I Am the Messenger


Markus Zusak - 2002
    He's pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery.That's when the first ace arrives in the mail.That's when Ed becomes the messenger.Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary) until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission?

Screaming in the Silence


Lydia Kelly - 2010
    While hitchhiking across the country, she and her companion are struck by a car. Her friend is killed but Raleigh survives and her life is thrown into the hands of the three men involved in the accident. Bruised and in shock, Raleigh is locked in the basement of their remote country house, unsure of her fate. Kaden, one of her captors, is handsome and at times protective, and he convinces his friends to spare Raleigh’s life to ransom her. But the safety he provides is only from his friends, and Raleigh must face his sinister intentions. Agreeing to become his lover in return for continued protection, she begins to see a tender and caring side of Kaden despite their short but violent history. As the ransom payment begins to unravel and Raleigh's life hangs in the balance, she wonders how much she can trust Kaden. Are the feelings she has developed for him genuine or a result of her situation? Does he truly care for her, as he claims, or does he just see her as a ransom payment?

A Different Blue


Amy Harmon - 2013
    She doesn't know her real name or when she was born. Abandoned at two and raised by a drifter, she didn't attend school until she was ten years old. At nineteen, when most kids her age are attending college or moving on with life, she is just a senior in high school. With no mother, no father, no faith, and no future, Blue Echohawk is a difficult student, to say the least. Tough, hard and overtly sexy, she is the complete opposite of the young British teacher who decides he is up for the challenge, and takes the troublemaker under his wing. This is the story of a nobody who becomes somebody. It is the story of an unlikely friendship, where hope fosters healing and redemption becomes love. But falling in love can be hard when you don't know who you are. Falling in love with someone who knows exactly who they are and exactly why they can't love you back might be impossible.

Star-Crossed


Luna Lacour - 2014
    It is intended for mature readers.It started with a game - seduce the new teacher.Eighteen-year-old Kaitlyn Laurent is living the American Dream. Born into a wealthy, socialite family with more opulent surroundings and material things than any girl could even fathom, Kaitlyn is the fresh, young face amidst a sea of morally-amiss Manhattan Debutantes. She is educated, poised, and on the outside - entirely virtuous. Her life, in short, is perfect.Or so it would seem. Inside the walls of her Upper East Side mansion, Kaitlyn is struggling. After her parents' divorce and her father's remarriage to a beautiful but otherwise utterly vapid woman, Kaitlyn quickly finds herself living in a realm of self-created fantasy, completely detached and entirely clashing with her new family – particularly, her classmate-turned-stepbrother, Marius. Arrogant and with a penchant for playing games, he is intrigued and infatuated by Kaitlyn's faux-chaste outer facade that she uses to cover an otherwise calloused heart.When the two of them enter into into their final semester at Trinity Prep, and the buzz around campus is that a gorgeous new teacher has set foot in the classroom, Marius makes Kaitlyn a bet: seduce the man who is now her Literature teacher.If she wins, she gets his trust fund. Money that she can use to finally escape a life that she has come to loathe.If Marius wins...he gets her virginity.When an initial spark turns into full-blown obsession, and her affections are inevitably returned – Kaitlyn learns that there are no actions without consequence, and some affairs are simply star-crossed.

Normal People


Sally Rooney - 2018
    He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school soccer team while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers - one they are determined to conceal.A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.

Candy


Luke Davies - 1997
    She's breathing gently, long slow breaths. I imagine her soul going in and out: wanting to leave, wanting to come back, wanting to leave, wanting to come back. The day will soon harden into what we need to do. But for now we have each other. . . ."He met Candy amid a lush Sydney summer. Gorgeous, sexy, free-spirited Candy. They fell in love fast, lots of laughter and lust, the days melting warmly into each other. He never planned to give her a habit. But she wanted a taste. And wasn't love, after all, about sharing lives? Candy had a bit of money and in the beginning, everything was beautiful. Heady, heroin-hazed days, the world open and inviting. But when the money ran out, the craving remained, and the days ceased their luxurious stretch.But there was still love. Only now, it was a threesome. Heroin had its own demands, its own timetable, and thoughts of nabbing the next fix hurled them into each day. Then, when desperation sets in, Candy will stop at nothing to secure a blast, as she and her lover become hostage to the nightmarish world of addiction. Painful, sexy, tender, and charged with dark humor, Candy provocatively charts the daily rituals of two lovers maintaining a long-term junk habit. Told in stunningly vivid prose and set against the backdrop of suburban and urban Australia, Candy is both an electrifying and frightening glimpse of contemporary life and love.

Unsticky


Sarra Manning - 2009
    Stuck in a grind where everyone’s ahead apart from her, she’s partied out, disillusioned, and massively in debt. If she’s dumped by another rock-band wannabe, squashed by anyone else at her cut-throat fashion job, or chased by any more bailiffs, Grace suspects she’ll fall apart …So when older, sexy and above all, wealthy art-dealer Vaughn appears, she’s intrigued against her will. Could she handle being a sugar daddy’s arm candy?Soon Grace is thrown into a world of money and privilege, at Vaughn’s beck and call in return for thousands of pounds in luxurious gifts, priceless clothes—and cash. Where’s the line between acting the trophy girlfriend, and selling yourself for money?And, more importantly: whatever happened to love?

