YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Social Themes / Physical & Emotional Abuse (see also Social Themes / Sexual Abuse)
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Beauty Mark
A Verse Novel of Marilyn Monroe
Price: $19.99
Pub Date: September 8, 2020
Format: Hardcover
In a powerful novel in verse, an award-winning author offers an eye-opening look at the life of Marilyn Monroe.
From the day she was born into a troubled home to her reigning days as a Hollywood icon, Marilyn Monroe (née Norma Jeane Mortenson) lived a life that was often defined by others. Here, in a luminous poetic narrative, acclaimed author Carole Boston Weatherford tells Marilyn’s story in a way that restores her voice to its rightful place: center stage. Revisiting Marilyn’s often traumatic early life—foster homes, loneliness, sexual abuse, teen marriage—through a hard-won, meteoric rise to stardom that brought with it exploitation, pill dependency, and depression, the lyrical narrative continues through Marilyn’s famous performance at JFK’s birthday party, three months before her death. In a story at once riveting, moving, and unflinching, Carole Boston Weatherford tells a tale of extraordinary pain and moments of unexpected grace, gumption, and perseverance, as well as the inexorable power of pursuing one’s dreams. A beautifully designed volume.
What the Birds See
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: December 10, 2019
Format: Paperback
“Hartnett again captures the ineffable fragility of childhood in this keenly observed tale set in 1977 in her native Australia.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Nine-year-old Adrian watches his world closely, but there is much he cannot understand. He does not, for instance, know why three neighborhood children might set out to buy ice cream one summer’s day and never be seen again. In a suburb that is no longer safe and innocent, in a broken family of self-absorbed souls, Sonya Hartnett sets the story of a lone little boy — unwanted, unloved, and intensely curious — a story as achingly beautiful as it is shattering.
Surrender
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: August 13, 2019
Format: Paperback
“Sophisticated young readers will be awed by the delicate, measured, heartbreaking portrait that emerges.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
As life slips away, Gabriel looks back over his brief twenty years, clouded by the frustration and humiliation of never being allowed to forget the horrific mistake he made as a child. He has only two friends: his dog, Surrender, and the unruly wild boy, Finnigan, a shadowy doppelgänger with whom the meek Gabriel once made a boyhood pact. But when a series of arson attacks grips the town, Gabriel realizes how unpredictable and dangerous Finnigan is. As events begin to spiral violently out of control, it becomes devastatingly clear that only the most extreme measures will rid Gabriel of Finnigan for good.
Being Fishkill
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: November 14, 2017
Format: Hardcover
Fishkill Carmel fends for herself, with her fists if need be — until a thwarted lunch theft introduces her to strange, sunny Duck-Duck and a chance for a new start.
Born in the backseat of a moving car, Carmel Fishkill was unceremoniously pushed into a world that refuses to offer her security, stability, love. At age thirteen, she begins to fight back. Carmel Fishkill becomes Fishkill Carmel, who deflects her tormenters with a strong left hook and conceals her secrets from teachers and social workers. But Fishkill’s fierce defenses falter when she meets eccentric optimist Duck-Duck Farina, and soon they, along with Duck-Duck’s mother, Molly, form a tentative family, even as Fishkill struggles to understand her place in it. This fragile new beginning is threatened by the reappearance of Fishkill’s unstable mother — and by unfathomable tragedy. Poet Ruth Lehrer’s young adult debut is a stunning, revelatory look at what defines and sustains “family.” And, just as it does for Fishkill, meeting Duck-Duck Farina and her mother will leave readers forever changed.
Golden Boys
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: April 12, 2016
Format: Hardcover
With masterful nuance and vividly drawn characters, Sonya Hartnett’s novel visits a suburban neighborhood where psychological menace lurks below the surface.
Colt Jenson and his younger brother, Bastian, have moved to a new, working-class suburb. The Jensons are different. Their father, Rex, showers them with gifts — toys, bikes, all that glitters most — and makes them the envy of the neighborhood. To the local kids, the Jensons are a family out of a movie, and Rex a hero — successful, attentive, attractive, always there to lend a hand. But to Colt he's an impossible figure: unbearable, suffocating. Has Colt got Rex wrong, or has he seen something in his father that will destroy their fragile new lives? This brilliant and unflinching novel reveals internationally acclaimed author Sonya Hartnett at her most intriguing and psychologically complex.
Requiem
Poems of the Terezin Ghetto
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: August 6, 2013
Format: Paperback
“Moving and brutal, a poetic remembrance of a tragedy too vast to forget.” — Kirkus Reviews
Acclaimed poet Paul B. Janeczko gives voice to the indomitable creative community of the Czech concentration camp of Terezín (Theresienstadt), emphasizing its dignity, resilience, and commitment to art and music in the face of great brutality. Accented with dramatic illustrations by prisoners, found after World War II, Janeczko’s spare and powerful poems convey Terezín’s tragic legacy on an intimate, profoundly moving scale.
Butterfly
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: July 9, 2013
Format: Paperback
"Exquisitely written . . . steeped in emotional clairvoyance." — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)
Plum Coyle is on the edge of adolescence. Her fourteenth birthday is approaching, when her old life and her old body will fall away, and she will become graceful, powerful, and at ease. Or so she desperately believes. Instead, over the next couple of weeks, the older brothers she adores court catastrophe in worlds that she barely knows exist, while Plum’s friends, her worst enemies, tease and test, smelling weakness. A powerful tale about the shifting bonds and psychological perils of adolescence.
Out of This Place
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: May 14, 2013
Format: Hardcover
A powerful novel in verse captures the voices of three teens as they struggle against hardscrabble realities — and move toward their dreams.
Luke spends his days hanging out at the beach, working shifts at the local supermarket, and trying to stay out of trouble at school. His mate Bongo gets wasted, blocking out memories of the little brother that social services took away from his addict mom and avoiding the stepdad who hits him. And Casey, the girl they both love, longs to get away from her strict, controlling father and start anew in a place where she can be free. But even after they each find a way to move on and lead very different lives, can they outrun their family stories — and will they ever be able to come together again? Set in Australia and narrated in alternating points of view, here is an affecting look at the evolving lives of three friends from talented author Emma Cameron.
Black Helicopters
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: March 26, 2013
Format: E-Book
A teenage girl. A survivalist childhood. And now a bomb strapped to her chest. See the world through her eyes in this harrowing and deeply affecting literary thriller.
I’m Valkyrie White. I’m fifteen. Your government killed my family.
Ever since Mabby died while picking beans in their garden — with the pock-a-pock of a helicopter overhead — four-year-old Valley knows what her job is: hide in the underground den with her brother, Bo, while Da is working, because Those People will kill them like coyotes. But now, with Da unexpectedly gone and no home to return to, a teenage Valley (now Valkyrie) and her big brother must bring their message to the outside world — a not-so-smart place where little boys wear their names on their backpacks and young men don’t pat down strangers before offering a lift. Blythe Woolston infuses her white-knuckle narrative, set in a day-after-tomorrow Montana, with a dark, trenchant humor and a keen psychological eye. Alternating past-present vignettes in prose as tightly wound as the springs of a clock and as masterfully plotted as a game of chess, she ratchets up the pacing right to the final, explosive end.
All We Know of Love
Price: $6.99
Pub Date: January 22, 2013
Format: E-Book
A boldly original tale about a girl who journeys through love and loss to find her mother — and discovers that everyone has a story to tell, including herself.
"I used to think that a person would not know who I was, not really know me, until they heard about my mother."
Four years, four months, and fifteen days ago, Natalie Gordon's mother walked out mid-sentence, before she finished what she was going to say. Now Natalie is traveling twenty-four hours on a bus to Florida to find her mother, to find herself, to find out something about love. Along the way, Natalie struggles to understand her relationship with Adam, a boy she pines for with near-obsession, and to her surprise, she meets people with stories like her own, stories about giving love and getting lost in the desire to be wanted. Acclaimed middle-grade novelist Nora Raleigh Baskin makes her young adult debut with a deeply resonant novel about secrets held and secrets shared, about having the courage to uncover all we know — and don’t know — of love.

