Eighteen-year-old Holiday needs to sort her life out.
She's still shaken from her brother's recent suicide attempt; still pining over her ex, Maya; and still struggling to write again after a long dry spell. To earn enough money for a rebalancing trip with Maya, Holi gets a short-term job: organizing the attic of acclaimed author Elsie McAllister. It's an unglamorous gig with a difficult boss. Elsie--whose fame rests on a single novel published decades ago--is in her nineties, in failing health, and fiercely protective of her privacy. But as Holi sorts through the attic's surprising contents, she realizes there's much more to Elsie than the novel that made her a legend.
Unearthing Elsie's secrets will change how Holi sees art, life, and the way they intertwine, as she grapples with choices that will redefine her own path.
Jonah Tarver, a troubled Oakland teenager grappling with his parents' troubled marriage, his own mental disorder, and the weight of his best friend's death, embarks on a desperate quest to find meaning in life. On his eighteenth birthday, coinciding with his Senior prom, Jonah, along with his girlfriend Taniesha, his best friend Trevon, and a group of peers, spirals into a night of reckless indulgence in drugs and alcohol in the vibrant city of San Francisco. As tensions escalate and emotions run high, Jonah finds himself thrust into a gripping twelve-hour journey through the dark underbelly of San Francisco's nightlife, forever altering his perception of the world. Will Jonah uncover the purpose he so desperately seeks, or will he discover that life, like broken pencils, may have no point?
A Freeman Award Winner for Young Adult Literature
For two teens, falling in love is going to make a world of difference in this beautifully translated, bold, and endearing novel about love, loss, and the pain of racial discrimination.
As a Korean student in a Japanese high school, Sugihara has had to defend himself against all kinds of bullies. But nothing could have prepared him for the heartache he feels when he falls hopelessly in love with a Japanese girl named Sakurai. Immersed in their shared love for classical music and foreign movies, the two gradually grow closer and closer.
One night, after being hit by personal tragedy, Sugihara reveals to Sakurai that he is not Japanese--as his name might indicate.
Torn between a chance at self-discovery that he's ready to seize and the prejudices of others that he can't control, Sugihara must decide who he wants to be and where he wants to go next. Will Sakurai be able to confront her own bias and accompany him on his journey?
Just before the United States enters the Vietnam War, eleven-year-old Bé and her three-footed kitten Mèo must rise above the injustices of war to find the comfort, safety, and love of a found family.
Eleven-year-old Bé hasn't spoken a word since her mother left. She hangs on to the hope that one day they will be reunited, but after two years of waiting, it's becoming more difficult. Her father--who is now frail and helpless after a stroke--can do little to protect her from her stepmother, Big Mother, who treats Bé like an animal and a servant. Thankfully, Bè has a secret friend, her little kitten Mèo, to comfort her in the worst of times. Maybe if she just steers clear of Big Mother and is obedient, everything will be okay.
Unfortunately, Big Mother has other plans. She accuses her of stealing, and Bé is drugged and sold. When she wakes up, she finds herself in a locked underground bunker being held captive with a group of young women. Bé is too young to understand why they're prisoners, but at least she still has Mèo! He was hiding in her shirt when she was taken. As weeks pass, Bé makes a friend her own age, Ngân, even without speaking, and Mèo becomes a solace for the women--being available for cuddles and catching the mice that annoy them.
Suddenly, a violent uprising enables the imprisoned women and girls to escape, only to realize the wider world of war is just as dangerous. Can Bé and Mèo, and their newfound friend, Ngân, find their way to a safe place they can call home--even though the world is literally exploding all around them?
A beautiful literary work, full of kindness and compassion amidst the devastation of war.
For eighteen-year-old Shannon Lightley, life's been an endless parade across Europe, following either her actress mother or her renowned journalist father. Paris, Milan, London--Shannon has been everywhere, but somewhere along the way, she realizes she's really...nowhere.
Having graduated from high school and about to board yet another flight for yet another destination, Shannon is offered an alternative: stay in Portland, Oregon, with her parents' close friend and help his law firm investigate a group of strangers living near the local university. A will with a substantial inheritance is being contested, and Shannon's task is to gather information on the unlikely recipients of the money.
