Charles Weston won't play games. Even as a child he refused to play the schoolroom game of Simon Says. Not for fun, and not in life. Now an aspiring young artist, Charles enrolls in a private arts high school, not because he thinks he can learn anything from the teachers but because he wants to meet the "famous" Graeme Brandt, a student whose recently published novel touches a chord deep within him.
When Killian's new friend Seth is brutally murdered and he is seriously injured in the process the police think it's just a random mugging. Killian thinks there may have been a darker motive and, with Seth's father, sets out to uncover the truth behind the possible hate crime. Before his investigation is over he will uncover hatred and corruption in small town America.
"Nothing can stay the same forever. We get in trouble in life when we think it can and will. Everything changes, or as King Solomon said in the Bible and The Byrds sang in the 60’s, to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. It’s not a particularly easy lesson to learn, or a fun one for that matter. I learned it the summer between high school and college, and my life would never be the same."
Susan Callaway, whose weight has kept her a shy, lonely outcast, narrates the story. Only Brendan, a gay classmate in the group, knows what landed her there. Susan is more than the sweet girl everyone thinks she is. She's had to cope with a lot more than anyone realizes. When the crank calls start-a male voice asking her to go out on a date-she's sure the calls were made by one of the guys in the group. But why is her brother never home when the calls come?
Two years ago, Jeff Hart was kidnapped at knifepoint. Now his kidnapper is releasing him to return home. But when Jeff finds his family, he feels shell-shocked and unable to tell anyone what happened. He can't believe that anyone-not even his family or friends-will understand what he went through. Jeff isn't the same person he was before, and he never will be again.
Fifteen-year-old Miriam is having stupid arguments with her mother, is bored to death in class, and is trying to get excited by the same old parties with the same old friends in the same old town. She wishes she lived in a big city where she could meet new people and experience new things.
Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935.
Augie Boretski Knows how to get by. If you're a scrawny loser in the destitute city of Camden, New Jersey, you keep your head down, avoid the drug dealers and thugs, and try your best to be invisible. Augie used to be good at that, but suddenly his life is changing...
Original stories by C. S. Adler, Marion Dane Bauer, Francesca Lia Block, Bruce Coville, Nancy Garden, James Cross Giblin, Ellen Howard, M. E. Kerr, Jonathan London, Lois Lowry, Gregory Maguire, Lesléa Newman, Cristina Salat, William Sleator, Jacqueline Woodson, and Jane Yolen.
Ben just started high school-and it's tough but exciting. The sophisticated new girl who has just moved into the house across the street thinks he's a cat murderer. At school Ben's freshman football team is the worst ever, but the coach thinks Ben is so good he just might skip JV and go straight to varsity.
Aurin has no intention of throwing off their established equilibrium. But when Neila joins their circle, Aurin realizes that she and Neila are becoming more than friends. Aurin and Neila are happy in their developing relationship, but Kenney feels left out.
In a small New Jersey town a lonely boy walking along a highway one autumn evening meets the boy of his dreams, a boy who happens to have died decades ago and haunts the road. Awkward crushes, both bitter and sweet, lead him to face youthful dreams and childish fears. With a cast of offbeat friends, antiques, and Ouija boards, Vintage offers readers a memorable blend of dark humor, chills and love.
Dirk MacDonald, a sixteen-year-old boy living in Los Angeles, comes to terms with being gay after he receives surreal storytelling visitations from his dead father and great-grandmother.
Cherokee Bat danced and sang. Witch Baby, Cherokee's almost-sister, pounded the beat on her drums. Raphael played the guitar, and Angel Juan kept the rhythm on his bass. They made music that sparkled like fireworks, and audiences loved them.
Ten years ago Francesca Lia Block made a dazzling entrance into the literary scene with what would become one of the most talked-about books of the decade: Weetzie Bat.
When Louie and Willa first meet, they don't know their lives will soon be changed forever. Self-assured Louie is gearing up for another successful year in high school, starring in a production of Twelfth Night and running the Comedy Club. Kicked out of her last school and still stinging from a past relationship, Willa wants only to get through her final year at school quietly so she can graduate and become a chef.
Carmen got the jeans at a thrift shop. They didn’t look all that great; they were worn, dirty, and speckled with bleach. On the night before she and her friends part for the summer, Carmen decides to toss them.
Thoughtful Pete, tough Pauly, twins Eric and Nicole, strange Raymond: As kids they were tight; now they've grown up--and apart. They agree to get together one last time, but, twisted by personal histories and fueled by pharmaceuticals, old jealousies surface.
Seventeen-year-old Odella is haunted by family secrets. Why doesn’t her great-aunt Gloria visit anymore? Why does her mother, Sally, drink so much? Sally’s tragic car accident on a frozen lake when she was sixteen seems to have cast a spell over her life that no one can break.
Johnny’s had kind of a tough life so far, and he’s always been a bit of a freak. His goth look usually includes black nail polish and a little mascara. When he discovers Debbie Harry, the lead singer of Blondie, he not only likes her music but realizes that he kind of, sort of, wants to BE her.
Born a bastard, Molly Bolt is adopted by a dirt-poor Southern couple who want something better for their daughter. Molly plays doctor with the boys, beats up Leroy the tub and loses her virginity to her girlfriend in sixth grade.
"Oh, I'm not your friend." My savior looked surprised. "It's just that this is MY school. I'm Maria Sweet -- Sugar. If you get bullied, it'll be when I say so."
Fifteen-year-old Sigurd, son of King Sigmund, is the last surviving member of the Volson clan. His father's kingdom -- the former city of London -- is gone. And his father's knife, a gift from Odin himself, has been shattered to dust.
It’s time for eighteen-year-old James Sveck to begin his freshman year at Brown. Instead, he’s surfing the real estate listings, searching for a sanctuary—a nice farmhouse in Kansas, perhaps. Although James lives in twenty-first-century Manhattan, he’s more at home in the faraway worlds of Eric Rohmer or Anthony Trollope—or his favorite writer, the obscure and tragic Denton Welch.
Ten of today's finest authors of adult and young-adult literature lend their talent and their voices to take a hard, clear look at love and sexuality. From balancing abstinence and desire, to learning the difference between love and lust, to fulfilling a childhood obsession, each of these stories depicts characters exploring a world of new feelings and sensations that is opening up before them.
Eighteen year-old Andy Logan has finally made it to his first year of college, but not without some struggle. As he tries to settle in this new environment, he cannot help but recall the events and experiences that have led him there.
In this revelatory, groundbreaking novel, the love of sixteen-year-old Hal Robinson for self-confident Barry Gorman is revealed through Hal’s own observations, press clippings, and the scattered notes of a social worker. These various perspectives contribute to an extraordinarily sensitive portrait of the intensity of first love.
What happens to Jacob Todd when he visits his grandfather's grave at the annual commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem is paralleled in time by events of the dramatic day in World War 2 when retreating troops were sheltered by the family of Geertrui Van Riet. Geertrui, now an old lady, reveals secrets to Jacob in contemporary Amsterdam which completely overturn his view of himself and his country, and lead him to question his very place in the world.
This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares.
When Cyd Charisse moves from San Francisco to start a new life in New York City, she leaves behind her family -- and her true love, Shrimp.She wants to find a cool job, the city's best caffeination and most perfect cupcake, and a hot new love. But the reality of CC's new life hits some unexpected obstacles, including a broken leg that renders her immobile; the joy and aggravation of sharing an apartment with a roommate who's also an older brother; and a tasty selection of guys -- none of whom measure up to Shrimp.
Naomi and Ely are best friends. Naomi loves and is in love with Ely, and Ely loves Naomi, but prefers to be in love with boys. So they create their "No Kiss List" of people neither of them is allowed to kiss. And this works fine - until Bruce.
Beloved for his hilarious and unexpectedly moving novels, Bruce Coville is also a master of the short story. In this follow-up to Oddly Enough, he again presents a collection of unusual breadth and emotional depth.
In six tense, exciting short stories, athletes face up to more than sports in tales of love and death, of bigotry and heroism, of real people doing the best that they can, even when that best is not enough.
Jarold, aka, Jazz, is a typical sixteen year old boy. He lives at home with his two remarkably un-divorced parents, his holier-than-thou sister, and his overbearing grandmother. It’s a life straight out of a TV show. Or so it seems…
In contemporary San Francisco, an extended family is transformed by the emerging breakdown of a troubled adolescent boy. The lives of Christopher's mother, Nan; her lover, Marina; his gay father, Hal; and Hal's new love interest are pushed to the edge by Christopher's strange behavior, by something new in him that mystifies them all.
Upset at her parents' impending divorce, twelve-year-old Jamie runs away from home to live with a Navajo family that she befriended on earlier trips to the desert country with her father.
On a hundred-mile bike trip, Drew Collins leaves everything that hurts her behind in a spray of dirt from a back tire. Amid the quiet laps of waves, a cool ocean mist, and freshly rolled reefers, Drew meets Kate in the orange light of a beech party campfire and unleashes a sweltering romance.
Here's what it means to be a tortillera. It means you're a girl who loves girls. Which means you get kicked out of Catholic school faster than Mother Superior Sicko can say "immoral." Which means your wacko Mami finds out. Which means you're kicked to the curb with nowhere to go, and the love of your life is shipped off to Puerto Rico to marry a guy. But this is Miami, and if you have a bighearted best friend and a loyal puppy at your side, and if your broken heart is still full of love, you just might land on your feet.
Set in a small town in the middle of nowhere in the mid-1960s, Common Sons not only anticipates the coming gay revolution, but delineates its fields of battle in churches, schools and society, pitting fathers against sons, straight teens against gay teens, and self-hatred against self-respect.
A broken-hearted and enraged Kelly decides to pose as a recruit at Lion’s Mouth Christian Ranch to discover why his beloved William committed suicide after experiencing religious conversion. In the isolated high mountains of the desert, where there is no way out, Kelly soon discovers the awful truth.
Sometimes questions have no answers. Fifteen-year old Virginia Dunn discovers this after her dog is run over, her dad is diagnosed with a mysterious illness, and her mom’s drinking worsens. The people she has known forever are suddenly strangers. Into this mystery walks Jane, and Virginia soon realizes that she has become a stranger to herself as well.
Thirteen tales are unspun from the deeply familiar, and woven anew into a collection of fairy tales that wind back through time. Acclaimed Irish author Emma Donoghue reveals heroines young and old in unexpected alliances--sometimes treacherous, sometimes erotic, but always courageous.
Rustle is a young scout in a tight-knit female warrior group of five. They're trained to be aggressive, quick thinking, obedient-though for what exact purpose they couldn't quite tell you. But somehow the group is falling apart now. The leader Shona turns out to be a traitor to them. Roku has disappeared. Rustle has failed to show her killing skills in a crucial test of courage, and is feeling quite separate from the others. Loo is a true warrior, ready and able for action of the most extreme kind, though Rustle's private yen for her has not dimmed. Solomon, the healer of the group, is a steady hand, but not even her stability can save them.
Juliet meets her Juliets in this raw look at punk, young love and the sometimes cloudy road to adulthood. Mosh Pit, a compelling story of rebel girls in the modern city, stars Simone - torn between her loyalty to her rebellious heart - throb Cherry and her feelings for Carol, streetwise and distant enough to be alluring.
