The Stepmom Shake-Up


Book Description

Grace + her dad, Davy = Team Gravy. No way is a new stepmom going to break up this team. . . . Filled with reverse Parent Trap-like pranks, The Stepmom Shake-Up is a hilarious and heartfelt look at what it means to be a family. Grace + Dad = the perfect team After Grace's mom died, she and her dad grew extra close. They have special nicknames and are always busy with new projects--like building a puppy condo for their dog, Potus--and they love learning random facts about the US presidents. Grace thinks her little family of two is perfect. Then some committee members at church suggest it's time for Dad to start dating again. And Dad agrees! Grace knows that adding a new member to the team will end in disaster. No problem! She and her best friend have a plan: Operation: Stepmom Shake-Up But what if a little shake-up is exactly what Grace's family needs?




The Stepmom Shake-Up


Book Description

Grace + her dad, Davy = Team Gravy. No way is a new stepmom going to break up this team. . . . Filled with reverse Parent Trap-like pranks, The Stepmom Shake-Up is a hilarious and heartfelt look at what it means to be a family. Grace + Dad = the perfect team After Grace's mom died, she and her dad grew extra close. They have special nicknames and are always busy with new projects--like building a puppy condo for their dog, Potus--and they love learning random facts about the US presidents. Grace thinks her little family of two is perfect. Then some committee members at church suggest it's time for Dad to start dating again. And Dad agrees! Grace knows that adding a new member to the team will end in disaster. No problem! She and her best friend have a plan: Operation: Stepmom Shake-Up But what if a little shake-up is exactly what Grace's family needs?




Bernice Buttman, Model Citizen


Book Description

Bernice Buttman is tough, crass, and hilarious, and she just might teach you a thing or two about empathy in this novel for fans of The Great Gilly Hopkins. When you're a Buttman, the label "bully" comes with the territory, and Bernice lives up to her name. But life as a bully is lonely, and if there's one thing Bernice really wants (even more than becoming a Hollywood stuntwoman), it's a true friend. After her mom skedaddles and leaves her in a new town with her aunt (who is also a real live nun), Bernice decides to mend her ways and become a model citizen. If her plan works, she just might be able to get herself to Hollywood Hills Stunt Camp! But it's hard to be kind when no one shows you kindness, so a few cheesy pranks may still be up her sleeve. . . . Get ready to laugh out loud--and maybe even shed a tear--with this fantastic new middle-grade voice!




The Sense of an Ending


Book Description

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.




Positively


Book Description

Since the day Emerson Pressman and her mother were diagnosed as HIV positive, nothing has been the same. When her mother dies of AIDS, Emmy has to go live with the father and stepmother she barely knows, and she feels more alone than ever. Now she has to take pills by herself, and there is no one left who understands what it's like to be afraid every time she has a cold. But when her father decides to send her to Camp Positive, a camp for HIV-positive children, Emmy begins to realize that she's not alone after all, and that sometimes, opening up to other people can make all the difference in the world.







Where You'll Find Me


Book Description

The first month of school, thirteen-year-old Anna Collette finds herself... DUMPED by her best friend Dani, who suddenly wants to spend eighth grade "hanging out with different people." DESERTED by her mom, who's in the hospital recovering from a suicide attempt. TRAPPED in a house with her dad, a new baby sister, and a stepmother young enough to wear her Delta Delta Delta sweatshirt with pride. STUCK at a lunch table with Shawna the Eyebrow Plucker and Sarabeth the Irish Stepper because she has no one else to sit with. But what if all isn't lost? What if Anna's mom didn't exactly mean to leave her? What if Anna's stepmother is cooler than she thought? What if the misfit lunch table isn't such a bad fit after all? With help from some unlikely sources, including a crazy girl-band talent show act, Anna just may find herself on the road to okay.




Wink


Book Description

A hilarious and heartwrenching story about surviving middle school--and an unthinkable diagnosis--while embracing life's weirdness. Ross Maloy just wants to be a normal seventh grader. He doesn't want to lose his hair, or wear a weird hat, or deal with the disappearing friends who don't know what to say to "the cancer kid." But with his recent diagnosis of a rare eye cancer, blending in is off the table. Based on Rob Harrell's real life experience, and packed with comic panels and spot art, this incredibly personal and poignant novel is an unforgettable, heartbreaking, hilarious, and uplifting story of survival and finding the music, magic, and laughter in life's weirdness.




All Our Broken Pieces


Book Description

You can't keep two people who are meant to be together apart for long... Lennon Davis doesn't believe in much, but she does believe in the security of the number five. If she flicks the bedroom light switch five times, maybe her new LA school won't suck. But that doesn't feel right, so she flicks the switch again. And again. Ten more flicks of the switch and maybe her new stepfamily will accept her. Twenty-five more flicks and maybe she won't cause any more of her loved ones to die. Fifty more and then she can finally go to sleep. Kyler Benton witnesses this pattern of lights from the safety of his tree house in the yard next door. It is only there, hidden from the unwanted stares of his peers, that Kyler can fill his notebooks with lyrics that reveal the true scars of the boy behind the oversize hoodies and caustic humor. But Kyler finds that descriptions of blond hair, sad eyes, and tapping fingers are beginning to fill the pages of his notebooks. Lennon, the lonely girl next door his father has warned him about, infiltrates his mind. Even though he has enough to deal with without Lennon's rumored tragic past in his life, Kyler can't help but want to know the truth about his new muse.




Lies Like Poison


Book Description

“A journey into the dark corners of friendship.” —Mindy McGinnis, author of The Female of the Species Riverdale meets Karen M. McManus’s Two Can Keep a Secret in this “twisty, sumptuous dark fairy tale of a mystery” (Kara Thomas, author of The Cheerleaders) about estranged friends who reunite when someone commits the murder they’d planned—but didn’t go through with—and leaves one of their own to take the fall. Poppy, Lily, and Belladonna would do anything to protect their best friend, Raven. So when they discovered he was suffering abuse at the hands of his stepmother, they came up with a lethal plan: petals of poppy, belladonna, and lily in her evening tea so she’d never be able to hurt Raven again. But someone got cold feet, the plot faded to a secret of the past, and the group fell apart. Three years later, on the eve of Raven’s seventeenth birthday, his stepmother turns up dead. But it’s only belladonna found in her tea, and it’s only Belladonna who’s carted off to jail. Desperate for help, Belle reaches out to her estranged friends to prove her innocence. They answer the call, but no one is prepared for what comes next. Now, everyone has something to lose and something equally dangerous to hide. And when the tangled web of secrets and betrayal is finally unwound, what lies at its heart will change the group forever.