Difficult Teens

Sixteen-year-old Sayers Wayte has everything. Popularity, good looks, perfect grades—there's nothing Sayers' family money can't buy. Until he's kidnapped by a man who tells him the privileged life he's been living is based on a lie. Trapped in a windowless room, without knowing why he's been taken or how long the man plans to keep him shut away, Sayers faces a terrifying new reality. To survive, he must forget the world he once knew, and play the part his abductor has created for him.

Matt hasn't eaten in days. His stomach stabs and twists inside, pleading for a meal, but Matt won't give in. The hunger clears his mind, keeps him sharp - and he needs to be as sharp as possible if he's going to find out just how Tariq and his band of high school bullies drove his sister, Maya, away. Matt's hardworking mom keeps the kitchen crammed with food, but Matt can resist the siren call of casseroles and cookies because he has discovered something: the less he eats the more he seems to have...powers.

Jenny Hubbard’s debut, Paper Covers Rock, earned instant acclaim upon publication. Tucked away at an exclusive boys’ boarding school, friends Alex and Glenn fail to prevent their classmate’s drowning in a nearby river. Distraught, Alex pours his guilty feelings into a journal, and Glenn weaves a web of lies to explain their actions that day. Meanwhile, their English teacher Miss Dovecott grows suspicious of the two and begins a troubling investigation.

Eighteen-year-old Ziva may have defeated a deadly warlord, but the price was almost too much. Ziva is forced into a breakneck race to a nearby city with the handsome mercenary, Kellyn, and the young scholar, Petrik, to find a powerful magical healer who can save her sister’s life.

It’s been five years since Summer Marks was murdered in the woods. Everyone thinks Mia and Brynn killed their best friend. That driven by their obsession with a novel called The Way into Lovelorn the three girls had imagined themselves into the magical world where their fantasies became twisted, even deadly. The only thing is: They didn’t do it. On the anniversary of Summer’s death, a seemingly insignificant discovery resurrects the mystery and pulls Mia and Brynn back together again, and the girls must confront what really happened in the woods all those years ago.

When Marcus moves to a new town, he doesn't have any friends. While practicing football for impending tryouts, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with former NFL star Charlie Popovich, nicknamed "The King of Pop". Charlie is a charismatic prankster, and the best football player Marcus has ever seen. But when his behavior starts getting more and more erratic, Marcus learns a secret: Charlie is suffering from early onset Alzheimer's from the concussions he sustained while playing professional football.

There are ghosts around every corner in Fayette, Pennsylvania. Tessa left when she was nine and has been trying ever since not to think about it after what happened there that last summer. Memories of things so dark will burn themselves into your mind if you let them. Callie never left. She moved to another house, so she doesn't have to walk those same halls, but then Callie always was the stronger one.

But the weather-beaten sailboat Chance Taylor and his father call home is thirty years old and hasn’t sailed in years. One step from both homelessness and hunger, Chance worries about things other kids his age never give a thought: Where will the money come for the electricity bill, grocery bill, and moorage fees? So when a new job falls his way, he jumps at the opportunity. He knows how much he will earn; what he doesn’t know is how much he will pay.

In the final book of The Slayer Chronicles trilogy, Slayer Joss McMillan is home in Santa Clara when he’s assigned to track down and take out a murderous vampire. But vampires aren’t Joss’s only trouble this summer: His girl-crazy cousin Henry is staying with him, and still holding a grudge against Joss for trying to kill his best friend, Vladimir Tod. Joss’s former mentor and supposedly dead vampire, Sirus, is casting a shadow on Joss’s every move. And Kat, Joss’s old friend, has come back to exact revenge for past wrongs.

Andre Jackson is determined to reclaim his identity. But returning from juvie doesn’t feel like coming home. His Portland, Oregon, neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying, and COVID-19 shuts down school before he can return. And Andre’s suspicions about his arrest for a crime he didn’t commit even taint his friendships. It’s as if his whole life has been erased. The one thing Andre is counting on is his relationship with the Whitaker kids—especially his longtime crush, Sierra.

