and more than a little chocolate'Do you speak chocolate?' Jaz has found the best way to make friends with new girl Nadima, who doesn't speak any English - by offering her a chocolate bar. Nadima grins and offers back some Turkish Delight, the ice is broken, and a special friendship begins ... Jaz is outgoing, rebellious, gumptious and a little bit bolshy - but it doesn't stop her from finding it hard that she doesn't have a best friend at school any more. Not since Lily went off with Kara ... She's not one to get down about things, though - and things start to look up when Nadima comes into their classroom. Before long the girls are firm friends, even when Nadima, recently arrived from Syria, can't speak much English. The path of true friendship doesn't run smooth, though ... Jaz, ever the entrepreneur, cooks up a plan to sell Turkish Delight at school, with disastrous results. A drama project with Nadima about family history proves impossible to manage. And Charity Challenge Week puts the icing on the cake as Jaz puts every foot wrong possible. Can she find a way to put things right, and restore the wonderful and unique friendship that she has with Nadima? In a story of friendship, family and entrepreneurial wizardry, Cas Lester deftly navigates the trials and tribulations of girlhood, and examines with the lightest of touches and gentle humour the thorny and compelling issues of integration, belonging and identity.

    Her father is dead (shot in a holdup) and now her mother is moving the family to New Mexico to try to recover. Climbing in Los Alamos Canyons, Davey meets mysterous Wolf, who seems to understand the rage and fear she feels. Slowly, with Wolf's help, Davey realizes that she must get on with her life. But when will she be ready to leave the past behind? Will she ever stop hurting?

    She's setting her sights on a more glamorous life, but it's going to take all of her focus. At least that way she won't have to watch her friends moving so far ahead.rootsJo is spending the summer at her family's beach house, working as a busgirl and bonding with the older, cooler girls she'll see at high school come September. She didn't count on a brief fling with a cute boy changing her entire summer. Or feeling embarrassed by her middle school friends. And she didn't count on her family at all. . . leavesAma is not an outdoorsy girl. She wanted to be at an academic camp, doing research in an air-conditioned library, earning A's. Instead her summer scholarship lands her on a wilderness trip full of flirting teenagers, blisters, impossible hiking trails, and a sad lack of hair products.It is a new summer. And a new sisterhood. Come grow with them.

    No one knows, and Mia wants to keep it that way. But when trouble at school finally forces Mia to reveal her secret, she must learn to accept herself and embrace her ability, called synesthesia, a mingling of the senses.

    Yet this year, it's different -- Hattie's uncle Adam is coming home. Returning from a Chicago school that's just closed and whose existence is kept quiet by adult family members, Adam is a 21-year-old man with a child's mind, having a knack for talking quickly, a savant-like ability for remembering weekdays, and a passion for I Love Lucy. Hattie and Adam wind up spending precious time together -- including a visit to the recently arrived carnival with Hattie's new friend, Leila -- which makes her feel soulfully connected to her uncle, especially when he declares that she's one of the people who can lift the corners of our universe. But when Hattie takes Adam on the Ferris wheel one night, it sets off dramatic events that lead Hattie's family to strengthen its bonds and changes her life's outlook forever.

    It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It's quiet and peaceful. You can't get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere's museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe's psychiatric practice.Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver's license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she's dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn't want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?This moving, often funny book about grief, death, and loss will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.

    A million rats, delinquent Girl Scouts out for revenge, and a secret city below the streets of Manhattan combine in this remarkable novel about a darker side of New York City you have only just begun to know about…

    She's looking forward to hosting a month-long house party, with guests including her Vassar college roommate Isobel Porteous and old chum Betsy Ray. With lots of the old Crowd and a new friend--wealthy, unkempt, but lovable Sam Hutchinson--around, the days are filled with fun. And romance seems to be in the air. But Carney can never be romantic about anyone but Larry Humphreys, her high school sweetheart, who moved to California four years ago. Then Larry returns to Deep Valley and sets the town abuzz. Will Larry propose? And will Carney say yes? In addition to her beloved Betsy-Tacy books, Maud Hart Lovelace wrote three more stories set in the fictional town of Deep Valley: Winona's Pony Cart, Carney's House Party, and Emily of Deep Valley. Longtime fans and new readers alike will be delighted to find the Deep Valley books available again for the first time in many years.

