Showing titles in Difficult Situations

In the spirit of the author’s massively popular Twitter thread, Tucker Shaw’s When You Call My Name is a heartrending novel about two gay teens coming of age in New York City in 1990 at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Mary H. K. Choi. Film fanatic...

The Breakfast Club meets The Usual Suspects in this riveting YA mystery told entirely through the first-person police interviews of four teens over the course of several hours that asks: how far will you go to be remembered? An influencer, an over achiever, a heartthrob, an outcast, and a...

Sadie Wen is perfect on paper: school captain, valedictorian, and a "pleasure to have in class." It's not easy, but she has a trick to keep her model-student smile plastered on her face at all times: she channels all her frustrations into her email drafts. She'd never send them of course—she'd rather die than hurt anyone's feelings—but it's a relief to let loose on her power-hungry English teacher or a freeloading classmate taking credit for Sadie's work. All her most vehemently worded emails are directed at her infuriating cocaptain, Julius Gong.

One fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighbourhood escalates into tragedy. ‘Boys just being boys’ turns out to be true only when those boys are white. Suddenly, at just 16 years old, Amal Shahid’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it? 

Francesca is at the beginning of her second term in Year 11 at an all boy's school that has just started accepting girls. She still misses her old friends, and, to make things worse, her mother has had a breakdown and can barely move from her bed.

Heralding his outstanding return to young adult fiction, Keith Gray captures the subtle agonies of teen life in this compelling, bittersweet tale of rivalry and friendship. In this compelling story of teenage rivalry and friendship, award-winning author Keith Gray captures the subtle agonies and...

On a night of wild storms, two troubled figures escape from captivity. One is a 15-year-old boy, Samuel Miles, a.k.a. "Smiler", wrongly convicted of theft and sent to a young offenders institution. The other is a cheetah, Yarra, a restless resident of Longleat Wildlife Park. Both are in danger from the outside world—and each other—but somehow their lives become inextricably bound up as they fight for survival on the edge of Salisbury Plain.

A wickedly comic feminist mystery about the dark side of a hopeless romantic's seemingly perfect love story. A must-read for fans of The Cheerleaders! "Whip-smart… A thrilling romp from start to finish."—Jessica Goodman New York Times bestselling author of They Wish They Were Us Alyson is...

Bloomsbury presents Call It What You Want by Brigid Kemmerer, read by Julie Rogers and Christopher Ragland. New York Times bestselling author Brigid Kemmerer pens a new emotionally compelling story about two teens struggling in the space between right and wrong. When his dad is caught embezzling...

On a continent ruled by three empires, some are born with a "witchery," a magical skill that sets them apart from others. In this follow-up to New York Times bestselling Truthwitch, a shadow man haunts the Nubrevnan streets, leaving corpses in his wake―and then raising those corpses from the...

Sirscha Ashwyn comes from nothing, but she's intent on becoming something. After years of training to become the queen's next royal spy, her plans are derailed when shamans attack and kill her best friend, Saengo. And then Sirscha, somehow, restores Saengo to life. Unveiled as the first soulguide in living memory, Sirscha is summoned to the domain of the Spider King. For centuries, he has used his influence over the Dead Wood - an ancient forest possessed by souls - to enforce peace between the kingdoms.

"This satire offers a thought-provoking and scathing indictment that may prod readers to examine the more sinister possibilities of corporate- and media-dominated culture." —Publishers Weekly(starred review) For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon — a...

My parents forgot something when they ran…me. After scamming most of our town out of their life savings, my folks disappeared in the middle of the night. Forced to take me in, my estranged aunt and uncle shipped me off to Raven River Academy the first chance they got. In my town, the line between the haves and the have-nots is actually a 12-foot gate that keeps the unwanted where they belong. Nothing could unite the two factions until I set foot on campus. For the first time in our history, they all agree on one thing: I must pay for my father’s sins.

Living on the South Crongton council estate has its worries - and life for McKay has been even tougher since his mum died. His dad has been working all hours to keep the bailiffs from their door. His brother is always out riding the streets at night, tempting trouble. And now, having strayed off his turf on a 'heroic' (if misguided) mission to help out a girl, McKay finds himself facing a friend's crazy ex-boyfriend, some power-tripping hood-rats and a notoriously violent gangster with a vendetta which hits too close to home.

In this queer contemporary YA mystery, a nonbinary autistic teen realizes they must not only solve a 30-year-old mystery but also face the demons lurking in their past in order to live a satisfying life.

It's Chrismastime, and Blair and Serena are best friends again and up to their old tricks: partying hard and breaking hearts from Park Avenue to the Caribbean. Blair's mom and Cyrus are having their honeymoon in Salt Key. And when school lets out for the holiday, Blair, Serena, Aaron, and company head down there to blow off steam after their midterm exams.

Ro's mum is a compulsive hoarder. Their home is a horror show. So Ro has become an expert at hiding: from social services, from friends, from having any sort of normal life. Then Tanvi Shah, the girl who almost died, comes tumbling back into her life and Ro’s carefully constructed walls start to come crashing down around her. Sometimes it takes a real friend to show you who you truly are.

Number one New York Times best-selling author of the Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot knows the difficulties (real or otherwise) of awkward teenage years. In Twilight, Cabot continues her series about Suze Simon, the teenage mediator with an other-worldly boyfriend, Jesse de Silva. But when fellow mediator Paul Slater threatens to send Jesse back to where he came from, can Suze stop him in time?

'I wonder what she would've said if I'd told her all the parts the report left out, like how I'd woken up that morning and pulled that sock out of my draw and filled it, one after the other, with the D batteries I'd bought the last time I visited my dad in the city. But there was no way. There...

An instant New York Times bestseller! “Grown exposes the underbelly of a tough conversation, providing a searing examination of misogynoir, rape culture, and the vulnerability of young black girls. Groundbreaking, heart-wrenching, and essential reading for all in the #MeToo era.”...