Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Family & Relationships

Theo is better now. She’s eating again, dating guys who are almost appropriate, and well on her way to becoming an elite ballet dancer. But when her oldest friend, Donovan, returns home after spending four long years with his kidnapper, Theo starts reliving memories about his abduction - and his abductor. Donovan isn’t talking about what happened, and even though Theo knows she didn’t do anything wrong, telling the truth would put everything she’s been living for at risk. But keeping quiet might be worse.

Fourteen-year-old David Alspeth is the owner of a 22-foot sailboat, an inheritance from his uncle Owen, who recently died of cancer. Uncle Owen’s last request before he died was that David should take his ashes out to sea, a job David would give anything to avoid. When he finally sets sail on calm, clear evening, David feels the weight of what he must do all around him. He can’t imagine life without Owen. David completes his task, but on the return trip home he is caught unawares by a freak storm.

Kids have been picking on 14-year-old Harold ever since he can remember. They stare at him and call him "maggot" or "ghost boy" because he's an albino. Even his mother seems angry and withdrawn when he's around.One day the circus comes to town, and Harold runs away to join it. When Fossil Man and Princess Minikin accept him into their family, he feels that he has at long last come home.

Ours is an age-old tale of two betties, apple-Jacks forever, when suddenly one goes ace gorgeous and then, naturally, massive popular. Said popular betty ditches other unsaid, unpopular betty for superhit cool crowd. Girls don't speak again for four years, until a chance meeting reunites them.... What do you do when Ms. Ancient History comes waltzing back into your life? If you're Lu Butler, dodging sweet but clueless boys while secretly crushing hard on girls, you fall.

After "borrowing" her father's credit card to finance a more stylish wardrobe, Margot Sanchez suddenly finds herself grounded. And by grounded, she means working as an indentured servant in her family's struggling grocery store to pay off her debts. With each order of deli meat she slices, Margot can feel her carefully cultivated prep school reputation slipping through her fingers, and she's willing to do anything to get out of this punishment. Lie, cheat, and maybe even steal.

Jack is on the verge of leaving for college, but before he does, he wants to track down his estranged brother, Alex, and find some closure in the wake of their father's death. Meanwhile, Hallie has just found out some upsetting news about a friend in Oregon, and she has a small window to go see him before it's too late. Jack and Hallie are practically strangers. They shared a class together years ago and haven't seen each other since, though they have more in common than they'd ever imagine.

In the sandy Mojave Desert, Madison is a small town on the road between nothing and nowhere. But Eldon wouldn't want to live anywhere else because in Madison, everyone gets one wish - and that wish always comes true. Some people wish for money; some people wish for love. But Eldon has seen how wishes have broken the people around him. And with the lives of his family and friends in chaos, he's left with more questions than answers. Can he make their lives better?

In this richly imagined dystopic future brought by global warming, mass human migrations are constant, water and food are scarce, new babies are illegal, and the disintegrating society is run by corporates who feed the people a steady diet of "pharma" to keep them happy. Usually, 17-year-old Nat doesn't let it get her down too much: this, after all, is the life she's used to; and though she is nostalgic for the ancient world she's heard about, she's also realistic, cheerful, and tough. But now her family have come to Hawaii for their parents' Final Week.

Celia Sand faced Diavala and won, using ink magic to destroy the corrupt religion of Profeta that tormented her for a decade. But winning came with a cost. Now Celia is plagued with guilt over her role in the death of her best friend. When she discovers that Diavala is still very much alive and threatening Griffin, the now-infamous plague doctor, Celia is desperate not to lose another person she loves to the deity's wrath. The key to destroying Diavala may lie with Halycon Ronnea, the only other person to have faced Diavala and survived. But Halcyon is dangerous.

For five friends, this was supposed to be one last getaway before going their separate ways - a chance to say good-bye to each other and to the game they've been playing for the past three years. But they're all dealing with their own demons, and they're all hiding secrets.