    Besides being homesick for her father and Connecticut, she isn't sophisticated like the other girls, and discussions about boys leave her tongue-tied. Her happiest times are spent apart from the others, sketching or wandering in the mountains.But the day she's out walking alone and meets a French boy, Paul, things change for Flip. As their relationship grows, so does her self-confidence. Despite her newfound happiness, there are times when Paul seems a stranger to her. And since dating is forbidden except to seniors, their romance must remain a secret. With so many new feelings and obstacles to overcome in her present, can Flip help Paul to confront his troubled past and find a future?

    It's been there for an age. I keep on saying that I'll write a journal. So I'll start right here, right now. I open the book and write the very first words: My name is Mina and I love the night. Then what shall I write? I can't just write that this happened then this happened then this happened to boring infinitum. I'll let my journal grow just like the mind does, just like a tree or a beast does, just like life does. Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line?And so Mina writes and writes in her journal, and through her stories and poems there grows an opus of her life - her lessons, her loves, her beliefs, her mum, her dad, her thoughts and her dreams.In this stunningly designed book, David Almond revisits Mina before she has met Michael, before she has met Skellig, in what is a thought-provoking and extraordinary prequel to his best-selling debut novel, Skellig. From the winner of the Whitbread Children's Book Award the Carnegie Medal and the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award comes the extraordinary prequel to the award-winning Skellig.

    In an apartment across the lake, Evie's celebrity-chef dad is starting a new life with his young second wife, Angie, who's expecting twins. To make matters worse, Evie's dad has custody of the beloved family dog. Navigating her new family situation is difficult, and Evie turns to her love of cooking as a way to stay connected to her father. Through cooking classes, Evie finds an unexpected friend in Corey, whose eccentric aunt Shanti might be able to make everyone a little happier. Evie learns to look outside herself, help others, and make friends where she never thought she could (she also learns to make a pretty darn good soufflé!).

    As the only child of model-turned-TV-host Celestine Cruz and pro-baseball star Zack Miller, she has everything a twelve-year-old girl could want. Well, except for real friends. After a disastrous birthday party where she discovers her supposed BFFs are only friends with her because her parents are uber-famous, she finds a place as far from fake and phony Hollywood as she can get: a boarding school in Camden, Maine. In her desperation to distance herself from her star-studded parents and the paparazzi who trail them, Ruby tells her new friends that she’s an orphan. She feels awful about lying, but once she starts, it’s hard to come clean. Plus, now that nobody’s comparing her to her perfect parents, Ruby can finally let her own talents as a dress designer take center stage. When Ruby finds herself connecting with a cute boy who really did lose his parents, she’s torn between who she is and who she’s pretending to be. And with Parents’ Weekend approaching, she must find a way to keep her secret—without losing her new best friend, the trust of her first crush, and the chance to shine as the designer of her very own fashion show.

    NO I DON’T!!!!IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT, HELLER HARRIGAN!!!!

    If he hadn’t gotten Meg pregnant, she would have never stopped her chemo treatments and would still be alive. Instead, he’s failing fatherhood one dirty diaper at a time. And it’s not like he’s had time to grieve while struggling to care for their infant daughter, start his senior year, and earn the soccer scholarship he needs to go to college.The one person who makes Ryden feel like his old self is Joni. She’s fun and energetic—and doesn’t know he has a baby. But the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to keep his two worlds separate. Finding one of Meg’s journals only stirs up old emotions, and Ryden’s convinced Meg left other notebooks for him to find, some message to help his new life make sense. But how is he going to have a future if he can’t let go of the past?

    Everybody who's anybody in New York City summers in the Hamptons. Mara, Eliza, and Jacqui all want a piece of the action, all for different reasons.So the girls answer a classified ad to become au pairs. How bad can it be, watching a couple of kids on the beach all day? They've got the swank address, the sweet ride, and an all-access pass to the hottest social scene on the East Coast. It's shaping up to be the summer of their lives.