"There's always been a hole in Gio's life. Not because he's into both guys and girls. Not because his father has some drinking issues. Not because his friends are always bringing him their drama. No, the hole in Gio's life takes the shape of his birth mom, who left Gio, his brother, and his father when Gio was nine years old. For eight years, he never heard a word from her . . . and now, just as he's started to get his life together, she's back" --...

"Known as the Roadkill Kid due to his mother's job, middle schooler Jack becomes his mom's assistant as he deals with his parents' divorce, even though he just wants to finally talk to Zoe, his conservationist classmate with the bright green eyes."--

"It is summer in Phoenix, and seventeen-year-old Maximo offers to help Jordan, a fellow student in high school, with the food truck that belonged to Jordan's deceased father, and which may be the only thing standing between homelessness for Jordan and his mom; the boys are strongly attracted to each other, but as their romance develops, it is threatened by the secrets they are hiding--and by the racism and homophobia of those around them." --

When twelve-year-old Ash McCarthy wakes up after his father's funeral, he finds that he has been kidnapped to an island off the coast of Costa Rica, caught in the middle of a secret and deadly project named Kronos in which his mother is somehow involved, and he must find a way to save them both--and the only person he is sure he can trust is a Spanish girl his own age named Isabel.

There's a fine line between real life and video games in this engrossing novel that's part Kathryn Erskine's Mockingbird, part Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls. Severkin is an elf who slinks through the shadows of Wellhall's spiraling stone towers, plundering ancient ruins and slaying mystical monstrosities with ease. He's also a character in a video game--a character that twelve-year-old Nick Reeves plays when he needs a break from the real world....