The Curtain Twitchers of Oakley Place (Truth Seekers, #1)
by Deborah Hodgetts
After running away from their troubled homes, two English teenagers move in with a group of squatters in the port city of Bristol and try to find ways to support their growing addiction to heroin.
A fast-moving and gripping thriller with a powerful emotional engagement; this is a young boy’s story of loss and unbearable hope as he survives on London’s streets.Reminiscent of Slumdog Millionaire, this contemporary adventure story set on the streets of London follows a boy whose luck is about to change. Since his mother's death, Bully has lost his old life. Living rough with his dog, Jack, he can’t imagine his future. But one day, in the last birthday card she ever gave him, he finds a winni...
A powerful novel written in vignettes about a a Nepalese girl who risks everything for a chance to reclaim her life.Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though they are desperately poor, Lakshmi’s life is full of simple pleasures: playing hopscotch with her best friend, looking after her black-and-white speckled goat, having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when Lakshmi’s family lose all that remains of their crops in a...
The third Paul Faustino novel by multi-award-winning Mal Peet. A massive soccer star has it all, but someone is plotting his downfall...Revered as a national hero … married to the desirable Desmerelda … cherished by the media … soccer star, Otello, has it all. But a sensational club transfer sparks a media frenzy, and when he is wrongly implicated in a scandal, the footballer’s life turns into a tragic spiral of destruction. South America’s top sports journalist, Paul Faustino, witnesses the pow...
Seventeen-year-old Fern is having a hard time: she finds school difficult, lives in a run-down apartment in a dangerous neighborhood, and watches her mother struggle to survive on a housekeeper's meager salary. But through it all, Fern's mother refuses to give in and makes sure that Fern knows she is loved. And Fern does have outlets: she writes to an imaginary friend named Xanoth, pets her beloved cat Beauty, and imagines living a different life. But when Fern's mother dies suddenly of a heart...
Michelle and her little siblings Cass and Denny are African-American and living on the poverty line in urban Baltimore, struggling to keep it together with their mum in jail and only Michelle's part-time job at the Taco Bell to sustain them. Leah and her stepbrother Tim are white and middle class from suburban Maryland, with few worries beyond winning lacrosse games and getting college applications in on time. Michelle and Leah only have one thing in common: Buck Devereaux, the biological father...
In this riveting story about baseball and brotherhood, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks finds himself pitching his way out of poverty—one strike at a time. By “a premier author of provocative YA sports novels” (The Bulletin). 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 a...
Winner of the 2014 UKLA Award Deo is a great footballer, a fierce protector of his older brother, Innocent. His brother is easily nervous, easily happy but good at keeping score on the dusty fields of Zimbabwe where the boys play.Then Mugabe's soldiers come, destroying the only home the boys have known. Now, Deo has nothing but his brother, and a football stuffed with billions of worthless dollars. And so starts their journey to find their father. But with soldiers everywhere, they have only one...
For fans of Lovecraft Country and Candyman comes a witchy story full of Black girl magic as one girl's dark ability to summon the dead offers her a chance at a new life, while revealing to her an even darker future. Katrell can talk to the dead. And she wishes it made more money. She’s been able to support her unemployed mother—and Mom’s deadbeat-boyfriend-of-the-week—so far, but it isn’t enough. Money’s still tight, and to complicate things, Katrell has started to draw attention. Not from this...
Beatrice was a mother . . . and the embittered ringmaster of the circus Hunsdorfer featuring three generations of crazy ladies living under the sloppiest big top on earth. Nanny was no problem. She sat and stared and stayed silent as a venerable vegetable should. Ruth was half-mad and easily bought with an occasional cigarette. But how is the world would Beatrice control Tillie--keeper of rabbits, dreamer of atoms, true believer in life, hope, and the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon mari...
Last Bus to Everland is Sophie Cameron's gorgeous follow up to her acclaimed debut Out of the Blue, introducing Everland: an addictive magical place where you do you. Brody Fair has had enough of real life. Enough of the bullies on his block, of being second best to his genius brother, and of not fitting in at school or at home. Then one day he meets Nico. Colourful, confident and flamboyant, he promises to take Brody to Everland, a diverse magical place. A place where he can be himself, where t...
A neglected girl’s chaotic coming-of-age becomes a trending new hashtag in a novel about growing up and getting away by an award-winning author. Underprivileged and keenly self-aware, SoCal fourteen-year-old Layla Bailey isn’t used to being noticed. Except by mean girls who tweet about her ragged appearance. All she wants to do is indulge in her love of science, protect her vulnerable younger brother, and steer clear of her unstable mother. Then a school competition calls for a biome. Layla ch...
Joy Delamere is suffocating from severe asthma, overprotective parents, and an emotionally-abusive boyfriend when she escapes to the streets of nearby Seattle and falls in with a "street family" that teaches her to use a strength she did not know she had.
Angie lives in an old car with her brother and mother. Homeless after their father left to find work, the family struggles to stay together and live as normally as possible. It is difficult though. Between avoiding the police and finding new places to park each night, it is a constant struggle. When Angie discovers slam poetry, she finds a new way to express herself and find meaning and comfort in a confusing world.
Everybody has a story that will break your heart; a poignant coming-of-age YA for fans of David Arnold, from the author of the acclaimed The Agony of Bun O'Keefe, a Kirkus Best of the Year selection. Poppy used to be an optimist. But after a photo of her dressed as Rosie the Riveter is mocked online, she's having trouble seeing the good in the world. As a result, Poppy trades her beloved vintage clothes for a feathered chicken costume and accepts a job as an anonymous sign waver outside a resta...
Blue de la Cour has her life planned: hide the magic in her blood and continue trying to turn metal into gold so she can help her city’s homeless. But when her father is murdered and a cruel but powerful woman claims custody of Blue and her property, one wrong move could expose her—and doom her once and for all. The only one who can help? The boy she’s loathed since childhood: Prince Kellan.Kellan Renard, crown prince of Balavata, is walking a thin line between political success and devastating...