A hilarious and heartfelt young YA comedy about the misadventures of an aspiring young rapper as he navigates school, family, and friendship.

Thirteen-year-old Growls (aka Shaun) is an aspiring (awful) rapper who hopes to enter this year's Raptology competition with his best friend, Shanks (aka Zachariah). After all, what better way to land his crush (Tanisha) and get the respect he finally deserves than winning the contest and going viral?

But when a livestream practice goes epically wrong, the two friends do go viral- and not in the way they'd hoped.

Now the laughingstock of the school, Growls is sure he'll never have another chance to date Tanisha. Even worse, Shanks has gone MIA, leaving him terribly alone.

But when Growls meets the new girl on the block (Siobhan), things don't seem so terrible after all. And with some patience, a little luck, and a whole lot of practice, he just might win the Raptology competition and be a hero to both Siobhan and Shanks.

Either way, he's ready for this. He's steady for this. It's comeback season and they call him comeback king for a reason.

Mari never gave much thought to the afterlife before her untimely demise, but she certainly didn't think it would be an experimental wellness enclave called Paradise Gate--a place where the newly dead go to sort out the unfinished business of their lives. She also didn't think the biggest problem to plague her in life would follow her into the great beyond: her also recently deceased mother, Faye. Mari quickly realizes Faye is her unfinished business, and in order to move on to whatever's next, she'll have to find a way to forgive her dysfunctional mother for being no mother at all. But there's so much to forgive: never holding down a steady job, never having a stable home, and abandoning Mari in the end.

It's a lot to sort through, but faced with the possibility of being turned out into the abyss, Mari gets to work. She enrolls in the prescribed self- actualization classes (think: journaling, positive self-talk, and lots of Youga(TM)). It all seems pretty hokey, but still, the assignments force Mari to confront difficult truths about her past.

When a shocking revelation about Mari's death captures the attention of the afterlife media, Mari is suddenly in the spotlight, her messy history being judged by the whole realm. She finds escape in an equally troubled boy, who takes Mari to an obscure part of Paradise Gate and introduces her to rebels who show Mari that this wellness center is not all it pretends to be. With classmates disappearing and an afterlife revolution brewing, Mari must decide whether to play it safe or break the rules. At stake? Her eternal fate. Literally.

Michael L. Printz Honor Book
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
New York Times Bestseller

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 ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun--but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl. Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.

A National Book Award Longlist Selection

Classic Malley: her parents are about to ship her off to boarding school, so she takes off with some guy she met online... Poor Richard: he's less of a rebel than Malley, and a lot less trusting. He knows his cousin is in trouble before she does. Wild Skink: he's a ragged, one-eyed, ex-governor of Florida, and enough of a renegade to think he can track Malley down. With Richard riding shotgun, this unlikely pair scour the state, undaunted by blinding storms, crazed pigs, flying bullets, and giant gators.

In Carl Hiaasen's outrageous, hilarious, and wildly dangerous state of Florida, there are a million places an outlaw might stash a teenage girl. A million unpleasant ways to die. And two who will risk everything to rescue a friend . . . and to, hopefully, exact a bit of swamp justice.

A PARADE BEST KIDS BOOK OF ALL TIME

Everybody loves Mother Paula's pancakes. Everybody, that is, except the colony of cute but endangered owls that live on the building site of the new restaurant. Can the awkward new kid and his feral friend prank the pancake people out of town? Or is the owls' fate cemented in pancake batter?

Welcome to Carl Hiaasen's Florida--where the creatures are wild and the people are wilder!

A hilarious and heartfelt young YA comedy about the misadventures of an aspiring young rapper as he navigates school, family, and friendship.

Thirteen-year-old Growls (aka Shaun) is an aspiring (awful) rapper who hopes to enter this year's Raptology competition with his best friend, Shanks (aka Zachariah). After all, what better way to land his crush (Tanisha) and get the respect he finally deserves than winning the contest and going viral?

But when a livestream practice goes epically wrong, the two friends do go viral- and not in the way they'd hoped.

Now the laughingstock of the school, Growls is sure he'll never have another chance to date Tanisha. Even worse, Shanks has gone MIA, leaving him terribly alone.

But when Growls meets the new girl on the block (Siobhan), things don't seem so terrible after all. And with some patience, a little luck, and a whole lot of practice, he just might win the Raptology competition and be a hero to both Siobhan and Shanks.

Either way, he's ready for this. He's steady for this. It's comeback season and they call him comeback king for a reason.

High school senior Delia Bridges has the most amazing mom and sister, a killer GPA--and periods that are so painful they make her scream, pass out, and throw up. Though she doesn't know it yet, Delia has endometriosis, an affliction plaguing millions of people that is notoriously difficult to diagnose.

Pain makes everything harder, but Delia is just one semester away from graduating from Stockwood Prep and pursuing her dream of becoming the kind of doctor she's never had: one who takes her symptoms seriously. But when she breaks a rule for the first time ever and is caught using marijuana at school to manage her pain, Delia is expelled.

