Beverly is the only Black girl in her high school. She lives with her alcoholic, needy, and not-always-responsible mom in a ratty apartment. She takes care of her mom more than vice versa. She has an “aunt” who parties hard… Read More ›
Parent Conflict
Past Perfect Life
Ally (Allison) Smith is a high school senior living in the small town of Valley Falls WI. It’s always been just she and her dad, since (she was told) her mother died of cancer when she was only three years… Read More ›
Jackpot: All Bets Are Off
Seventeen-year-old Rico Danger is of exotic mixed parentage. She is, by her classmates’ evaluation, a stunning beauty, though she is unaware of it. Her clothes come from thrift shops. She has no friends and keeps to herself to hide her… Read More ›
The Undoing of Thistle Tate
Seventeen-year-old Thistle Tate is known as the author of runaway best-selling YA series LEMONADE SKIES, the story of a teenage girl who’s discovered a portal into the Afterworld that she hopes will lead to a reunion with her mother, who… Read More ›
We Walked the Sky
Catherine Hastings is a 16-yr-old living in a Boston household with an emotionally and physically abusive father and a dying mother. The circus comes to town! Catherine, with sudden, unexpected, and urgent pushing from her mom, runs away from home… Read More ›
The Silence Between Us
Having lost her hearing at the age of thirteen from a bout with meningitis, seventeen-year-old Maya moves through the world with the ability to speak clearly but with a preference for using American Sign Language as a declaration that she… Read More ›
Let’s Call It A Doomsday
Ellis is a 16.5-year-old growing up in a Mormon family in Berkeley CA. She has one younger sister and a regular home life, though as with all imperfect people everywhere her parents, especially her mother, have made some missteps with… Read More ›
Suggested Reading
Clara Evans, graduating senior at the private Lupton Academy, lives, eats and breathes books–fiction books, in particular. Although her best friend, LiQui, is student council president and, through her, Clara associates with non-book-fanatic people (going to Friday night football games… Read More ›
Beverly, Right Here
On a hot summer’s day in her small Florida town, fourteen-year-old Beverly Tapinski sadly buries her dog Buddy with the help of her best friend Raymie. She then decides to leave town and hitches a ride with her cousin to… Read More ›
The Beholder
Here is a fairy tale set in an imaginary location and time period that creatively (and loosely) references known countries and areas, medieval and modern customs, weaponry, technology and some vocabulary, and that spans the development of feminism through the… Read More ›
Before You Buy YA 