★ Among CCBC's Best Books for Kids & Teens list, a starred selection of exceptional caliber We live in a hopeless old house on an almost-deserted dead-end street in a middle-of-nowhere town named Hope. This is the oldest part of Hope; eventually it will all be torn down and rebuilt into perfect homes for perfect people. Until then, we live here: imperfect people on an imperfect street that everyone forgets about. For Eva Brown, life feels lonely and small. Her mother, Shirley, drinks and yell...
A teenager’s longing for family and a place to call home is poignantly portrayed in this heartfelt and ultimately uplifting story of life in the foster-care system. A teenager’s longing for family and a place to call home is poignantly portrayed in this heartfelt and ultimately uplifting story of life in the foster-care system from bestselling author Eve Ainsworth. Feeling betrayed when her long-term foster placement breaks down, Amy is sent to live with a new family, the Daw...
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step inside Mosco's Traveling Wonder Show, a menagerie of human curiosities and misfits guaranteed to astound and amaze! Perhaps the strangest act of Mosco's display is Portia Remini, a normal among the freaks, on the run from McGreavy's Home for Wayward Girls, where Mister watches and waits. He said he would always find Portia, that she could never leave. Free at last, Portia begins a new life on the bally, seeking answers about her father's disappearance....
June Hur's elegant and haunting debut The Silence of Bones is a bloody YA historical mystery tale perfect for fans of Kerri Maniscalco and Renée Ahdieh.I have a mouth, but I mustn't speak;Ears, but I mustn't hear;Eyes, but I mustn't see.1800, Joseon (Korea). Homesick and orphaned sixteen-year-old Seol is living out the ancient curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Indentured to the police bureau, she’s been tasked with assisting a well-respected young inspector with the investigation into...
Abandoned by her drug-addicted mother at the age of eleven, high school student Taylor Markham struggles with her identity and family history at a boarding school in Australia.
Caraval meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this deliciously dark young adult fantasy about a girl who makes a deal with a magical secret society to enter a potentially deadly competition for the chance to avenge her mother’s death.Ever since a vampire murdered her mother, Ava has been determined to get revenge. This all-encompassing drive has given her the fuel she needed to survive foster home after foster home.But it’s been ten years since anyone’s seen a vampire, and Ava has lost hope that she...
Shifters are unknown to the human world, with the exception of a secret organization—the EOS, referred to as “hunters.” Hunters capture and kill. Some shifters are taken to labs for testing—a place they will never leave—others are deemed useless, a danger to society, and are killed. Shifters travel in packs, constantly moving, and keep themselves hidden to avoid discovery. Horse shifter Flo now travels in a wild pack with what remains of the shape-shifter circus she once performed in. She, bear...
Anna and Abel couldn’t be more different. They are both seventeen and in their last year of school, but while Anna lives in a nice old town house and comes from a well-to-do family, Abel, the school drug dealer, lives in a big, prisonlike tower block at the edge of town. Anna is afraid of him until she realizes that he is caring for his six-year-old sister on his own. Fascinated, Anna follows the two and listens as Abel tells little Micha the story of a tiny queen assailed by dark forces. It’s a...
After leaving Uncle Chester's homestead claim, orphan Hattie Brooks throws a lasso around a new dream, even bigger than the Montana sky. She wants to be a reporter, knowing full well that a few pieces published in the Arlington News will not suffice. Real reporters must go to Grand Places, and do Grand Things, like Hattie's hero Nellie Bly. Another girl might be stymied by this, but Hattie has faced down a hungry wolf and stood up to a mob of angry men. Nothing can squash her desire to write for...
The world will ignite and so will I. The Forsaken hunger for vengeance, leaving Steel and me with no choice but to follow Camiel to the only place strong enough to protect me—Eden, an ancient, hidden city darkened by my family’s secrets. But Eden isn’t the safe haven I expected, and family runs deeper than blood. As Thorne grows stronger by the day, his Fallen forces threaten to raze London—and then the world—to cinders. In order to stop him, the entire angelic community has to unite, but anc...
A Family Apart (Orphan Train Adventures) (The Orphan Train quartet)
by Joan Lowery Nixon
In 1860, when their widowed mother can no longer support them, six siblings are sent on the orphan train by the Children's Aid Society of New York City to live with farm families in Missouri.
Michael O'Halloran (The Library of Indiana Classics)
by Gene Stratton-Porter
This early 20th-century classic chronicles the adventures of an orphaned newspaper boy in his "hand-to-hand scuffle" with life in a midwestern metropolis. Gene Stratton-Porter's faith in the healing power of nature is also apparent, in a lovingly depicted tamarack swamp set near the city.
Toby's hope that she, her mother, and sister would be reunited on her thirteenth birthday, at the latest, is not met and she enters her teens in a foster home.