Her expulsion jeopardizes her college acceptance, her planned mentorship, and everything she had carefully planned for years. Without her academic success and no closer to a diagnosis, is Delia anything more than her period?

Fifteen-year-old Evia Birtwhistle can't seem to catch a break. At home, she must deal with her free-spirited mom, and at school she's the target of ridicule for stating basic truths: like that girls have body hair!

When her BFF Frankie--who has facial hair due to her PCOS--becomes the target of school bullies, Evia decides that enough is enough and creates the 'Hairy Girls' Club.'

Leading a feminist movement at school is not easy. Boys often look at Evia like she's a total weirdo, and the self-proclaimed 'smoothalicious' girls start their own campaign in retaliation. As Evia struggles with feeling strong enough to lead, and questions how to be a good friend to Frankie, she falls back on the best thing she has--hope. Her message is simple: We CAN make this world a more accepting, less judgmental place for girls to live in...one hairy leg at a time!

Angus:
My mixed-breed cat, half domestic tabby, half Scottish wildcat. The size of a small Labrador, only mad.

Thongs:
Stupid underwear. What's the point of them, anyway? They just go up your bum, as far as I can tell.

Full-Frontal Snogging:
Kissing with all the trimmings, lip to lip, open mouth, tongues ... everything.

Her dad's got the mentality of a Teletubby (only not so developed). Her cat, Angus, is trying to eat the poodle next door. And her best friend thinks she looks like an alien -- just because she accidentally shaved off her eyebrows. Ergghhhlack. Still, add a little boy-stalking, teacher-baiting, and full-frontal snogging with a Sex God, and Georgia's year just might turn out to be the most fabbitty fab fab ever!

Selby hates homework.

She would rather watch daytime television - anything to escape the tedium of school, her parents' bookshop and small-town busybodies.

So Selby didn't plan to read Hamlet. She certainly never planned to meet him.

This novel transports Selby, and the reader, into the cold and crime-ridden play itself. Here she meets Hamlet: heavy with grief, the young prince is overthinking and over everything. Selby can relate. But unlike Hamlet, Selby isn't afraid of making decisions. In her world, Selby is used to feeling overlooked. But in the bloody, backstabbing world of Shakespeare, Selby's good conscience and quiet courage might just save some lives . . . hopefully before Hamlet stabs one of her classmates

Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones. Kingsley Amis's scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.

More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.

Michael L. Printz Honor Book
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

Katherine V thought boys were gross
Katherine X just wanted to be friends
Katherine XVIII dumped him in an e-mail
K-19 broke his heart
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type happens to be 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 ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun--but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl.

Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.

The perfect blend of horror and humor, I Have a Bad Feeling About This is a laugh-out-loud wilderness comedy about an ultimate survival camp that takes a deadly turn...

Wilderness Survival Tip #1

Drinking your own sweat will not save your life. Somebody might have told you that, but they were trying to find out if you'd really do it.

Wilderness Survival Tip #2

In case of an avalanche, don't despair. You're doomed, but that's a wicked cool death.

Wilderness Survival Tip #3

If you're relying on this book for actual survival tips, you're dead already.

Henry Lambert would rather play video games than spend time in the great outdoors--but that doesn't make him a wuss. Skinny nerd? Fine. But wuss is a little harsh. Sadly, his dad doesn't agree. Which is why Henry is being shipped off to Strongwoods Survival Camp.

Strongwoods isn't exactly as advertised. It looks like the victim of a zombie apocalypse, the camp director is a psycho drill sergeant, and Henry's sure he saw a sign written in blood...

Perfect for those looking for:

• Survival books for adults as well as young adults
• Hilarious comedy books for boys
• Teen books for boys ages 13-16

Also by Jeff Strand:

A Bad Day for Voo Doo

The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever

How You Ruined My Life

Stranger Things Have Happened

A PARADE BEST KIDS BOOK OF ALL TIME

Everybody loves Mother Paula's pancakes. Everybody, that is, except the colony of cute but endangered owls that live on the building site of the new restaurant. Can the awkward new kid and his feral friend prank the pancake people out of town? Or is the owls' fate cemented in pancake batter?

Welcome to Carl Hiaasen's Florida--where the creatures are wild and the people are wilder!

Negotiations are heated preceding Rosalite Roxburg's departure to the kingdom of Largole, and it's all about who holds the purse strings. As the Duke's daughter fights for the other Ducal households to contribute to the funds for her journey, House Edanelli makes an offer all find hard to refuse.

Sir Oswald, meanwhile, grows more and more attached to Rosalite, to the point that our heroine begins commiserating with him more than her own father, putting Oswald in Duke Roxburg's thorny sights. But this is a mere appetizer to the trouble awaiting Rosalite upon arrival in Largole: with the timeline for the novel's original apocalypse escalated, she finds herself out of time for frivolous encounters with the fourth prince.

Meanwhile, Glen, whose safety in the canon Rosalite has taken for granted, finds himself face-to-face with his manipulative mother, Lady Melissa Diamont. Will Rosalite make it back in time to rescue Glen, or will the machinations of the story finally catch up with her? Find out in Volume III of Touch My Brother and You Die!

Starting high school is never easy. Seniors take your lunch money. Girls you've known forever are suddenly beautiful and unattainable. And you can never get enough sleep. Could there be a worse time for Scott's mother to announce she's pregnant? Scott decides high school would be a lot less overwhelming if it came with a survival manual, so he begins to write down tips for his new sibling. Meanwhile, he's trying his best to capture the attention of Julia, the freshman goddess. In the process, Scott manages to become involved in nearly everything the school has to offer. So while he tries to find his place in the confusing world of high school, win Julia's heart, and keep his sanity, Scott will be recording all the details for his sibling's--and your--enjoyment.

Read the companion novel Sophomores and Other Oxymorons coming August 2015

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel comes to high school in acclaimed author Katie Henry's coming-of-age YA contemporary about a girl who accidentally falls into the world of stand-up comedy. Perfect for fans of John Green and Becky Albertalli!

Sixteen-year-old Izzy is used to keeping her thoughts to herself--in school, where her boyfriend does the talking for her, and at home, where it's impossible to compete with her older siblings and high-powered parents.

When she mistakenly walks into a stand-up comedy club and performs, the experience is surprisingly cathartic. After the show, she meets Mo, an aspiring comic who's everything Izzy's not: bold, confident, comfortable in her skin. Mo invites Izzy to join her group of friends and introduces her to the Chicago open mic scene.

The only problem? Her new friends are college students--and Izzy tells them she's one, too. Now Izzy, the dutiful daughter and model student, is sneaking out to perform stand-up with her comedy friends. Her controlling boyfriend is getting suspicious, and her former best friend knows there's something going on.

But Izzy loves comedy and this newfound freedom. As her two parallel lives collide--in the most hilarious of ways--Izzy must choose to either hide what she really wants and who she really is, or finally, truly stand up for herself.

* Rise: A Feminist Book Project Book of the Year * A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Book of the Year *

If this were a movie, everything would work out perfectly. Tabby would discover that Matt's madly in love with her, be overcome with emotion, and fall into his arms. Maybe in the rain.

But that's not how it works. Matt watches Tabby get swept away by senior basketball star and all-around great guy Liam Branson. Losing Tabby to Branson is bad enough, but screwing up and losing her as a friend is even worse.

After a tragic accident, Matt finds himself left on the sidelines, on the verge of spiraling out of control and losing everything that matters to him. From debut author Jared Reck comes a fiercely funny and heart-wrenching novel about love, longing, and what happens when life as you know it changes in an instant.

This story broke my heart and made me laugh and gave me hope--and really, what more can you ask of a book than that? I loved it, and I have a feeling you will too. --Jennifer E. Smith, author of Windfall and The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

In the blink of an eye, A Short History of the Girl Next Door goes from hilarious to haunting to harrowing to heartbreaking to hopeful and back. --Jeff Zentner, award-winning author of The Serpent King and Goodbye Days

Sharp, smart, and unforgettable. --Kate Hattemer, critically acclaimed author of The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy and The Land of 10,000 Madonnas

A powerful novel about first love, the intimacy of childhood friendships, and moving forward from loss. --Publishers Weekly

Pair this with other novels that explore loss from a male perspective, such as Jeff Zentner's Goodbye Days or Adam Silvera's History Is All You Left Me. --Booklist

Reck gives subtlety and depth to Matt, so he's believable as a flawed guy negotiating his way through his feelings for Tabby as well as his social status in school, his ideas of masculinity, and his insecurities. --The Bulletin

Recommend this to readers who enjoyed Steven Levenson's Dear Evan Hansen. --VOYA

Amnesia, love triangles, and political intrigue, oh my!

Rosalite may be stuck in her younger brother's tragic BL story, but all she has is work on her mind. In Volume II of the blockbuster hit Touch My Brother and You Die, the story takes a dive into political intrigue with the amnesiac magic instructor Sage Oswald acting as the head of a large-scale band of thieves in the Barony of Veloce. The problem? He's completely forgotten about the Magic Tower and seems more interested in sticking close to Rosalite than returning to his former duties.

Meanwhile, Rosalite and Glen's contractual relationship is all work and no play-especially for Glen as he takes on piles of work dumped on him by his lively paramour as the next Lord of Veloce. Rosalite seems oblivious to his stress, instead taking up the mantle of a diplomat in the distant country of Largole in the Alain Kingdom. Surely her crush on Largole's third imperial prince has nothing to do with her decision to leave... or does it?