Mira needs to get home for the holidays - badly. But when an incoming blizzard results in a canceled layover, it looks like she might get stuck at the Philadelphia airport indefinitely. And then Harper, Mira's glamorous seatmate from her initial flight, comes to the rescue. Harper and her three friends are renting a car, and they can drop Mira off on the way home. But as their trip begins, Mira discovers her fellow travelers aren't friends like she thought - they're total strangers. And every one of them seems to be hiding something dangerous.

Stuy wanted to play the drums just like his mom, a founding member of the punk band The Bed-Stuy Magic Dusters. With his mother as his teacher, Stuy starts busking in the subway with his friends Dunks, Alexis, Keith, and Frankie under the name Soundtrack. To everyone’s surprise, including their own, they become an underground sensation, and their success changes the course of their lives.

Julie Ellis and Luke Muldenhower have always been school sweethearts. Now both are in high school and deeply in love. Luke, a talented football player, is almost certain to receive an athletic scholarship to a top college. And no matter what her parents say, wherever Luke goes, Julie intends to follow. When Luke can't shake what he thinks is a virus, Julie persuades him to see a doctor. Luke's test results are alarming, but Julie believes their love is stronger than anything. Can love survive, now and forever?

Fourteen-year-old Carey and six-year-old Jenessa have been living in the woods with their mother for as long as they can remember; the sheltering trees and a broken-down camper are all they know. But what they’ve never been told is that Carey vanished from the real world ten years ago, when their mother took her, causing an uproar in the media - and in her father’s life.

The summer of 1976 should have been the best of times for nature-loving Eli Book, but instead it is filled with terrible changes. His sister begins to hate her country. His beautiful but distant mother is caught between his traumatized Vietnam War vet father and his former antiwar protester aunt, who has come to live with them. And the only person with whom he can be himself, his best friend, Edie, begins to turn inward when her parents split up. Watching from the sidelines while his world falls apart, Eli must take his first courageous steps toward truth-telling and adulthood.

Vlad’s running out of time. The Elysian Council has given him only weeks to live, and that’s if the Slayer Society doesn’t kill him - along with all the citizens of Bathory - first. Then there’s the issue of Vlad’s father, who may or may not still be alive after all these years. Oh yeah, and that tiny little detail in the Pravus prophecy about Vlad enslaving Vampirekind and the human race. So much for college applications.

No good deed goes unpunished. I learned that lesson the hard way when I agreed to help my friend Justin with a favor. My platonic friend Justin. A favor that helped him with his reputation but turned mine into the trending topic at my school. The whispers, the stares, and the constant gossip could bring me down, but I’m tired of hiding in the dark, covering up my anxiety and being alone. I decide to take on the bullies and find a few surprising allies along the way; the Allendale Four.

When Sophie has to visit her mother at her sanctuary for bonobos, she's not thrilled to be there. Then Otto, an infant bonobo, comes into her life, and for the first time, she feels responsible for another creature. But peace does not last long for Sophie and Otto. When an armed revolution breaks out in the country, the sanctuary is attacked, and the two of them must escape unprepared into the jungle. Caught in the crosshairs of a lethal conflict, they must struggle to keep safe.

In the final days of the Việt Nam War, Hằng takes her little brother, Linh, to the airport, determined to find a way to safety in America. In a split second, Linh is ripped from her arms - and Hằng is left behind in the war-torn country. Six years later, Hằng has made the brutal journey from Việt Nam and is now in Texas as a refugee. She doesn’t know how she will find the little brother who was taken from her until she meets LeeRoy, a city boy with big rodeo dreams, who decides to help her.

Janie Johnson's life has been in turmoil ever since she discovered she was kidnapped as a young child. Visiting and getting acquainted with her birth family was difficult. As the story spread throughout high school, facing her curious classmates was even worse. Maybe this year will be better now that she's no longer the focus of attention and she will be a mature junior. But late one night she hears her friend Reeve hosting a call-in program on a college radio station. To her horror, he reveals her story to his fans.