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Sebastian and Aneesa create a YouTube pizza making show. For the first time, Sebastian feels like he is in a judge free zone. Because Aneesa is new in town, she doesn’t know his secret…the terrible, horrific secret that he accidentally shot and killed his infant sister when he was four years old.

A father’s anguished account of his promising son’s meth addiction and its painful impact on the entire family is honest, raw, and full of information about the realities of drug addiction.

Los Angeles! City of tanned shoulders! Smog-spewing, pay-per-viewing, sit-com maker for the world!

Del’s put in 17 years there, bouncing among foster homes. Smart, sharp-tongued, a master mimic, she’s fed up with her world and with being Del. So she’s faked her own death and is leaving both herself and L.A. behind until her escape lands her in an all-day traffic jam.

Fast-forward eight years. It’s opening night for the one-woman play she’s written and is starring in a show called Breakout, about a Los Angeles traffic jam. Wildly funny, she seems to be skewering workaholics, road ragers, pickup artists, and car culture in general. But readers will see what her audience can’t, that the show is a portrait of herself, of her hunger for her mother and her terror of rejection, her free-floating identity and yearning for connection.

Flashing between Del’s present and future, Breakout gives us a backstage pass into a young playwright’s psyche, letting us watch her life being transformed into a art, heartache into comedy, solitude into community, and anger gradually giving way to acceptance.

Challenger Deep is a stand-alone novel by Neal Shusterman, author of The Unwind Dystology. It deals frankly with issues surrounding teenage mental illness. Caden, the narrator, experiences paranoid and delusional thinking and is hospitalized. A character attempts suicide. Violence in the book is mostly imaginary and centered on a fantastical ship on which the captain and his parrot want to kill each other. Language is mild, with an instance or two each of “hell,” “damn,” “bastard,” and “ass.” Sexual content is limited to hand-holding and one night of cuddling in bed. Caden’s parents are mildly intoxicated in one scene. Caden takes a “cocktail” of prescribed medications, and the regimen helps him heal.

Hattie enjoys her family and the boarders in her parents’ rooming house. Her wealthy grandmother is tough sometimes, but Hattie doesn’t get discouraged. When her mentally challenged Uncle Adam comes to live with them, Hattie must determine who in her family is most important.

Hopkins has become the leading author of novels in verse, mainly due to her gritty, unflinching subject matter. Crank, her first novel, deals with Kristina/Bree and her addiction to crystal meth.

This very different take on music features 11-year old Zoe, who dreams of being a concert pianist, until her Dad brings home an organ. Zoe learns to play and even enters a competition.

In the shadow of their mother’s suicide, twin sisters Destiny and Livvy have grown and healed in their summer as camp counselors. But a bewildering encounter with a fellow counselor on the eve of her departure leaves Destiny reeling, and when she returns home, she learns he was keeping a terrible secret. He’s a vampire. And he won’t stop until he’s made her one, too.

Twelve-year-old Korean American Junie Kim, who’s kept quiet about the bullying and racism she encounters at school, is diagnosed with depression but is later inspired to speak out after learning about her grandparents’ experiences during the Korean War.

On the surface, Ramiro Lopez and Jake Upthegrove couldn’t live more different lives. Ram is Mexican-American, lives in the poor section of town, and is doing his best to keep his mother sane while his brother fights off a drug-induced coma. Jake is a WASP who drives a nice car, lives in a mansion, and has a mother who drinks a bit too much and a step-father who cheats on her. But there is one point, one issue, where their lives are exactly the same; their fathers walked out on them when they were just young boys. And at this convergence, Ram and Jake see how everything in their lives is just a little bit similar, because they both blame everything that goes wrong on the one thing they actually have in common.

When a boy from an abusive home is placed in foster care with an old woman, he brings with him his troubles — an invitation to the Sinisteeds, nighttime visitors to humans who gather memories good or not so good. Tough, timely topics are handled in a straightforward telling in this compelling and credible fantasy.

Two friends — one black and wealthy, the other poor and white — are united by their lack of mothers, but divided by the racism and classicism in their small Ohio town.

