"Maddy Gaines sees danger everywhere she looks: at the bus stop, around the roller rink, in the woods, and (especially) by the ocean. When Maddy meets a mysterious boy setting booby traps in the North Carolina woods, she suspects the worst. Maddy is certain she's found Billy Holcomb-the boy who went missing in the fall. Except, maybe it's not him. It's been six months since he disappeared. And who will believe her anyway? Definitely not her mom or...

A small town's beloved family. A shocking, senseless crime and the dark secret at the heart of it all. Everyone in Ashford, Cornwall, knows Meg Nichols and her daughter, Grace. Meg has been selflessly caring for Grace for years, and Grace, smiling and optimistic in spite of her many illnesses, adores her mother. So when Meg is found brutally bludgeoned in her bed and her daughter missing, the community is rocked. Meg had lived in terror of her abusive,...

"Anna is a possession. She is owned by the man named Will, shielded from the world of struggles by his care. He loves her, protects her, and then breaks her. Anna is obedient, dutiful, and compliant. Anna does not know her place in the world. When she falls pregnant, Anna leaves her name behind, and finds the strength to run. But the past--and Will--catch up with her in an idyllic town with a dark secret, and this time, it's not just Anna who is at...

"At seventeen, Juana is sent to a Southern California juvenile correctional facility for killing her husband, which she denies having done. Separated from her baby, Katrina, whom she left in the care of relatives, she settles into her tough circumstances. As Juana's longings twist with regrets, she learns about her fellow inmates: some are Chicanas, some are gang members. Jester, a leader, bullies Juana about her Mexican background, shows her the...

"One weekend, sisters Tanya and Nessa Bloom pause their respective adult lives and travel to the Boston suburbs to help their mother pack up and move out of their childhood home. For the first time since they were teenagers sharing a bunk bed over a decade ago, they find themselves in the place where long-kept secrets were born, where jealousy, comfort, anger, forgiveness, and repulsion coexist with the fiercest love and loyalty. What they don't expect...

"The isolation and bullying Stan suffers at school are nothing compared to the war at home. After he tries and fails to defend his mom by standing up to his abusive father, Stan decides there is only one solution to finding a new he must learn how to fight. Tragic events have split the two sides of Elpidia’s family into fighting factions. Every day she finds herself outnumbered by her cousins on the schoolyard. After the latest beatdown, her grandmother...

"Punching Bag is the compelling true story of a high school career defined by poverty and punctuated by outbreaks of domestic abuse. Rex Ogle...describes his struggle to survive; reflects on his complex, often paradoxical relationship with his passionate, fierce mother; and charts the trajectory of his stepdad’s anger. Hovering over Rex’s story is the talismanic presence of his unborn baby sister. Through it all, Rex threads moments of grace...

"Far from Tahiti’s postcard-perfect beaches, Ma and Auguste and five of their nine children live a hand-to-mouth life in destitute, run-down Tenaho. Nine-year-old Pina, abused and neglected in equal measure, is the keeper of her family’s secrets, though the weight of this knowledge soon proves to be a burden no child could ever bear. A victim of her father’s alcoholic rages and the object of her mother’s anger and indifference, Pina protects...

"A Child Called 'It' is the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games—games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer...

"At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became. With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha...