Teach Me


R.A. Nelson - 2007
    Teach Me invites readers inside an experience that fascinates everyone—an affair between a teacher and student—and gives an up-close-and-personal answer to the question: How does this happen?

Mao's Last Dancer


Li Cunxin - 2003
    In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, through a series of events worthy of the most exciting cloak-and-dagger fiction, he defected to the United States, where he quickly became known as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world. This is his story, told in his own inimitable voice.THE BASIS FOR A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

Lives of Girls and Women


Alice Munro - 1971
    When she begins spending more time in town, she is surrounded by women -- her mother, an agnostic, opinionated woman who sells encyclopedias to local farmers; her mother's boarder, the lusty Fern Dogherty; and her best friend, Naomi, with whom she shares the frustrations and unbridled glee of adolescence.Through these unwitting mentors and in her own encounters with sex, birth, and death, Del explores the dark and bright sides of womanhood. All along she remains a wise, witty observer and recorder of truths in small-town life. The result is a powerful, moving, and humorous demonstration of Alice Munro's unparalleled awareness of the lives of girls and women.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden


Hannah Green - 1964
    It is not a case history or study. I like to think it is a hymn to reality." —Joanne Greenberg

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves


Karen Russell - 2005
    Here, wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns; a family makes its living wrestling alligators in a theme park; and little girls sail away on crab shells. Filled with stunning inventiveness and heart, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves introduces a radiant new writer.

Am I Normal Yet?


Holly Bourne - 2015
    She’s almost off her meds and at a new college where no one knows her as the girl-who-went-crazy. She’s even going to parties and making friends. There’s only one thing left to tick off her list…But relationships are messy – especially relationships with teenage guys. They can make any girl feel like they’re going mad. And if Evie can’t even tell her new friends Amber and Lottie the truth about herself, how will she cope when she falls in love?

Harold and Maude


Colin Higgins - 1971
    He fakes suicides to shock his self-obsessed mother, drives a customized Jaguar hearse, and attends funerals of complete strangers. Seventy-nine-year-old Maude Chardin, on the other hand, adores life. She liberates trees from city sidewalks and transplants them to the forest, paints smiles on the faces of church statues, and “borrows” cars to remind their owners that life is fleeting—here today, gone tomorrow! A chance meeting between the two turns into a madcap, whirlwind romance, and Harold learns that life is worth living. Harold and Maude started as Colin Higgins’ master’s thesis at UCLA Film School, and the script was purchased by Paramount. The film, directed by Hal Ashby, was released in 1971 and it bombed. But soon this quirky, dark comedy began being shown on college campuses and at midnight-movie theaters, and it gained a loyal cult following. This novelization was written by Higgins and published shortly after the film’s release but has been out of print for more than 30 years. Even fans who have seen the movie dozens of times will find this companion valuable, as it gives fresh elements to watch for and answers many of the film’s unresolved questions.

About a Boy


Nick Hornby - 1998
    He's single, child-free, goes to the right clubs and knows which trainers to wear. He's also found a great way to score with women: attend single parents' groups full of available (and grateful) mothers, all hoping to meet a Nice Guy.Which is how Will meets Marcus, the oldest twelve-year-old on the planet. Marcus is a bit strange: he listens to Joni Mitchell and Mozart, looks after his mum and has never owned a pair of trainers. But Marcus latches on to Will - and won't let go. Can Will teach Marcus how to grow up cool? And can Marcus help Will just to grow up?

The Girl Between Two Worlds


K.M. Levis - 2018
    Her mother, who disappeared soon after they migrated from the Philippines to America, speaks to her in prophetic dreams. Stranger still is the old man who turns up at her house one day and claims to be her grandfather, even though Karina’s mother had told her he died a long time ago.Karina discovers that her mother is an engkanto princess who ran away from Engkantasia. Karina is now of age to take the throne and must do so to prevent a war between Engkantasia and the human world. She must learn to control her powers and fight a range of weird creatures trying to kill her and her family. To make matters worse, she finally meets a boy she likes and there’s something about him she can’t quite figure out.