The powerful graphic memoir from Jarrett Krosoczka about growing up with a drug-addicted mother, a missing father, and two opinionated grandparents. Hey, Kiddo is a profoundly important story about a family grappling with addiction and finding the art that helps you survive. National Book Award finalist.

You can see related interviews with Jarrett about Hey, Kiddo on Jarrett's website, as well as his TED talk in which he shares his personal story.

When Griffin’s first love and ex-boyfriend, Theo, dies in a drowning accident, his universe implodes. Even though Theo had moved to California for college, Griffin never doubted Theo would come back to him when the time was right. But now, the future he’s been imagining for himself has gone far off course.

To make things worse, the only person who truly understands his heartache is Theo’s new boyfriend, Jackson. But no matter how much they open up to each other, Griffin’s downward spiral continues. He’s losing himself in his obsessive compulsions and destructive choices, and the secrets he’s been keeping are tearing him apart. If Griffin is ever to rebuild his future, he must first confront his history, every last heartbreaking piece in the puzzle of his life.

That night Ingrid told Caitlin, I’ll go wherever you go. But by dawn Ingrid, and her promise, were gone. Ingrid’s suicide immobilizes Caitlin, leaving her unsure of her place in a new life she hardly recognizes. A life without the art, the laughter, the music, and the joy that she shared with her best friend…. But Ingrid left something behind. In words and drawings, Ingrid documented a painful farewell in her journal. Journeying through Ingrid’s final days, Caitlin fights back through unspeakable loss to find renewed hope.

Growing up is particularly difficult for Evie Green as she has no past. She lost it when her father testified against fellow police officers in a racially motivated murder. Each family member must learn to deal with their new lives and identities alone.

In danger of being evicted from the motel he lives in with his alcoholic mother and little sister, ten-year-old Isaiah Dunn discovers a love of poetry after finding his late father’s journal. 

Joey Pigza really wants his six-week visit with his dad to count, to show him he’s not as wired as he used to be, to show his dad how much he loves him. But Carter Pigza’s not an easy guy to love. He’s eager to make it up to Joey for past wrongs and to show him how to be a winner, to take control of his life. With his coaching, Joey’s even learned how to pitch a baseball, and he’s good at it. The trouble is, Joey’s dad thinks taking control means giving up the things that “keep Joey safe”. And if he wants to please his dad, he’s going to have to play by his rules, even when the rules don’t make sense.

Lily Jo McGrother, born Timothy McGrother, is a girl. But being a girl is not so easy when you look like a boy. Especially when you’re in the eighth grade. Dunkin Dorfman, birth name Norbert Dorfman, is dealing with bipolar disorder and has just moved from the New Jersey town he’s called home for the past thirteen years. This would be hard enough, but the fact that he is also hiding from a painful secret makes it even worse. One summer morning, Lily meets Dunkin, and their lives forever change. Rainbow Project Book List Recommendation.

Lucy Otswego is a big girl who towers over just about everyone and everything in her small Alaskan town-except for her father’s reputation as a mean drunk. At fifteen, Lucy runs away from the cruel classmates who see her only as the Giant, the neighboring adults who pity her, and the abusive father whose fleeting attention is worse than his indifference. When the crew of a crabbing boat assumes she’s much older than she is and invites her to sign on for the season, she jumps at the chance to escape her teenage life.

When Reason’s mother goes insane, she is forced to live with her grandmother Esmerelda, who may be the source of her mother’s insanity. Reason does her best to avoid contact with Esmerelda, but when she decides to run away, she walks through Esmeralda’s back door in Sydney and finds herself on a New York City street. The book is full of action, a little violence, and is a good entry in the urban fantasy genre.

Bobby Byington has always had to navigate his father’s alcoholism and anger, but things are looking up. His father has stopped drinking, his mother is back home, and his basketball team is winning games. But two new problems surface when his -smart- girlfriend is bullied by a resentful schoolmate and a fellow team member is bullied by an abusive father.
This is the second novel in the No Name series.

Seventeen-year-old Peter Houghton wakes up one day, loads his backpack with four guns, walks into the school cafeteria, and kills nine students and one teacher in the span of nineteen minutes. Why?