Difficult Relationships

It’s the night before Death-Cast goes live, and there’s one question on everyone’s mind: Can Death-Cast actually predict when someone will die, or is it just an elaborate hoax? Orion Pagan has waited years for someone to tell him that he’s going to die. He has a serious heart condition, and he signed up for Death-Cast so he could know what’s coming. Valentino Prince is restarting his life in New York. He has a long and promising future ahead and he only registered for Death-Cast after his twin sister nearly died in a car accident.

Most of us know someone who, for whatever reason, always seems to cause problems, irritate others, or incite conflict. Often, these people are a part of our daily lives. The truth is that these trouble makers haven't necessarily asked to be this way. Sometimes we need to learn new approaches to deal with people who are harder to get along with or love.

Tennyson: Don’t get me started on the Bruiser. He was voted “Most Likely to Get the Death Penalty” by the entire school. He’s the kid no one knows, no one talks to, and everyone hears disturbing rumors about. So why is my sister, Brontë, dating him? One of these days she’s going to take in the wrong stray dog, and it’s not going to end well.BronteMy brother has no right to talk about Brewster that way — no right to threaten him. There’s a reason why Brewster can’t have friends — why he can’t care about too many people.

It was bad enough that they had to move to Brooklyn. Brooklyn Heights, as Tucker Woolf's dad instructs him to tell everyone after he loses his job. Now his father has suddenly developed an allergy to Tucker's cat, Nader, a nine-month-old calico Tucker found underneath a Chevrolet. Tucker's beloved pet finds a new home with overweight, outrageous Susan "Dinky" Hocker, the only person to answer Tucker's ad. As Tucker starts paying regular visits to Dinky's house to check up on Nader, his life begins to change.

Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start.

Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might die. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him. Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister's recent death. When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it's unclear who saves whom.

When a letter that was never meant to be seen by anyone draws high school senior Evan Hansen into a family's grief over the loss of their son, he is given the chance of a lifetime: to belong. He just has to stick to a lie he never meant to tell: that the notoriously troubled Connor Murphy was his secret best friend. Suddenly, Evan isn't invisible anymore - even to the girl of his dreams. And Connor Murphy's parents, with their beautiful home on the other side of town, have taken him in like he was their own, desperate to know more about their enigmatic son from his closest friend.

Five years. That's how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, criss-crossing the nation. It's also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash. Coyote hasn't been home in all that time, but when she learns that the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished - the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box - she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,600 miles back to Washington state in four days...without him realizing it.

We've all encountered them: the bullies, the wet blankets, the yea-sayers that never come through. More often than not, we're left fumbling for words, stumbling toward the door...frustrated, enraged or just plain depressed.

​Sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, embarrassment, disappointment, frustration, and vulnerability. In 30 years as a practicing psychologist, Dr. Joan Rosenberg has found that what most often blocks people from success and feeling capable in life is the inability to experience, move through, and handle these eight unpleasant feelings. Knowing how to deal with intense, overwhelming, or uncomfortable feelings is essential to building confidence, emotional strength, and resilience.

Samantha McAllister looks just like the rest of the popular girls in her junior class. But hidden beneath the straightened hair and expertly applied makeup is a secret that her friends would never understand: Sam has purely obsessional OCD and is consumed by a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can't turn off. Second-guessing every move, thought, and word makes daily life a struggle, and it doesn't help that her lifelong friends will turn toxic at the first sign of a wrong outfit, wrong lunch, or wrong crush.

Emily Lonergan's best friend died last year. And Emily hasn't stopped grieving. Lizzie Porter was lively, loud, and fun - Emily's better half. Emily can't accept that she's gone. When Lizzie's parents and her sister come back to town to visit, Emily's heartened to see them. The Porters understand her pain. They miss Lizzie desperately, too. Desperately enough to do something crazy. Something unthinkable. Suddenly, Emily's life is hurtling toward a very dark place - and she's not sure she'll ever be able to return to what she once knew was real.

Just when 17-year-old Matt thinks he can't handle one more piece of terrible news, he meets a girl who’s dealt with a lot more - and who just might be able to clue him in on how to rise up when life keeps knocking him down - in this wry, gritty novel from the author of When I Was the Greatest. Matt wears a black suit every day. No, not because his mom died - although she did, and it sucks.

Prince Jones is the guy with all the answers—or so it seems. After all, at seventeen, he has his own segment on Detroit’s popular hip-hop show, Love Radio, where he dishes out advice to the brokenhearted. Prince has always dreamed of becoming a DJ and falling in love. But being the main caretaker for his mother, who has multiple sclerosis, and his little brother means his dreams will stay just that and the only romances in his life are the ones he hears about from his listeners. Until he meets Dani Ford.

Taylor Edwards’ family might not be the closest-knit - everyone is a little too busy and overscheduled - but for the most part, they get along just fine. Then Taylor’s dad gets devastating news, and her parents decide that the family will spend one last summer all together at their old lake house in the Pocono Mountains. Crammed into a place much smaller and more rustic than they are used to, they begin to get to know each other again. And Taylor discovers that the people she thought she had left behind haven’t actually gone anywhere.

In this parenting classic, Dr. Stanley Turecki, one of the nation's most respected experts on children and discipline—and himself the father of a once difficult child—offers compassionate and practical advice to parents of hard-to-raise children.

Camille couldn't be having a better summer - she kills it as Ophelia in her community theater's production of Hamlet, catches the eye of the cutest boy in the play, and nabs a spot in a prestigious theater program. But on the very night she learns she got into the program, she also finds out she's pregnant. She definitely can't tell her parents. And her best friend Bea doesn't agree with the decision Camille has made. Camille is forced to try to solve her problem alone - and the system is very much working against her.

In her small town, dubbed “Dullsville”, 16-year-old Raven—a vampire-crazed goth-girl—is an outcast. But not for long. The intriguing and rumored-to-be haunted mansion on top of Benson Hill has stood vacant and boarded-up for years. That is, until its mysteriously strange new occupants move in. Who are these creepy people—especially the handsome, dark, and elusive Alexander Sterling? Or rather, what are they? Could the town prattle actually ring true? Are they vampires?

Toxic Sons- and Daughters-in-Law helps expose the harmful attitudes and actions of a difficult son- or daughter-in-law and calls for biblical repentance and change. Untangling the destructive and dysfunctional nature of their abusive behavior will help parents manage the painful process of rejection, manipulation, and anger. Practical counsel throughout the book will guide parents through the minefield of emotions to a God-glorifying conclusion and a lifestyle marked by application of biblical principles.

In a novel-in-verse that brims with grief and love, National Book Award-winning and New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives.