In this story of perseverance in the face of adversity, Regina Calcaterra recounts her childhood in foster care and on the streets and how she and her savvy crew of homeless siblings managed to survive years of homelessness, abandonment, and abuse. Regina Calcaterra's emotionally powerful memoir reveals how she endured a series of foster homes and intermittent homelessness in the shadow of the Hamptons, and how she rose above her past while fighting to keep her brother and three sisters together.

If there's one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it's that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad's in prison. Life's not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav's got everything under control. Until, that is, Maverick finds out he's a father. But it's not so easy to sling dope, finish school, and raise a child.

Ghost. Lu. Patina. Sunny. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school track team - a team that could qualify them for the Junior Olympics if they can get their acts together. They all have a lot to lose, but they also have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves.

A bag of chips. That's all 16-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad's pleadings that he's stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad's resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad's every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered.

When the Watson family—ten-year-old Kenny, Momma, Dad, little sister Joetta, and brother Byron—sets out on a trip south to visit Grandma in Birmingham, Alabama, they don’t realize that they’re heading toward one of the darkest moments in America’s history. The Watsons’ journey reminds us that even in the hardest times, laughter and family can help us get through anything.

The author of the best selling Left Behind series, Jerry B. Jenkins is one of the most widely read and deeply admired novelists of our time. With Hometown Legend he has written an inspirational tale placed firmly in the nation's heartland, where football, family, and faith are everything, and where one town's greatest contest has begun.

Michelle was a young single mother when she was kidnapped by a local school bus driver named Ariel Castro. For more than a decade afterward, she endured unimaginable torture at the hand of her abductor. In 2003 Amanda Berry joined her in captivity, followed by Gina DeJesus in 2004. Their escape on May 6, 2013, made headlines around the world.

Guys and girls get together, get played, and get real. Who Am I Without Him? is a Booklist Top 10 Romance Novel for Teens and is "breaking new and necessary ground" in 12 short stories about guys and girls falling in and out of love and relationships, testing out ways to communicate with one another, respect each other - and respect themselves. This is a complex, often humorous, and always on-point exploration of today's teens determined to find love and self-worth...any way they know how.

The first time she saw him, she flipped. The first time he saw her, he ran. That was the second grade, but not much has changed by the seventh. Juli says, "My Bryce. Still walking around with my first kiss." He says, "It's been six years of strategic avoidance and social discomfort." But in the eighth grade, everything gets turned upside down: Just as Bryce is thinking that there's maybe more to Juli than meets the eye, she's thinking that he's not quite all he seemed.

When it happened Miguel was sent to Juvi. The judge only gave him a year in a group home - said he had to write in a journal so some counselor could try to figure out how he thinks. The judge had no idea that he'd actually done Miguel a favor. Ever since it happened Miguel’s mom can't even look him in the eye. Any home besides his would be a better place to live. But Miguel didn’t bet on meeting Rondell or Mong or on any of what happened after they broke out. He only thought about Mexico and getting across the border to where he could start over....

All Pen wants is to be the kind of girl she's always been. So why does everyone have a problem with it? They think the way she looks and acts means she's trying to be a boy - that she should quit trying to be something she's not. If she dresses like a girl and does what her folks want, it will show respect. If she takes orders and does what her friend, Colby, wants, it will show her loyalty. But respect and loyalty, Pen discovers, are empty words.

Luther T. Farrell has got to get out of Flint, Michigan. As his best friend Sparky says, "Flint's nothing but the Titanic."

In Bed Stuy, New York, a small misunderstanding can escalate into having a price on your head - even if you’re totally clean. This gritty, triumphant debut captures the heart and the hardship of life for an urban teen. A lot of the stuff that gives my neighborhood a bad name, I don’t really mess with. The guns and drugs and all that, not really my thing. Nah, not his thing. Ali’s got enough going on, between school and boxing and helping out at home. His best friend Noodles, though. Now there’s a dude looking for trouble - and, somehow, it’s always Ali around to pick up the pieces.

Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi and featuring some of the most acclaimed best-selling black authors writing for teens today - Black Enough is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it’s like to be young and black in America. A selection of the Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading List.

