She prefers the fantasy world of her favourite novels: The Starling Black Adventures, in which ghosts are real and you can cast magic spells to defeat your enemies. In her real life, Briony's parents are getting divorced and her friends are preoccupied by losing weight and shagging boys. Worst of all, Briony has almost finished the last ever Starling Black novel. But Briony is about to learn that fantasy and reality aren't always so easy to distinguish, and life doesn't have to be dull just because you're getting older.

    As Ann Beattie writes in her perceptive introduction, These girls still exist in an innocent world in which a pose is only a pose--what adults make of that pose may be the issue. Sally Mann's work is in the collections of major museums across the country. Haunting black-and-white studies of children, shown here as surprisingly sensual and often distant beings, the magical keepers of some obscure and vaguely frightening secrets.--Karen Lipson, Newsday

    Popularity goes much deeper. . . .Appearances can be deceiving. Sam Klein’s found that out firsthand. All she wanted was to be popular. But sometimes what we want is the absolute worst thing for us.Sam discovers that Kylie, It-girl of Woodlawn High, owes her popular status not to her expensive clothes, highlighted hair, and spot on the cheerleading squad but to a magical second skin. Nobody can actually see it—but they can feel it. And if you’re wearing the skin, you feel incredible. Invincible. Popularity is yours.So Sam stole the skin from Kylie. Now she’s the most popular girl at school, while Kylie’s social life takes a serious hit. Sam can barely recognize herself. Her old geek clique is history—but are her new friends really people she can count on? The skin is clinging tighter to her each day . . . can Sam get it off before it’s too late?

    Nick Twisp is back. In Revolting Youth: The Further Journals of Nick Twisp America's own comic diarist returns with more riotous adventures through the land mines of 21st century adolescence. This sequel to C.D. Payne's epic-length first-novel Youth in Revolt finds love-struck Nick Twisp still on the lam from the law and his parents.Our 14-year-old hero (and his multiplying alter egos) now must battle blizzards, back-stabbing aliens, vengeful parents, and school officials determined to schedule him into girls' gym. He conspires to play cupid, journeys south of the border on a secret mission, takes some gunplay lessons from his distraught mom, and still finds time to confide all to his diary while inadvertently wreaking havoc in cyberspace.First self-published by the author in 1993 and released by Doubleday in 1995, Youth in Revolt has been hailed by many readers as the funniest novel they've ever read. Several critics have compared it to A Confederacy of Dunces. Not widely reviewed, the three-part novel has found a growing audience almost entirely through word of mouth. Sales of the two Doubleday editions now total more than 25,000. Foreign editions have been published in the United Kingdom, Germany, Croatia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, where it is a best-seller.Youth in Revolt was produced as a TV pilot by Brillstein-Grey and is in development as a mini-series by MTV. A 10-part radio dramatization of the book will be broadcast in Germany in December, 2000. It also has been produced as a play in San Francisco, Denver, and elsewhere.

    We've just landed on the moon, the Vietnam War is heating up, the Mets are beginning their famous World Series run, and Woodstock is rocking upstate New York. Down in New Jersey, twelve-year-old Brody is mostly concerned with the top ten hits on the radio and how much playing time he'll get on the football team. But when he goes along for the ride to Woodstock with his older brother and sees the mass of humanity there, he starts to wake up to the world around him-a world that could take away the brother he loves.

    Moving back home was never my plan. Except here I am, struggling under my evil step-mom's crushing thumb while I look for work. I feel just like Cinderella, but I never expected my best friend's DAD to be my prince. He's just as hot now as he was when I was a teen; maybe hotter. He's also rich and powerful, and when he offers me a job working under him at his company... I can't say no. I don't WANT to say no. All our flirting is bad enough--we can't get caught, my best friend would hate me--but then we go too far. Hiding our relationship was one thing... How the hell do I hide a baby? Penny Wylder's first full length novel! It's all the fun and filth you expect, just a lot more of it! This story has a romantic core and a happily ever after that will make you melt.

