August is an average twelve-year-old. He likes dogs and fishing and doesn't mind early-morning chores on his family's Michigan dairy farm. But following his parents' messy divorce, his mother decides that she and August need to start over in a new town. There, he tries to be an average teen -- playing football and doing homework -- but when his role in a shocking act of violence throws him off course once more, he flees to a ranch in rural Montana,...

A wonderfully funn and perceptive novel in the traditions of Thornton Wilder and Anne Tyler, The Risk Pool is set in Mohawk, New York, where Ned Hall is doing his best to grow up, even though neither of his estranged parents can properly be called adult.His father, Sam, cultivates bad habits so assiduously that he is stuck at the bottom of his auto insurance risk pool. His mother, Jenny, is slowly going crazy from resentment at a husband who refuses...

When sixteen-year-old Blake goes to a mysterious, by-invitation-only carnival he somehow knows that it could save his comatose brother, but soon learns that much more is at stake if he fails to meet the challenge presented there by the beautiful Cassandra.

New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. (Set during the 1937 New London school explosion, the deadliest school disaster in American history.).

Boone's Lick is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry's triumphant return to the kind of story that made him famous -- an enthralling tale of the nineteenth-century West. McMurtry brings his unique blend of historical fact and sheer storytelling genius to the Cecil family's arduous journey from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Fifteen-year-old Shay describes the journey that begins when his Ma, Mary Margaret, decides...

"Paul Walden is not an alpha lobster, the hypermasculine crustacean king who intimidates the other male lobsters, beds all the lady lobsters, and "wins" at life. At least not according to the ego-bursting feedback he's given in his freshman seminar. But Paul finds a funny, faithful friend in Roby Smalls, and maybe -- oh god, please -- he's beginning to catch the interest of smart, beautiful Natalia Gutierrez. Cruising through high school as a sauced-out,...

Mercedes Lackey's triumphant return to the best-selling world of Valdemar, Take a Thief reveals the untold story of Skif--a popular character from Lackey's first published novel, Arrows of the Queen.Skif was an orphan who would have died from malnutrition and exposure if he had never met Deke the pickpocket. By the time he was twelve, Skif was an accomplished cat burglar. But it wasn't until he decided to steal a finely tacked-out white horse, which...

Based on incidents that took place in the southwestern United States and Mexico around 1850, this novel chronicles the crimes of a band of desperados, with a particular focus on one, "the kid," a boy of fourteen.

Ponyboy is a Greaser. He wears his wavy hair long and slicked back and his shirts tight to show off his muscles. Sometimes he carries a knife, but it's usually just for show. He lives on the wrong side of the tracks with his older brothers Darry and Sodapop. Even though his parents died in a car accident, Ponyboy gets to live with his brothers - as long as they behave. So Ponyboy stays out of trouble as much as he can, and is careful not to get caught...

Magic and humor are combined in the whimsical story of the hard life of a teenage pharaoh who does not have a clue about what he is supposed to do as the new ruler of the desert kingdom of Djelibeybi.