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

Wild, beautiful, and (as rumor has it) experienced, Hayden Vargas doesn't have time for love or relationships. She's learned the hard way that the only person you can count on is yourself and she's hell-bent on earning enough money to leave her small, judgy Texas town as fast as possible. So when nerdy Emmaline Martin offers to pay Hayden for lessons in seduction, the money is so easy, there must be a catch. Enter the catch: Emmaline's older brother, popular, all-around nice guy™ Nolan Martin, who doesn't want his sister's reputation tarnished....

Girl Code: Never date a friend's ex. Willa Evans has no intention of breaking the code. So what if she's always secretly loved her next-door neighbor Zach? As her best friend's boyfriend, he was always off-limits and it needs to stay that way, even though they just broke up. Even though every time she turns around he's there, tempting her. Flor Hidalgo has a lot on her plate: her breakup with Zach, her dad's new dating life, and her struggling grades. So why can't she stop thinking about her hot, know-it-all tutor? At least she's got Willa, her constant in the chaos.

In this authentic, humorous debut novel about privacy, waking up, and speaking up, Senator Anthony Ruiz is running for president. Throughout his successful political career he has always had his daughter's vote, but a presidential campaign brings a whole new level of scrutiny to sheltered 15-year-old Mariana and the rest of her Cuban American family, from a 60 Minutes-style tour of their house to tabloids doctoring photos and inventing scandals. As tensions rise within the Ruiz family, Mari begins to learn about the details of her father's political positions.

Lazarus "Laz" Weathers has always been shy, and his issue with stuttering when he speaks hasn't helped. Stuck in a Seattle trailer park, Laz finds baseball helps him escape from the world of poverty and drugs. When he gets an opportunity to pitch for the rich kids across town, he has a chance to get drafted by the major leagues. But playing for the other team means leaving behind his family, including Antonio, Laz's younger brother, who more and more, seems to be drawn to the dark world of the Jet City's drug ring.

Iris Oxtabee has managed to navigate the tricky world of unspoken social interactions by reading everything from neuroscience journals to Wikipedia articles. Science has helped her fit the puzzle pieces into an understandable whole, and she’s sure there’s nothing it can’t explain. Love, for example, is just chemistry. Her best friend, however, believes love is one of life’s beautiful and chaotic mysteries, without need for explanation. Iris isn’t one to back down from a challenge; she’s determined to prove love is really nothing more than hormones and external stimuli.

Fifteen-year-old RJ Armante has never known a life outside his dead-end hometown of Arcangel, CA. The Blackjacks rule as they have for generations, luring the poorest kids into their monopoly on petty crime. For years, they’ve left RJ alone, but now they have a job for him: Prey upon an old loner in town. In spite of the danger, RJ begins to resist.

Steven Gerald Gabel - a.k.a. Stiggy - needs to get out of Minnesota. His father recently look his own life, his mother is a shell of the person she used to be, and his sort-of-girlfriend ghosted him and skipped town. What does he have left to stick around for? Armed with his mom's credit card and a tourist map of Great River Road, Stiggy sets off in his dad's car.

Mansfield, Massachusetts, is the last place 17-year-old Edie Price wants to spend her final summer before college. It's the home of wealthy suburban mothers and prima donnas like Edie's cousins, who are determined to distract her from her mother's death with cute boys and Cinderella-style makeovers. She's got her own plans, and they don't include any prince charming. But as she dives into schoolwork and getting a scholarship for college, Edie finds herself drawn to two Mansfield boys strumming for her attention.

Cliff Hubbard is a huge loser. Literally. His nickname at Happy Valley High School is Neanderthal because he's so enormous - 6'6" and 250 pounds to be exact. Life in his trailer-park home has gone from bad to worse ever since his older brother's suicide. There's no one Cliff hates more than the nauseatingly cool quarterback Aaron Zimmerman. Then Aaron returns after a near-death experience with a bizarre claim: while he was unconscious he saw God, who gave him a list of things to do to make Happy Valley High suck less. And God said there's only one person who can help: Neanderthal.