That Night with My Best Friend's Brother


J.S. Cooper - 2015
     Aiden Taylor is my best friend's brother. He's sexy, charming and drop dead gorgeous. He also doesn't know I exist as anything other than his little sister's best friend. However, I'm determined to change that. I'm Alice Waldron. Twenty-two, spunky, and adventurous. I'm willing to do whatever it takes for Aiden to notice me. And Liv, my best friend, is determined to help me as well. The only problem is that I have a small secret. A secret that could make my getting together with Aiden Taylor very complicated. A secret that could make more than one night with Aiden nothing more than a dream. NOTE: This novella is a free prequel to the full-length standalone novel Falling For My Best Friend's Brother, that will be released at the end of February. This novella will also be included in the full-length book when it is released, so you can read it first as a free download or you can read it as part of the novel on release day.

Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang


Joyce Carol Oates - 1993
    The place is a blue-collar town in upstate New York, where five high school girls are joined in a gang dedicated to pride, power, and vengeance on a world they never made - a world that seems made to denigrate and destroy them. Foxfire is Joyce Carol Oates' strongest and most unsparing novel yet...an often engrossing, often shocking evocation of female rage, gallantry, and grit. Here, then, are the Foxfire chronicles - the secret history of a sisterhood of blood, a haven from a world of lechers and oppressors, marked by a liberating fury that burns too hot to last. It is the story of Maddy Monkey, who writes it...of Goldie, whose womanly body masks a fierce, explosive temper...of Lana, with her Marilyn Monroe hair and packs of Chesterfields...of timid Rita, whose humiliation leads to the first act of Foxfire revenge. Above all, it is the story of Legs Sadovsky, with her lean, on-the-edge, icy beauty, whose nerve, muscle, hate, and hurt make her the spark of Foxfire, its guiding spirit, its burning core. At once brutal and lyrical, this is a careening joyride of a novel - charged with outlaw energy and lit by intense emotion.The story moves over the years from the first eruption of adolescent anger at sexual abuse to a shared life financed by luring predatory men into traps baited with sex. But then the gang's very success leads to disaster - as Foxfire makes a last tragic stand against a society intent on swallowing it up. Yet amid scenes of violence, sexual abuse, exploitation, and vengeance lies this novel's greatest power: the exquisite, astonishing rendering of the bonds that link the girls of Foxfire together - especially that between Maddy, the teller ofthe tale, and Legs, whose quintessential strength and bedrock bravery make her one of the most vivid and vital heroines in modern fiction.

Sweet Sixteen Princess


Meg Cabot - 2006
    As usual, Grandmere has other ideas, and thinks a reality TV special is just the thing in order to celebrate royally. The whole scheme smacks of Lilly's doing -- Lilly, whose own TV show is still only limited to local cable viewers.Will Mia be able to stop Grandmere's plan? Will her friends ever forgive her if she does stop it, since it involves all of them taking the royal jet to Genovia for an extravaganza the likes of which would turn even Paris Hilton green with envy? Why can't Mia get what she really wants: an evening alone with Michael?With a little luck, this sweet sixteen princess might just get her wish -- a birthday that's royally romantic.

Banyaga: A Song of War


Charlson Ong - 2006
    Hau, Writer and literary critic

Sometimes We Tell the Truth


Kim Zarins - 2016
    -He somehow ended up sitting next to his ex-best friend, who he hasn’t spoken to in years. -He still feels guilty for the major part he played in pranking his teacher, and the trip’s chaperone, Mr. Bailey. -And his best friend Cannon, never one to be trusted and banned from the trip, has something “big” planned for DC.But Mr. Bailey has an idea to keep everyone in line: each person on the bus is going to have the chance to tell a story. It can be fact or fiction, realistic or fantastical, dark or funny or sad. It doesn’t matter. Each person gets a story, and whoever tells the best one will get an automatic A in the class.But in the middle of all the storytelling, with secrets and confessions coming out, Jeff only has one thing on his mind—can he live up to the super successful story published in the school newspaper weeks ago that convinced everyone that he was someone smart, someone special, and someone with something to say.In her debut novel, Kim Zarins breathes new life into Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in a fresh and contemporary retelling that explores the dark realities of high school, and the subtle moments that bring us all together.

Ladlad: An Anthology of Philippine Gay Writing


J. Neil C. Garcia - 1994
    Features poems, essays, plays, and works of fiction written in both Filipino and English.