Bitter Melon

Author	Maria Padian
ISBN	0375865799

This is a hilarious and heartbreaking story of two teen girls and the summer when everything changes for them. Both Henry and Eva are New Jersey natives and excellent athletes: Henry's a master on the tennis court and Eva is a graceful ballerina. When opportunity knocks for both of them the summer before...

Author	Cynthia Kadohata
ISBN	0689865759

"My mother had four daughters by four different men." There's only one way Shelby and her sisters can describe their mother: She's a sexpot. Helen Kimura collects men (and loans, spending money, and gifts of all kinds) from all over the country. Sure, she's not your typical role model, but she's also...

Author	Barbara Caridad Ferrer
ISBN	0312650043

Winner of an International Latino Book Award

A dancer driven to succeed.

A musical prodigy attempting to escape his past.

The summer they share.

And the moment it all goes wrong.

Dance is Soledad Reyes's life. About to graduate from Miami's Biscayne High...

Author	Ashley Hope Pérez
ISBN	0761361553

Marissa has smarts and plenty of promise, but she's marooned in a broken-down Houston neighborhood--and in a Mexican immigrant family where making ends meet matters much more than making it to college. When her home life becomes unbearable, Marissa seeks comfort elsewhere--and suddenly neither...

Author	Barbara Stuber
ISBN	1416997032

At fifteen, Iris is a hobo of sorts -- no home, no family, no direction. After her mother’s early death, Iris’s father focuses on big plans for his new shoe stores and his latest girlfriend, and has no time for his daughter. Unbeknownst to her, he hires Iris out as housekeeper and companion for a country...

Author	Stephanie Morrill
ISBN	0800733908

Out with the In Crowd was excellent. I liked it even better than the first book, and I definitely recommend reading them in order to get the full effect. I may not have liked Skylar had I started with the second book. However, I understood her well by the time I read this second novel in the series so it worked...

Author	Thalia Chaltas
ISBN	0670011991

Home is supposed to be a place you belong. It's supposed to be parents who are there and siblings who bug you and a life that feels comfortable. It's not supposed to be an absentee mother or a drowned sister. But that's Vera's reality, and she can't stand it anymore. So she runs. She ends up in an old mining...

Author

Chris Lynch

If you do it right, it can be a life. The hothouse, the guys, the glory. But just like that, it can all go up in smoke. In the beginning it was strange, ya know, because of all that we had lost. But there was something about it that felt so good and so right, too: "I'm so proud of you, Russ." "We'll always be here...

Author	Heidi Ayarbe
ISBN	0061993867

Today has to be perfect.
Magic.
I look at the clock.
10:14 AM.

Ten fourteen. One plus one is two plus four is six plus ten is sixteen minus one is fifteen minus two is thirteen. OK.

I turn from the clock and walk into the hallway. "Ready."

Saturday will be the third...

Author	Rick Detorie
ISBN	1606841491

A book for the Wimpy Kid who has grown into a Wimpy Teen
 
Larkin Pace desperately wants a new camcorder. How else is he going to become the next great filmmaker? But his dad won’t give him any money, his sister is determined to make his life miserable, and his nemesis Dalton Cooke is trying to...

Author	Gloria Whelan
ISBN	0061255459

Kate Tapert sees her life in paintings. She makes sense of the world around her by relating it to what she adores—art. Armed with a suitcase, some canvases, and a scholarship to art school in Detroit, Kate is ready to leave home and fully immerse herself in painting. Sounds like heaven. All Kate needs...

Author	Jenny Moss
ISBN	0802721931

Reimagining the days surrounding this unforgettable event in history, readers are brought back to 1986 as the astronauts prepare for the Challenger mission, and Christa McAullife trains to be the first teacher in space. When a teen named Annie meets Christa, she is fascinated by Christa's courage....

