Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Difficult Situations

The two-time Newbery Honor winner Gary D. Schmidt delivers the shattering story of Joseph, a father at 13, who has never seen his daughter, Jupiter. After spending time in a juvenile facility, he's placed with a foster family on a farm in rural Maine. Here Joseph, damaged and withdrawn, meets 12-year-old Jack, who narrates the account of the troubled, passionate teen who wants to find his baby at any cost. In this riveting novel, two boys discover the true meaning of family and the sacrifices it requires.

Simone Thibodeaux is about to switch things up. Check her life: It’s sealed in a boy-proof container. Her Haitian immigrant parents send Simone to an all-girls high school and enforce strict no-dating rules. As for prom? Simone is allowed to go on one condition: Her parents will select her date (a boy from a nice Haitian-immigrant family, obviously). Simone is desperate to avoid the setup - especially since she has a serious crush on another boy. It’s time to take action.

One day, 13-year-old Jessie Bollier is earning pennies playing his fife on the docks of New Orleans; the next, he is kidnapped and thrown aboard a slave ship, where his job is to provide music while shackled slaves "dance" to keep their muscles strong and their bodies profitable. As the endless voyage continues, Jessie grows increasingly sickened by the greed, brutality, and inhumanity of the slave trade, but nothing prepares him for the ultimate horror he will witness before his nightmare ends - a horror that will change his life forever.

As if her parents' divorce and sister's departure for college weren't bad enough, 14-year-old Ricky Bloom has just been diagnosed with a life-changing chronic illness. Her days consist of cursing everyone out, skipping school - which has become a nightmare - daydreaming about her crush, Julio, and trying to keep her parents from realizing just how bad things are. But she can't keep her ruse up forever.

Dean Foster knows he’s a trans guy. He’s watched enough YouTube videos and done enough questioning to be sure. But everyone at his high school thinks he’s a lesbian - including his girlfriend, Zoe, and his theater director, who just cast him as a “nontraditional” Romeo. He wonders if maybe it would be easier to wait until college to come out. But as he plays Romeo every day in rehearsals, Dean realizes he wants everyone to see him as he really is now - not just on the stage, but everywhere in his life. Dean knows what he needs to do.

It’s the beginning of the school year—and Briar’s newest resident, D.J. Rosenblum, is not here for it. Ever since her cousin Rachel died, D.J.’s family has been a mess: Her aunt and uncle are catatonic. Her mom is even more scatterbrained than usual. She had to postpone her bat mitzvah a whole year. Worst of all, she and her mom had to move—leaving her best friend, Eva, behind.

Told in dual timelines - half of the chapters moving forward in time and half moving backward - We Used to Be Friends explores the most traumatic breakup of all: that of childhood besties. At the start of their senior year in high school, James (a girl with a boy's name) and Kat are inseparable, but by graduation, they're no longer friends. James prepares to head off to college as she reflects on the dissolution of her friendship with Kat while, in alternating chapters, Kat thinks about being newly in love with her first girlfriend and having a future that feels wide open.

Chloe missed her bus home thanks to the terrible Miss Langley. Thankfully, she's able to catch the back-up bus. Unfortunately for Chloe … there is no back-up bus. As more and more students go missing without explanation and the authorities are stumped, Kaitlin and her friends become entangled in this deeply unsettling mystery that goes far deeper than any of them expected.

Michael is content to live in the shadow of his best friends, James and Becky. Plus, his brother, Connor, has already been kicked out of the house for being gay, and laying low seems to be Michael's only chance at avoiding the same fate. To pass the time before graduation, Michael hangs out at The Echo, where he can dance and forget about his father's angry words, the pressures of school, and the looming threat of AIDS, a disease that everyone is talking about, but no one understands

Despite hard-won victories, the revolutionary forces known as the Red Hand are more endangered than ever: the Planetary Alliance Commission—the PAC—has branded them public enemy number one, ramping up their efforts to eliminate the Red Hand’s remaining members even as the pandemic rages on. In order to protect the progress they have made, the team must adopt new tactics. Ashiva, armed with a new bionic upgrade, leads a team back into the fray on a dangerous mission across a toxic wasteland wracked by storms.