Beauty Mark
A Verse Novel of Marilyn Monroe
Price: $19.99
Pub Date: September 8, 2020
Format: Hardcover
In a powerful novel in verse, an award-winning author offers an eye-opening look at the life of Marilyn Monroe.
From the day she was born into a troubled home to her reigning days as a Hollywood icon, Marilyn Monroe (née Norma Jeane Mortenson) lived a life that was often defined by others. Here, in a luminous poetic narrative, acclaimed author Carole Boston Weatherford tells Marilyn’s story in a way that restores her voice to its rightful place: center stage. Revisiting Marilyn’s often traumatic early life—foster homes, loneliness, sexual abuse, teen marriage—through a hard-won, meteoric rise to stardom that brought with it exploitation, pill dependency, and depression, the lyrical narrative continues through Marilyn’s famous performance at JFK’s birthday party, three months before her death. In a story at once riveting, moving, and unflinching, Carole Boston Weatherford tells a tale of extraordinary pain and moments of unexpected grace, gumption, and perseverance, as well as the inexorable power of pursuing one’s dreams. A beautifully designed volume.
What the Birds See
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: December 10, 2019
Format: Paperback
“Hartnett again captures the ineffable fragility of childhood in this keenly observed tale set in 1977 in her native Australia.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Nine-year-old Adrian watches his world closely, but there is much he cannot understand. He does not, for instance, know why three neighborhood children might set out to buy ice cream one summer’s day and never be seen again. In a suburb that is no longer safe and innocent, in a broken family of self-absorbed souls, Sonya Hartnett sets the story of a lone little boy — unwanted, unloved, and intensely curious — a story as achingly beautiful as it is shattering.
Surrender
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: August 13, 2019
Format: Paperback
“Sophisticated young readers will be awed by the delicate, measured, heartbreaking portrait that emerges.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
As life slips away, Gabriel looks back over his brief twenty years, clouded by the frustration and humiliation of never being allowed to forget the horrific mistake he made as a child. He has only two friends: his dog, Surrender, and the unruly wild boy, Finnigan, a shadowy doppelgänger with whom the meek Gabriel once made a boyhood pact. But when a series of arson attacks grips the town, Gabriel realizes how unpredictable and dangerous Finnigan is. As events begin to spiral violently out of control, it becomes devastatingly clear that only the most extreme measures will rid Gabriel of Finnigan for good.
Being Fishkill
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: November 14, 2017
Format: Hardcover
Fishkill Carmel fends for herself, with her fists if need be — until a thwarted lunch theft introduces her to strange, sunny Duck-Duck and a chance for a new start.
Born in the backseat of a moving car, Carmel Fishkill was unceremoniously pushed into a world that refuses to offer her security, stability, love. At age thirteen, she begins to fight back. Carmel Fishkill becomes Fishkill Carmel, who deflects her tormenters with a strong left hook and conceals her secrets from teachers and social workers. But Fishkill’s fierce defenses falter when she meets eccentric optimist Duck-Duck Farina, and soon they, along with Duck-Duck’s mother, Molly, form a tentative family, even as Fishkill struggles to understand her place in it. This fragile new beginning is threatened by the reappearance of Fishkill’s unstable mother — and by unfathomable tragedy. Poet Ruth Lehrer’s young adult debut is a stunning, revelatory look at what defines and sustains “family.” And, just as it does for Fishkill, meeting Duck-Duck Farina and her mother will leave readers forever changed.
Golden Boys
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: April 12, 2016
Format: Hardcover
With masterful nuance and vividly drawn characters, Sonya Hartnett’s novel visits a suburban neighborhood where psychological menace lurks below the surface.
Colt Jenson and his younger brother, Bastian, have moved to a new, working-class suburb. The Jensons are different. Their father, Rex, showers them with gifts — toys, bikes, all that glitters most — and makes them the envy of the neighborhood. To the local kids, the Jensons are a family out of a movie, and Rex a hero — successful, attentive, attractive, always there to lend a hand. But to Colt he's an impossible figure: unbearable, suffocating. Has Colt got Rex wrong, or has he seen something in his father that will destroy their fragile new lives? This brilliant and unflinching novel reveals internationally acclaimed author Sonya Hartnett at her most intriguing and psychologically complex.
