Showing results by publisher "Simon & Schuster Audio" in Difficult Situations

Her father is a Musik, one of only five musicians in the country licensed to compose and perform original songs. In the kingdom of Aell, where winter is endless and magic is accessible to all, there are strict anti-magic laws ensuring music remains the last untouched art.

Esta isn’t a stranger to high-stakes heists. She’s a seasoned thief who has no reservations about using her affinity for time to give her an edge, and she’s trained her whole life for one mission: travel back to 1902 New York, steal the ancient Book of Mysteries, and use its power to destroy the Brink and free the Mageus from the Order’s control. But the book held a danger that no one anticipated - Seshat, an angry goddess, was trapped within its pages.

Once, Esta believed that she could change the fate of magic. She traveled to the past and stopped the Magician from destroying a mystical book that held the key to freeing her people from the Brink, an energy barrier that traps all Mageus who cross it. But the Book was more than she bargained for. So was the Magician she was tasked to steal it from. Hunted by an ancient evil, Esta and Harte have raced through time and across a continent to track down the powerful artifacts they need to bind the Book’s devastating power.

Adam is in Doha, Qatar, making a map of the Hijra, a historic migration from Mecca to Medina, and worried about where his next paycheck will come from. Zayneb is in Chicago, where school and extracurricular stresses are piling on top of a terrible frenemy situation, making her miserable. Then a marvel occurs: Adam and Zayneb get the chance to spend Thanksgiving week on the Umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia.

In her best-selling novel, Tricks, Ellen Hopkins introduced us to five memorable characters tackling enormous questions: Eden, the preacher's daughter who turns tricks in Vegas and is helped into a child prostitution rescue; Seth, the gay farm boy disowned by his father who finds himself without money or resources other than his own body; Whitney, the privileged kid coaxed into the life by a pimp and whose dreams are ruined in a heroin haze.

Jasmine Yap’s life is great. Well, it’s okay. She’s about to move in with her longtime boyfriend, Paul, before starting a nursing program at community college - all of which she mostly wants. But her stable world is turned upside down when she catches Paul cheating. To her giant, overprotective family, Paul’s loss is their golden ticket to showing Jasmine that she deserves much more. The only problem is, Jasmine refuses to meet anyone new. But...what if the family set up a situation where she wouldn’t have to know? A secret Jasmine Project.

In this dark academia young adult thriller for fans of The Female of the Species and People Like Us, a teen girl’s search for answers about her mother’s mysterious death leads to a powerful secret society at her new boarding school—and a dangerous game of revenge that will leave her forever changed.

For over a hundred years, girls have fought to attend St. Bernadette’s, with its reputation for shaping only the best and brightest young women. Unfortunately, there is also the screaming. When a student begins to scream in the middle of class, a chain reaction starts that impacts the entire school. By the end of the day, seventeen girls are affected—along with St. Bernadette’s stellar reputation. Khadijah’s got her own scars to tend to, and watching her friends succumb to hysteria only rips apart wounds she’d rather keep closed.

Filled with the zany enthusiasm that has made Lele into Vine's most viewed star, this charming novel is proof that high school is a trip. From crushing your crushes (what's up with that hot transfer student, Alexei?) to throwing Insta-fake parties with your BFFs and moaning over homework (GAH) with your frenemies, high school is a roller coaster of exhilarating highs and totally embarrassing lows.

Dino doesn’t mind spending time with the dead. His parents own a funeral home, and death is literally the family business. He’s just not used to them talking back. Until Dino’s ex-best friend July dies suddenly - and then comes back to life. Except not exactly. Somehow, July is not quite alive and not quite dead. As Dino and July attempt to figure out what’s happening, they must also confront why and how their friendship ended so badly and what they have left to understand about themselves, each other, and all those grand mysteries of life.

It’s been ten months since Nami narrowly escaped the Four Courts and Ophelia’s wrath. Ten months since she was betrayed by someone she once considered a friend. Someone she poured her heart out to. And now her family here in the afterlife are gone, captured, and Nami is utterly alone. On the run, only steps ahead of the AI forces pursuing her, and desperate to free her friends, Nami must take the allies she can find, even if she doesn’t fully trust them. And as she tests the limits of her own power, she must also reckon with the responsibility that entails.

Sixteen-year-old Elena Mendoza is the product of a virgin birth. This can be scientifically explained (it's called parthenogenesis), but what can't be explained is how Elena is able to heal Freddie, the girl she's had a crush on for years, from a gunshot wound in a Starbucks parking lot. Or why the boy who shot Freddie, David Combs, disappeared from the same parking lot minutes later after getting sucked up into the clouds. What also can't be explained are the talking girl on the front of a tampon box, or the reasons that David Combs shot Freddie in the first place.

Travis Coates has a good head…on someone else’s shoulders. A touching, hilarious, and wholly original coming-of-age story from John Corey Whaley, author of the Printz and Morris Award-winning Where Things Come Back. Listen - Travis Coates was alive once and then he wasn’t. Now he’s alive again. Simple as that. The in-between part is still a little fuzzy, but Travis can tell you that, at some point or another, his head got chopped off and shoved into a freezer in Denver, Colorado. Five years later, it was reattached to some other guy’s body, and well, here he is.

When the Last Days came, the planet of Laterre promised hope, a new life for a wealthy French family and their descendants. But 500 years later, it’s now a place where an extravagant elite class reigns supreme; where the clouds hide the stars and the poor starve in the streets; where a rebel group, long thought dead, is resurfacing. Whispers of revolution have begun - a revolution that hinges on three unlikely heroes.

After a cyberbullying incident at her school goes viral, Luna Iglesias finds herself at the heart of a brewing controversy. When the social media company Limbo—who are also implicated in the scandal—sweeps in with an offer that sounds like an opportunity to turn over a new leaf and receive a scholarship to the college of her dreams, she’s happy to jump on the new trend. It’s called the Retro Challenge, where contestants live without modern technology, wear vintage clothes, party as if the future weren’t already written, and fall in love as if they were living in a movie.

As a citizen of Omnistellar Concepts, the most powerful corporation in the solar system, Kenzie has trained her entire life for one goal: to become an elite guard on Sanctuary, Omnistellar's space prison for superpowered teens too dangerous for Earth. As a junior guard, she's excited to prove herself to her company - and that means sacrificing anything that won't propel her forward. But then a routine drill goes sideways, and Kenzie is taken hostage by rioting prisoners.

Can a love triangle have only two people in it? Online, it can…but in the real world, its more complicated. In this debut novel that’s perfect for fans of Jenny Han and Morgan Matson, Marisa Kanter hilariously and poignantly explores what happens when internet friends turn into IRL crushes.

Victoria and her dad have shared a love of the undead since the first vampire revealed his existence on live TV. Public fear soon drove the vampires back into hiding, yet Victoria and her father still dream about finding a vampire together. But when her dad is diagnosed with terminal cancer, it’s clear that’s not going to happen. Instead, Victoria vows to find a vampire herself—so that she can become one and then save her father.

So, stuff has, like, a beginning and an end. And you don’t really realize that until the end, or right before. Before that, you’re just thinking that you and your homies are chillin’ and getting high, and it’s all gonna work out. You know? Truth is, the way life works is that you were born in the eye of a hurricane, and you think that’s just the way life is, calm-like. Until…it isn’t. So, yeah, Elijah is only sixteen, and already he would change a lot of stuff if he could go back in time. But you can’t ever do that. And when you can’t, that’s when you find out who you really are.

Mac has never really felt like he belonged. Definitely not at home—his dad’s politics and toxic masculinity make a real connection impossible. He thought he fit in on the baseball team, but that’s only because he was pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Finding his first gay friend, Cammy, was momentous; finally, he could be his authentic self around someone else. But as it turned out, not really. Cammy could be cruel, and his “advice” often came off way harsh.