi (short for Delta Dawn). Add a million dollars in prize money from a national cooking contest and a move from the trailer parks of South Carolina to the Gold Coast of New York. Mix in a fancy new school, new friends and enemies, a first crush, and a generous sprinkling of family secrets.

For 16-year-old Mel Hannigan, bipolar disorder makes life unpredictable. Her latest struggle is balancing her growing feelings in a new relationship with her instinct to conceal her diagnosis by keeping everyone at arm's length. But when a former friend confronts Mel with the truth about the way their relationship ended, deeply buried secrets threaten to come out and upend her shaky equilibrium.

Astrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother's pushiness and her father's lack of interest tell her they're the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn't know the passengers inside, but they're the only people who won't judge her when she asks them her most personal questions...like what it means that she's falling in love with a girl.

Lauren DeStefano’s Wither was called a “thought-provoking debut, reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale” by Kirkus Reviews. Its chilling follow-up, Fever, continues 16-year-old Rhine’s tale - set in a dark future in which men and women die by age 25, and young girls are sold into marriage to keep the population growing. Rhine has finally escaped her marriage. But what hope can the outside world offer when death looms ever closer?

Eden had her best friend Katie—she didn’t need anyone else. But then there was Truman. Katie’s older brother, the artist. The recluse. The boy with the innocent smile and the dangerous eyes. Eden had never really known Truman—not until the night of Katie’s accident. That was the night they’d finally let each other into their orbits—only to have the sky come crashing down on them.