Even When You Lie to Me


Jessica Alcott - 2015
    Another year of living in the shadow of her best friend, Lila. Another year of hiding behind the covers of her favorite novels. Another year of navigating her tense relationship with her perfectionist mom.But everything changes when she meets her new English teacher. Mr. Drummond is smart. Irreverent. Funny. Hot. Everyone loves him. And Charlie thinks he's the only one who gets her.She also thinks she might not be the only one with a crush.In this stunning debut, Jessica Alcott explores relationships-and their boundaries-in a way that is both searingly honest and sympathetic.

Misbehaved


Charleigh Rose - 2017
    She’s outspoken, brazen and wants nothing more than to escape the Nevadan hell hole that she calls home. On the brink of eighteen, with a deceased mother and a well-meaning, yet absent father, she is forced to fend for herself. The only person she’s ever had to depend on is her borderline obsessive stepbrother, Ryan. But, what used to be her anchor is quickly becoming a loose cannon. When Remi gets the opportunity to attend the best private school in the state during her senior year of high school, she jumps at the chance. Then she meets Mr. James. Ornery, aloof, and totally irresistible. Most girls would swoon in secrecy. Most girls would doodle his name with hearts in their notebook. But Remi Stringer has never been like most girls.

Finding Home


Lauren Baker - 2006
    How come it feels so right?When Megan first meets Mouth, a homeless teenage hustler, on the streets of L.A., he's the perfect subject for the street life expose she hopes will help her break into journalism. She doesn't expect to be drawn into his life and become his friend—or to take him in after he's been beaten and robbed by thugs.As they learn to live together, a powerful attraction flourishes between Megan and the young man. Although he's street smart, tough and mature, he's also a youth in transition. When they finally give in to the sexual heat between them, Megan fears she's taking advantage of her position as his mentor.Their relationship challenges every aspect of her life. Megan must make difficult choices between the conflicting demands of her friends and family, her career and love. Warning:Explicit sex, reference to underage sex, graphic language, violence.

Losing It


Cora Carmack - 2012
    But her plan turns out to be anything but simple when she freaks out and leaves a gorgeous guy alone and naked in her bed with an excuse that no one with half-a-brain would ever believe. And as if that weren't embarrassing enough, when she arrives for her first class of her last college semester, she recognizes her new theatre professor. She'd left him naked in her bed about 8 hours earlier.

Tempting


Alex Lucian - 2015
    My teeth biting his neck. His scent on my skin. My nails carving a path down his back. His commands whispered in my ear. All of my senses filled with him. I knew it was bad. But I craved more. It had begun innocently enough, bumping into one another in a crowded Boston bar. What followed that night had been anything but innocent. Because I'd known, even as he'd slid inside of me, that he was my professor. I'd pursued him, a predator stalking its prey. And he didn't know I was his student. But he would. ***Author's note: This isn't a jail bait student/teacher novel with a butterflies-in-the-belly kind of romance. The characters portrayed in this novel are consenting adults with functioning brains. If curse words, sex, and hard ass college professors with secrets offend you, move right along.

The Kingdom of Childhood


Rebecca Coleman - 2011
    Thrown together to organize a fundraiser for their failing private school and bonded by loneliness, they begin an affair that at first thrills, then corrupts each of them. Judy sees in Zach the elements of a young man she loved as a child, but what Zach does not realize is that their relationship is, for Judy, only the latest in a lifetime of disturbing secrets.Rebecca Coleman's manuscript forThe Kingdom of Childhood was a semifinalist in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition. An emotionally tense, increasingly chilling work of fiction set in the controversial Waldorf school community, it is equal parts enchanting and unsettling and is sure to be a much discussed and much-debated novel.

The Unrequited


Saffron A. Kent - 2017
    She is suffering from unrequited love. But it’s time to move on. No more stalking, no more obsessive calling. What she needs is a distraction. The blue-eyed guy she keeps seeing around campus could be a great one—only he is the new poetry professor—the married poetry professor.Thomas Abrams is a stereotypical artist—rude, arrogant, and broody—but his glares and taunts don’t scare Layla. She might be bad at poetry, but she is good at reading between the lines. Beneath his prickly façade, Thomas is lonely, and Layla wants to know why. Obsessively.Sometimes you do get what you want. Sometimes you end up in the storage room of a bar with your professor and you kiss him. Sometimes he kisses you back like the world is ending and he will never get to kiss you again. He kisses you until you forget the years of unrequited love; you forget all the rules, and you dare to reach for something that is not yours.NOTE: Please be aware that this book deals with sensitive topics like cheating. 18+ Only.

One Day


David Nicholls - 2009
    Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that?And every year that follows?--back cover