Iris, Gum, and Aidan are vacationing in Bad Creek, just like every summer. Except Iris’s older sister, Glory, drowned in the lake last year, and Iris can’t seem to move on; Gum is hiding his sexuality from his family while being viciously haunted by Glory’s rotting ghost; and Aidan is distraught over a drunken argument with Glory that he fears may have led to her death. When Iris sleepwalks to the dilapidated house that Glory obsessively sketched in her final days, she and the boys begin to uncover a sinister history in the very bones of the town.

There are five towns in the U.S. named “Normal” and seventeen-year-old Gemma Leonardo plans on visiting every one of them. Right after she escapes Children’s Hospital in Harrisburg, where she’s being treated for anorexia. Enter Lucas Polizzi, a high school wrestler with bulimia and, more importantly to Gemma, a getaway car. Sick of being told they’re sick, Gemma and Lucas team up for a themed road trip to “ the Normals” on one condition— they can’t mention food, ever.

For a few weeks every summer, Sara was Mandy's best friend. At Highmark, the lake resort where their families vacationed, the two were in a world of their own. Or at least Mandy got to be part of Sara's world. But now Sara's dead. The police ruled her death an accident; a tragic mistake after a night of impaired judgment. For the past year, Mandy's coped by escaping: leaving home and barely keeping it together at school. The last thing she wants to do is return to Highmark this summer―even if she does need "closure."

Turtle is scavenging a drowned town when she saves a stranger’s life. There’s something special about Kai—an attraction she’s never felt before. She would do anything to see him again. But Turtle can never truly be with Kai, because Kai is Normal, and Turtle is one of the Mer, kids whose genes were illegally hacked before birth and who now have working gills as well as lungs. Turtle lives on an old cruise ship with the other Mer in order to be close to the water she needs to survive. Yet she sneaks away and lies to her friends to spend more time on land with Kai.

Tensions run as hot as the Khamsin winds in the great kingdom of Khetara. Rumors of the pharaoh's mysterious illness abound, and with them, murmurs of rebellion grow. Meanwhile, in the quiet desert, a forgotten oracle begins to unfold, setting a dark prophecy into action and drawing together four strangers …

Senior year is going to be perfect. Meghan won't settle for anything less. She's already crushing her classes and dating the star of the basketball team. Nate's friends have been less than welcoming, but it's never easy being one of the only Black kids at a mostly white prep school. Still, Meghan did not expect the scene at pep rally. Robin and Bria dated Nate too. Correction: are dating him. He never broke up with them, and Meghan is furious.

Chronically ill seventeen-year-old Ivy has stayed inside baking all summer—pies are better than people, and they don’t trigger her social anxiety. So when her (also) chronically ill mom and sister cook up a plan to get Ivy out of the house and into a support group, Ivy doesn’t expect to say more than a few words. And she certainly doesn’t expect Grant. Grant is CUTE: class-clown cute, perfectly-messy-hair cute, will-always-text-you-back cute. There’s an instant connection between them. He has the same illness as her—juvenile rheumatoid arthritis—and he actually understands Ivy’s world.

Brian, a 20-something reporter on the Niagara Cascade's City Desk, is navigating life as the only Indigenous writer in the newsroom, being lumped into reporting on stereotypical stories that homogenize his community, the nearby Tuscarora reservation. But when a mysterious roadside assault lands Tim, the brother of Brian's mother's late boyfriend in the hospital, Brian must pick up the threads of a life that he's abandoned.

The city of Leithon is under Imperial occupation and Arian Athensor has made it her playground. In stealing magical artifacts for the Resistance, bounding over rooftops to evade Imperial soldiers, and establishing herself as the darling thief of the underground, Arian lives a life wrapped in danger and trained towards survival. She’ll steal anything for the right price, and if she runs fast enough, she can almost escape the fact that her mother is dead, her father is missing, and her brother, Liam, is tamping down a wealth of power in a city that has outlawed magic.

For once, everything in Maya's life is falling perfectly into place. She's getting serious media cred uncovering the source of a new designer drug doing major glitterati damage. And the new man in her life is giving Maya all the cool bling and attention she craves off-camera. But the truth behind her scoop is about to cut too close to home — and put Maya and her family in the crosshairs. Soon, she'll have to decide just how far she can afford to go to save her family, her career…and herself.