River on Fire is the story of Randall Smith, a foundling orphan growing up in the midwestern United States in the late 1960s. Without the intimate guidance of loving parents, Randall struggles to understand a dangerous and confusing world during one of the most tumultuous times in modern history. Filled with humor and irony, River on Fire will both warm and break your heart.

When it happened Miguel was sent to Juvi. The judge only gave him a year in a group home - said he had to write in a journal so some counselor could try to figure out how he thinks. The judge had no idea that he'd actually done Miguel a favor. Ever since it happened Miguel’s mom can't even look him in the eye. Any home besides his would be a better place to live. But Miguel didn’t bet on meeting Rondell or Mong or on any of what happened after they broke out. He only thought about Mexico and getting across the border to where he could start over....

When Brittany Ellis walks into chemistry class on the first day of senior year, she has no clue that her carefully created perfect life is about to unravel before her eyes. She's forced to be lab partners with Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, and he is about to threaten everything she's worked so hard for her flawless reputation, her relationship with her boyfriend, and the secret that her home life is anything but perfect.

Nothing has been the same since Caleb Becker left a party drunk, got behind the wheel, and hit Maggie Armstrong. Even after months of painful physical therapy, Maggie walks with a limp. Her social life is nil and a scholarship to study abroad - her chance to escape everyone and their pitying stares - has been canceled. After a year in juvenile jail, Caleb’s free...if freedom means endless nagging from a transition coach and the prying eyes of the entire town. Coming home should feel good, but his family and ex-girlfriend seem like strangers.

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.

Yankee transplant Daniel Musgrove can't seem to fit in at his Mississippi high school. When he meets fellow outsider Tim Cousins, things look up. But then the two boys' battles with a local bully escalate into a violent act that rocks the town.

Since first grade, Christopher Creed has been everyone's favorite freak and weirdo whipping boy. But when he disappears without a trace, leaving behind only a strange e-mail message that might be a suicide note, his quiet town becomes consumed with speculation and finger-pointing. And the longer he remains missing, the more clear it becomes that for most people, finding out what happened to Christopher is much less important than finding someone besides themselves to blame.

Nine-year-old Carrie Parker and her mother, Libby, are making a fresh start in the small town of Hartsville, North Carolina, ready to put their turbulent past behind them. Violence has shattered their family and left Libby nearly unable to cope. And while Carrie once took comfort in her beloved sister, Emma, her mother has now forbidden even the mention of her name. When Carrie meets Ruth, Honor, and Cricket Chaplin, these three generations of warmhearted women seem to have the loving home Carrie has always dreamed of. But as Carrie and Cricket become fast friends, neither can escape the pull of their families' secrets.

Best friends since childhood, Luke and Toby have dreamed of one thing: getting out of their dead-end town. Soon they finally will, riding the tails of Luke's wrestling scholarship, never looking back. If they don't drift apart first. If Toby's abusive dad, or Luke's unreliable mom, or anything else their complicated lives throw at them doesn't get in the way. In a format that alternates between Luke's letters to Toby from death row and the events of their senior year, Bryan Bliss expertly unfolds the circumstances that led to Luke's incarceration.

Ryan Dean West is a 14-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids. He’s living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers, and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he’s madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy. With the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics, Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications and even find some happiness along the way. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important.

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words - and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps”. Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

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.

After an eventful freshman year and a disastrous summer, fifteen-year-old Will Carter returns to Merrian High none the wiser. The year starts off pretty normally. He’s back on the football field (the bench area of the field). He and his boys start a fight club to defend themselves against Scary Terry Moss, who is out of juvie and hunting Carter. And he goes to homecoming again with Amber Lee.

While looking out the window with her grandma's binoculars, Sammy witnesses a crime across the street at the Heavenly Hotel. What's worse, the thief saw her spying! As Sammy attempts to find the burglar who has made several other hits in the neighborhood, she finds herself trying to keep him from uncovering her - or worse, the police discovering that she's living illegally with her grandmother in the seniors-only housing!

Each of the 18 kids in Mr. Ward's inner city classroom has something important to say, but some don't even realize it. Then Mr. Ward begins to have "open mic" poetry slams once a month on Fridays. Young adult listeners will identify with the characters in Bronx Masquerade as they explore questions about life and self-expression.

When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has $10,000 in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun - but no Katherines.