Author	Shari Maurer
ISBN	1934813362

Shortly after her sixteenth birthday, popular varisty soccer star Emmi comes down with an ordinary virus. But when she doesnt bounce back as always, she gets the worst possible newsshes had endocarditis thats destroyed her heart, putting her into congestive heart failure. This formerly energetic...

Author	Danette Vigilante
ISBN	0147515505

Ever since her brother's death, Dellie's life has been quiet and sad. Her mother cries all the time, and Dellie lives with the horrible guilt that the accident that killed her brother may have been all her fault.

But Dellie's world begins to change when new neighbors move into her housing project...

Author	Janet Lee Carey
ISBN	1606840355

A dreamwalker who has lost her way. A shape shifter who fears his own dark power. A fire herd punished for his magic. Can these three teens keep the human world of Noor and the magical world of Oth from splitting apart?

The ancient trees of Noor are dying. If the blight kills the last azure trees whose...

Author	Pat Lowery Collins
ISBN	0763645001

As the ground of her past shifts, a girl finds her way to an unexpected future in this compelling historical novel about survival and strength.

It’s 1849, and twelve-year-old Addie lives in the shipbuilding town of Essex, Massachusetts. Her father has left the family to seek gold on the West...

Author	Irene N. Watts
ISBN	0887769713

A story of reliance and resilience.Did you call out to us, Johnny, before your small body was dragged down under the water? Why didn't we hear you? I am sorry! I'll never forget.

Louisa Gardener is the fourteen-year-old nursemaid to the young daughters of a wealthy, titled family living in London,...

Author	Laura Resau
ISBN	0385736533

Sixteen-year-old Zeeta and her flighty English-teaching mom, Layla, have traveled the world together, settling in a different country every year, making a whole new set of friends and adopting new customs. This year, they’ve chosen to live in Aix-en-Provence, France, an enchanting city full...

Author	Melissa Kantor
ISBN	1423123689

Jane, Victoria, and Natalya. Together, they are the Darlings. Best friends forever. They have matching necklaces, their own table at Ga Ga Noodle, and even a shared motto: May you always do what you're afraid of doing.

When the friends begin freshman year at three different high schools...

Author	Chelsea Rae Swiggett
ISBN	0757315275

Rae is beyond socially awkward.

Since she was a little girl, Rae Swiggett knew something was different about her. The sound of planes flying overhead could spark a panic attack. Being called on in class was enough to push her over the edge. She feared the unknown, life, death, people . . . even...

Author	Jan Blazanin
ISBN	1416579931

If life were a fairy tale, Oribella Bettencourt would have a "happily ever after" kind of future ahead of her. A Hollywood producer has come to Des Moines in search of a perfectly modern Princess Rapunzel, and Ori -- a model, dancer, and star of the beauty pageant circuit -- lands the part. And why shouldn't...

Author	Allen Zadoff
ISBN	1606840363

High school sophomore Adam Zeigler, who lost his father to a sudden accident two years ago, thinks the best way to live life is behind the spotlight. As a member of the theater crew, he believes he's achieved it all when he wins the coveted job of spotlight operator. But that was before a young actress, Summer,...

Author	Cecil Castellucci
ISBN	0545060796

Partly based on the author's own experiences at the famous Manhattan high school for the performing arts, this novel explores friendship, freedom, and the art of challenging convention.

Set in New York in the 1980s, this story of two ballet dancers (one American, one Russian) recounts the...

Author	Allison Whittenberg
ISBN	0385738692

Wendy Anderson and Hakiam Powell are at opposite ends of the spectrum—the social spectrum, the financial spectrum, the opportunity spectrum, you name it. Wendy lives in an all-white suburb of Philadelphia, where she’s always felt like the only chip in the cookie. Her dad, who fought his way out...

Author	Amber Kizer
ISBN	0385734328

Okay, so here's the deal: there are books about volcanoes erupting and meteorites hitting Earth and plane crashes where the survivors have to eat people—those are extraordinary crises.

That's not what this book is about. I'm more the ordinary catastrophe type. This second semester of...