Requiem
Poems of the Terezin Ghetto
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: August 6, 2013
Format: Paperback
“Moving and brutal, a poetic remembrance of a tragedy too vast to forget.” — Kirkus Reviews
Acclaimed poet Paul B. Janeczko gives voice to the indomitable creative community of the Czech concentration camp of Terezín (Theresienstadt), emphasizing its dignity, resilience, and commitment to art and music in the face of great brutality. Accented with dramatic illustrations by prisoners, found after World War II, Janeczko’s spare and powerful poems convey Terezín’s tragic legacy on an intimate, profoundly moving scale.
Butterfly
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: July 9, 2013
Format: Paperback
"Exquisitely written . . . steeped in emotional clairvoyance." — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)
Plum Coyle is on the edge of adolescence. Her fourteenth birthday is approaching, when her old life and her old body will fall away, and she will become graceful, powerful, and at ease. Or so she desperately believes. Instead, over the next couple of weeks, the older brothers she adores court catastrophe in worlds that she barely knows exist, while Plum’s friends, her worst enemies, tease and test, smelling weakness. A powerful tale about the shifting bonds and psychological perils of adolescence.
Out of This Place
Price: $17.99
Pub Date: May 14, 2013
Format: Hardcover
A powerful novel in verse captures the voices of three teens as they struggle against hardscrabble realities — and move toward their dreams.
Luke spends his days hanging out at the beach, working shifts at the local supermarket, and trying to stay out of trouble at school. His mate Bongo gets wasted, blocking out memories of the little brother that social services took away from his addict mom and avoiding the stepdad who hits him. And Casey, the girl they both love, longs to get away from her strict, controlling father and start anew in a place where she can be free. But even after they each find a way to move on and lead very different lives, can they outrun their family stories — and will they ever be able to come together again? Set in Australia and narrated in alternating points of view, here is an affecting look at the evolving lives of three friends from talented author Emma Cameron.
Black Helicopters
Price: $7.99
Pub Date: March 26, 2013
Format: E-Book
A teenage girl. A survivalist childhood. And now a bomb strapped to her chest. See the world through her eyes in this harrowing and deeply affecting literary thriller.
I’m Valkyrie White. I’m fifteen. Your government killed my family.
Ever since Mabby died while picking beans in their garden — with the pock-a-pock of a helicopter overhead — four-year-old Valley knows what her job is: hide in the underground den with her brother, Bo, while Da is working, because Those People will kill them like coyotes. But now, with Da unexpectedly gone and no home to return to, a teenage Valley (now Valkyrie) and her big brother must bring their message to the outside world — a not-so-smart place where little boys wear their names on their backpacks and young men don’t pat down strangers before offering a lift. Blythe Woolston infuses her white-knuckle narrative, set in a day-after-tomorrow Montana, with a dark, trenchant humor and a keen psychological eye. Alternating past-present vignettes in prose as tightly wound as the springs of a clock and as masterfully plotted as a game of chess, she ratchets up the pacing right to the final, explosive end.
All We Know of Love
Price: $6.99
Pub Date: January 22, 2013
Format: E-Book
A boldly original tale about a girl who journeys through love and loss to find her mother — and discovers that everyone has a story to tell, including herself.
"I used to think that a person would not know who I was, not really know me, until they heard about my mother."
Four years, four months, and fifteen days ago, Natalie Gordon's mother walked out mid-sentence, before she finished what she was going to say. Now Natalie is traveling twenty-four hours on a bus to Florida to find her mother, to find herself, to find out something about love. Along the way, Natalie struggles to understand her relationship with Adam, a boy she pines for with near-obsession, and to her surprise, she meets people with stories like her own, stories about giving love and getting lost in the desire to be wanted. Acclaimed middle-grade novelist Nora Raleigh Baskin makes her young adult debut with a deeply resonant novel about secrets held and secrets shared, about having the courage to uncover all we know — and don’t know — of love.