    Extra material: An Author’s Note is included in the back of the book.Mike Costa has lived his whole life in The Strip, Pittsburgh’s warehouse and factory district. His father’s large Italian family runs a food wholesale business, and Mike is used to the sounds and smells of men working all night to unload the trains that feed the city. But it’s 1933, and the Depression is bringing tough times to everyone. Money problems only add to Mike’s worries about his beloved grandfather, who is getting forgetful and confused.     Mike is being tormented at school by a loud-mouth named Andy Simms, who calls Mike “Macaroni Boy.” But when dead rats start appearing in the streets, that name changes to “Rat Boy.” Around the same time Mike notices that his grandfather is also physically sick. Can whatever is killing the rats be hurting Mike’s grandfather? It’s a mystery Mike urgently needs to solve in this atmospheric, fast-paced story filled with vibrant period detail.From the Hardcover edition.

    It wasn't very late, but Somnath felt as though the sun had suddenly set on impenetrable forest, giving way to a dangerous darkness.'1970s Calcutta. The city is teeming with thousands of young men in search of work. Somnath Banerjee spends his days queuing up at the employment exchange. Unable to find a job despite his qualifications, Somnath decides to go into the order - supply business as a middleman. His ambition drives him to prostitute an innocent girl for a contract that will secure the future of Somnath Enterprises. As Somnath grows from an idealistic young man into a corrupt businessman, the novel becomes a terrifying portrait of the price the city extracts from its youth.

    Crossing the border into Arizona with a group of Mexicans and a coyote, or guide, Pedro and his parents faced such harsh conditions that the boy is the only survivor. Pedro comes to live with Sophie, her parents, and Sophie's Aunt Dika, a refugee of the war in Bosnia. Sophie loves Pedro - her Principito, or Little Prince. But after a year, Pedro's surviving family in Mexico makes contact, and Sophie, Dika, Dika's new boyfriend, and his son must travel with Pedro to his hometown so that he can make a heartwrenching decision.

    As dreams turn slowly into nightmares, they cross paths and decide to face their challenges together. This is a powerful tale of friendship and a stark, authentic portrait of modern China.

    A Spokane Indian journalist transplanted from the reservation to the city picks up a hitchhiker, a Lummi boxer looking to take on the toughest Indian in the world. A Spokane son waits for his diabetic father to come home from the hospital, tossing out the Hershey Kisses the father has hidden all over the house. An estranged interracial couple, separated in the midst of a traffic accident, rediscover their love for each other. A white drifter holds up an International House of Pancakes, demanding a dollar per customer and someone to love, and emerges with $42 and an overweight Indian he dubs Salmon Boy. Sherman Alexie's voice is one of remarkable passion, and these stories are love stories -- between parents and children, white people and Indians, movie stars and ordinary people. Witty, tender, and fierce, The Toughest Indian in the World is a virtuoso performance by one of the country's finest writers.

    Indeed, the great fear is we are entering endgame where we appear to have lost the race between self-destruction and self-discovery the race to find the psychologically relieving understanding of our good and evil-afflicted human condition. WELL, ASTONISHING AS IT IS, THIS BOOK BY AUSTRALIAN BIOLOGIST JEREMY GRIFFITH PRESENTS THE 11TH HOUR BREAKTHROUGH BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF THE HUMAN CONDITION NECESSARY FOR THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REHABILITATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF OUR SPECIES!The culmination of 40 years of studying and writing about our species psychosis, 'FREEDOM' delivers nothing less than the holy grail of insight we have needed to free ourselves from the human condition. It is, in short, as Professor Harry Prosen, a former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, asserts in his Introduction, THE BOOK THAT SAVES THE WORLD! Griffith has been able to venture right to the bottom of the dark depths of what it is to be human and return with the fully accountable, true explanation of our seemingly imperfect lives. At long last we have the redeeming and thus transforming understanding of human behaviour! And with that explanation found all the other great outstanding scientific mysteries about our existence are now also able to be truthfully explained of the meaning of our existence, of the origin of our unconditionally selfless moral instincts, and of why we humans became conscious when other animals haven't. Yes, the full story of life on Earth can finally be told and all of these incredible breakthroughs and insights are presented here in this greatest of all books.

    

    Interweaving past and present, Sweden and Zambia, The Eye of the Leopard draws on bestselling author Mankell's deep understanding of the two worlds he has inhabited for more than 20 years.