Using an assumed name and working as a waitress in a diner, Shannon finds herself entirely on her own for the first time in her life; and as the long summer days go by, she tries to sort out who she really is and what her future holds.
Originally published in 1968 and newly released as part of Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries, Greensleeves is a smart and timeless tale of how far people must go to find themselves.
--Winner of the 2015 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People
--Named a 2015 Green Earth Honor Book by the Nature Generation
--Named a Best Book of 2014 by Teaching for Change
A deep read, but fast; it lingers in your mind long after it's been read. --New York Journal of Books
I'm the first to admit that dystopia isn't usually for me, but this one got right under my skin. --The School Librarian
Part of Akashic's Black Sheep YA imprint.
In this richly imagined dystopic future brought by global warming, seventeen-year-old Nat and her hacker brother Sam have come by ship to the Big Island of Hawaii for their parents' Final Week. The few Americans who still live well also live long--so long that older adults bow out not by natural means but by buying death contracts from the corporates who now run the disintegrating society by keeping the people happy through a constant diet of pharma. Nat's family is spending their pharma-guided last week at a luxury resort complex called the Twilight Island Acropolis.
Deeply conflicted about her parents' decision, Nat spends her time keeping a record of everything her family does in the company-supplied diary that came in the hotel's care package. While Nat attempts to come to terms with her impending parentless future, Sam begins to discover cracks in the corporates' agenda and eventually rebels against the company his parents have hired to handle their last days. Nat has to choose a side. Does she let her parents go gently into that good night, or does she turn against the system and try to break them out?
But the deck is stacked against Nat and Sam: in this oppressive environment, water and food are scarce, mass human migrations are constant, and new babies are illegal. As the week nears its end, Nat rushes to protect herself and her younger brother from the corporates while also forging a path toward a future that offers the hope of redemption for humanity. This page-turning first YA novel by critically acclaimed author Lydia Millet is stylish and dark and yet deeply hopeful, bringing Millet's characteristic humor and style to a new generation of young readers.
Set in magical New Orleans, two teens from vastly different worlds discover that sharing their strengths, including the love of their friends and family, may just be the path to finding wholeness within themselves.
Being there for her family is the most important thing to Jessamine Monet. And her family is complicated. Her twin brother Joel has a secret boyfriend, and her transgender cousin Solange is flourishing, despite the disapproval of Solange's dying mother. Yet Jessamine doesn't mind being caught up in family drama. Being busy keeps the water at bay -- the water of memories, of Katrina, of past trauma. So when Tennessee Williams -- a rich white boy named after the writer -- asks her out, she hesitantly says yes. He'll be like a library book, she figures, something to read and return. Falling for him is another burden she can't afford to carry.
Tennessee has always lived his life at the mercy of his mom's destructive creativity and his dad's hypermasculine expectations. Jessamine's caring and aloof nature is a surprisingly welcome distraction. While she fights her attraction to him, Tennessee is pulled into her inner family circle and develops a friendship with Joel's boyfriend, Saint Baptiste. Together Saint and Tennessee bond over the difficulty of loving the emotionally unavailable Monet twins.
As senior year progresses, old traumas and familial pressures rise higher than hurricane waves. Can this group of friends make peace with each other, their families, and most importantly, with themselves?
Brennan just wants to be a good boy and make his parents proud, but his world is defined by strict rules and unyielding parents who believe in the power of punishment. He gives every day his best effort-both at home and at school-yet he just can't seem to stay out of trouble. And the more stressed out his parents become, the more trouble he seems to find himself in.
When Brennan fatefully crosses paths with a new kid at his school-a boy whose parents and home life seems to defy the very beliefs and principles that Brennan has been raised to follow-he is drawn into a spiral of anxiety, self-doubt, and confusion, until an eventual playground conflict ends with Brennan's temporary suspension from school.
As he wrestles with the consequences of his actions, Brennan begins to unravel the complex tapestry of love, fear, and control that binds him to his parents, picking up some new mindsets and coping methods along the way to help him process-and survive-the darkly confounding world around him.
A Kafkaesque young adult book with some serious teeth [...] It'll leave many adult readers just as shaken and moved by Brennan's harrowing tale as its younger, YA audience-if not, even more so [...] This is not a story for the faint-of-heart.
The New Kid's Revelation is a bold deep-dive into a child's search for identity and security amid familial conflicts, pressures, and expectations that he is ill-equipped to process and respond to on his own.
In this daring, debut novella, Marck Thomas Wilder explores the strange burdens that adults so often place on the shoulders of children, illuminating the hazards and the harm that can shape-and sometimes scar-our young spirits for years, or even decades, to come.
This edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream takes the comedy seriously. Like my previous Hackett editions, it gives full weight to Shakespeare's dramatic setting, which other editors (and scholars) almost always ignore or at least fail adequately to consider. Ancient Athens is the core, not the mere background, of Midsummer Night's Dream. As we shall see, Shakespeare focuses, in particular, on the love of the beautiful and the triumph of learning and art, along with the rise of democracy, which, as Pericles' famously claims, are the hallmarks of Athens. 'We are lovers of the beautiful with thrift, and lovers of wisdom without softness' (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 2.40.1). [...]
Failure to consider classical Athens as central to Midsummer Night's Dream will cause a reader to miss not only the play's remarkable substance, but much of its sparkling comedy as well. Far from impeding the play's humor, focusing on Athens helps to bring out multi-layers of comedy that Shakespeare put there.
This award winning novel will soon be released as a movie starring Saoirse Ronan as Daisy.
Fifteen-year-old New Yorker Daisy is sent to live in the English countryside with cousins she's never even met. When England is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy, the cousins find themselves on their own. Power fails, system fail. As they grow more isolated, the farm becomes a kind of Eden, with no rules. Until the war arrives in their midst.This sequel to The Whispering of the Willows is set in the late 1920s' Appalachia, where granny witches and spiritualism often show the path for wanderers to take, especially in matters of the heart.
This Big Creek sequel follows the lives and loves of two siblings. Coral determines to visit the family's nemesis, Charlie, now in prison for the rape of her sister, Emerald, and the murder of her inlaw. When Mercy re-enters brother Ernest's life, he has already found a new attraction in his elder brother's widow.
Coral sat in contemplation under a mulberry tree. It was spring, and the fragrant female blossoms promised the mid-summer arrival of first white, then pink, then crimson, and finally deep purple berries. The white berries were hard and tart and enjoyed by the quail, wild turkeys, mocking birds, and blue jays. The blackish purple berries were soft and sweet - perfect for pies and jams.
When the berries turned white, Coral would thank the good Lord for providing food for the birds. When the berries ripened she would thank the good Lord for the sweetness savored in her mouth and curse the birds for wanting more than their share.
Where Emerald Ashby's story leaves us in the last pages of The Whispering of the Willows, sixteen-year-old Coral Ashby's story begins. Like the changing mulberries, Appalachian siblings Coral and Ernest Ashby, navigate life through the late 1920s. Coral is determined to visit the family nemesis, Charlie, who now stews in prison.
When Ernest's previous love interest, Mercy, returns to the holler of Big Creek, she discovers that his heart is now singing a melody for Charlotte, the older Ashby brother's widow. But Mercy has brought along her own spiritual tools and a special friend who guides her way.
Accompanied by friends and foes, matters of the heart complicate life for Coral and Ernest. Relationships must be journeyed carefully.
He says it's a mistake, but as new notes appear and loved ones are hurt, it's clear his blackmailer thinks otherwise.
From high speed chases to breaking and entering, CJ finds himself slipping back into old ways. To make matters worse, his actions lead friends to question his innocence.
CJ must decide how far he's willing to go to prove they've got the wrong guy.
Best friends b and Rang are all each other have. Their parents are absent, their teachers avert their eyes when they walk by. Everyone else in town acts like they live in Seoul even though it's painfully obvious they don't. When Rang begins to be bullied horribly by the boys in baseball hats, b fends them off. But one day Rang unintentionally tells the whole class about b's dying sister and how her family is poor, and each of them finds herself desperately alone. The only place they can reclaim themselves, and perhaps each other, is beyond the part of town where lunatics live--the End.
In a piercing, heartbreaking, and astonishingly honest voice, Kim Sagwa's b, Book, and Me walks the precipice between youth and adulthood, reminding us how perilous the edge can be.