Camille couldn't be having a better summer - she kills it as Ophelia in her community theater's production of Hamlet, catches the eye of the cutest boy in the play, and nabs a spot in a prestigious theater program. But on the very night she learns she got into the program, she also finds out she's pregnant. She definitely can't tell her parents. And her best friend Bea doesn't agree with the decision Camille has made. Camille is forced to try to solve her problem alone - and the system is very much working against her.

Best friends Marine Duval and Kate Sanders have trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School since childhood, where they've formed an inseparable bond forged by respective family tragedies and a fierce love for dance. When the body of a student is found in the dorms just before the start of their final year, Marine and Kate begin to ask themselves what they would do to win the ultimate prize: to be the one girl selected to join the Opera's prestigious corps de ballet.

Dumped by her boyfriend the summer after senior year, teen love and relationship columnist Lu Charles has hit a wall with her writing. The words just won't come to her like they used to and if she doesn't find a topic for her column, she'll lose her gig at hip online magazine Misnomer, and the college scholarship that goes along with it.

Susan is the new girl - she's sharp and driven, and strives to meet her parents' expectations of excellence. Malcolm is the bad boy - he started raising hell at age 15 after his mom died of cancer, and has had a reputation ever since. Susan's parents are on the verge of divorce. Malcolm's dad is a known adulterer. Susan hasn't told anyone, but she wants to be an artist. Malcolm doesn't know what he wants - until he meets her. Love is messy and families are messier, but in spite of their burdens, Susan and Malcolm fall for each other.

For most of high school, Bijan Majidi has flown under the radar. He gets good grades, reads comics, hangs out with his best friend, Sean, and secretly crushes on Elle, one of the most popular girls in his school. When he's called off the basketball team's varsity bench and makes the winning basket in a playoff game, everything changes in an instant. But not everyone is happy Bijan is the man of the hour: An anonymous cyberbully sends the entire school a picture of Bijan photoshopped to look like a terrorist.

Arkansas, 1984: The town of Griffin Flat is known for almost nothing other than its nuclear missile silos. MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction - is a fear every local lives with and tries to ignore. Unfortunately that’s impossible now that film moguls have picked Griffin Flat as the location for a new nuclear holocaust movie, aptly titled The Eve of Destruction. When 16-year-old Laura Ratliff wins a walk-on role (with a plus-one!) thanks to a radio call-in contest, she is more relieved than excited.

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.

Seventeen-year-old Evie Parker is devastated in the wake of her father’s sudden death. But she knows something her mother doesn’t: The day of his heart attack, her dad was planning to move out. After finding his packed bags, she impulsively put everything away to spare her mom more heartache. To make matters worse, Evie soon learns the reason her father was going to leave: He had been dating his 22-year-old receptionist, Bree, who is now six months pregnant with his child...Evie’s half-sibling.

Charity is a fairy godmother. She doesn’t wear a poofy dress or go around waving a wand, but she does make sure the deepest desires of the student population at Jack London High School come true. And she knows what they want even better than they do because she can glimpse their perfect futures. But when Charity fulfills a glimpse that gets Vindhya crowned homecoming queen, it ends in disaster. Suddenly, every wish Charity has ever granted is called into question.

West Finch is one hurricane away from falling into the sea. Yet 16-year-old Harlow Prout is determined to save her small Maine hometown. If only she could stop getting in her own way and find someone - anyone - willing to help. But her best friend, Ellis MacQueen, “fixes” problems by running away from them - including his broken relationship with his twin brother, Tommy. And Tommy’s depression has hit a new low, so he’s not up for fixing anything. In the wake of the town’s latest devastating storm, Tommy goes out for a swim that he doesn’t intend to survive.

The Tech sisters don't date in high school. Not because they're not asked. Not because they're not interested. Not even because no one can pronounce their long, Thai last name - hence the shortened, awkward moniker. But simply because they're not allowed. Until now. In a move that other Asian American girls know all too well, six months after the older Tech twins got to college, their parents asked, Why aren't you engaged yet? The sisters retaliated, vowing that they wont marry for 10 (maybe 20!) years, not until they've had all the dating practice that they didn't get in high school.