When 17-year-old Calliope meets her new neighbor Max, their connection is instantaneous, but the revelation of her sperm donor’s identity changes everything. Calliope Silversmith has always had just two friends in her small Pennsylvania town, Ginger and Noah, and she's fine with that. She's never wanted anything more than her best friends, her moms, their house in the woods, and their family-run yoga studio - except maybe knowing who her sperm donor is. Her curiosity has been building for years, and she can finally find out this summer when she turns 18.

Ophelia Castellan will never be just another girl at Elsinore Academy. Seeing ghosts is not a skill prized in future society wives. Even when she takes her pills, the bean sidhe beckon, reminding her of a promise to her dead mother. Now, in the wake of the Headmaster's sudden death, the whole academy is in turmoil, and Ophelia can no longer ignore the fae. Especially once she starts seeing the Headmaster's ghosts - two of them - on the school grounds.

Zay’s ma always said his mouth would get him in trouble. Sure enough, it got him into his first and only fight, junior year. Expelled from his district, Zay understands that his only hope for redemption is to transfer to Broadlawn Alternative School.

Seventeen-year-old Ginny Park is about to get expelled from high school—again. Stephanie, the picture book author who took Ginny into her Oregon home after she was kicked out of school in Hawaii, isn’t upset: she only wants to know why. But Ginny has always been in-between. She can’t bring herself to open up to anyone about her past, or about what prompted her to flee her native Japan. Then, Ginny finds a mysterious scrawl among Stephanie’s scraps of paper and storybook drawings that changes everything: The sky is about to fall. Where do you go?

When Janie first realized she was the missing child on the milk carton, her whole world fell apart. At first, she wondered if the parents she loved so much had actually kidnapped her, but it turns out that they were only trying to protect her. Now that the mystery of Janie's kidnapping has been unraveled, she is caught on the horns of a huge dilemma.

When his family packs up and moves from the city to a small town deep in the Wisconsin countryside, 15-year-old Wil Neuton makes an exhilarating discovery. He finds a small island on a nearby lake, a place where he can be alone and learn to know nature—and himself. On his island, he can write, paint, and watch the loons and fish in the lake. Wil can’t stay away from the outside world forever, though. Sooner or later, he must return and face the bully determined to fight him and his bickering parents, who worry when Wil decides to stay on the island indefinitely.

Corey and her best friend, Kyra, are inseparable. Corey is the only person who understands Kyra's high-highs and low-lows. So when Corey's family moves away from their Alaskan town, she makes Kyra promise to stay strong during the long, dark winters and wait for her return. Except Kyra doesn't. Two days before Corey is to visit, Kyra is found floating underneath the ice. While everyone in Lost Creek deems Kyra's death a suicide, Corey knows something is wrong. With every hour, her suspicion grows.

Justine Childs is your average teenage girl, until the day ex-child-star Eva Kate Kelly moves in across the way. Eva Kate is gorgeous, seductive, and eager to invite Justine into her glittery world. Their relationship intensifies quickly, but there is a lot they aren't telling each other, and in the midst of the whirlwind, a girl lies dead. Who killed Eva Kate? Justine swears her innocence - and she'd like you to hear her side of the story.

Lia and Beck. Beck and Lia. Despite army-brat life orbiting them in and out of each other's worlds, Lia knows they are destined to be together. It's more than their friendship and chemistry. When Lia's mom was a teen, a fortune teller said her daughter would fall in love with her best friend's son. Lia and Beck were always meant to be. Or so they thought.

Ever since The Night in Question left her with a hideous scar and no memory of what happened, Theo Lane has been hiding. An aspiring filmmaker, she uses a hidden button cam to keep the world at bay. She spends the entire summer in a Manhattan cafe, secretly documenting random "subjects".