First published by St. Martin's in 1986, Blackbird is a funny, moving, gay coming-of-age novel about growing up black and gay in Southern California. The lead character, Johnnie Ray Rousseau, is a high school student upset at losing the lead role in the school staging of Romeo and Juliet; if that weren't enough, his best friend has been beaten badly by his father, and his girlfriend is pressuring him to have sex for the first time.
This off-kilter novel centers on three girls who are definitely not part of the in crowd: one’s fat, one’s a dyke, and one is missing a breast. Nicknamed “Lezzylard” by her classmates, Angie is seduced by the prettiest girl in school, an anorexic who just wants to make imaginary grocery lists. Inez, the school’s pot dealer, can’t shoplift because security guards are mesmerized by her single enormous breast.
Karina has plenty to worry about on the last day of seventh grade: finding three Ds and a C on her report card again, getting laughed at by everyone again, being sent to the principal -- again. She'd like this to change, but with her and her sisters dodging their stepfather's fists every day after school, she doesn't have time to do much self-reflecting.
Each ride on the bucking bull is a lesson in pain. Each landing on the packed dirt is a jarring reminder of reality. Rodeo camp is a tough way to spend a summer, but John is having the time of his life. No clingy girlfriends, no nagging moms, no annoying sisters. Just him and the guys and the biggest bulls he's ever seen.
Written with uncanny precision and wild humor, this is the story of Billy Connors, high school student in the Bronx, member of the swim team, and all-around regular guy, who in his sixteenth year has to face the fact that he's a little different from everyone else, a little "weird."
Ellen loves Link and James. Her older brother and his best friend are the only company she ever wants. She knows they fight, but she makes it a policy never to take sides.
Barbara Jean (BJ) Belanger has always suffered from low self-esteem: she has a portwine birthmark on her face, she feels overweight, and has repeatedly suffered the taunts of others her age for which she is a natural target, a victim. One of the very few who have treated her with respect, understanding and affection is Alex, who becomes her best friend. And what's ripping her apart as the story opens is that she knows she has betrayed him in the worst possible way.
In her final year at a prestigious boarding school, reserved, artistic Jinx is badly hurt by the treachery of the rich, pretty girl she has considered her best friend.
When sixteen-year-old Walker gets caught up in a witch-hunt against homosexuals, he is left to stand by and watch as a tragedy unfolds.
Liza never knew that falling in love could be so wonderful . . .
and so confusing.
"'Liza,' Mom said, looking into my eyes, 'I
want you to tell me the truth, not because I want to pry, but because
I have to know. This could get very unpleasant... Now--have you and
Annie--done any more than the usual experimenting...'
When the Taylor-Michaelson family - Nikki and Travis and their two moms - buy an old inn in Vermont, they don't expect their first visitor to be the local sheriff with news of a robbery - and their second to be a bedraggled hiker with amnesia!
Dear Diary,
...Until today I was Holly
Lawrence-Jones. But starting tomorrow I'm going to be Yvette
Lawrence-Jones. My family doesn't know that yet, but I'll tell them
tomorrow, and that's the name I'll tell the people at school, too.
Jamie Crawford is the senior editor of the "Telegraph," her high school's newspaper, but the publication of her editorial in favor of the school's new policy to distribute condoms happens to coincide with the election of a new, highly conservative school board member. As a result, Jamie suddenly finds her editorial voice gagged.
Dylan discovers that friendship can get in the way of love.
Seventeen-year-old Joss is a rebel--the daughter of a famous newscaster and a sperm donor; a wild girl who can play a mean harmonica; a student of time travel at the prestigious Centre for Neo-Historical Studies. This year, for the first time, the Centre has an alien student--Mavkel, from the planet Choria. And Mavkel has chosen Joss, of all people, as his roommate and study partner.
When Cody heads off to rural Georgia for the gay version of the popular reality TV show, City/Country, he has no idea that things are going to be so disorganized. What starts out as a legitimate offer from network TV dissolves into a farce where Cody and the other four guys who agreed to do the show are being used as guinea pigs for a doctoral thesis.