"This is not a novel about prejudice or race relations or brotherhood. It is about parents and children, young people and older people, about love and failure, loss and discovery, coming to terms with ourselves and others. Edgar Allan is a work of art." —The New York Times• An American Library Association (ALA) Notable Book• An Outstanding Book of the Year, The New York Times

    Geniuses. Revolutionaries.The members of the legendary band Lemonade Mouth have been called all of these things. But until now, nobody's known the inside story of how this powerhouse band came to be. How five outcasts in Opoquonsett High School's freshman class found each other, found the music, and went on to change both rock and roll and high school as we know it. Wen, Stella, Charlie, Olivia, and Mo take us back to that fateful detention where a dentist's jingle, a teacher's coughing fit, and a beat-up ukelele gave birth to Rhode Island's most influential band. Told in each of their five voices and compiled by Opoquonsett's "scene queen," freshman Naomi Fishmeier, this anthology is their definitive history.

    Darcy is spellbound by Kathleen Mary's vivid tales of Catholicism. She shows Darcy a world beyond Frenchtown: a world of daring games and secrets, of sins and miracles. With Darcy's father off fighting the war somewhere in Europe, Kathleen Mary couldn't have come into her life at a better time.Then, just as suddenly as they appeared, Kathleen Mary and her family disappear. While Darcy waits to hear from her, she learns that her father is missing in action. Christmas is coming, and Darcy is unsure about the power of God's love. Will the miracle she hopes for really happen?

    The family trip is her mother’s doing: Mrs. Gardner wants to volunteer at the orphanage that cared for her when she was young. But going to India isn’t Jazz’s idea of a great summer vacation. She wants no part of her mother’s do-gooder endeavors.What’s more, Jazz is heartsick. She’s leaving the business she and her best friend, Steve Morales, started—as well as Steve himself. Jazz is crazy in love with the guy. If only he knew!Only when Jazz reluctantly befriends Danita, a girl who cooks for her family, and who faces a tough dilemma, does Jazz begin to see how she can make a difference—to her own family, to Danita, to the children at the orphanage, even to Steve. As India claims Jazz, the monsoon works its madness and its magic.From the Hardcover edition.

    But when her school team is selected to be featured and televised as part of HockeyFest, her status as the only girl on the boys’ team makes her the lead story. Not everyone is thrilled with Holland’s new fame, but there’s one person who fiercely supports her, and it’s the last person she expects (and definitely the last person she should be falling for): her bossy team captain, Wes.

    In fact, Panning’s last collection of short stories, Super America, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Enter this exciting new novel, the best work yet from a writer whose astute observations of American life are as honest as they are engaging.Butter is a coming of age tale set against the backdrop of small-town Minnesota during the 1970s and told from the perspective of an eleven-year-old girl, Iris, who learns from her parents that she is adopted. The story of Iris’s childhood is at first beguiling and innocent: hers is a world filled with bell-bottoms and Barbie dolls, Shrinky Dinks and Shaun Cassidy records, TV dinners and trips to grandma’s. But as her parents’ marriage starts to unravel, Iris grows more and more observant of disintegration all around her, and the simple cadences of her story quickly attain an unnerving tension as she wavers precariously between girlhood and adolescence. In the end, Iris’s story represents a profound meditation on growing up estranged in small town America—on being an outsider in a world increasingly averse to them. Passionate, lyrical, and disquieting, this intensely moving novel is a rich exploration of a crucial theme in American literature that will confirm Anne Panning’s place as a major figure in the world of contemporary fiction.

    But when school's out, she becomes Queen of the Runway-whipping up cutting-edge designs.When Emma is discovered by a well-known fashionista, the pseudonym Allegra Biscotti is born to protect her from the lime light. She soon discovers balancing a secret identity, boys, school, and friends isn't as easy as she thought.This fashion-themed series features doodles throughout the book-two-color illustrations are found as chapter openers and in the margins-adding tons of delicious style detail!

    So when an old lady on the subway offers her a wish, Wilma immediately asks for popularity -- in fact, she asks to be the most popular kid at school.Suddenly, Wilma has more friends than she can keep track of, forty dates to the Grad Night Dance, and a secret admirer writing her love poems. Everything is great, until she realizes there's a loophole in her wish, and her time in the spotlight has almost run out.

    Birdy spends her days trying to teach her students to appreciate the beauty of literature and her nights getting high with Jesus, her gay colleague and confidant.Birdy regards Pinetop as merely an escapade. But the desultory quality of her life is interrupted when a middle-aged widow asks Birdy to edit her rambling memoir. Combining superb storytelling with good humor, Antonya Nelson follows Birdy as she helps Mrs. Anthony reconstruct the history surrounding the bizarre and mysterious deaths of Mrs. Anthony's husband and daughter years earlier. As Birdy is drawn deeper into her subject's story, she begins a love affair with Mrs. Anthony's surviving son -- a young man who just happens to be one of Birdy's students. With its sensuous and lovingly rendered Southwestern setting, "Nobody's Girl" is a startling novel that showcases the striking talents of an emminently gifted writer.

    Jamie Johnson is eleven and having a tough time. Bullies won't let him play football at break, his best mate is at another school, and he even gets picked on for not having a dad. But everything changes when Jamie realizes his football skills can take him further than he thought...

    It includes character studies and summaries of the plot with discussions of the major themes, as well as a background to John Steinbeck.