Difficult Family

Lucy lives on the 24th floor. Owen lives in the basement. It's fitting, then, that they meet in the middle - stuck between two floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they're rescued, Lucy and Owen spend the night wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is back, so is reality. Lucy soon moves abroad with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father.

Twelve-year-old Golden Maroni is determined to channel his hero, soccer superstar Lionel Messi, and become captain of his soccer team and master of his eighth-grade universe...especially since his home universe is spiraling out of orbit. Off the field, Golden’s dad, once a pro soccer player himself, is now battling ALS, a disease that attacks his muscles, leaving him less and less physically able to control his body every day. And while Mom says there’s no cure, Golden is convinced that his dad can beat this, just like any opponent. They just have to try.

Love - good and bad - forces three teens' worlds to tilt in a riveting standalone novel from #1 New York Timesbest-selling author Ellen Hopkins. Three teens, three stories - all interconnected through their parents' family relationships. As the adults pull away, caught up in their own dilemmas, the worlds of the teens begin to tilt.

In a world where magic is illegal, Cassel Sharpe has the most deadly ability of all: With one touch, he can transform any object - including a person - into something else entirely. And that makes him a wanted man. The Feds are willing to forgive all his past crimes if he’ll only leave his con-artist family behind and go straight. But why does going straight feel so crooked? For one thing, it means being on the opposite side of the law from Lila, the girl he loves.

There was something wicked about Beau that drew me to him. What was wrong with me? Why did I want to sin so badly? Ashton is getting tired of being good, of impressing her parents and playing ideal girlfriend to Sawyer Vincent. Sawyer is perfect, a regular Prince Charming, but when he leaves town for the summer, it’s his cousin Beau who catches Ashton’s eye. Beau is the sexiest guy she’s ever seen, and even though he’s dangerous, Ashton is drawn to him.

Seventeen-year-old Evan Panos doesn't know where he fits in. His strict immigrant Greek mother refuses to see him as anything but a disappointment. His quiet, workaholic father is a staunch believer in avoiding any kind of conflict. And his best friend, Henry, has somehow become distractingly attractive over the summer.

Cashing in on his family's recent good-luck streak, ten-year-old Freddy Peach has been entering his family in a bunch of sweepstakes, but he doesn't really expect to win. And then he does—a free family trip to the Ice Hotel in Sweden! Since the Peaches are now the proud owners of their own bed-and-breakfast, they decide they can't pass up on the opportunity. It's research. They'll learn more about what it takes to operate a successful hotel from one of the most famous tourist destinations in the world.

Told in letters, journal entries, e-mails, doctors’ reports, and instant messages, the heartbreaking story of an aspiring ballet dancer battling leukemia.

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.

Charlie Bucktin, a bookish 13 year old, is startled one summer night by an urgent knock on his bedroom window. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in their small mining town, and he has come to ask for Charlie's help. Terribly afraid but desperate to impress, Charlie follows him into the night. Jasper takes him to his secret glade, where Charlie witnesses Jasper's horrible discovery. With his secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion.

A word-of-mouth best seller which has become one of the best loved and most successful books in the parenting field. With around 20 percent new material, Steve Biddulph’s Raising Boys is to be rereleased this month with some startling new research on what helps - and what harms - boys.

Farway Gaius McCarthy was born outside of time. The son of a time-traveling Recorder from AD 2354 and a gladiator living in Rome in AD 95, Far's birth defies the laws of nature. Exploring history himself is all he's ever wanted, and after failing his final time-traveling exam, Far takes a position commanding a ship with a crew of his friends as part of a black market operation to steal valuables from the past. But during a heist on the sinking Titanic, Far meets a mysterious girl who always seems to be one step ahead of him.

Lara just got told off on Facebook. She thought that Christian liked her, that he was finally going to ask her to his school's homecoming dance. It's been a long time since Lara's felt this bad, this depressed. She's worked really hard since starting high school to be happy and make new friends. Bree used to be BBFs with overweight, depressed Lara in middle school, but constantly listening to Lara's problems got to be too much. Bree's secretly glad that Christian's pointed out Lara's flaws to the world. Lara's not nearly as great as everyone thinks.

It's the perfect idea for a romantic week together: traveling across America by train. But then Hugo's girlfriend dumps him. Her parting gift: the tickets for their long-planned last-hurrah-before-uni trip. Only, it's been booked under her name. Nontransferable, no exceptions. Mae is still reeling from being rejected from USC's film school. When she stumbles across Hugo's ad for a replacement Margaret Campbell (her full name!), she's certain it's exactly the adventure she needs to shake off her disappointment and jump-start her next film.

Thirteen-year-old Kyra has grown up in an isolated polygamous community without questioning her father's three wives and her twenty brothers and sisters. Or at least without questioning them much—if you don't count her secret visits to the Mobile Library on Wheels to read forbidden books, or her meetings with the boy she hopes to choose for herself instead of having a man chosen for her. But when the Prophet decrees that Kyra must marry her 60-year-old uncle—who already has six wives—Kyra must make a desperate choice in the face of violence and her own fears of losing her family.

Willa is lucky: She has a loving blended family that gets along. Not all families are so fortunate. But when a bloody crime takes place hundreds of miles away, it has an explosive effect on Willa's peaceful life. The estranged father she hardly remembers has murdered his new wife and children, and is headed east toward Willa and her mother. Under police protection, Willa discovers that her mother has harbored secrets that are threatening to boil over. Has everything Willa believed about herself been a lie?

This thoughtful, wry story is about two girls - a 'punk' and a 'priss' - who find themselves facing each other in a peer-counseling program and discover that they have some surprising things in common.

When Nina Faye was 14, her mother told her there was no such thing as unconditional love. Nina believed her. Now, she'll do anything for the boy she loves to prove she's worthy of him. But when he breaks up with her, Nina is lost. What is she if not a girlfriend? What is she made of? Broken-hearted, Nina tries to figure out what the conditions of love are.

Sharkita “Kita” Hayes is always waiting. Waiting for her mama to mess up. Waiting for social services to be called again. Waiting for her and her siblings to be separated. Waiting for her worst fear to come true. But Mama promises things are different now. She’s got a good job, she’s stopped drinking, stopped going out every night—it’s almost enough to make Kita believe her this time. But even as Kita’s life is going good, she can’t shake the feeling that everything could go up in flames at any moment.

What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill...or else everyone dies.